Mormonism and Natural Law

That’s the title of my latest entry over at The Catholic Thing. Here’s how it begins:

With the increasing likelihood that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for President, it is important for Catholics and other Christians to reflect on some concerns raised by Damon Linker in a 2007 New Republic article. Linker argues that Mormon theology does not have important resources that traditional Christians have at their disposal, such as natural-law theory.

Although LDS writings say little specifically about the nature of moral law, they do say quite a lot about the nature of laws and principles that include moral laws. The founding Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr., maintained that laws and principles are eternal and unchanging: “Every principle proceeding from God is eternal and any principle which is not eternal is of the devil. . . . The first step in the salvation of man is the laws of eternal and self-existent principles.”

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