THE ORIGINAL QUESTION OF NATURAL LAW

From antiquity to the present, Jewish theologians have argued whether Judaism has a concept of natural law or not. This debate is fundamental because it is concerned with the question of law. Judaism is much more than law. It is more than simple “legalism” – contrary to the views of Spinoza, Kant, and many others – but it is not less than law. Judaism without law is simply unthinkable. But the primary law of Judaism is the revealed law of God (torah min ha-shamayim). Those theologians who recognize no place for the concept of natural law in Judaism think that the doctrine of the revealed law of God could not be properly maintained if the concept of natural law actually had a place there. Other theologians, who strongly endorse the concept of natural law in Judaism, think that without this concept (by whatever name it happens to be called at different times in Jewish history), Judaism would have no place for human reason. The absence of this concept would make human reason superfluous, and the Torah would become unintelligible in the world. Already in Scripture, though, revelation and reason often appear together and are often bound one with the other. However, is reason dependent on revelation, or is revelation dependent on reason? That is what seems to be basically at issue between these two groups of theologians.