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Divine law is a law believed to be revealed to humans by a higher power, and is related to natural law. While some religions have large bodies of divine law, others have smaller sets of laws or principles. Belief in divine law can sometimes clash with secular law, but not all cultures treat them as contradictory. The Catholic Church regards many Old Testament laws as superseded by the teachings of Christ.
In religious and legal philosophy, divine law is any law that is believed to have been directly revealed to humans by a higher power. Some experts consider this concept to be related to that of natural law, the belief that there are universal ideas of right and wrong inherent in the human condition. Belief in divinely revealed law can be found in many cultures. Some religions have large bodies of this type of law, including Orthodox Judaism, which attributes many of its rules directly to divine revelation. Others may have a smaller set of laws or principles, but they may be no less influential: a culture’s secular laws may be influenced by citizens’ beliefs in divine law.
The ideas of divine law and natural law are philosophically connected. Natural law is an eternal law, inherent in the nature of the world and of humanity, which can be discovered by human reason. Religious philosophers, therefore, may view natural law as divinely revealed, while laymen locate the origins of natural law in human consciousness, rather than in a deity. However, there is often considerable overlap between the two. For example, in Christianity and Judaism, many of the Ten Commandments, such as prohibitions on murder and theft, are held to be divine law but are also present in natural moral law.
While many cultures consider natural law to be divine, not all divine law is natural law. Divine law can change over time due to new revelations or new interpretations, or according to a divine purpose. The Catholic Church, for example, regards the many ritual and dietary laws established in the Old Testament as superseded by the teachings of Christ.
Belief in divine law can sometimes lead to clashes with temporal or secular law. Believers have argued that because such laws are the work of divine power—whereas secular law is the product of human reason—the human construct is invalidated if it conflicts with revelation. For example, Christian abolitionists in the nineteenth century United States opposed slavery on the grounds that, while legal, it conflicted with the teachings of the Bible. The belief that these laws transcend political decisions about the law is known as the belief in government according to the higher law.
Not all cultures treat divine law and human law as necessarily contradictory. In some societies, religious law and secular law are separate. For much of the medieval period in Europe, the church was governed by its own set of laws, with the right to have its own courts and to execute its own sentences. Other religious minorities, including members of the Jewish community, were sometimes permitted to observe their own religious laws in private life, as long as they obeyed secular law in public matters.
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