RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
The only sources I used were Thomas and Althusius. Other Reformed thinkers held to natural law, and I will list them in the comments.
- There is an objective moral order to which we have cognitive access.
- Natural law is a participation, however indirectly, in the Divine Mind. (See this chart).
- Law is a rule and measure of acts directed towards the common good (Thomas, ST I-II, q.90).
- Politics is the art of associating men for the purpose of establishing, cultivating, and conserving social life (Althusius).
- God willed that each need the service and aid of others in order that friendship would bind all together and no one would consider another to be valueless (Althusius).
- Ownership of a realm belongs to the estates and administration of it belongs to the king [or relevant executive figure] (Ibid).
- Human law is not identified with natural law. It is practical reason. Human law is directed towards particulars (Thomas, Ibid, q.91).
- Natural law is unchangeable in its first principles, but changeable in its proximate conclusions (Ibid, 94).
- Thomist natural law employed a grace perfects nature scheme. It is not clear if Reformed natural law needs such a scheme.
- Moral virtue of rendering to others their due (ST 2a 2ae. 57.1). It is a balance of equity.