MANKIND AND NATURAL LAW
Either man is subject to natural law or not. So too is mankind, itself, subject to natural law or not. The lesser in the greater, and the greater in the lesser.
If not subject to natural law, then s/he can live without natural laws' goods: oxygen, food, hydration, and s/he can produce and reproduce himself or herself, alone, living forever, gods.
If subject to natural law, then, s/he is bound, as all else is bound, to natural law, whether that law be near or far, including their need to breathe, to eat, drink, produce and reproduce.
Clearly man is subject to natural law.
Thus, notions of "sin" or "the fall" are natural in man, natural to man, if man is subject to natural law. That is to say man is powerless to resist sin, as the stars are powerless to resist shining.
If man is not subject to natural law, then sin could not exist, because there would be no eternal, infallible, celestial, standard apart--from mankind, itself--by which to assess sin's presence.
That is to say that everything, sin and good, truth and lies, would all stand in absolute moral relativism, due to mankind 's exceptionalism to natural law, if such were the case.
My own view is that mankind is part of nature, and being such, is subject to natural law. Hence, mankind and each man is managed by the same laws, as those that govern the plethora of minute constituent elements that comprise each man: atoms, chemicals, molecules, matter, gravity, forces, planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, oceans, time, energy.
Sin, too, if it does really exists, is part of man's and mankind's naturally ordered algorithms, logarithms, biorhythms, in this microscopic world, the same as the orbits, seasons, ebbs, tides, day, night, life, death, beyond.
So, if man is subject to natural law, then mankind would necessarily lack the capacity to do right or to do wrong, to be good or bad, on his own, on its own, all these natural characteristics having been preternaturally preordered, preset in mankind, and in each man from before creation was extant in the will of God.
Mankind as does each man has the power "to be" or "not to be," and to conceive of itself as indeed of being potent, by reason of its manipulative, mobility, reasoning and imaginative capacities. These capacities enable it and him to know God, to feel, and to intuit his and its attachment to God, even if but for an infinitesimal instant, in this evanescence of time and space, like a bright beam of rarified light streaking from here to there, from glory to glory by grace!
Oh what a mighty God we serve !
Oh what a mighty God we serve !
MANKIND AND NATURAL LAW
Either man is subject to natural law or not. So too is mankind, itself, subject to natural law or not. The lesser in the greater, and the greater in the lesser.
If not subject to natural law, then s/he can live without natural laws' goods: oxygen, food, hydration, and s/he can produce and reproduce himself or herself, alone, living forever, gods.
If subject to natural law, then, s/he is bound, as all else is bound, to natural law, whether that law be near or far, including their need to breathe, to eat, drink, produce and reproduce.
Clearly man is subject to natural law.
Thus, notions of "sin" or "the fall" are natural in man, natural to man, if man is subject to natural law. That is to say man is powerless to resist sin, as the stars are powerless to resist shining.
If man is not subject to natural law, then sin could not exist, because there would be no eternal, infallible, celestial, standard apart--from mankind, itself--by which to assess sin's presence.
That is to say that everything, sin and good, truth and lies, would all stand in absolute moral relativism, due to mankind 's exceptionalism to natural law, if such were the case.
My own view is that mankind is part of nature, and being such, is subject to natural law. Hence, mankind and each man is managed by the same laws, as those that govern the plethora of minute constituent elements that comprise each man: atoms, chemicals, molecules, matter, gravity, forces, planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, oceans, time, energy.
Sin, too, if it does really exists, is part of man's and mankind's naturally ordered algorithms, logarithms, biorhythms, in this microscopic world, the same as the orbits, seasons, ebbs, tides, day, night, life, death, beyond.
So, if man is subject to natural law, then mankind would necessarily lack the capacity to do right or to do wrong, to be good or bad, on his own, on its own, all these natural characteristics having been preternaturally preordered, preset in mankind, and in each man from before creation was extant in the will of God.
Mankind as does each man has the power "to be" or "not to be," and to conceive of itself as indeed of being potent, by reason of its manipulative, mobility, reasoning and imaginative capacities. These capacities enable it and him to know God, to feel, and to intuit his and its attachment to God, even if but for an infinitesimal instant, in this evanescence of time and space, like a bright beam of rarified light streaking from here to there, from glory to glory by grace!
Oh what a mighty God we serve !
Oh what a mighty God we serve !