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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Something like natural law is required if Christians are to say that Jesus Christ is as relevant to human beings of every age and in every place that we have ever existed as a race. There must be something stable about the human condition which means that we are all alike in need of a Saviour. That something is the fact that we are created to love God and to love our neighbour. This much is revealed to all humankind. For the Apostle Paul and Thomas Aquinas the natural law was not given as an alternative method of salvation but rather to explain the justice of God's judgment and the utter gratuity of divine grace. Similarly, natural theology is not an assertion that faith in Christ is optional but rather that all human beings are culpable if they do not recognise that there is a god who created them and rewards those who seek God. Natural theology is the minimum content of faith where Christ has not been proclaimed; it is no substitute for explicit faith in Christ when He has been revealed.
1 This, of course, leaves open the question of what form that exclusion may take.
2 Levering ‘Reading John with St Thomas Aquinas' in Weinandy, Keating an Yocum eds. Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to his Biblical Commentaries (London: T&T Clark, 2005) p. 111Google Scholar.
3 I make this claim circumspectly, in full knowledge of the dangers of such analogical reasoning. Nonetheless, I cannot see any way of avoiding it.
4 Hall, Pamela M. Narrative and the Natural Law: An Interpretation of Thomistic Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994) p. 2Google Scholar.
5 O'Donovan, Oliver Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (2nd edn.; Leicester: Apollos, 1994) p. 85Google Scholar.
6 ST I.2.1 ad. I; ST I-II.94.4; Hall Narrative and the Natural Law p. 21.
7 Nichols also points out that Grisez and Finnis hold to an irreducible plurality of goods, whereas Aquinas orders them all in the light of the vision of God in heaven: Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction to his Life, Work and Influence (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2002) pp. 92–96Google Scholar. See also Hall Narrative and the Natural Law p. 18.
8 Black, Christian Moral Realism: Natural Law, Narrative, Virtue and the Gospel (Oxford: OUP, 2000) pp. 6–17Google Scholar, 65, 99; Hall Narrative and the Natural Law p. 18.
9 As Black points out, in Christian Moral Realism at p. 58, what New Natural Law thinkers discern from the way things are is a list of irreducible human goods. Moral reasoning is orientated to the pursuit of these goods, which act as reasons for action. New Natural Law is therefore a form of moral realism because these goods are integral to the given reality of human nature. See also pp. 83, 89, 100ff.
10 Black Christian Moral Realism p. 48; Finnis Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980) p. 65.
11 Black Christian Moral Realism pp. 66, 126; Finnis Natural Law and Natural Rights pp. 101–102.
12 Nichols Discovering Aquinas p. 174.
13 Ziesler, Paul's Letter to the Romans (London: SCM, 1989) pp. 77–78Google Scholar; Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) pp. 61–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Aquinas's Super librum Dionysii De divinis nominibus c.7, lect. 4; Nichols Discovering Aquinas p. viii.
15 Jonathan Edwards ‘Wisdom in the Contrivance of the World’ in Scientific and Philosophical Writings pp. 307–310.
16 Wright, N.T. What St. Paul Really Said (Oxford: Lion, 1997) pp. 45–62Google Scholar.
17 O'Donovan Resurrection and Moral Order p. 89.
18 Karl Rahner ‘Reflections on the unity of the love of neighbour and the love of God’Theological Investigations VI, p. 234.
19 Yocum ‘Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job' in Weinandy, Keating and Yocum eds. Aquinas on Scripture p. 24.
20 Novak, ‘Response to the Desire of the Nations’Studies in Christian Ethics 11.2 (1998) p. 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Mobbs, ‘Is Natural Law Contained in Revelation?’New Blackfriars 85 (2004) p. 457CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Aubert, ‘L’Analogie entre la Lex Nova et la Loi Naturelle' in Elders, and Hedwig, eds. Lex et Libertas; Freedom and Law according to St Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1987) pp. 248–53Google Scholar
23 Kerr After Aquinas p. 66.
24 [87967]Super Heb., cap. 11 l. 2; ST II-II.1.7; III.supp. 89.7.
25 Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought: A Critique of Protestant Views on the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985) p. 107Google Scholar.
26 ST I-II.94.4; 6; Hall Narrative and the Natural Law 34–35, 46.
27 Christ's Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002) p. 61Google Scholar.
28 Christ's Fulfillment p. 112.
29 Christ's Fulfillment p. 113.
30 ST I-II.106.1 sed contra; Christ's Fulfillment 113.
31 See also ST I-II.98.2 ad.4; Levering Christ's Fulfillment 157 endnote 33.
32 Levering Christ's Fulfillment 113.; ST I-II.107.1 ad.3.
33 Holmes ‘Aquinas’Lectura in Matthaeum’ in Weinandy, Keating and Yocum eds. Aquinas on Scripture p. 89.
34 See also Rikhof, ‘The Church’ in Weinandy, , Keating, and Yocum, eds. Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction (London: T&T Clark, 2004) p. 208Google Scholar.
35 Black Christian Moral Realism p. 197.
36 xMarshall, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime and Punishment (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001) p. 47Google Scholar. See also Townsend, Christopher ‘An eye for an eye? The morality of punishment.’Cambridge Papers 6.1 (1997)Google Scholar; Rad, von Old Testament Theology (London: SCM Press, 1962) Vol.2 pp. 370, 373Google Scholar.
37 Schluter, ‘Relationism: pursuing a biblical vision for society’Cambridge Papers 6.4 (1997)Google Scholar
38 McIlroy, ‘The Relevance of Old Testament Law for Today: Part Two’Law & Justice 150 (2003) pp. 21–36Google Scholar.
39 Vos Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought pp. 23–25.