Orthodox Christians are deeply concerned with laws passed in post-Christian, Western societies that are against nature. This raises the question of what constitutes good law and bad law. The law in America that recognised same-sex ‘marriage’ (Obergefell v. Hodges), is a good example of bad law. Christians are calling for the repeal of this law and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented from it.
In Laelius’ speech in Cicero, On the Republic, he begins by saying:
True law is correct reason congruent with nature, spread among all persons, constant, everlasting.’
Here we have five criteria for true law: it is reasonable, accords with nature, is universal, is constant, and is everlasting (3.27).
Any law establishing same-sex marriage fails each test. It is unreasonable in defying the meaning of ‘marriage’. Marriage does not define close relationships or sexual activity, nor is a small unit of mutually engaged persons. That which elevates marriage and family to something higher is where both are associated with laws of nature. Marriage has to do with procreation that produces a family. Same-sex ‘marriage’ only mimics this, perhaps by borrowing children in one way or another (surrogacy, adoption). It redefines ‘parents’ from being mother and father to being merely two adults.
Same-sex marriage is also contrary to nature. It defies God’s intent in creation. God created male and female, with the express command to be fruitful and multiply. Marriage between a man and a woman is natural and God’s intended purpose for two opposite genders becoming ‘one flesh’. Civil laws that are not grounded in natural law are temporary and functional, like speed limit signs on a road. One can hardly reduce marriage—the very basis of human flourishing—into something like a speed limit law. Cicero cautions civil laws that have no higher source than legislative or judicial pronouncements: ‘But truly the most foolish thing is to think that everything is just that has been approved in the institutions or laws of peoples’ (On the Laws 1.42). Also, ‘But we can divide good law from bad by no other standard than that of nature’ (On the Laws 1.44). He adds that both laws and what is considered honourable and disgraceful must be rooted in nature (1.45). Typical language to describe homosexuality in antiquity was that they lived ‘against nature’ (so also Paul in Romans 1.26-27). What a law claiming that homosexual marriage is permissible amounts to a merely civil law establishing a dishonourable practice as though it was grounded in nature when it is not.
Same-sex marriage has never been approved in history, even if rare instances of people in history are recorded in which two persons of the same sex dwelt together as husband and wife. A law establishing this, however, is something entirely new. It is not universally acknowledged and lacks any historical warrant. It is a court’s ruling at a particular time of cultural decay that will not have universal approval, will lack constancy, and will not be everlasting.
The Church is right to speak truth to authorities, even in an anti-creational, atheistic culture that at one time claims things to be natural that are unnatural and at other times denies that nature plays any role in establishing ‘local truths’. This waffling is characteristic of a society that wishes to reject what Cicero saw as necessary: law must have grounding in nature, and what is natural is what is grounded in God. Our Western society is an experiment in rejecting the grounding of civil laws in nature and under God. To this culture, the Church can join with the Roman jurist and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero, of the 1st century BC, to asserts that ‘true law is correct reason congruent with nature, spread among all persons, constant, everlasting’. Our challenge, however, is that what is considered right is increasingly grounded only in law and not in nature and God. Cicero warned:
But if rights were established by peoples’ orders, if by leading men’s decrees, if by judges’ verdicts, there would be a right to rob, a right to commit adultery, a right to substitute false wills if those things were approved by the votes or resolutions of a multitude (On the Laws 1.43).
To these examples, we might add in our day same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, it is not hypothetical. As Christians, we call for the removal of so distorting and unnatural a law.
English (US) · 