Punishment Capital Punishment

St. Thomas Aquinas’s “The Summa Theologica” is a document meant to summarize the difference between divine laws and human laws. This document explains whether these two types of laws are just or unjust. Aquinas demonstrates how laws are the reason for the common good which is made by those who care for their community, and how all the laws come from divine reasons which according to the document are understood by men.

His ideas centre his notion of natural law, with his knowledge of God. He bases his theory of natural law in the concept of an eternal law, which is in God. For Aquinas, law is an order of reason from God for all of the community. (Summa

Aquinas believed there are two ways in which we know Natural Law. Firstly, reason, this is the idea it is within us to know and distinguish between right and wrong. The other way is revelation, revelation is in the Bible and its teachings. An example of revelation is when St Paul found the Gentiles obeyed laws of the Torah without ever

Did you know, that according to a study at North Carolina State, a murder case cost 2.16 million dollars more with a death penalty then with a sentence of life imprisonment? It 's true! It is estimated that the death penalty cost the U.S. Judicial System an extra one billion dollars a year! It 's not only expensive, it 's wrong. The worst part is Juveniles are being executed. This is wrong because the human brain is not fully developed until the 20s.

Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) was one of the world’s most influential philosophers. His book, the "SummaTheologiæ" is an incomplete piece of literature that Aquinas began to write but never finished due to his passing. Aquinas answers some of the world’s most abstract questions regarding faith and the existence of the human race. Aquinas’ view on natural law is structured strongly under the part of divine law, which includes the belief of God and a higher moral reasoning. The specific reading focuses on question 94 regarding the natural law. The main topics discussed are six articles: whether natural law is habit, whether the natural law contains several precepts or just one only, whether all acts of virtue are prescribed by natural law, whether natural law is the same in all men, whether natural law

St. Thomas Aquinas natural laws theory developed from a non-Christian that was Aristotle. Despite many of many Catholic theologian did not agree with St. Thomas Aquinas due to his agreement with Aristotle, but St. Aquinas would become one of the most influential theologian in Christianity history. His theory on natural law started to first defining law in general. For example, the key aspect of his definition is that, “law is something pertaining to reason.”(Aquinas, p.3) This was a key point that was a development from what St. Aquinas had understood from Aristotle that not mattering what the issues were there had to be law that had to refer to reason, as characteristic human function. Also, there are some essential to a law that St. Aquinas recognized which are an ordinance of reason, directed to the common good, made by one who has care of the community, and promulgated.

The death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1977, and since then murderers and rapist have been executed for the violent and harsh crimes they were found guilty of committing. In the past thirty years over 1,200 prisoners have been put to death for crimes in which they were convicted. The government of each state executes these prisoners by way of the electric chair, gas chamber, and the most common way lethal injection. A survey, from the Death Penalty Information Center, shows that over half of the citizens in the United States support the death sentence. Some supporter of the death penalty may even believe that sparing the guilty shows them mercy and the victims’ families no justice. If

Aquinas’s view of Natural Law includes a more religious focus than Aristotle’s, as he considers every moral law to be a derivation of eternal law. This eternal law is God’s way of governing human beings toward the common basic goods (Murphy).

Natural Law cooperates with Eternal Law, in that living by the Natural Law — Aquinas's belief that man ought to and is inclined toward pursuing good and avoiding evil — confers participation in Eternal Law and, hence, the divine.

Aquinas defines “Natural Law” as the sharing from within of the Eternal Law. “The natural law” is just the rational person’s involvement in the eternal law. This involvement is available to all persons independently of any belief on their part in God. The natural law is observed whenever people both engage in correct practical reasoning about what is good and best for them in any given situation and when they act in accordance with that natural inclination.

Similar to so, Aquinas declares that a law is unjust laws if it is contrary to human good and again, opposed to divine good. Additionally, just laws are the foundation to acquiring virtue. As Aquinas’s claim will be elucidated and objected, one will be clear to conclude that Aquinas speaks of the truth.

St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican monk who wrote on many aspects of law writings. This paper will ultimately discuss St. Thomas Aquinas’s ten elements of human law, and how humans have consciously came together to bind different variations of eternal and natural law to create now our human laws. Aquinas’s focuses mostly on the natural laws and in the laws which derived from the eternal laws that were ultimately produced by God. He also focuses on understanding God and all the relationships between him and his creations. Aquinas describes the law as a dictate of reason from head ruler of a particular community, equally to God who is the ruler of his people which in turn created eternal laws to control the masses. This dictate of reasons is created and put into place by the head of that particular community and are created according to the reasoning of that particular head ruler. Each law is created is according to what the head ruler thinks is best for his community. However, some of the rules that he set into place result to non-functionality of the community and can cause some friction. However, all this can be changed with laws adapting to the request of particular ideology in a community. Aquinas also says that God has an idea on how he governs the earth. He governs using eternal law and uses his intellect to make the earth a better place for his creation (Dimock, 10). Hence, this is where begin to notice the mergence of natural law. Aquinas says that the law is not only

The death penalty to all kind of rapist has always been one of the most hotly debatable issues among the societies. Everybody including the politicians, religious heads, media commentators, women’s rights activists, with a voice heard or unheard have an opinion it. Can death penalty check the occurrence of a heinous crime like rape? Death penalty is define as punishment of execution. Meanwhile, all kind of rapist means all type of person who commit rapes (Oxford University Press, 2013). The death penalty is conduct by two ways- Hang-strangled to death and electric chair which will give a shock punishment to the executant until he died. The recent article from the Business Time proof that this case is still being discussed.

Rather, God is the source of being, truth and goodness, in whom we live, move and exist; God is more intimately present to us than we are to ourselves. Further, Thomas Acquinas distinguished law into four categories: eternal, divine, natural and man-made. Eternal law reflected God’s grand blueprint for the world, divine law is that which finds expression in the scriptures, natural law was eternal law as it applied to human conduct and man-made law was devised by human beings to befit natural law as per the changing society. For Acquinas, the elementary precept of natural law is per se nota, known through themselves. Acquinas propounded that ‘Good is to be done and evil is to be avoided.’ He believed in the principle of non-contradiction, which like the fundamentals of natural law were general and static. On the contrary, man-made laws are dynamic and accommodating. Further Acquinas maintains that when human laws contravene natural laws, they are regarded as ‘acts of violence’ and ‘perversion of law’. Such laws have no legal validity and cease, in this regard, to be law as the law of nature is the foundation of all human

The cause of the death penalty more often then not is politically inspired. Fear has long been a favored method for controlling the population. In the case of the execution of those found guilty of murder in developed countries such as The USA , where the motivation is simply political. More votes are gained by appealing to the sense of justice exhibited in the lower educated classes than are to be gained by appealing to those that are more educated and trained in the exercise of reasoning. It is one of the failings of democracy. The effect of the death penalty is that if a person is a murderer he or she has nothing to lose by killing to cover their crime. No murderer commits a crime and intends to do