kind of theological basis it would need. She acknowledges that for Barth the question is not only theological but Christological.32
Porter observes that the scholastics did situate natural theology in an overall theology in which the person and work of Christ were central; but they did not think, as Barth does, that Christology is directly relevant for shaping a natural law ethic. Porter, moreover, thinks it a very good thing that the scholastics thought the claim that the world is the good creation of God, without referencing Christ, is theologically appropriate.33 She does so because she thinks it important to recognize that Christians are not alone in affirming the doctrine of creation. According to Porter, the belief in creation may be a central belief for Christians, but that does not mean the Christian understanding of creation is unique.34
Porter’s way of putting this matter reflects her concern that Christian ethics not be thought to be distinctive or unique given the reality of, as well as need for, a common morality. She thinks it quite likely that our common secular morality is in fact more Christian than its critics suggest. Such critics confuse the question of a distinctive Christian account of morality with the question of what constitutes an adequate account of morality. Those, like Barth, who refuse to acknowledge an overlap between Christian morality and different forms of secular morality cannot help but fall into the theological error of “failing to take the doctrine of the creation with full seriousness and truncating the scriptural witness to God as the one who creates and sustains the natural world.”35
Accordingly, Porter challenges Barth to think what it would mean to have a Christology without a doctrine of creation. “Taken to its extreme, an emphasis on Christ without some reference to the doctrine of creation risks a view according to which Christ is a wholly unexpected emissary from an utterly unknowable God — in other words, risks becoming a version of Catharism.”36 That is why Christian theology stands in need of the category of natural goodness: because without such a category it is impossible to preserve the doctrine of creation, making it impossible to hold on to the idea of Christ as Redeemer.37
Porter returns to these themes in her later book, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law, in which she worries about how the tendencies in Christianity associated with asceticism and perfectionism can too easily develop into some forms of dualism that imply a denial of the fundamental doctrine that God is the Creator of the world. As a result, the continuity between God’s goodness and wisdom and the goodness and intelligibility of the world “as we experience it” can be lost.38
I should be candid and acknowledge that Porter’s critique of Barth is also a critique directed at me and, in particular, my pacifism. According to Porter, it is a mistake to think the difference between the scholastics and pacifists is that the former derive their ethics from reason and the latter derive their ethics from the Bible. Rather, what is at stake is two ways of interpreting the moral significance of Scripture. The scholastics interpret Scripture on the basis of natural law, but the concept of natural law is grounded in scripturally informed texts of creation.
So the fundamental difference is not scriptural but doctrinal. Pacifists can base Christian ethics only on Jesus Christ, whether Jesus is seen in more or less orthodox terms or considered as a central figure in the foundational narratives of the Gospels. Pacifists, therefore, reflect the influence of Karl Barth, even though they break with Barth in terms of the ethics of pacifism. “In contrast,” according to Porter, “the scholastics give priority to preserving the integrity of Christian doctrine taken as a whole, and given the context within which they wrote, they give particular weight to the doctrine of creation. As a consequence, they have no theological stake in the uniqueness or distinctiveness of Christian morality.”39
Porter acknowledges that positions such as Barth’s rightly caution against too easy accommodations with secular orders; yet the witness comes at too high a price just to the extent that whatever does not fit neatly into a Christian framework must be rejected as alien or evil. Porter is not suggesting that Christians are called to embrace uncritically every aspect of secular culture, but her position does mean that there should be a willingness by Christians to accept the ambiguities that are present in every society. The scholastics’ willingness to acknowledge such ambiguities, Porter suggests, makes them surprisingly similar to Reinhold Niebuhr’s understanding of Christian realism.40
Porter justifies her appeal to Niebuhr as an ally of the scholastic understanding of natural law by calling attention to William of Auxerre’s argument, an argument based on natural law, for the legitimacy of resisting force by force. According to Porter, William acknowledges that this is in tension with the Lord’s command to turn the other cheek, but to turn the other cheek, according to William, is not always possible. To turn the other cheek in certain circumstances may be a way to draw men and women to God by unaccustomed mildness, but such a stance cannot always be required. Retaliation and vindication, reactions that draw on our naturally given anger and self-protective instincts, when subject to rational reflection, serve to sustain the purposes of the preservation of just societies.41
Porter concludes this line of reflection by observing that “our inclinations toward self-defense and retaliation can be understood in terms of human goods they serve. Given the scholastic concept of the natural law, this implies that they reflect the goodness of human nature and the wisdom and love of its Creator.”42 God as Creator and our status as creatures are therefore used by Porter to underwrite knowledge of moral norms that seem to be in some tension with the demands of discipleship.
Though I have reservations about Porter’s account of natural law in scholastic theology, my concerns in this essay are not historical but theological. In spite of Porter’s claim that her account of natural law presupposes a doctrine of creation, I do not see the difference an appeal to creation makes for how natural law is understood. I may have missed it, but I have been unable to discover in what Porter has written how her claims about creation as a necessary presumption for sustaining natural-law reasoning might result in judgments that are at odds with those who do not share her views about creation.43
With admirable candor, in Ministers of the Law Porter acknowledges that her defense of natural rights as an expression of her account of natural law has a great deal in common with leading secular theories such as those represented by Ronald Dworkin, Neil MacCormick, John Rawls, and Martha Nussbaum. Indeed, she suggests that the convergence is sufficient for some to suspect that her account of natural law and rights is “essentially a baptized version of secular liberalism.” She acknowledges that there is some truth to that charge, but she defends the result, noting that she is “a twenty-first-century woman with strong liberal sensibilities, and it would be very strange if her theology were not shaped by this context to some degree.”44
Yet the question must then be asked, What difference does her appeal to creation as a necessary theological presumption to sustain natural-law reasoning make for moral reflection? As far as I can see, in spite of her strong claims concerning the necessity of creation to justify a natural law ethic, her theological convictions do no work for her.
I can illustrate what it means for the appeal to creation to do work by calling attention to Barth’s way of introducing his account of ethics
