Richard A. Horsley, “The law of nature in Philo and Cicero,” Harvard Theological Review, 71: 35-59., 1978.

Overview:

–  “Christian Natural Law is the acceptance and reinterpretation according to Christian and ecclesiastical principles of Stoic Natural Law. …” Thus runs Troeltsch’s classic and influential formulation of the view that Stoicism forms the “preparation of the gospel” with regard to the law of nature in Christian theology and ethics. Historians of political theory similarly assume that it was the Stoic doctrine of natural law that decisively influenced both the rationalization and universalization of Roman law and medieval political theory.