Amanda Perreau-Saussine de Ezcurra saw positive law as a resource for uncovering natural law. She also saw our natural inclinations, especially our natural sociability and our natural tendency toward benevolence, as crucial to a proper understanding of natural law. Drawing on these two foundational ideas of hers, this article will look at the Decalogue, the pre-eminent example of divine positive law, and then our concrete experience of desire, as revelatory of what she called ‘a law-like ordering of the world prior to human thought and action, a natural ordering that constrains practical reasoning’.Footnote 1 To her characteristic concerns, it will add attention to God's silence.
This article will approach its subject in the following way. First, it will consider the Decalogue. It will give particular attention to what the Decalogue does not legislate, and to what it assumes without saying. After this inquiry into the Decalogue's omissions and assumptions, it will consider the place of desire in the structure of human nature and the structure of natural law. Finally, it will consider what God reveals about natural law by his silence.
The Decalogue and its omissions
In Christian tradition, the Decalogue is typically seen as the paradigm of Mosaic law and a concise summary of its most essential demands. Yet the Decalogue passes over critical moral obligations in silence. There is a command for children to honour their parents (Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16), for example, but there is no command for parents to care for their children. The omission is not absolute. The commandment about the Sabbath specifies that no work may be done by one's son or one's daughter (Exod 20:10; Deut 5:14), implicitly requiring parents to give their children time for rest and worship.Footnote 2 Furthermore, when we consider the Decalogue in its literary context (i.e. the rest of Torah), we find other precepts that somewhat supply for its silence about parental obligation. Of the 613 commandments enumerated by rabbinic tradition, several pertain to children. They prohibit incest (Lev 18:6–17), they forbid parents from sacrificing their children to Molech (Lev 18:21) and they command parents to redeem their first-born sons with a monetary offering (Num 18:15–16; cf. Exod 13:13, 34:20). Most significantly, in Genesis, God commands the first humans to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). This command, long interpreted as applying not just to the first humans but also their descendants, arguably requires parents to care for their children.
Nevertheless, the Pentateuch contains no explicit commandment for parents to care for their children. Meanwhile, it amplifies the Decalogue's command to honour father and mother. It prescribes death for anyone who strikes or curses father or mother (Exod 21:15, 17), and it authorises and even commands parents to present rebellious sons to the elders for judgment and stoning (Deut 21:18–21). The omission from Mosaic law of any command for parents to love or care for their children should give us pause. The Pentateuch contains many commandments of relatively minor significance. Why would it omit something as essential to Israelite culture and commonsense morality as care for one's children?
The Decalogue's asymmetrical handling of the parent–child relationship is striking, but its failure to command parents to care for their children is only one of many striking omissions from Mosaic law. There are others. In Leviticus the Israelites are commanded to love their fellow Israelites as themselves (Lev 19:18), but they are never commanded to love themselves. The precept presumes that the Israelites love themselves, and it arguably presumes that there is a moral obligation for them to do so, but it does not make any such obligation explicit, and neither does any other commandment. Likewise, the Decalogue forbids adultery (Exod 20:14; Deut 5:18), but it does not command love or care for one's spouse.
Why does the Pentateuch exhibit these omissions and lacunae? It cannot be because we already act in accord with the omitted commandments. Parents do not always care for their children, spouses do not always care for each other and we do not always care for ourselves. Nor can it be because the Pentateuch does not place high value on parental love, married love or proper love of self. Each was central to the culture of ancient Israel.
Could it be that the Pentateuch does not command these actions because it regards them as merely personally beneficial, or perhaps even morally good, but not morally obligatory? It is hard to imagine how that could be the case. Mosaic law forbids the Israelites to wrong orphans or deprive them of justice (Exod 22:21–3; Deut 24:17, 27:19). It also commands them to share their harvest with orphans (Deut 14:29, 24:19–21, 26:12–13). In the cultural context that the Pentateuch assumes and creates, parents who failed to care for their children would not be seen as merely failing to choose what was most beneficial to themselves, or merely failing to strive after the most praiseworthy option. Abraham, for instance, could hardly regard another Israelite who did not care for his first-born son as merely settling for less. He would judge him morally defective or at least mentally ill. In fact, it seems likely that the reason why Jewish commentators first located a universal command to marry and procreate in Genesis 1:28 was not because they discovered it there – the literal sense of the text manifests no intention to promulgate such a commandment – but because they already believed that these behaviours were morally obligatory.
The best explanation for the Pentateuch's omissions is that, as with any legal system, Mosaic law is concerned first and foremost with those behaviours that, in its cultural context, most require legislation. Mosaic law does not legislate for parents to care for their children, or for spouses to care for each other, or for the Israelites to care for themselves, because the Israelites did not need encouragement to do these things. Their perceived value and their obligatory character were so foundational to Israelite culture that explicitly commanding them would have been superfluous and unnecessary. It is not that the Israelites never failed to care for their children or their spouses or themselves. Rather, the importance of doing these things was so obvious to them that it did not merit being said.
Nevertheless, a puzzle remains. If these unspoken moral obligations were so foundational and obvious to the Israelites, and yet were presumably flouted with some frequency in Israelite society, as they are in every other human society, why are they not mentioned in Mosaic law? What makes them different from other obligations that were also foundational and obvious to the Israelites, but nonetheless explicitly legislated, such as the obligation to worship the God of Israel and him alone, or the obligation to keep holy the Sabbath, or the obligation to stay faithful to one's spouse?
The unspoken moral obligations have this characteristic in common: they all involve behaviours that flow directly from powerful natural impulses. Even granting that we are naturally inclined to care for our aged parents, for example, no instinct of filial affection can compare to a mother's intense desire to hold and nurse her newborn child, or to the parental instinct to protect and nurture children as they grow to maturity. Children are disposed to love their parents (or those fulfilling parental roles), but they do not begin their lives loving their parents, or even understanding who they are. They love their parents only in response to their parents’ love for them, and they must grow into their love over time. Parents, on the other hand, must go against their instincts not to care for their children. Likewise, as social animals, we are naturally inclined to love our neighbour, but love of neighbour does not come as naturally or as easily as love of self or love of spouse.
In contrast, the behaviours commanded by the Decalogue do not flow directly from powerful natural impulses. In fact, most of its precepts forbid actions to which we are often strongly inclined. If the unspoken moral obligations presumed by Mosaic law are mainly about fulfilling desire, the commandments of the Decalogue are mainly about restraining desire and controlling the restless id of the human psyche.
Some qualifications, though, are necessary. The Decalogue does not stand in total opposition to our desires and inclinations. We have natural tendencies to do what the Decalogue commands. For example, we have natural tendencies to set aside time for rest and worship of the divine, corresponding to the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath, and to show gratitude and respect to our parents, corresponding to the commandment to honour our father and mother. Yet these tendencies are not as subjectively powerful as, for example, the impulse for parents to love and care for their children. These tendencies are natural to the human person, but they are inherently delicate and fragile because they depend on rational judgements and not merely biological imperative. Not coincidentally, we do not find them among non-human animals.
In light of these considerations, rather than saying that the precepts of the Decalogue are mainly about restraining desire, it is better to say that they are about bolstering subjectively fragile tendencies which often find themselves threatened by other, more subjectively powerful tendencies. For example, although the Israelites and Israelite culture were thoroughly oriented to the worship of the invisible God, their loyalty was frequently tested by their attraction to visible objects of worship, such as the gods of other nations or the social acceptance that came from worshipping them. Consequently, the first commandment commands them to have no gods beside the God of Israel. Likewise, marriage fulfils our natural tendencies toward an exclusive sexual relationship, but sexual attraction often threatens these tendencies, and so the Decalogue forbids adultery.
Implications for natural law
From these reflections on Mosaic law and what it commands and what it does not command, we can draw some important conclusions. First, the Decalogue and the rest of Mosaic law presuppose a deeper, unspoken law.Footnote 3 Second, this unspoken law is nothing other than our deepest inclinations and desires and an attendant obligation to cooperate with them and bring them to fruition. Consequently, while the Decalogue's formal characteristics (e.g. its straightforward listing of commands) have encouraged deontological interpretations, its substance, when properly understood in its full historical and literary context, in fact presumes a eudemonistic ethical framework. Third, the commandments of the Decalogue are best understood, not in terms of restraining desire, but in terms of supporting subjectively fragile desires against being overwhelmed by subjectively powerful desires.
Considering the Pentateuch purely as a historical text, these three conclusions offer considerable resources for natural law theory. The exhaustive detail that characterises modern legal codes can obscure what is most foundational, thus making it difficult to derive from them universally applicable legal principles. The sheer brevity of Mosaic law makes its principles more accessible. Insofar as Mosaic law is human law, these principles provide an important window into the moral assumptions that inform human society, and thus, quite plausibly, into the structure of natural law. Comparison with other legal systems would be necessary to determine which principles have the best claims to universality, but even without comparative studies, Mosaic law is well worth investigating as a case study.
Reading the Pentateuch as a divinely inspired text, these three conclusions take on infinitely greater implications. First, without touching the actual content of natural law, they have great implications for the way religious believers frame their investigation of natural law theory. They provide firm theological support for the view that there is indeed a natural law, and that, paradoxically, God has revealed its existence.Footnote 4 The unspoken assumptions of Mosaic law also bolster the view that natural law holds ontological priority over divine positive law, insofar as they suggest that Mosaic law presupposes natural law.Footnote 5 Second, by its unspoken moral assumptions, Mosaic law provides powerful scriptural support for the classical view, most notably associated with Thomas Aquinas, that natural law derives from our natural inclinations, as known through ordinary human reason.Footnote 6 In fact, Mosaic law's unspoken assumptions suggest that natural law does not merely derive from our natural inclinations, but rather that our natural inclinations themselves constitute natural law.
This view of natural law runs against what we ordinarily mean by law, at least law in a moral or legal sense. Human law is typically verbal; consequently, we ordinarily associate law with thoughts and words. Human law also commands human agents from outside themselves; consequently, we ordinarily regard law as something external to the agents to whom it is addressed. Such an understanding of law leaves no room for natural inclinations to themselves constitute law. If we extend our definition of law to include commands that are non-verbal and that come from within ourselves – and there is no a priori reason to think that we should not, other than the fact that human laws do not function this way – then we are on solid ground to argue that our natural inclinations themselves constitute natural law. Since they address our capacity for free choice and direct us to behave in certain determinate ways, and are more than merely requests or suggestions, they can be accurately described as laws.
To be clear, it is hardly plausible that the human legislators of Mosaic law meant to affirm the reality of natural law, or that they had a coherent understanding of natural law which we can hope to reconstruct. Nor do they give any evidence of having a clearly defined concept of natural inclination, let alone a comprehensive list of them. What does seem to be the case, however, is that they presupposed moral obligations which were closely associated with what we would now describe as natural inclinations. Consequently, while it would be highly tendentious to claim that they meant to teach the existence of natural law, implicitly or explicitly, let alone define it in terms of natural inclinations, their legal formulations can be plausibly described as presupposing natural law, and a certain notion of natural law. And if they in fact do, then God, as the primary author of sacred scripture, through the Mosaic law in general and the Decalogue in particular, has implicitly revealed the existence of natural law and its close association with our natural inclinations.
With those qualifications in mind, the account of natural law suggested – though not defined – by Mosaic law could be summarised as follows. By the natural inclinations he implanted within human nature, God guides us in certain determinate ways toward what is good for us, and he expects us to cooperate with his guidance. When we cooperate with our natural inclinations, we fulfil the natural law; when we do not, we violate it. Furthermore, while Mosaic law does not offer anything like a comprehensive list of our natural inclinations, the sorts of things which it treats as grounding unspoken moral obligations (our tendencies toward food, drink and reproduction; our natural sociability; our natural benevolence toward our family and our children; etc.) implicitly give us criteria for identifying them.Footnote 7
First difficulty
This approach to natural law can claim an attractive simplicity, but it faces two substantial difficulties. The first difficulty runs as follows. Since morally good actions often advance one natural inclination at the expense of another, how can our natural inclinations suffice of themselves to provide norms for human action?
We can resolve this difficulty with two important specifications which go beyond the presuppositions of Mosaic law. The first specification is that we violate our natural inclinations only when we intentionally frustrate them. There is nothing morally problematic about preferring one inclination over another. If we do not intentionally frustrate our natural inclinations, but merely prefer one inclination over another, then our actions are not morally defective. The problem comes when we frustrate our inclinations by deliberate intention. For instance, when we give our dinner to someone starving, we need not be acting against mean to intentionally frustrate our natural tendency to self-preservation; we can act purely with the intention of helping someone else, and thus with the intention of bringing our natural sociability to its proper telos. If, however, we give our dinner to someone not only to help, but also because we wish to deprive ourselves of food and eventually bring about our own death, then our actions intentionally thwart our natural inclinations and thus violate them, rendering our actions morally defective. In this way, our inclinations provide the basis for exceptionless moral norms. While it can be acceptable to prefer one inclination over another, it is always morally wrong to intentionally frustrate any of them.Footnote 8
Of course, intention, and what it means to intend something, remain intensely disputed in moral philosophy and moral theology. Among those working within the traditions of natural law or double effect reasoning, disagreement centres on the extent to which our intentions necessarily encompass the effects of our actions. Historically, the case of self-defence (and especially Aquinas's treatment of self-defence in ST 2/2.64.7) has been the locus classicus for reflection on this question. The question can be summarised as follows. When we kill an aggressor in self-defence, knowing that our actions will necessarily lead to the aggressor's death, can we say that we intend merely to protect ourselves, and that we do not intend the aggressor's death?
Just as there are two answers to this question (that is, yes or no), so too, broadly speaking, there are two main approaches to intention. Both approaches hold that we necessarily intend the chosen means to a chosen end. For example, if we choose to ride a bicycle to the store, we necessarily intend to ride a bicycle. Both approaches also hold that we can knowingly cause effects that we do not intend in the course of performing intentional actions. For example, if we take medicine that we know is bad-tasting, we need not intend to give ourselves a bad taste in the mouth; we can intend only to cure our sickness. These two approaches differ, however, about just how closely an effect can be bound up with our explicit intentions without us necessarily intending it. Some approaches to intention give greater leeway for agents to cause effects knowingly without intending them.Footnote 9 Other approaches give agents less leeway.Footnote 10
For this account of natural law to work, we need an account of intention that gives agents greater leeway. Without such an account of intention, the idea that our natural inclinations themselves constitute the natural law cannot stand. for example, consider the case of a soldier who jumps on a grenade to protect his friends. If our understanding of intention compelled us to say that he must intend to cause his own death, and thus deliberately frustrate his natural inclinations, it would render this account of natural law incoherent. It would mean that, according to this account of natural law, his actions were morally defective, yet we know that they are self-evidently heroic. For this account of natural law to work, we need to be able to say that he intends to absorb the blast, and yet does not intend to cause his own death, or something like that. It is beyond the scope of this article to present or defend such an account of intention.Footnote 11 For our purposes, it is enough to note that many philosophers and theologians have done so, and that assuming that this approach to intention is correct, a significant worry about the strict identification of natural law with natural inclination can be resolved.
This first specification – that we violate our natural inclinations only when we intend to frustrate them – is not enough. To explain how our natural inclinations can suffice of themselves to provide norms for human action, we need a second specification as well. We must specify that our actions are morally defective not only when we intentionally frustrate particular inclinations, but also when our actions’ foreseen negative effects outweigh their foreseen positive effects, with both negative and positive being measured against our natural inclinations. For example, should we choose to eat an ice cream rather than press a button to save the world, even if we were not declining to save the world for malicious reasons, we would be performing a morally defective action because the foreseen negative effects of our actions would outweigh the positive.
This second specification stems from the ontological implications of freedom and rationality. As rational beings, as one of our natural tendencies, we necessarily desire goodness as such, that is, whatever appears good for us.Footnote 12 (The possibility of rational choice, and the fact that mentally competent rational beings cannot escape the necessity of making rational choices, requires us to postulate this involuntary tendency. Without a tendency toward the good, we would have neither reason nor desire to make rational choices. As it is, we cannot escape the necessity of making choices. At every waking moment, assuming we are mentally competent, we cannot avoid making choices. Even deciding to do nothing is a choice. The existential necessity of making choices points to an underlying impetus toward the good: a desire that drives us to seek out whatever appears good in our field of vision.)
Our desire for the good – for whatever appears good for us – necessarily directs us toward actions whose foreseen effects, holistically considered, advance our natural inclinations (since our natural inclinations direct us toward our ontological fulfilment and thus what is good for us). Consequently, any action whose foreseen negative effects outweigh its foreseen positive effects must necessarily be morally defective. Performing such an action knowingly would violate our inclination toward the good. Since we need only intend to thwart a single natural inclination to make an action morally defective, and since our inclination toward the good is itself one of our natural inclinations, deliberately thwarting that single inclination is enough to taint the action's moral goodness. For example, even if we do not intend to bring about our death by jumping off a bridge, but merely to enjoy the thrill of falling through the air, which is a good, the foreseen negative effects of our actions would outweigh the foreseen positive effects, and so jumping off the bridge for such a purpose would be morally defective.
These two specifications suffice to resolve the first difficulty. According to legend, Archimedes once said, ‘Give me a place to stand and a lever big enough, and I will move the world.’ With this account of natural law, we can likewise say, ‘Give us knowledge of our natural inclinations and an adequate account of intention, and we can derive every precept of the natural law.’Footnote 13
Second difficulty
Nevertheless, a second difficulty remains. It is one thing to say that our natural inclinations are suggestions or recommendations, directing our wills toward determinate ends. It is another thing to say that they are commands carrying with them moral or legal obligation to comply. On what grounds can we say that our natural inclinations are not merely suggestions or recommendations, but commands carrying the force of moral obligation?
Here we must return to the idea that, as rational beings, we necessarily desire whatever appears good for us. Now, something appears good for us to the extent that it appears to advance our natural inclinations. Consequently, whenever we perceive something to advance our natural inclinations (consciously or unconsciously), we necessarily desire it. When we choose to cooperate with our natural inclinations, this desire provides energy and motivation for our actions, and after performing them, we feel a sense of interior peace and harmony for having done so. When we instead intentionally frustrate one or more natural inclinations, and thus direct ourselves toward what is ontologically defective, this desire haunts us and leaves us interiorly conflicted. In this way, our desire for the good suffices to account for our subjective feelings of moral obligation and conscience.
We can, of course, deny that the feeling of moral obligation signals any actual obligation to act in accord with it. Nevertheless, we cannot stop feeling it. And if we cannot stop feeling it, from the sheer fact that we cannot stop feeling it, our desire for the good carries the force of obligation. It makes a demand on us without our consent, and when we refuse to cooperate, we experience a penalty, namely, interior discomfort. This explanation resolves the second difficulty. Properly understood in its full implications, our desire for the good can account for why our natural inclinations constitute commands carrying the force of obligation, and not merely recommendations.Footnote 14
God's silence
Historically, most theorists of natural law have held that God is its legislator, and that God promulgates natural law in the very act of creation, through the form and structure he imparts to the world. We could argue, however, that God reveals natural law not only in creating the world and sustaining it in being, but also in his silence.
Before exploring this possibility, we must first address a more fundamental question: to affirm the reality of natural law, must we hold that natural law originates with a divine legislator? In one sense, insofar as we know that we were created by God, the answer is yes, because everything originates with God. Yet in another sense, we can answer emphatically in the negative. Even if larger considerations lead us to the conclusion that the world was created by God, or that our natural inclinations must originate in a divine legislator, natural law does not require a divine legislator to justify its status as law. Our natural inclinations direct us toward specific goods suitable to our nature, and our tendency toward the good gives our natural inclinations the force of obligation. Our natural inclinations are thus commands carrying the force of obligation – with or without a divine legislator responsible for bringing those natural inclinations into being. Consequently, we do not need to posit a divine legislator to argue for the existence of natural law. The fact of our natural inclinations is enough. By themselves, they prove the existence of natural law, because they themselves are the natural law.
If we approach natural law from a materialist perspective, it makes no sense to ask why natural law is this way or that; natural law just is. But if we approach natural law from a theist or specifically Christian perspective, then natural law manifests the mind of its divine legislator, because legislation is a personal act. Consequently, from a theist perspective, since natural law would be otherwise if God had chosen otherwise, it makes a great deal of sense to ask why natural law is this way or that. Accordingly, this question has attracted much interest from Christian theologians. They have traditionally answered it by referring to God's goodness, God's wisdom and God's desire to share his life and happiness with humanity. A related question, however, has not attracted as much attention. God chose not only the content of natural law but also its means of promulgation. Why has God chosen to promulgate natural law in the way that he has, and does his chosen means reveal anything about the content of natural law?
In seeking to answer this question, we must contend both with what God says and what he does not say. What he says is more obvious. In his promulgation of the natural law, God speaks through our natural inclinations. He commands and obliges from the inside, through the natural tendencies he planted within us. Yet these natural tendencies, and therefore God, are silent on some important points. Our natural tendencies do not indicate the specific ways in which we must bring them to fulfilment. For example, they direct us to eat nutritious food, but they do not direct us to prepare our food for consumption in specific ways. Our natural sociability and our creative impulses, inherent to our rationality, incline us to develop culinary traditions, but they do not incline us to develop any specific cuisine. In this way, our natural inclinations are fundamentally open-ended. They point us in definite directions, toward specific goods, but they do not direct us to specific outcomes or specific means of execution. They are silent about them, leaving the choice to us and to our freedom and creativity.
From a materialist perspective, this silence admits only of materialist explanations. It would be pointless to ask for a rational explanation, as though this silence could be explained by a rational motive. From a theist perspective, however, this silence must have a rational explanation. It is not a random fact. It reflects the free, personal choice of the divine legislator.
Why, then, has God chosen to remain silent, and what does God's silence reveal about natural law? God evidently does not wish to command specific outcomes and specific means of execution. And yet the precepts of natural law force us to choose some sort of outcome, and to do so using our freedom and creativity; we could not keep the precepts of the natural law if we did not. It follows that our natural inclinations are commands not merely to seek specific goods, but also to use our freedom and creativity in their attainment: both in how we attain those goods and in choosing among specific outcomes. And if that is what they are, then we can infer that the divine legislator wants us not only to cooperate with our natural inclinations, but also to do so in a fully personalised way that fully integrates our wills, our intellects, our emotions, and even our bodies (especially insofar as our bodies are inextricably linked to our psyches). In this way, the silence of natural law and its legislator reveals something about the content of natural law. It reveals that natural law concerns not merely the fulfilment of our natural tendencies, but also the way we fulfil them. We are commanded and obliged not only to fulfil our natural inclinations, but also to appropriate them personally in the process – first in making sense of them and assimilating them, and then in our free and creative actions.
God is silent in another way as well. Even granting that God speaks through our natural inclinations, it is empirically obvious that we often fail to grasp what he means to command. We can therefore ask: why has he not confirmed natural law with unmistakable verbal communication? For Jews and Christians, God has spoken through the Decalogue, and for Christians, he has also spoken in Jesus Christ. Even according to Jewish and Christian accounts, however, this verbal communication is not unmistakable, from the sheer fact that so many billions of people do not recognise its divine origins.
Jews and Christians would be among the first to vouch for the advantages of divine positive law when it comes to knowing and keeping the natural law. Natural law can be misconstrued in ways that verbal law cannot. (Though verbal law can also be misconstrued in ways that natural law cannot.) We can easily misunderstand our natural inclinations or our obligation to cooperate with them, especially in difficult cases, and divine positive law makes clear what otherwise could be foggy. We also need customs and conventions to order our natural inclinations, and divine positive law supplies many of them. For example, God's command to keep holy the seventh day gives us an agreed-upon reference point for ensuring that we set aside sufficient time for rest, communal recreation, contemplation and worship, thus fulfilling our natural needs and tendencies.
Given the benefits of divine positive law, God surely has good reason to communicate verbally with every human person in an unmistakable way. He also surely has the power to do so. Yet he has not. Likewise, despite the many specific commands and prohibitions found in sacred scripture, many important moral questions are left unaddressed and unresolved. What does God's silence reveal about natural law?
Here God's silence reveals that, in keeping the natural law, personal appropriation of our natural inclinations ranks higher than flawless performance of morally correct actions. If the natural law demanded merely compliance and obedience, God would surely have supplemented natural law with unmistakable, comprehensive verbal legislation. Yet the instant divine revelation became unmistakable and comprehensive, our motivation for cultivating intellectual virtues such as prudence or intellectual creativity would significantly decrease. A comprehensive moral code would also diminish the possibility that we would intellectually integrate our natural inclinations into our personality and actions. Believing the code infallible and knowing ourselves fallible, we would invariably prefer to consult the code rather than try to figure out how to behave using our reason and experience. Our intellectual curiosity would atrophy, as would our individuality and creativity. Only legislative supplements that allow room for doubt of their divine authority prevent their guidance from undermining our freedom and individuality, and only those that balance guidance with discretion leave space for intellectual curiosity and creativity.
In sum, God's silence reveals that the natural law demands that we personally appropriate our natural inclinations through the active engagement of intellect and will. Since this personal appropriation requires interiority, and since interiority requires quiet reflection, we could also say that God's silence requires our silence.
Conclusion
In this article, we began by considering the Decalogue's omissions and saw how they revealed that Mosaic law presupposes an unspoken, ethically prior law closely related to our natural inclinations. Taking this observation as a point of departure, we then proceeded to consider how natural law could be identified with our natural inclinations. Finally, we considered how God's silence reveals that natural law requires not merely obedience to our natural inclinations but also creative, personal appropriation. And if our two deepest inclinations are to love and to be loved, we could further conclude that, in the end, life is about learning how to love.Footnote 15, Footnote 16
