The learned Dane and the harmony of natural law
Religion & Liberty Online

The learned Dane and the harmony of natural law

Roman Catholics and Protestants alike have forgotten that Protestants had a natural law theory, says E. J. Hutchinson in this week’s Acton Commentary.

To be sure, the work is of historical interest, as a testimony to Melanchthonian and, more broadly, Protestant thinking on natural law in the 16th and 17th centuries. That fact alone is not without significance, given that many people — Roman Catholics and Protestants alike – have forgotten that Protestants had a natural law theory (or, rather theories), and indeed that natural law in its more or less traditional form was basic to all magisterial Protestant theologians and philosophers from the very inception of the Reformation. Clearing the ground has its uses.

The full text of the essay can be found here.

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).