The Melody and Harmony that is Law

Nathanael Culverwell, a English scholar of the law, wrote a book on the Natural Law entitled An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature. In the fourth chapter of that work, he discusses the nature of law. Culverwell expresses some dissatisfaction with St. Thomas Aquinas's definition of law in his Summa Theologica, Ia–IIae, Q. 90, art. 1 as Lex est quaedam regula & mensura, secundum quam inducitur aliquis ad agendum, vel ab agendo retrahitur (law is a certain rule and measure, according to which any agent is led to act, or restrained from acting). His complaint is that it is too restrictive. During his critique of the scholastic theologian, Culverwell, like a bird taking off in sudden flight, turns toward Plato. Spreading his poetic wings, Culverwell, relying on Plato, decides to liken law to music and pens these wondrous words:

A Law is such a just and regular tuning of Actions, as that by virtue of this they may conspire into a moral music, and become very pleasant and harmonious. Thus Plato speaks much of that Εὐρυθμία&συμφωνία [melody and harmony] that is in Law, and in his second book De Leg.7 he does altogether discourse of harmony, and does infinitely prefer mental and intellectual music, those powerful and practical strains of goodness, that spring from a well-composed spirit, before those delicious blandishments, those soft, transient touches that comply with sense, and salute it in a more flattering manner; and he tells you of a spiritual dancing that is answerable to so sweet a music, to these τὰθείοτατααὐλήματα [most divine flutings]. While the Laws play in consort, there is a Chorus of well ordered affections that are raised and elevated by them.

And thus as Aristotle well observes, some Laws were wont to be put in verse, and to be sung like so many pleasant odes, that might even charm the people into obedience.

’Tis true, that learned Philosopher gives this reason of it, they were put into verse, ὅπωςμὴἐπιλάθωνται, that they might remember them the better: but why may not this reason also share with it, that they might come with a greater grace and allurement, that they might hear them as pleasantly as they would do the voice of a Vial or an Harp, that has Rhetoric enough to still and quiet the evil spirit?

(from An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, ed. Robert A. Greene and Hugh MacCallum, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001) (spelling modernized).)

Lex Aeterna: τὸ γνωστὸν του νόμου

IN OUR EARLIER POSTINGS, we had discussed how the Eternal Law, like God, is empirically hidden from us. It is not detectable by any our five senses, and so knowledge of its existence must be obtained in a way other than relying purely on the senses. Knowledge of the existence of the Eternal Law and what it encompasses be gained in two ways. First, these may be accepted by Faith as a result of having been revealed by God. Secondly, they may be gleaned, as the Pagans managed, by extrapolating what is learned from the visible creation. "No theistic and teleological system of philosophy that acknowledges an intelligent supreme Being can omit the concept of a supreme and eternal law." (Hans Meyer, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas quoted in Heinrich A. Rommen, The Natural Law (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), 158 n. 7. ) The Greek and Roman philosophers with theistic and teleological systems of philosophies therefore managed to grasp the truth of the Eternal Law. It follows that, to the extent our political philosophies and philosophies of law or jurisprudences omit mention of the existence of a supreme and eternal law, they are neither theistic nor teleogical, i.e., they are practically atheistic and have no meaning or end. The political philosophy or jurisprudence that does not recognize a notion of an Eternal Law is therefore untrue, or at least seriously limited and defective, if for no other reason than because it does not recognize that man and his nature has any meaningful end or purpose (what is called entelechy).

(photo from of Violet Oakley's Divine Law, see http://cpc.state.pa.us/)

Whether accepted by Revelation or gained through Reason, our notions of the Eternal Law are dark and limited, and, when based on Reason alone without Revelation's aid, prone to error as a result of vice, poor education, cultural inheritances, or simple weakness of mind. Even the most naturally virtuous, dispassionate, honest, and sincere seeker, the Aristotelian σπουδαῖος (spoudaios = a very diligent, earnest, zealous and naturally good person), is wooing and is wooed by an unfathomable Mystery, an Other. And if the Eternal Law is in fact God, as St. Thomas teaches, it follows that, with our finite minds, even the best and brightest of us can never comprehend it on this earth. Si comprehenderis non est Lex Aeterna. If you understand it, it is not the Eternal Law. You simply will never get the arms of your mind about it.

Though the Eternal Law is one respect hidden, and therefore cannot be wholly known, it does not follow that it is entirely hidden. The existence of the Eternal Law and what it comprehends can be known in part. Likewise, it does it follow that we cannot know what it is not. By reasoning from created things, we are able to grasp heavenly realities. The law we know is part of God's creation. Nathanael Culverwell (whom we mentioned in our prior posting) explains:

Now as God himself shews somewhat of his face in the glasse [i.e, mirror] of creatures, so the beauty of this [Eternal] Law gives some representations of it self in those pure derivations of inferiour Lawes that stream from it. And as we ascend to the first and supreme being, by steps of second causes; so we may climb up to a sight of this eternal Law, by those fruitful branches of secondary Lawes, which seem to have their root in earth, when as indeed it is in heaven; and that I may vary a little that of the Apostle to the Romanes, The invisible Law of God long before the creation of the world, is now clearly seen being understood by those Lawes which do appear, so that τὸ γνωστὸν του νόμου [the knowledge of the law] is manifested in them, God having shown it to them.

Culverwell, 36 (citing Rom. 1:20).

In Culverwell's words, God is mirrored in his creatures, including the human law we are familiar with, so we may "climb up" from our knowledge of human legislators and human laws to gain a "sight" of the Eternal Law. We must not think that the human lawgiver and human laws are rooted in the earth only, as the human lawgiver and and the institution of human law in fact owe their existence to the Eternal Law or God. Knowledge of the existence of the Eternal Law and its content--what Culverwell rather ungainfully calls τὸγ νωστὸν του νόμου (to gnoston tou nomou)--may thus be gained by extrapolating from the lawgiver and the law that we do know through a process called the analogy of being (analogia entis).

This principle is well described by St. Bonaventure:

All created things of this sensible world lead the soul of the contemplative and wise man toward the eternal God, and this because He is the first, most powerful, wise, and best principle, the eternal origin, light, and fullness, the efficient, exemplary, and ordering art of which they are the shadows, resonances, and pictures. They are vestiges, likenesses, and images divinely given to us as first premises to lead the mind to God. They are exemplars to be used by minds still rude and sensory, so that through such sensible signs, which they see, they may be transferred to the intelligible which they do not see, as through signs to the thing signified.

Omnes creaturae istius sensibilis mundi animum contemplantis et sapientis ducunt in Deum aeternum, pro eo quod illius primi principii potentissimi, sapientissimi et optimi, illius aeternae originis, lucis et plenitudinis, illius, inquam, artis efficientis, exemplantis et ordinantis sunt umbrae, resonantiae et picturae, vestigia, simulacra et spectacula nobis ad contuendum Deum proposita et signa divinitus data; quae, inquam, sunt exemplaria vel potius exemplata, proposita mentibus adhuc rudibus et sensibilibus, ut per sensibilia, quae vident, transferantur ad intelligibilia, quae non vident, tanquam per signa ad signata.

St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis ad Deum (The Mind's Road to God), 2.11.

Applied to the Eternal Law, the principle works as follows. God is the Creator of the cosmos, a world which He brought forth from nothing (ex nihilo) as if a divine artisan, and so God must share some quality with the artisan that we do see. God also is the Ruler of that world, though He rules it in a manner that we do not physically see. But, in ruling the universe, He must share in the qualities of the earthly ruler that we do see, though He does so eminently. Lastly, the Eternal Law we do not see, though we see its effects; but it must share some analogy with the natural moral law we do have some knowledge of, or the human law which we clearly see.

The principle is well-handled by Timothy McDermott in his Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1989), who is his paraphrase/translation of St. Thomas has the following:

No one but God and those blessed with the vision of God can know the eternal law in itself. But all knowledge of truth is a light radiating from the eternal law, and everyone knows some truth, if only the general principles of the law that we have in us by nature. Those who know more than others know the eternal law better. We can know the hidden things of God by looking at the things that he has made, but no one fully comprehends the eternal law because its effects do not fully reveal it.

(p. 284)

It is from this basis that St. Thomas begins his philosophical analysis of the Eternal Law. St. Thomas handles his discussion of the Eternal Law in Question 93 of the second part of the first part (Prima Secundae) of his Summa Theologica by analogizing what he knows about an earthly artisan and an earthly ruler. St. Thomas observes that an artisan must have an archetype or plan (in Latin, a ratio) of the things he intends to make prior to making them. Similarly, a ruler must have an archetype or ordering idea, a blueprint (ratio ordinis) that guides him in governing those subject to him. That ordering idea (ratio ordinis), which is based upon reason, has the nature of law if it is aimed at the common good, and promulgated by the one who has care of the community. ST IaIIae, Q. 93, art.1, resp. Since God is both Creator and Governor of the world--which includes non-rational and rational creatures--it follows that the idea or archetype of the created world that is found in the Divine Wisdom (ratio divinae sapientiae) has the character of law (obtinet rationem legis). The Eternal Law is nothing else but the plan or archetype of the Divine Wisdom--the ratio or the logos--that is made manifest in His creation. Id.

In his work The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Etienne Gilson summarizes Aquinas's teaching regarding the Eternal Law thus:

The first and vastest of all [communities] is the Universe. The entirety of beings created by God and maintained in existence by His will, can be considered as an immense society of which we are citizens; and not only we, but also all animals and things. There is not a single creature, animate or inanimate, which does not act in conformity with certain rules and in view of certain ends. Animals and things follow these rules and tend towards these ends without knowing them; man, on the contrary, is conscious of them and his moral justice consists in accepting them voluntarily. All laws of nature, all the laws of morality and of society must therefore be considered as so many particular instances of one and the same law, viz., the divine law. But the law by which God wills the universe to be governed is necessarily eternal as God is Himself; eternal law is, therefore, the name given to this first law, which is the source of all other laws.

(Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Dorset Press) (Edward Bullough, trans.), 327.)

Our next post will address the issue of whether God is bound by or subject to the Eternal Law, and the relationship between the divine Will and the divine Reason.

Lex Aeterna: In Church, Scripture, and the Pagan

WHEN HE STATED in his compilation of the Saxon laws that "God is himself law" (see prior post), Eike von Repgow was referring to the notion of Eternal Law. The Eternal Law is the belief that God, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, has a master plan or ratio that is found in His Creation and is enforced in His Providence. The existence of the Eternal Law is part of that assurance that there is a Reason behind God's Creation and its continued sustaining through His Providence. This plan or ratio goes beyond the material world. It includes the rational creation, and in particular mankind, for whom God has great solicitude. This solicitude, this love that God has for mankind, extends itself, in what has been called the "scandal of particularity," to reach each man and every woman, even every sparrow's fall. It is the firm hope that human life, my and my loved ones' lives, my neighbor's life, even my enemy's life, by God's design, has a purpose or end. Life is not, as Macbeth would have it,

. . . but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon a stage,
And then is heard no more.

It is not, a

. . . tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

(Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, sc. v.)

Embracing the reality of the Eternal Law encompasses a rejection of metaphysical pessimism. The doctrine insists that there is a purpose, plan, archetype, or design under which Creation and Providence are governed. This is what is called the Eternal Law.

We must start with this notion of the Eternal Law to understand the classical and traditional doctrine of the Natural Law, in both its Graeco-Roman and Christian roots. The notion of an Eternal Law is a truth that modernly has been disbelieved, discarded, and forgotten, and it must be relearned. In his book Creative Fidelity, the Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel speaks of the duty of the believer to become aware of the non-believer that is within him. This is also true with respect to our life in common. We have a duty to try to recognize where our society disbelieves, and where it ambles without guidance in the sloughs of practical atheism. Both individually and as a civil society, we are to have the same attitude as the man in the Gospels: Credo, Domine; adjuva incredulitatem meam! "Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24). This should be our approach, our earnest prayer, in engaging with the doctrine of Eternal Law. For many--to accept it in its full implications--it will require a conversion of the mind and the heart.

In Article 1 to Question 91 of the first part of the second part (Prima Secundae Partis) of his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas asks whether there is an Eternal Law, a question he answers affirmatively. In answering the question he has posed, St. Thomas refers back to his definition of law as a "dictate of practical reason emanating from the ruler who governs a perfect community." ST IaIIae Q. 91, art.1, resp.; see also ST IaIIae Q. 90, art.4, resp. If God's existence and role as Creator and divine Provider are granted (and Thomas had treated those matters in a prior part of his Summa), St. Thomas observes that it follows, "the whole community of the universe is governed by Divine Reason." This governance by God "has the nature of a law," and since God's Reason is eternal, it is evident that this law must likewise be eternal. ST IaIIae Q. 91, art.1, resp. (As an aside, it may be observed that the Declaration of Independence, invokes a "firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," which implicitly invokes the notion of an Eternal Law. So it is we that ought to look incredulously at the professorate of our law schools mentioned in our earlier post.)

In trying to understand the Eternal Law, however, man suffers from an intrinsic limitation. We have no direct knowledge of the Eternal Law. It is not seen in written form like a human statute; it is not announced in the public square; it is not obviously enforced by a league of visible policemen and judges. There are no angels handing out tickets or pursuing indictments. But this is not a cause for despair, nor, as the skeptics would have it, a matter for ridicule (one thinks of Jeremy Bentham in this regard). For the believer, it is a truth revealed in Scripture and propounded by the Teaching Church that there is an Eternal Law. It is a truth that is graspable through reason, though through a glass darkly. Therefore, it is a belief that may be found among the best of the pagans. It is a belief which may be shared with men and women of good will.

In Dignitatis Humanae (No. 3), for example, the Second Vatican Council points out that the

supreme rule of life is the divine law itself, the eternal, objective and universal law by which God out of his wisdom and love arranges, directs and governs the whole world and the paths of the human community. God has enabled man to share in this divine law, and hence man is able under the gentle guidance of God's providence increasingly to recognize the unchanging truth.

The Church's teaching rests soundly upon Scripture and Tradition, in particular, St. Augustine's and St. Thomas's classic teaching of the Eternal Law.

In his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II quoted this specific part of Dignitatis Humanae, and then commented (Nos. 43-44):

The Council refers back to the classic teaching on God's eternal law. Saint Augustine defines this as "the reason or the will of God, who commands us to respect the natural order and forbids us to disturb it." Saint Thomas identifies it with "the type of the divine wisdom as moving all things to their due end." And God's wisdom is providence, a love which cares. God himself loves and cares, in the most literal and basic sense, for all creation (cf. Wis 7:22; 8:11). But God provides for man differently from the way in which he provides for beings which are not persons. He cares for man not "from without," through the laws of physical nature, but "from within," through reason, which, by its natural knowledge of God's eternal law, is consequently able to show man the right direction to take in his free actions. In this way God calls man to participate in his own providence, since he desires to guide the world--not only the world of nature but also the world of human persons--through man himself, through man's reasonable and responsible care. The natural law enters here as the human expression of God's eternal law. Saint Thomas writes: "Among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine providence in the most excellent way, insofar as it partakes of a share of providence, being provident both for itself and for others. Thus it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end. This participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called natural law."

The Church has often made reference to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law, including it in her own teaching on morality. Thus my Venerable Predecessor Leo XIII emphasized the essential subordination of reason and human law to the Wisdom of God and to his law. After stating that "the natural law is written and engraved in the heart of each and every man, since it is none other than human reason itself which commands us to do good and counsels us not to sin," Leo XIII appealed to the "higher reason" of the divine Lawgiver: "But this prescription of human reason could not have the force of law unless it were the voice and the interpreter of some higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be subject." Indeed, the force of law consists in its authority to impose duties, to confer rights and to sanction certain behaviour: "Now all of this, clearly, could not exist in man if, as his own supreme legislator, he gave himself the rule of his own actions." And he concluded: "It follows that the natural law is itself the eternal law, implanted in beings endowed with reason, and inclining them towards their right action and end, it is none other than the eternal reason of the Creator and Ruler of the universe."

(Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, Nos. 43-44 (citations omitted) (The encylical quoted by John Paul II is Leo XIII's Libertas Praestantissimum of June 20, 1888)).

The Scriptural references to the Eternal Law are legion. It is usually referred to under the personification of Divine Wisdom. Suffice us to point out Proverbs 8:15-16, and Proverbs 8:23-36.

By me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things,
By me princes rule, and the mighty decree justice
I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made.
The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived. neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out:
The mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth:
He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of
the world.
When he prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law
and compass he enclosed the depths:
When he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters:
When he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits:
When he balanced the foundations of the earth; I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times;
Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men.
Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise, and refuse it not.
Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my
gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors.
He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord:
But he that shall sin against me, shall hurt his own soul.
All that hate me love death.

The existence of an Eternal Law is not only a religious or revealed truth. There is a basis in reason for believing in the Eternal Law, and consequently one can find an understanding of the Eternal Law in the leading lights of Greece and Rome, such as the philosopher Plato or the Roman statesman Cicero. For example, in writing his book on the Natural Law, the English Protestant divine Nathanael Culverwell (1619-1651), generally associated with the Cambridge Platonists, relied on the Jesuit Francisco Suárez and the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. But he also accessed the writings of the pagans Plato and Cicero to show how even the pagans had a notion of a Law above all law, a law that governed the cosmos, and that was the archetype or model, of what human laws should be. Aggregating references to Plato's dialogues, including Cratylus and Laws, and Plotinus's Enneads , Culverwell summarizes:

This the Platonists would call ἰδέαντωννόμων [the ideal of laws], and would willingly heap such honourable titles as these upon it, ὁνόμοςἀρχηγὸς, πρωτουργὸς, αὐτοδίκαιος, αὐτόκαλος, αὐτοάγαθος, ὁὄντωςνόμος, ὁνόμοςσπερματικός [the archetypal law, primary, intrinsically just, beautiful and good, the essential law, the seminal law]. And the greatest happinesse the other Lawes can arrive unto, is this, that they be Νόμοιδουλεύοντες, καὶὑπηρετουντες, ministring and subservient Lawes; waiting upon this their Royal Law. Σκιαὶνόμων; Or as they would choose to stile them, Νομοειδεις, some shadows & appearances of this bright and glorious Law, or at the best, they would be esteemed by them but Νόμοιἔκγονοι, the noble off-spring and progeny of Lawes; blessing this womb that bare them, and this breast that gave them suck.

Culverwell also draws from Cicero's book De Legibus II.4.8 to show that this notion was carried over and adopted by the Romans. As he freely translated it:

Wise men did ever look upon a Law, not as on a spark struck from human intellectuals, not blown up or kindled with popular breath, but they thought it an eternal light shining from God himself irradiating, guiding, and ruling the whole Universe; most sweetly and powerfully discovering what wayes were to be chosen, and what to be refused. And the minde of God himself is the centre of Lawes, from which they were drawn, and into which they must return.

(NathanielCulverwell, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (Robert A. Greene and Hugh MacCallum, eds.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), 36-37.)

The notion of the Eternal Law is thus part of our cultural and religious heritage. In our next post, we will address in a little greater detail St. Thomas Aquinas's teachings about the Eternal Law, a teaching which the Church has adopted as her own.