Steven A. Long evaluates the International Theological Commission’s account of natural law, supporting its recovery of metaphysical and teleological foundations against the notion of an autonomous will detached from divine providence. He argues that speculative knowledge of reality and its ordered ends grounds practical moral judgment: the human good cannot be separated from the truth of being, and nature’s hierarchy of purposes makes rational choice possible.

Long then defends a Thomistic account of divine and human causality. Human freedom does not compete with God’s providence; God, as First Cause, sustains and moves the will without abolishing its interior authorship. Natural law is therefore participation in divine governance, not an external constraint on autonomy. The common good likewise rests on the shared nature and God-given ends of persons rather than arbitrary social contracts. Human rights arise from justice and natural law, while the common good is a noble universal good, not merely an instrument for individual or social advantage.