The Integrity of Faith

1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-261
Author(s):  
Robert A. Gessert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
English Language ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
Concept Of Law

Though at first it seems quite simple and straightforward and though he devotes hundreds of pages to its exposition, Calvin's idea of law is subtle and elusive. He, like Luther, stresses the Protestant principle of justification by grace alone, but not a few interpreters have seen him as the severest of legalists who finally relegates grace to the position of being merely a means to works righteousness. It is undoubtedly pretentious to try to put law in its ‘true’ meaning and context in Calvin's schema. This paper must therefore be regarded as simply an exploratory effort in that direction.Since Calvin was himself a competent student of the secular law, a fruitful method for investigating this problem would be to inquire into the character of the legal studies that formed such an important part of his background. How did he regard the Roman Law which had been shaping European civilisation for several centuries? To what extent was he influenced by Greek versions of the Natural Law which had been so important to Thomas Aquinas? In the English language we make the word ‘law’ (like ‘love’) carry, somewhat promiscuously, nuances of meaning that the more analytical languages of Latin and Greek distinguish. The tools of Philology and History may be necessary for a definitive examination of Calvin's concept of law.

The Ethics of Natural Law according to Thomas Aquinas

Verbum ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-368
Author(s):  
Dalia Marija Stancienė
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Aquinas

Germain Grisez and the “New Natural Law”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
John Finnis

This chapter is an extended examination of a revisionist approach to natural law, explored by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Grisez and Finnis elucidated an entirely new paradigm that they believed to be both sounder intellectually than the paradigms of the neo-scholastics and revisionists and much closer in outline to the paradigm offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. This approach is usually labeled the “new natural law.” The author proposes that the entire “new natural law” project undertaken by Grisez and Finnis could be viewed as being about saving natural law by reestablishing it on distinctly different foundations that avoided any appeal to metaphysical claims, which modern science had long rejected as outdated and unscientific.

Happiness and the Theology of the Self in Late Seventeenth-Century England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Muldrew
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Self ◽  
Appropriate Use

Muldrew traces the integration of Aristotelian into Christian thinking about happiness, by Thomas Aquinas and during the Renaissance but more particularly in the thinking of late seventeenth-century ‘Latitudinarian’ divines. He argues that they were seeking an alternative way to achieve peace and tranquillity to that offered by Hobbes, who had stressed the need for strong authority. Their alternative drew on a variety of classical ideas about self-cultivation and self-discipline, but built upon and further developed relatively hedonistic versions of these. The pursuit of moderate sensual gratification was legitimized as an appropriate use of human faculties implanted by God. Although this was an erudite tradition, it was presented to a less erudite audience in sermons: these writers often transposed ideas from a classical to an English-language setting. In that context, the word ‘happiness’ came to loom large, appearing frequently and functioning as a key motif in latitudinarian thought.

scholarly journals A critical investigation of Y7 students’ perceptions of Roman slavery as evidenced in the stories of the Cambridge Latin Course

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (42) ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Ella Parodi
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
English Language ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Public High School ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Introductory Textbooks

In an article, ‘The Slaves were Happy’: High School Latin and the Horrors of Classical Studies, Erik Robinson, a Latin teacher from a public high school in Texas, criticises how, in his experience, Classics teaching tends to avoid in-depth discussions on issues such as the brutality of war, the treatment of women and the experience of slaves (Robinson, 2017). However, texts such as the article ‘Teaching Sensitive Topics in the Secondary Classics Classroom’ (Hunt, 2016), and the book ‘From abortion to pederasty: addressing difficult topics in the Classics classroom’ (Sorkin Rabinowitz & McHardy, 2014) strongly advocate for teachers to address these difficult and sensitive topics. They argue that the historical distance between us and Greco-Roman culture and history can allow students to engage and participate in discussions that may otherwise be difficult and can provide a valuable opportunity to address uncomfortable topics in the classroom. Thus, Robinson's assertion that Classics teaching avoids these sensitive topics may not be so definitive. Regardless, Robinson claims that honest confrontations in the classroom with the ‘legacy of horror and abuse’ from the ancient world can be significantly complicated by many introductory textbooks used in Latin classes, such as the Cambridge Latin Course (CLC), one of the most widely used high school Latin textbooks in use in both America and the United Kingdom (Robinson, 2017). In particular, Robinson views the presentation of slavery within the CLC as ‘rather jocular and trivialising’ which can then hinder a reader's perspective on the realities of the violent and abusive nature of the Roman slave trade (Robinson, 2017). As far as he was concerned, the problem lay with the characterisation of the CLC's slave characters Grumio and Clemens, who, he argued, were presented there as happy beings and seemingly unfazed by their positions as slaves. There was never any hint in the book that Grumio or Clemens were unhappy with their lives or their positions as slaves, even though, as the CLC itself states in its English background section on Roman slavery, Roman law ‘did not regard slaves as human beings, but as things that could be bought or sold, treated well or badly, according to the whim of their master’ (CLC I, 1998, p. 78). One might argue, therefore, that there seems to be a disconnect between the English language information we learn about the brutality of the Roman slave trade provided in the background section of Stage 6, and what we can infer about Roman slavery from the Latin language stories involving our two ‘happy’ slaves.

The Natural Law in Catholic Ethics

2015 ◽  
pp. 387-402
Author(s):  
Kevin L. Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
John Finnis

This chapter presents Catholic teaching on the natural law as the product of a conversation over millennia. After offering some basic conceptual distinctions, the chapter begins by considering ancient non-Christian sources for Christian reflection on the natural law, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. The chapter then considers relevant biblical texts and the teachings of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Attention is particularly played to Thomas’s adaptation of Classical traditions, and his argument concerning the unchangeablness of natural law. The final section of the chapter focuses on discussion of natural law after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in the work of Germain Grisez and John Finnis.

scholarly journals THEOLOGY AND POLITICO-LEGAL POPULARIZATION OF MARTYRDOM IN THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSAL MONARCHY

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Victoria Sandoval Parra
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Original Thinking

The choice of the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas to formulate a theory of martyrdom present in the Hispanic Modern Age corresponds to the evident fact of its value as foundation of the Second Scholasticism theology, in the quality of builderof the philosophical and theological tendency that laid the foundations for the renovation of natural Law: an intellectualist iusnaturalism, contrary to voluntarism, which meant the Catholic orthodoxy and constituted, under the counter-reformist spirit, the basis of a reinterpretative and original thinking embodied by the modern jurists and theologians in their treatises and commentaries in order to acquire a political and legal connotation with regard to the legitimation of the nature and aimsof Universal Monarchy.

scholarly journals LEGAT W PRAWIE RZYMSKIM

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Loska
Keyword(s):  
Economic Benefit ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
General Concept ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Legal Effect ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Times ◽  
Concept Of Law

A LEGACY IN THE ROMAN LAWSummary A notion of a legacy did not exist in the archaic Roman law as a homogenous concept of law and it developed as late as in the pre-classical Roman law. Even then, however, only particular types of legacies, rather than their general concept, were defined. Nevertheless, one may say that a legacy was a civil law instrument by means of which a testator left a certain economic benefit to a particular person, not making him\her an inheritor.At the beginning there were four basic types of legacy in the Roman law: legatum per vindicationem, legatum per praeceptionem, legatum per damnationem and legatum sinendi modo. The first two types had an effect of a disposition while the two latter ones of an obligation only. In sources there also exist two other types: legatum optionis and legatum partitionis. This last mentioned is similar to a later established concept of a fideicommissum, an informal legacy, which became actionable in the times of the Emperor August.Already in the ancient times one may observe a decrease in the significance of these types of legacy, the effects of which directly related to the ownership of objects (legatum per vindicationem and legatum per praeceptioneni).They were connected with the notion o f an ownership according to ius civile and formal means of transferring the ownership. They lost its significance when - beside the oldest civil law - praetorian law and emperors’ constitutions appeared and when the ownership was standardised. After the issuance of senatusconsultum Neronianum in the 1st century AD it became possible to retain the legal effectiveness of the legacies which until then were considered invalid due to a failure to preserve an appropriate form; an ex /^ con version took place. It resulted most probably in converting invalid legacies into legatum per damnationem.In the subsequent centuries, emperors’ constitutions led to a harmonisation o f the concept of legacy (while the division between the legacy having an effect of a disposition and an obligation was still preserved), and later on to equalisation in the legal effect of formal and informal legacies. The most important regulations were: the constitution of the Emperor Constantinus dated 339 AD, which abolished the requirement of solemnitas verbum and two constitutions of the Emperor Iustinianus - the first - dated 529 AD - introduced an identical legal nature of all legacies, the other - dated 531 AD - completely equalised legacies with fideicommissa. 

“Bringing Philosophy Down from the Heavens”: Natural Right in the Roman Law

1989 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Zuckert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Relationship

The treatment of the natural law in the Roman law is puzzling because the relationship between jus naturale and the two other forms of law, jus gentium and jus civile, is far from clear in the texts. Moreover, the jus naturale does not appear to have the dignity most readers expect it to have. This article attempts to sort out the relationships among the three types of jus by showing that the various classifications the jurists use are based on their perceptions of the complexities of nature as a source of right and on the attempt to work out a political embodiment of natural right.

Natural Law in Early Modern Legal Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ibbetson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Hugo Grotius

Natural law thinking in the early modern world had two principal roots: Greco-Roman moral philosophy and Roman law. These two strands came together in sixteenth-century Spain, from where they influenced the Dutchman Hugo Grotius. Grotius can be seen as the channel through which this thinking reached a pan-European audience. His works, and the works of his followers, came to have an enormous influence on the development of legal thought and practice after the seventeenth century. Ideas of natural law were no longer regarded as dependent on God’s will. A rational structure could be derived from self-evident premises in the law of nature and identification of concrete rules of natural law was regarded as the work of human reason. These features, coupled with its seeming moral objectivity, allowed natural law to provide a template for positive legal systems, and fuelled the move towards codification of law in eighteenth-century Europe.

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