THE NATURAL LAW AND SECULAR LAW CONCEPTIONS CONTAINED IN THE ORIGEN’S PHILOSOPHICAL-THEOLOGICAL REFLEXION

Abstract

The Origen’s allegorical interpretation method will hold of a passage of the Gospel according to St Matthew (22,21) that deals the notorious passage “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” and a passage from The Romans (13,1-14) that describes the soul’s submission to the civil authority. That exegesis will represent the complementarity, although with different meanings, between the natural law and secular law conceptions. The correspondence between one lay and the other will transit between the sensitive worlds and the intelligible world or, in other words, between the earthly world and the spiritual world, that will have the free will as an indispensable element, because it will be translated into an awareness duty, which will focus on the trichotomic notion of Pauline soul moving among the wishes of the flash and the wishes of the spirit.