Natura, diritto, ecologia: considerazioni alla luce della tradizione cristiana

This essay poses the ecological theme in relation to the concepts of nature and law. The initial question is what conception of nature underlies the current ecological discourse and the legal instruments through which the imperative demands of environmental protection can be realised. Faced with the variety of positions and uncertainties of current times, the research examines a particular thread of the Christian tradition, in particular the idea, which matured in the bosom of medieval law and theology, that nature is a product of divine creation and is endowed with an intrinsic normativity. The medievals represented nature as a “book written by the finger of God”. This metaphor resurfaces in the current teachings of the Catholic Church, which, in substantial harmony with the most recent teachings of Orthodoxy, proposes the model of a human and integral ecology.