nómos.
A. The Greek and Hellenistic World.
J. The Meaning of nómos.
a. From némō, “to allot,” nómos first means “what is proper.” It thus comes to apply very broadly to any norm, rule, custom, usage, or tradition. The concept is religious but embraces all aspects of life (e.g., marriage, family, schools, and meals, not just the cultus). Even the gods have nómoi.
b. Politically a specialized use develops in the sphere of law, although nómos may still denote more generally the absolute as well as the political law, e.g., cosmic law, natural law, or moral law.
c. By the fifth century B.C. the term comes to be used for written laws in a legal sense.
d. It then denotes “contracts” or “conventions.”
e. It has a musical application as “mode of singing” or “melody.” Nómos is personified as a divine figure in poetry and later in theology.
2. The Nature and Development of the Concept in the Greek World. Rooted in religion, nómos always retains its relation to the cultus in the Greek world. Even written law expresses the will of deity. nómos always has an author, either deity or an inspired legislator. It is thus a work of supreme skill. Only when laws come to be made by consent does the concept lose its strength.
a. In the earliest period nómos is a creation and revelation of Zeus. It is thus firmly anchored in the divine sphere and expresses what is right or just. The city-states give constitutional form to established usage. The state represents nómos; hence the people must fight for its nómos as for the state itself. It is the ruling power (the basileús or despótēs) in the city.
b. By the sixth century B.C. Zeus comes to be viewed as a divine principle. The cosmos is ruled by nómos, and human nómos reflects this. It is a specific instance of divine law. One can no more live without it than without the nómos that rules the cosmos. Some authors (e.g., Heraclitus) understand cosmic law in terms of national law, but others (e.g., the Stoics) lay more stress on cosmic law, a basis for their cosmopolitanism.
c. Greek tragedy tackles the question of conflicting laws. Sophocles in Antigone depicts the confrontation between the law of the state and ancient unwritten law. The inability to keep the law arises, therefore, from an irreconcilability that may be traced right back to God, and a tragic outcome is thus unavoidable. Violation of the law is not due to human sinfulness in this instance. Out of the dilemma more stress comes to be put on unwritten law, either as the original usage of a state, or more commonly as universally valid natural or divine law (cf. the natural law of the Sophists and the cosmic law of the Stoics). This unwritten law embraces ethical and social as well as ritual commands.
d. In the fifth century B.C. the authority of law is shaken by the discovery of other laws and the conclusion that humans are the authors of specific laws. Conflict results not only between laws but between what is right by law and what is right by nature. An attack on religion is also the consequence. From one standpoint, law alone forms a basis for belief in deity. From another (that of the Sophists), the divine origin of law is a clever invention of lawgivers to add sanctions to their laws. Laws, then, can be overthrown only by an attack on religion. On the other hand, they can be protected only by showing that they are truly divine. This is what Plato attempts, first by proving the existence of the gods and second by affirming that nómos, as a child of noús, is related to the soul.
e. The thinking of Socrates begins with the positive content of the state. The law of the state is for him the law of life. It may be unjustly manipulated, but he dies rather than resist it. Laws are parents that sustain and instruct us, and they are still valid in the face of death and beyond.
f. Socrates does not oppose his individual conscience to nómos, for what is important for the Greeks is not the subjective moral sense but objective knowledge of right and wrong. This knowledge is law, and obedience to law is righteousness, which includes all virtues. The goal of education (Aristotle) is instruction in the spirit and ethos of laws, with law itself as a teacher, and obedience as a valid form of servitude that distinguishes free citizens from real slaves. (The only other valid form of douleía is respect for the gods.) The rule of law guarantees the preservation of the state and the possibility of human life.
g. Plato regards the death of Socrates in obedience to the law as the transition of norm and law from the institution to the soul. He finds a cosmos and order in the soul itself. This is nómos. The inner nómos is the order that is controlled by the norm of the soul, i.e., righteousness and self-control. The spirit gives law a new validity and force (Aristotle finds this in the noús). In this way a fresh link is formed with the divine world. Yet the ideal for Plato is no longer the dominion of law but the rule of a righteous and kingly figure who has true knowledge. In Aristotle, too, the person of outstanding virtue is above law and is indeed law itself for the self and others.
3. nómos in Hellenism.
a. This theory becomes a reality in Hellenism. The king himself is now nómos. As divine, he is the source of law. He is the visible manifestation of eternal law in the cosmos.
b. Stoicism replaces political law with cosmic law. It does not use the term for the laws of state. True divine law is to be sought only in the cosmos, where one law rules that is the basis of society and the union of divine and human beings. As reason, this law pervades nature and determines moral conduct. Zeus is identified as this cosmic law in a concession to popular religion. To decide for this nómos is to come to one’s true self. It is thus a reasonable possibility, and it leads to a happy life. Law is written on the soul. c. In Neo-Platonism law is less significant but the law of providence upholds humanity by relating morality and happiness.
d. Later antiquity adopts for the most part Orphic Platonic views seen in the light of cosmic theology.
4. The Greek Concept of nómos and the NT. For the Greeks nómos comes from the spirit rather than by revelation. Hence it is no mere imperative. It has power over those who try to evade it and brings salvation to those who obey it. It produces, however, no awareness of the inability to keep it, and in the long run fails to carry conviction because of a lack of historical objectivity. All this is in marked contrast to the NT understanding of nómos. [H. Kleinknecht, IV, 1022–35]
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