Welcome hardmod777,
I think I would respond this way: if our view of Natural Law is correct, there can never be a legitimate case of God’s Law versus Natural Law. If it is a question as to whether observed behavior forms a kind of “law unto itself” apart from God’s law I would say this: there is no binding “law” that is not God-made or sanctioned. The distinction being between what is prescribed and what is actual. For instance, Polygamy appears to have been performed, and tolerated, without being directly sanctioned. On the other hand, slavery appears to have direct acknowledgement and sanction from God, as God required a tithe of slaves. Because Polygamy was performed does not make it a “natural law” but rather shows that man and nature are under the law of sin, to be redeemed completely only at death or the paliggenesia (translated “regeneration”). Perhaps a simple way of putting it is that what is is not always nor necessarily what ought to be. If the world were not under the law of sin, then these two would be identical: the actual and the juridical.
The simple fact of humans functioning in their environments in the way that they do does not constitute a law, but rather a “fact.” Law is juridical in constitution, not actual. This is always the confusion that arises in discussions of the so-called “positive law” which is nothing more than a way of saying “all is permitted that occurs.”
A further confusion enters when we contemplate physical law. When we refer to physical laws, we are in a way misusing the term law to represent a scenario in which something occurs predictably and inviolably. It is an expression of sheer probabilism. In this current usage, there is no moral content. A law is simply the unexceptional activity of some sort. A process to which, given certain conditions, exceptions are unknown. Juridical laws, of course, can be and are violated. This does not mean that there are not psycho-social “laws” that are as yet not well understood. But these would not be juridical, they would be probabilistic in nature.
To this we should add that due to human fallibility, nowhere does man or nature behave in the manner in which they were created to behave, as the entire creation is “fallen.” This is the distinction between the created order and the current, or actual, order. This however, does not nullify the ordinances (juridical in character) pertaining to creation: the so-called Creation Ordinances, such as monogamy and marriage until death.
This “fallenness” (or futility) does not merely inhere in human action, but, according to scripture, affects nature as well. The fallen order is a lower and less perfect order than the created order. In this we see that actual behavior must not be viewed as prescriptive. We encounter this latter fallacy constantly when dealing with what the biblical Patriarchs did or did not do, as though it were prescriptive. We also see this applied in anthropological studies of so-called primitive societies, as though they were not also subject to the curse, and that their more “natural” behavior is somehow prescriptive for us. In this connection we must make a distinction of kind between the so-called lex naturalis and the ius naturale. The former, if it has any reality, could only be used to describe the “actual” and therefore it is not really a “lex” at all, because it does not have juridical content; it is merely the constitution of things as they are, in a fallen world. This does not carry with it, in human terms, a writ of approbation. The latter, the ius naturale, or natural justice (typically referred to as natural right) is simply the application of the concept of rights to a fallacious concept of juridical law present in what is actual. In point of fact, there is no natural right. There are no rights outside of God’s Law and the necessary inferences therefrom: no right to food, no right to shelter, no right to safety, no right to medical care, no right to die. No rights whatsoever exist outside of God’s Law. Certainly in nature there are no identifiable rights at all, merely the law of power: he who is more powerful does what he wants. I find the whole conception of Natural Law undergirding Ayn Rand’s so-called ‘Objectivism’ to be entirely without merit, either a rationalizing from what is actual to what ought to be, or a presumption of the universal rationality of a set of moral precepts that simply does not exist. Universality is only found in transcendant sources of law. Rand’s defining transcendent as that which is arrived at by reason is circular. The conception that there are no disagreements between rational agents on questions of what is right for a man to do is similarly circular.
If we cannot find certain ethical or moral precepts in scripture, or deduce them naturally and without force from the text, we cannot claim them as rights. I firmly believe this is the only check on the multiplication of so-called natural rights ad infinitum.
I find that often the discussion of Natural Law is merely a form of a confusion of semantic categories, rather than a legitimate dispute about jurisdiction. God’s jurisdiction is without limit. In humans, God has inscribed the laws of freedom and therefore also of moral responsibility.
I hope the foregoing helps. I would say this view of Natural Law is largely shared among the Kinists who have take the time to develop a position on the subject.
