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different foundations that avoided any appeal to metaphysical claims, which modern science had long rejected as outdated and unscientific.

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.

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.

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.

2. Natural law and morality

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-73
Author(s):  
Raymond Wacks
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the relationship between the ancient classical theory of natural law and its application to contemporary moral questions. It considers the role of natural law in political philosophy, the decline of the theory of natural law, and its revival in the twentieth century. The principal focus is on John Finnis’s natural law theory based largely on the works of St Thomas Aquinas. The chapter posits a distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ natural law, examines the notion of moral realism, and examines the tension between law and morality; and the subject of the moral dilemmas facing judges in unjust societies.

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