Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Natural law

The moral order built into creation and human nature, knowable (in principle) by reason apart from special revelation — the ethical dimension of general revelation.

Latin lex naturalis; in Aquinas, 'the participation of the rational creature in the eternal law'.

Romans 1:32; 2:14–15 ('the work of the law written on their hearts'); Acts 17:26–28; the moral appeals to conscience and to creation order in the wisdom literature.

Developed by the Stoics, taken up by the Fathers, and systematised by Aquinas (Summa I–II qq. 91, 94); central to Catholic moral theology and to Western legal and political thought (the 'law behind the law' invoked against unjust statutes). Protestant natural-law theory has a real history (the Reformers used it) and a recent revival after a Barthian eclipse.

Its first precepts ('do good, avoid evil'; preserve life; the basic goods) are held to be self-evident to practical reason; sin obscures its application, and Scripture clarifies and completes it.

How much sin has damaged moral knowledge; whether natural law can ground public moral argument in a pluralist society; Protestant debates over its status.

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.