Marie Louise Colman Religious Studies(AS) Natural Law Essay
Explain the theory of Natural Law
The beginnings of natural law came from the philosophy of Aristotle, back in the fourth century BC. He promoted the idea that all actions and objects have a ‘good’ towards which they are designed to work. This ‘good’ is determined by the ‘final cause’ of the thing in question, which is it’s destined purpose or end product. The ‘efficient cause’ is whatever is used in the development of this. For example, you could say that when writing, the pen you write with is the efficient cause, whereas the finished letter, essay or novel is the final cause.
Thomas Aquinas, referred to as St Thomas Aquinas by the Roman Catholic Church, who are strong believers in the natural law, developed this into an ethical theory in the thirteenth century. He extended Aristotle’s philosophies to include God, so that followers of the natural law must believe that; God created everything to a particular design, for a particular purpose and fulfilling that purpose is ‘good’. He called the ability of human beings to reason and freely choose their destiny, ‘natural law’. Due to this relation with God, natural law is seen as a deontological theory in that it is a rational understanding and following of God’s final purpose and therefore gives the possibility of providing a clearly defined, universal rule. It is debatable however, whether freedom enters into the equation, because the strictness of it’s rules makes this theory a promoter of less independent thought and decision making.
