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By the end of the fourth article Aquinas comes up with his definition on law, “Law is an ordination of reason for the common good by one who has care for the community, and promulgated.” Question 91 is on the different kinds of law. Aquinas establishes four types of laws: eternal law, natural law, human law, and divine law.
Human law is positive law: the natural law applied by governments to societies. [171] Natural and human law is not adequate alone. The need for human behaviour to be directed made it necessary to have Divine law. Divine law is the specially revealed law in the scriptures. Thomas quotes, "The Apostle says (Hebrews 7.12): The priesthood being ...
' natural law '). [10] Aquinas argues that because human beings have reason, and because reason is a spark of the divine, all human lives are sacred and of infinite value compared to any other created object, meaning everyone is fundamentally equal and bestowed with an intrinsic basic set of rights that no one can remove.
As the moral law of nature, it is the participation of the reason in the all-determining "eternal reason"; but since man falls short in his appropriation of this law of reason, there is need of a "divine law"; and since the law applies to many complicated relations, the practicae dispositiones of the human law must be laid down.
Thomas Aquinas expounded the concept of Human Law, a distinct form of law alongside Natural Law and Eternal Law, in Summa Theologica.Thomas asserted the primacy of natural law over man-made law, stating that where it "is at variance with natural law it will not be a law, but spoilt law" (ST, I–II q. 95 a. 2).
Aquinas distinguished four kinds of law: eternal, natural, divine, and human: Eternal law refers to divine reason, known only to God. It is God's plan for the universe. Man needs this plan, for without it he would totally lack direction. Natural law is the "participation" in the eternal law by rational human creatures, and is discovered by reason
Thomas Aquinas conflated man-made law (lex humana) and positive law (lex posita or ius positivum). [3] [4] [5] However, there is a subtle distinction between them.Whereas human-made law regards law from the position of its origins (i.e. who it was that posited it), positive law regards law from the position of its legitimacy.
Aquinas presents an Augustinian view of teaching being divided into "interior" and "exterior" processes; that is modified by Aristotelian ideas. [22] The former process is inventio , a means of teaching that is reserved to God, the principal teacher, a process of "natural reason [arriving] by itself at the knowledge of things previously unknown ...