Ed Feser responds to David Bentley Hart's latest attack on natural law theory by clarifying what natural lawyers do and do not hold about morality, rationality, and theology.

Sheer Hart Attack: 

Morality, Rationality, and Theology

by Edward Feser

Natural law theory makes a very limited, but very important claim

--that there is common ground between all human beings, and particularly between religious believers and non-believers, 

on which moral disagreements can be rationally adjudicated.

In the March issue of First Things, theologian David Bentley Hart was highly critical of natural law theory. The piece got a lot of attention, some positive, some negative. R. J. Snell responded critically here at Public Discourse. I was another of Hart's critics, and replied to him in an online article for First Things. In the latest issue of First Things, Hart has responded to my criticisms--quite aggressively, though not, it seems to me, effectively.

Before I respond to Hart's mistakes, let me first clarify several things.

• First, natural law theorists make a very limited, but very important claim--that there is common ground among all human beings, and particularly between religious believers and non-believers, on which moral disagreements can be rationally adjudicated. For there are, the natural law theorist claims, objective moral conclusions that can be derived via purely philosophical arguments from premises that in no way presuppose any special divine revelation, religious tradition, or scriptural or ecclesiastical authority.
• Second, natural law theorists nevertheless in no way deny that their arguments are controversial, especially in a society that is religiously and philosophically pluralistic. Nor do they deny that religious, aesthetic, and cultural sensibilities shape most people's moral thinking and practice more than philosophical arguments do.
• Third, natural law theorists don't deny that some moral truths might only be knowable through revelation; nor do they deny that grace may be needed for some to grasp moral truths; nor do they deny that revelation, religious tradition, and ecclesiastical teaching may be necessary to correct some people's erroneous moral thinking.

That said, allow me to turn to Hart. In my first piece, I claimed that Hart was guilty of several fallacies. His new article repeats some of the same (though he pleads innocent). Worse, where Hart's arguments are non-fallacious, they are also nonexistent. The article is full of unsupported assertions, put forward in prose so purple that its imperial gravitas is evidently supposed to stand in place of argument.

But assertions without arguments to back them up are like spitballs: Anyone can make them; anyone can fling them; and while they can annoy their target, they draw no blood whatsoever.

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