Download or read book Biblical Natural Law written by Matthew Levering and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2008-03-20 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to natural law theory and a challenge to re-think current biblical scholarship on the topic. Levering establishes the relevance of a biblical worldview to the contemporary pursuit of a moral life and locates his argument in the context of the philosophical development of natural law theory from Cicero to Nietzsche.
Download or read book Natural Law written by David Haines and published by . This book was released on 2017-12 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Christians, we affirm that Scripture is our supreme guide to truth and righteousness. Some wish to go further and assert that it is our only guide. But how then can we account for the remarkable insight and moral integrity that many unbelievers seem to display? Indeed, how to account for the myriad ways in which believers themselves navigate the world based on knowledge and intuition not always derived from Scripture? Enter the doctrine of natural law. Frequently misrepresented as an assertion of the autonomous power of human reason or as a uniquely Roman Catholic doctrine, natural law has actually been an integral part of orthodox Christian theology since the beginning, and is even clearly asserted in Scripture itself. In this brief guide, David Haines and Andrew Fulford explain the philosophical foundations of natural law, clear up common misunderstandings about the term, and demonstrate the robust biblical basis for natural law reasoning.
Download or read book The Possibility of Religious Freedom written by Karen Taliaferro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theory of religious freedom for the modern era that uses natural law from ancient Greek, Jewish, Christian and Islamic sources.
Download or read book Christianity and the Laws of Conscience written by Jeffrey B. Hammond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the Christian theological, legal, constitutional, historical, and philosophical meanings of conscience for both scholarly and educated general audiences.
Download or read book Ethics and Religion written by Harry J. Gensler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops strong versions of divine command theory and natural law and defends the importance of God to morality.
Download or read book Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics written by Stephen J. Grabill and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2006-10-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is knowledge of right and wrong written on the human heart? Do people know God from the world around them? Does natural knowledge contribute to Christian doctrine? While these questions of natural theology and natural law have historically been part of theological reflection, the radical reliance of twentieth-century Protestant theologians on revelation has eclipsed this historic connection. Stephen Grabill attempts the treacherous task of reintegrating Reformed Protestant theology with natural law by appealing to Reformation-era theologians such as John Calvin, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Johannes Althusius, and Francis Turretin, who carried over and refined the traditional understanding of this key doctrine. Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics calls Christian ethicists, theologians, and laypersons to take another look at this vital element in the history of Christian ethical thought.
Download or read book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms written by David VanDrunen and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional scholarship holds that the theology and social ethics of the Reformed tradition stand at odds with concepts of natural law and the two kingdoms. But David VanDrunen here challenges that status quo through his careful, thoroughgoing exploration of the development of Reformed social thought from the Reformation to the present. - from publisher description.
Download or read book Divine Covenants and Moral Order written by David VanDrunen and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the old question of natural law in its contemporary context. David VanDrunen draws on both his Reformed theological heritage and the broader Christian natural law tradition to develop a constructive theology of natural law through a thorough study of Scripture. The biblical covenants organize VanDrunen's study. Part 1 addresses the covenant of creation and the covenant with Noah, exploring how these covenants provide a foundation for understanding God's governance of the whole world under the natural law. Part 2 treats the redemptive covenants that God established with Abraham, Israel, and the New Testament church and explores the obligations of God's people to natural law within these covenant relationships. In the concluding chapter of Divine Covenants and Moral Order VanDrunen reflects on the need for a solid theology of natural law and the importance of natural law for the Christian's life in the public square.]>
Download or read book A Comparative Analysis of Cicero and Aquinas written by Charles P. Nemeth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Comparative Analysis of Cicero and Aquinas, Charles P. Nemeth investigates how, despite their differences, these two figures may be the most compatible brothers in ideas ever conceived in the theory of natural law. Looking to find common threads that run between the philosophies of these two great thinkers of the Classical and Medieval periods, this book aims to determine whether or not there exists a common ground whereby ethical debates and dilemmas can be evaluated. Does comparison between Cicero and Aquinas offer a new pathway for moral measure, based on defined and developed principles? Do they deliver certain moral and ethical principles for human life to which each agree? Instead of a polemical diatribe, comparison between Cicero and Aquinas may edify a method of compromise and afford a more or less restrictive series of judgements about ethical quandaries.
Download or read book God and Moral Law written by Mark C. Murphy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality—natural law theory and divine command theory—and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations. The characteristic methodology of theistic ethics is to proceed by asking whether there are features of moral norms that can be adequately explained only if we hold that such norms have some sort of theistic foundation. But this methodology, fruitful as it has been, is one-sided. God and Moral Law proceeds not from the side of the moral norms, so to speak, but from the God side of things: what sort of explanatory relationship should we expect between God and moral norms given the existence of the God of orthodox theism? Mark C. Murphy asks whether the conception of God in orthodox theism as an absolutely perfect being militates in favour of a particular view of the explanation of morality by appeal to theistic facts. He puts this methodology to work and shows that, surprisingly, natural law theory and divine command theory fail to offer the sort of explanation of morality that we would expect given the existence of the God of orthodox theism. Drawing on the discussion of a structurally similar problem—that of the relationship between God and the laws of nature—Murphy articulates his new account of the relationship between God and morality, one in which facts about God and facts about nature cooperate in the explanation of moral law.
Download or read book Knowing the Natural Law written by Steven J. Jensen and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowing the Natural Law traces the thought of Aquinas from an understanding of human nature to a knowledge of the human good, from there to an account of ought-statements, and finally to choice, which issues in human actions. The much discussed article on the precepts of the natural law (I-II, 94, 2) provides the framework for a natural law rooted in human nature and in speculative knowledge. Practical knowledge is itself threefold: potentially practical knowledge, virtually practical knowledge, and fully practical knowledge.
Download or read book Natural Reason and Natural Law written by James Carey and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural law, according to Thomas Aquinas, has its foundation in the evidence and operation of natural, human reason. Its primary precepts are self-evident. Awareness of these precepts does not presuppose knowledge of, or even belief in, the existence of God. The most interesting criticisms of Thomas Aquinas’s natural-law teaching in modern times have been advanced by the political philosopher Leo Strauss and his followers. The purpose of this book is to show that these criticisms are based on misunderstandings and that they are inconclusive at best. Thomas Aquinas’s natural-law teaching is fully rational. It is accessible to man as man.
Download or read book Common Law and Natural Law in America written by Andrew Forsyth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-11 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an ambitious narrative and fresh re-assessment of common law and natural law's varied interactions in America, 1630 to 1930.
Download or read book Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law written by Kody W. Cooper and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has Hobbesian moral and political theory been fundamentally misinterpreted by most of his readers? Since the criticism of John Bramhall, Hobbes has generally been regarded as advancing a moral and political theory that is antithetical to classical natural law theory. Kody W. Cooper challenges this traditional interpretation of Hobbes in Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law. Hobbes affirms two essential theses of classical natural law theory: the capacity of practical reason to grasp intelligible goods or reasons for action and the legally binding character of the practical requirements essential to the pursuit of human flourishing. Hobbes’s novel contribution lies principally in his formulation of a thin theory of the good. This book seeks to prove that Hobbes has more in common with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of natural law philosophy than has been recognized. According to Cooper, Hobbes affirms a realistic philosophy as well as biblical revelation as the ground of his philosophical-theological anthropology and his moral and civil science. In addition, Cooper contends that Hobbes's thought, although transformative in important ways, also has important structural continuities with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of practical reason, theology, social ontology, and law. What emerges from this study is a nuanced assessment of Hobbes’s place in the natural law tradition as a formulator of natural law liberalism. This book will appeal to political theorists and philosophers and be of particular interest to Hobbes scholars and natural law theorists.
Download or read book What s Divine about Divine Law written by Christine Hayes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How ancient thinkers grappled with competing conceptions of divine law In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. What's Divine about Divine Law? untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition—Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis—struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. Christine Hayes shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. Hayes describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. She shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. Hayes then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. A stunning achievement in intellectual history, What's Divine about Divine Law? sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.
Download or read book After the Natural Law written by John Lawrence Hill and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "natural law" worldview developed over the course of almost two thousand years beginning with Plato and Aristotle and culminating with St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. This tradition holds that the world is ordered, intelligible and good, that there are objective moral truths which we can know and that human beings can achieve true happiness only by following our inborn nature, which draws us toward our own perfection. Most accounts of the natural law are based on a God-centered understanding of the world. After the Natural Law traces this tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and then describes how and why modern philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and Hobbes began to chip away at this foundation. The book argues that natural law is a necessary foundation for our most important moral and political values – freedom, human rights, equality, responsibility and human dignity, among others. Without a theory of natural law, these values lose their coherence: we literally cannot make sense of them given the assumptions of modern philosophy. Part I of the book traces the development of natural law theory from Plato and Aristotle through the crowning achievement of Thomas Aquinas. Part II explores how modern philosophers have systematically chipped away at the only coherent foundation for these values. As a result, our most important moral and political ideals today are incoherent. Modern political and moral thinkers have been led either to dilute the meaning of such terms as freedom or the moral good – or abandon these ideas altogether. Thus, modern philosophy and political thought are leading us either toward anarchy or totalitarianism. The conclusion, entitled "Why God Matters", shows how even the philosophical assumptions of the natural law depend on a personal God.
Download or read book From Human Dignity to Natural Law written by Richard Berquist and published by Catholic University of America Press. This book was released on 2019-10-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Human Dignity to Natural Law shows how the whole of the natural law, as understood in the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition, is contained implicitly in human dignity. Human dignity means existing for one’s own good (the common good as well as one’s individual good), and not as a mere means to an alien good. But what is the true human good? This question is answered with a careful analysis of Aristotle’s definition of happiness. The natural law can then be understood as the precepts that guide us in achieving happiness. To show that human dignity is a reality in the nature of things and not a mere human invention, it is necessary to show that human beings exist by nature for the achievement of the properly human good in which happiness is found. This implies finality in nature. Since contemporary natural science does not recognize final causality, the book explains why living things, as least, must exist for a purpose and why the scientific method, as currently understood, is not able to deal with this question. These reflections will also enable us to respond to a common criticism of natural law theory: that it attempts to derive statements of what ought to be from statements about what is. After defining the natural law and relating it to human or positive law, Richard Berquist considers Aquinas’s formulation of the first principle of the natural law. It then discusses the love commandments to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself as the first precepts of the natural law. Subsequent chapters are devoted to clarifying and defending natural law precepts concerned with the life issues, with sexual morality and marriage, and with fundamental natural rights. From Human Dignity to Natural Law concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the natural law.
