temologically accessible via reason and intuition.42Therefore, provided that one accepts the initial premiss of natural law, namely the existence of a normative metaphysical reality mirroring itself in the human soul, then there are no objections per se to the notion of natural law as being an integrated element of legal reasoning. However, if the notion of natural law is accepted as a mere postulate, dogma of law, then practical considerations, such as the relationship between lex humana and lex aeterna, will invariably cause difficulties for practicing jurists.43 What poses a problem is whether or not the issue of knowledge of natural law is of any additional help in the application of positive law.The answer is yes provided that natural law and positive law correspond to one another. However, experience teaches us that this is not the case, since positive law may be unjust according to natural law and nevertheless still retain its positive legal validity. As pointed out earlier, Roman jurists did not consider themselves to be objectively bound by natural law in the case of conflicts between the rules of natural law and those of positive law (which is a necessary condition for the validity of natural law theory), whereon it is uncertain as to whether they would have applied so-called natural law without compelling practical reasons for doing so. After Antiquity, the development of natural law theory is marked by its gradual transformation into theology, its subsequent nonpantheistic identification of the Good with God, as well as the identification of natural law with the Good and the will of God, a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 573 42 A Companion to Epistemology, Dancy and Sosa, eds., Stoic epistemology; McCoubrey andWhite, Textbook on Jurisprudence, pp. 56-57. 43 For how do we know that this specific dogma corresponds to natural law?Who has the authority to formulate the dogmas of natural law? Is not a dogma a poor substitute for natural law proper, a substitute necessitated by the inherent cognitive seclusion of natural law? 1. 2 the middle age s : ant iqui ty to scholast ici sm
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