Doctrine of Law by St. Nicholas of Serbia (1880–1956): an Attempt of Systematization and Estimation

Abstract

The author proposes his own systematization of law, in order to estimate the doctrine of law proposed by Serbian Orthodox scholar. He distinguishes between the law, as the rule of repeating some outward experience, and the law as the norm of human’s behavior, elaborated and coined in words. Dealing with «outward» law, he supposes that laws organizing material world, like by Newton and Mendeleev, were created by God, but laws not committed by anything material, like of multiplication or logic, can be considered as God Himself, available to rational humans even without revelation. Dealing with «human» laws, he considers the doctrine of natural law, in its Paulinistic understanding (Decalogue, available even for pagans), as basic for proper jurisprudence, whereas the other components can be labeled as the positive law. In St. Nicholas’ doctrine of law the author notices the tendency to reject the existence of any outward law, but at the same time to glorify the «moral law», in fact natural law, as the only existing law.

Keywords

• decalogue
• justice
• law
• laws of the mountain sermon
• miracle
• natural law
• positive law