Positive law is an ancient concept that goes back at least to Aristotle and even today is found in Black's Law Dictionary. John Mark Hicks explains how theologians have used it in the past:
God bless, HomerThe distinction between positive law and moral law in the modern era finds its roots in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651). He distinguishes between those laws which “have been laws from eternity” (moral or natural) and those laws which have been made “by the will of those that have sovereign power over others” (e.g., God or human governments; Leviathan, 26)
This distinction was appropriated by Reformed theologians. Charles Hodge, the 19th century Presbyterian Princeton Seminary professor, is a good example of this. He referred to “moral” laws as those “permanent relations of men” that arise out of the character of God and the nature of things (thus, a form of natural law). But “positive” laws “derive all their authority from the explicit command of God.” So, while moral laws are those which obligate human beings due to the nature of things or the nature of God, positive laws refer to “external rites and ceremonies.” As a result, “the criterion of such laws is that they would not be binding unless positively enacted.” Consequently, there is a fundamental difference between moral and positive commands. Moral laws are obligatory “in their own nature,” but positive laws are obligatory solely by the explicit command of God (Systematic Theology, III:267, 269). In the case of the Sabbath, as a specific example, it is a “moral duty that the people should assemble for religious instruction and for the united worship of God” which “was obligatory before the time of Moses, and would have been binding had he never existed.” But it is a “positive [law] that the seventh rather than any other day of the week should be thus set apart” (Systematic Theology, III:323-324).
