The concept of Natural Law is given its definitive meaning only when that of Eternal Law has been established.
“This concept of Eternal Law is not solely theological. In the Summa theologiae, Saint Thomas insisted on the existence of the eternal law on the basis of theological arguments, but it is a philosophical truth as well, one which the philosopher with his means alone can reach and establish. God exists. He is the first cause of being, activating all beings. It is by his intellect and will that he acts: from which we have the notion of Providence. The entire community of the universe is governed by divine reason. Hence there is in God, as in one who governs the entirety of created beings, this very reality which is the judgment and command of the practical reason applied to the governing of a unified community: in other words, this very reality which we call “law”. Eternal Law is one with the eternal wisdom of God and the divine essence itself. Saint Thomas defines this Eternal Law as “nothing other than the exemplar of divine wisdom insofar as this wisdom directs all the actions and movements of things.”
“It is evidently to this Eternal Law that we must have recourse if we are in search of the first foundation of Natural Law. Because every law is a work of reason, at the source of Natural Law there must be reason: not human reason but Subsistent Reason, the Intelligence which is one with the First Truth itself; there we have the Eternal Law.”
~Jacques Maritain: Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice.
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