The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode, by R. J. Snell. Eugene: Pickwick, 2014, xii + 207 pages, $24.00, paper.

This is a very Roman Catholic book—written by a Roman Catholic philosopher (although he teaches at the historically Baptist Eastern University) mostly navigating intra-Roman Catholic discussions about moral philosophy and theology. The Perspective of Love, however, may be of interest to Reformed readers for several reasons. First, it provides insight into the state of contemporary Roman Catholic thought (albeit mostly of conservative stripe). Second, the author, R. J. Snell, addresses common Protestant objections to natural law theory, and not to critique them but to acknowledge their cogency and to try to incorporate their valid concerns into his natural law proposal. Finally, this book offers helpful illustration of why Roman Catholic theories of natural law fall short: not only because of a deficient view of sin but also because of an inaccurate understanding of salvation.

After discussing in his first chapter how natural law can be thought of, in a preliminary way, as a matter of common sense, Snell turns to discuss natural law as theory in chapter 2. This way of understanding natural law represents a classical approach to the subject, associated especially with Thomas Aquinas. In this approach, natural lawyers begin by developing a metaphysics and anthropology (usually wedded to Aristotelian philosophy) and, drawing upon this theoretical view of the world and especially human nature, derive moral conclusions which constitute the natural law. In chapter 3 Snell notes that most Protestant critics of natural law are responding to this classical approach, and he says that the classical approach is in fact not well equipped to answer Protestant objections. According to these objections, natural law theory makes nature autonomous, fails to recognize the necessity of grace, and especially fails to account for the noetic effects of sin.

Thus, Snell sets out in Part Two—what he refers to as “Natural Law in a New Mode”—to consider a number of contemporary Roman Catholic figures who offer a revised way of understanding natural law. Chapter 4 treats John Paul II and Martin Rhonheimer, a Swiss Roman Catholic moral philosopher, chapter 5 deals with several figures associated with the so-called “new natural law theory,” and chapter 6 discusses the intentionality analysis of the twentieth-century Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan’s work is the most central for Snell’s project.

These different writers and schools of thought develop matters in distinct ways, yet share some common convictions that I will try to summarize briefly. These writers do not believe that natural law is derived from a metaphysics or anthropology; in fact, they do not believe natural law is derived from anything. Instead, natural law is understood by turning to the human subject, following what Snell calls the “mode of interiority” (73 and elsewhere). These writers look within and perceive how human beings actually think and act. By doing so they realize that we are creatures who act with purpose, pursuing certain kinds of goods. These goods are self-evident, not in the sense that everyone acknowledges them but in the sense that they explain the coherence of human action. People are capable of denying these goods and the basic structure of human thought, but they ensnare themselves in self-contradiction when doing so, for they implicitly acknowledge the things they seek to deny in the very attempt to deny them. Snell pursues a kind of transcendental analysis here that may be of interest to practitioners of Van Tilian apologetics.

Snell strongly appreciates this approach to natural law “in a new mode.” In Part Three he attempts to defend and build upon it, in considerable part by showing how it can account for Protestant objections regarding sin and grace in ways that the classical approach to natural law cannot. Chapter 7, therefore, focuses upon how this new mode incorporates the noetic effects of sin into its understanding of natural law. Chapters 8 and 9 follow by discussing the gracious work of the Spirit in bringing redemption. Snell appeals to the classic Thomist formula: grace perfects nature. The natural law is not opposed to grace, he explains, because grace heals, elevates, and perfects nature, enabling nature to be what it’s supposed to be.

This book wrestles with far too many weighty issues for me to interact with in detail here. I offer only a few observations in conclusion.

First, I cannot avoid mentioning that this book presents several illustrations of the kind of butchery of English that can result from (presumably) trying to avoid sexist language. One horrific example: “While dialectic has an objective structure, it matters whether the dialectician is themselves converted or not” (179, italics added). Who am I to say, but that must be a violation of natural law in one mode or another.

Second, I note that Snell’s attempt to account for Protestant objections to natural law should not ultimately be convincing to Protestants—at least to Reformed Protestants—because it is not properly grounded in the dynamic of redemptive history or in a biblical doctrine of salvation. To mention a few specific matters: it does not treat natural law as a covenantal reality, its soteriology centers almost entirely around sanctification, and its view of nature-and-grace treats nature as something to be healed and elevated rather than as destined for eschatological consummation. While it is interesting, and in some ways encouraging, to see a Roman Catholic philosopher try to take modern Protestant objections to natural law theory seriously, the much better way to address them is not by refining traditional Roman Catholic theology but by explaining the critical role of natural law in a full-orbed Reformed theology, of which the biblical covenants, forensic justification, and the consummation of the present creation are essential features.

Finally, while I cannot recommend this book as providing a satisfactory way forward on the topic of natural law for people of Reformed conviction, it does provide useful insight into the state of contemporary conservative Roman Catholic moral theology. For all sorts of reasons, it is very important that Reformed pastors and theologians keep abreast of developments in recent Roman Catholic thought and not be satisfied with outdated views, and perhaps caricatures, about Rome. This book would be more useful in this regard if it also dealt with progressive Roman Catholic thought (which likewise is essential for understanding Rome), but as it is, readers wishing to get caught up on the dynamics of conservative Roman moral theology could do worse than reading this modestly sized volume.

David VanDrunen is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving as the Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California. Ordained Servant Online, November 2014.