A Grammar of the Natural Law: A Celebration of Josef Fuchs and His Legacy for Natural Law Renewal

Abstract

One of the most influential international moral theologians of the twentieth century was the German Jesuit, Josef Fuchs (1912–2005). Not only did he live through the tumult of two world wars and experience the radical reorientation and renewal that occurred during the Second Vatican Council, he also witnessed firsthand the rise of globalization and the need to secure human rights on a global scale. Rooted in an appropriation of the natural law, Fuchs’s theological ethic was sustained and ordered by his acceptance of moral realism, which affirms that an objective moral order exists independently of human understanding. Perhaps this is the most consistent thread that runs throughout the entire corpus of Fuchs’s contribution to the field and practice of theological ethics. Salient though this thread is, Fuchs’s reflections on the objective moral order were not static, but dynamic and subject to profound shifts throughout his career. This article celebrates the life and thought of Josef Fuchs with respect to his contributions to natural law theory in theological ethics. In the first section, I provide a brief introduction to Fuchs’s theological reflections on the natural law and chart its early development citing his text Natural Law: A Theological Investigation. In the second section, I use Mark Graham’s work Josef Fuchs on Natural Law as a guide for exploring the profound shift that occurred in Fuchs’s thought due to the twofold influence of his colleague, another German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, and his service with the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birth. In the third section, I explore the fruits of that conversion experience made manifest in two of his later works, Christian Ethics in a Secular Arena and Moral Demands and Personal Obligations. Inspired by Fuchs’s two post-conversion works, I call for a renewal of the natural law accompanied by its elevation within contemporary theological and ethical discourse for the twin purpose of securing human rights and promoting the conditions that contribute to the overall flourishing of human beings. To advance this claim, I contend that Fuchs is an insurmountable and invaluable figure for any contemporary project of natural law renewal.