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How did Thomas Aquinas explain the role of natural laws in God’s creation?

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St. Thomas Aquinas Enthroned Between the Doctors of the Old and New Testaments, with Personifications of the Virtues, Sciences, and Liberal Arts, fresco by Andrea da Firenze, c. 1365; in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. — Thomism *St. Thomas Aquinas Enthroned Between the Doctors of the Old and New Testaments, with Personifications of the Virtues, Sciences, and Liberal Arts*, fresco by Andrea da Firenze, c. 1365; in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

In the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, natural law is understood as the participation of the eternal law of God’s divine reason within the rational creature. While the eternal law exists in God’s mind and remains unknowable to humans in its perfection, it is partially accessible through both divine revelation and the operations of human reason.1

Aquinas taught that God’s creative Providence governs the universe by willing each being to act according to its own proper nature. Because God is the source of all existence, the order of nature is fundamentally consistent and rational. Consequently, natural law comprises those precepts that humans can formulate through reason, such as the preservation of one’s own good, the fulfillment of natural inclinations shared with other animals, and the pursuit of knowledge of God.21

By recognizing that nature possesses necessary laws, Aquinas affirmed the autonomy of the created world, arguing that human freedom is not diminished by its relationship to God but is instead founded upon it. Thus, for Aquinas, natural law serves as a rational bridge between the created order and the divine wisdom that sustains it.21