Natural law and Christian ethics

Abstract

ORIGINS Themes akin to natural law emerged in Greek civilisation. The tragedian Sophocles (497–406 bce ), for example, gave some indication of it in his depiction of the conflict between Antigone's obedience to King Creon and her stronger obligation to a higher law. Plato (428–348 bce ) countered the relativism of the Sophists by arguing that goodness consists in living a life in accord with our rational nature and not in thoughtless social conformity. Aristotle (383–322 bce ) followed suit in distinguishing the deeper ‘natural justice’ from what is legally just. For Aristotle, the good for every organism is ‘to attain fully its natural activity’. Living ‘according to nature’ ( kata physin ) for human beings means living virtuously. The cosmopolitan Stoics distinguished the human nature that pertains to all human beings as such from laws instituted by particular societies. They held that the right way to live can be discovered by intelligently conforming to the order residing in human nature. Their characteristic maxim – that we ought to live ‘according to nature’ – was an injunction to live virtuously rather than at the whim of fluctuating emotions or social approval. Stoic notions were assimilated and popularised by the Roman philosopher Cicero (106–43 bce ), who maintained that ‘True law is right reason in agreement with Nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.’