That the order of society is shaped and guided by divine providence and natural law was once universally understood. We find it expressed in one way or another in all ancient societies, from the simplest to the most complex. It is present in ancient Egypt, China, India, and in classical Greece where Hesiod, Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle all speak of it in different ways and through different symbols. It passed through the Stoics and Roman jurisprudence into the Middle Ages and became central in Christian theology, culminating in Thomas Aquinas. It is the law, innate in all things, guiding them to their proper ends within the great cosmic order. It is a knowledge of the good and just, written in the soul by God, as a guide to all actions, and which shines through the virtues of prudence, justice, courage and temperance. It is the law that brings order within the individual soul, and goodness, truth and justice in society. It is the law that harmonises all things, and which links heaven and earth, the eternal and the temporal.
Knowledge of this providential law has become clouded and obscured in our modern age. Nevertheless it still lives in all hearts, through an innate sense of justice and in an intuition that there is an underlying cosmic harmony and purpose in all things. In the study of the history of natural law I have found it awakens a kind of recognition of something always known. Once seen, it runs like a golden thread through all genuine philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and politics.
Dr Joseph Milne is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Kent where he taught on the MA course in Mysticism and Religious Experience until his retirement. He is Editor of Land & Liberty, the journal of the Henry George Foundation, and also a member of the team editing The Complete Works of Henry George. He is the author of the Temenos Academy Papers The Ground of Being: Foundations of Christian Mysticism (2004), Metaphysics and the Cosmic Order (2008), The Mystical Cosmos (2013) and The Lost Vision of Nature (2018). He is a Trustee of The Eckhart Society and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy. Copies of the Dr Milne’s new book Natural Law and the Just Society (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2026) will be available for purchase and signing after the talk.
Venue & Admission
18 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3ED
£10 General Admission
FREE for Temenos Academy Members/Full-time students with ID card