… But in philosophy, Rome did mark one important accomplishment: the development of an understanding of the natural law.
The natural law means that there are certain moral principles which men logically determine by studying life, human nature and reality. Some of these principles are the evil of murder, of theft, of perjury. The Hebrews, of course, prohibited these things because of the Ten Commandments, which they had received as a direct revelation from God. But the Roman philosophers reasoned with their minds to many of the same conclusions and then taught these conclusions to the people. They were the first people, therefore, to develop on their own a code of natural law morality. They used this as a basis for their law code, which was one of the fairest and most just systems in the world because it was based on principles believed to be unchanging, rather than on what any individual judge thought about the case. This means that the poor as well as the rich could expect justice under Roman law.
Our God is awesome! He gives each of us an intellect and a heart with which to discover the truth about ourselves (our nature as human beings), the world, and how we should want to live in order to be truly happy. At the same time, he tells us explicitly how to do this as He gives us the Ten Commandments. These Commandments are actually the natural law written on the stone tablets of Moses and which God writes on the heart of each human person. Wow! One would think this more than enough to assure that we “get the message.” However, God’s love is always greater than we could possibly imagine. He goes even further by sending His Love “in the flesh”, the Son of God Incarnate, to redeem us from the Evil One and to show us in person how to live in order to be truly happy—forever!
