 The term ‘natural law’ and its relations both to ‘eternal law’ and to positive law have, however, been the focus of much controversy. Maritain’s account of natural law both presupposes a metaphysical view of the nature of human beings and a realistic epistemology, and critics have argued that there are a number of tensions or inconsistencies internal to it. Some of the principal criticisms of this account are i) that it is inconsistent because it sets forth a naturalistic theory of what is good and bad and yet claims that only a supernatural sanction will serve to explain moral obligation, ii) that connatural knowledge is not only inadequate for what we normally count as knowledge, but it is, in fact, also incapable of establishing that something is a natural moral law, iii) that the first principle of moral law is vacuous, and iv) that Maritain glosses over the fact/value distinction.