Pietro Vermigli: Natural Law Makes us "Run to Christ"

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Pietro Vermigli by Hans Asper (1560)

THE REFORMER PETER MARTYR VERMIGLI presents us with a notion of the natural law that is more compatible with the Classical and Roman Catholic understanding of that doctrine. Far less pessimistic that his contemporary John Calvin, the Italian Reformer remained more faithful to his Aristotelian and Roman Catholic sources, at least in the area of the natural moral law, than Calvin. In the area of the natural law at least, he writes more in tune with the realism of the via antiqua than with the nominalism of the via moderna. In fact, contrary to so many of the Reformers, Vermigli did not disdain Aristotle, but even wrote a commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics. This stands in direct contrast with Luther, who claimed in his "Open Letter to the Christian Nobility" that "God has sent [Aristotle] as a plague upon us for our sins." Moreover, Vermigli's view in the area of natural theology is "broadly Thomistic with a strong Augustinian accent," thus assuring a more traditional bent. Grabill, 102.

Aristotle

Born in Florence, Italy, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1500-1562), originally Piero Mariano, was admitted into the Augustinian order, and was named after St. Peter Martyr. He was educated at the Augustinian friary in Fiesole, and then transferred to St. John of Verdara near Padua. Graduating in 1527, he preached in Brescia, Pisa, Venice, and Rome. In 1530, Peter Martyr was elected abbot of the Augustinian friary at Spoleto, and in 1533, prior of the convent of St. Peter ad Aram in Naples. Exposed to the influence of Protestant theologians' works, including Martin Bucher and Huldrych Zwingli, and eventually succumbing to their views, Peter Martyr drew the ire of authorities, including those of the Spanish viceroy of Naples and the superiors of his order. Summoned to appear before a chapter of his order and facing likely disciplining, Peter Martyr instead escaped to Pisa and then to Zürich and Basel, ultimately settling at Strasbourg where, in violation of his vows, he married his first wife Catherine Dammartin of Metz, and was appointed professor of theology. As Grabill summarizes it, "he was forced to move every five years on average . . . . [a]s a result, his institutional gravitas was in a state of near constant flux." Grabill, 99. Accepting an invitation by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, Vermigli was appointed regius professor of divinity at Oxford where he was actively involved in a variety of theological disputes. When the Catholic Queen Mary assumed the throne, Vermigli returned to Strasbourg where he taught theology. Vermigli ultimately settled in Zürich accepting a chair of Hebrew, whence he spent the rest of his days. He participated in the Colloquy at Poissy, a failed effort in 1561 to reconcile the Calvinist Huguenots and Catholics in France. A prolific writer, Vermigli published Biblical commentaries and various treatises. He died in 1562.

Similar to Calvin, Vermigli did not undertake to fashion a synthetic analysis of the natural law in the manner of St. Thomas. Yet his attendance to the notion of a nature-based morality independent--yet consistent with--revealed morality was more focused than Calvin. Vermigli's treatment of the natural law is most manifest in his exegesis of the first two chapters of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. This is not unexpected, since the first two chapters of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is the textus classicus when it comes to the Scriptural warrant for the natural law. In his treatment of this text, Vermigli shows marked differences from Calvin. "The fundamental differences between Calvin and Vermigli have to do with the latter's more extensive and disciplined use of natural theology/natural law. . . . While Vermigli acknowledges reason's post-lapsarian limitations, he is more sanguine than Calvin regarding its ability to grasp the precepts of the natural law through sense experience, moral intuition, and dialectics." Grabill, 102, 103-04.

St. Paul

Unquestionably, Vermigli believes in the existence of a natural theology: both the world and our minds are constructed so as to be able to glean from creation the existence of divinity. "God has planted prolepsis in our minds," Vermigli states, "that is, anticipations and notions through which we are led to conceive noble and exalted opinions about the divine nature." Grabill, 110 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 21r; CP, 1.2.3).

That natural knowledge outside of revelation is also found in the area of morality. Vermigli suggests that there is a natural moral theology that finds its roots in the imago Dei, the image of God, that is in man, and which persists, albeit in an attenuated or weakened fashion, in post-lapsarian man. Since our souls are akin to God their creator, they reflect "justice, wisdom, and many other most noble habits," and "also the knowledge of what is right and honest, and what is wrong and unclean." Grabill, 111 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 22v; CP, 1.2.4) Without doubt, Vermigli departs from Calvin's pessimistic assessment of man's ability to know of God and his law. Grabill, 113-14.

Following St. Thomas's commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Vermigli distinguishes between two types of knowledge of God. The first is "effectual," and second "frigid" or ineffectual. Effectual knowledge of God leads to spiritual transformation that is expressed by good deeds. Grabill, 114. Truth obtained through Faith, as distinguished from truth obtained through Reason or Nature, is "more likely to lead to action." Grabill, at 114. Therefore, he affirms with St. Thomas that, without Faith and the aid of God's grace, the "natural law is ineffective in leading human beings to the good." Grabill, 114. "Surely," states Vermigli,

this does not happen because one truth by itself and taken on its own is stronger than another. Truth has the same nature on both sides; the difference arises from the ways and means by which it is perceived. Natural strength is corrupt, weakened and defiled through sin, so that the truth that it grasps has no effect. But faith has joined with it the divine inspiration and power of the Holy Spirit so that it apprehends truth effectively. Hence the difference consists in the faculty by which truth is apprehended. This should not be taken to deny that more than we know through nature is revealed to us by the Scriptures, the New as well as the Old Testament. But we have drawn a comparison between the same truth when known by nature and when perceived by faith.

Grabill, 114 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, ff. 20r-21v; CP, 1.2.11) . To have effective knowledge of the natural law, that is, knowledge that results in an ability to follow that law, requires, in the ultimate analysis following the Fall, Faith and Grace in Christ. True: external compliance to the natural law may be found in other cultures and times:

[N]o nation is so savage or barbarous that it is not touched by some sense of right, justice, and honesty. . . . We might say instead that by this freedom our works may agree with the civil or economic law, which has regard to outward acts and is not so much concerned with the will.

Grabill, 117 (quoting Vermigli, "Free Will," f. 102, par. 4). While perhaps the natural law or even the Mosaic law may be followed externally and imperfectly or partially either as a result of natural goodness or the threat of human law, it is impossible for wounded, fallen man to follow the natural law perfectly, that is, with full internal assent. To follow the natural law with such full internal assent requires us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength, clearly an act that requires Faith and Grace. Grabill, 116.

For Vermigli (and unlike Calvin), the natural law is not principally condemnatory, though it has a role in informing the conscience and the internal forum. "Vermigli contends that God did not reveal such natural knowledge for the sole purpose of establishing his wrath against the Gentiles," Grabill, 115, but rather to force us to "admit that they were too weak while knowing what they should do," and so to make then "run to Christ." Grabill, 116 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 23v; CP, 1.2.8 "proinde necessarium esse, ad Christum confugere").

For Vermigli, the natural law has a more positive role of prompting man towards God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. This places him opposite Calvin. In almost a Kantian manner, Calvin appears to have maintained that although the natural law may be objectively manifest in the created order, since the Fall man had no ability subjectively to inform himself of that order. Thus, post-lapsarian man had no ability to know the moral Ding an sich that was vouchsafed us in the created order. Vermigli, on the other hand, contended that even after the Fall, man had the ability subjectively to comprehend and so to know the natural law manifest in the created order, but man's knowledge, though real, was not effectual without Faith and Grace. For Vermigli, the corruption of man, therefore, was more manifest in the will than in reason.

Vermigli properly insisted that the knowledge of moral good acquired by nature does not vitiate the need for revelation. "In Vermigli's judgment the phrase by nature [in Romans 2:14] should not be construed in such a way as to exclude divine revelation or assistance vis-à-vis the requirements of morality." Grabill, 117.

In sum,

Vermigli distinguishes two principal uses for why knowledge of the moral law was implanted in the human mind. The first, corresponding with a "frigid" knowledge of God, exists to nullify any excuse by providing objective and universally accessible knowledge of the moral law and the judgment to come. The second, corresponding with an "effectual" knowledge of God, exists to increase human "readiness" and "strength" to do that which is known to be just and honest. It is the second use, as Vermigli insists, that prods humanity to pursue true righteousness and that serves to renew God's image in us.

Grabill, 119-20.

To quote Vermigli:

The image of God in which man was created, is not utterly blotted out but obfuscated in the fall, and for that reason is in need of renewal by God. So natural knowledge is not fully quenched in our minds, but much of it still remains, which Paul now touches upon.

Grabill, 120 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 44 r).

The contrast between Vermigli's teaching on the one hand with Calvin or Barth's teaching on the other hand is striking. If there is to be dialogue between the Classical and Catholic view of the natural law and the Reformed or Protestant tradition, it must be through the likes of someone like Vermigli, and not someone like Calvin or Barth. In the area of natural law, the latter two are simply too far down the path of error to allow for easy reconciliation or rapprochement.

Universal Ethic-Convergences 4-Graeco-Roman Sources

1.2. The Graeco-Roman sources of the natural law

18. The idea that a natural right exists prior to any positive legal laws is already to be found in the classical Greek culture with the exemplary figure of Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus. Her two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, battled between themselves in their quest for power and were both killed. Polyneices, the rebel, was condemned to remain unburied and to to be burnt with fire. But Antigone, to fulfill the duty of the piety towards her dead brother, appealed against the public prohibition of burial issued by king Creon by citing to the “unwritten and unchanging law.”

CREON:
And yet you dared to break those very laws?
ANTIGONE
Yes. Zeus did not announce those laws to me
And Justice living with the gods below
sent no such laws for men. I did not think
anything which you proclaimed strong enough
to let a mortal override the gods
and their unwritten and unchanging laws.
They’re not just for today or yesterday,
but exist forever, and no one knows
where they first appeared. So I did not mean
to let a fear of any human will
lead to my punishment among the gods.(14)

19. Plato and Aristotle apply the distinction advanced by the Sophists between the laws that have their origin in convention, that is to say a pure positive decision (thesis), and those that have validity “by nature.” The first are neither eternal nor valid in any general way, and they are not obligatory upon all. The second are obligatory upon all men, always and everywhere.(15) Some Sophists, like Callicles of Plato’s Gorgias, referred back to this distinction to dispute the legitimacy of the laws instituted by the human polis or city-state. To such laws they opposed their idea, narrowed and wrong, of nature reduced solely to a physical component. In this manner, against the political and legal equality of the citizens in the polis, they supported what seemed to them the most evident of the "natural laws": those with greater might ought to rule over the weaker.(16)

20. Nothing of this in Plato and Aristotle. These two do not oppose natural right and the positive law of the polis. They are convinced that the laws of the polis or city-state are generally good and constitute the actualization, more or less achieved, of a natural right conformed to the nature of the things. For Plato, the natural right is an ideal right, a rule for the lawgivers and for the citizens, a rule that concurs as the foundation and the value of the positive law.(17) For Aristotle this supreme rule of morality corresponds to the realization of the essential form of nature. That is moral which is natural. The natural right is unchanging; the positive right changes relative to peoples and different epochs. But the natural right it is not placed in opposition to positive right. It it is embodied in positive right, that is, it is the application of the general idea of justice to social life in its variety.

21. In Stoicism, the natural law becomes the key concept of a universal ethic. That which corresponds to nature is good and ought to be done, with nature understood in both a psycho-biological and rational sense. Every man, regardless of the nation from which he comes, ought to integrate himself like a part of the whole of the universe. He should live according to nature.(18) This imperative presupposes that an eternal law, a divine Logos, exists, one which is present in a cosmos filled with rationality, and which is found in the human reason. It is in this way that, for Cicero, the law is "the supreme reason within nature that commands us to do what we ought to do, and prohibits its opposite."(19) Nature and reason constitute the two sources of our knowledge of the fundamental moral law, a law which is of divine origin.

(14) Sophocles, Antigone, v. 449-460 (trans. Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, available at http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/Sophocles/Antigone.htm).

(15) Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, XIII, 2 (1373 b 4-11) : "The particular law (nomos idios) is that every group of men determines in relation to its members, and these types of laws divide themselves in unwritten laws and written laws. The common law (nomos koinos) is one which conforms to nature (kata physin). In fact there is one right and one wrong, common in nature, which all recognize through a species of divination, even if there is no communication or reciprocal convention. So it is seen the Antigone of Sophocles declares that it is just to bury Polyneices, whose burial was forbidden, affirming that such burial is right, being in conformity with nature"; cf. also Nichomachean Ethics, V, 10.

(16) Cf. Plato, Gorgias (483 c-484 b) [Callicle’s Discourse] : “Nature, in my opinion, herself proclaims the fact that it is right for the better to have advantage of the worse, and the abler of the feebler. It is obvious in many cases that this is so, not only in the animal world, but in the states and races, collectively, of men—that right has been decided to consist in the sway and advantage of the stronger over the weaker. For by what manner of right did Xerxes, march against Greece or his father against Scythia? Or take the countless other cases of the sort that one might mention. Why, surely these men follow nature—the nature of right—in acting thus; yes, on my soul, and follow the law of nature—though not that, I dare say, which is made by us; we mold the best and strongest amongst us, taking them from their infancy like young lions, and utterly enthrall them by our spells and witchcraft, telling them the while that they must have but their equal share, and that this is what is fair and just. But, I fancy, when some man arises with a nature of sufficient force, he shakes off all that we have taught him, bursts his bonds, and breaks free; he tramples underfoot our codes and juggleries, our charms and “laws,” which are all against nature; our slave rises in revolt and shows himself our master, and there dawns the full light of natural justice. (trans. from Plato, Gorgias, Perseus).

(17) In the Theaetetus (172 to-b), the Socrates of Plato explains the inauspicious political consequences of the relativist thesis attributed to Protagoras, according to which every man is measure of the truth: "And likewise in affairs of state, the honorable and disgraceful, the just and unjust, the pious and its opposite, are in truth to each state such as it thinks they are and as it enacts into law for itself, and in these matters no citizen and no state is wiser than another . . . . But in the other class of things—I mean just and unjust, pious and impious—they are willing to say with confidence that no one of them possesses by nature an existence of its own; on the contrary, that the common opinion becomes true at the time when it is adopted and remains true as long as it is held.” (trans. from Plato, Theaetetus, Perseus)

(18) Cf., for example, Seneca, De vita beata, VIII, 1: "It is necessary to follow nature as a guide; reason observes it and consults it. Therefore it is the same thing to live happily and to live according to nature.” (Natura enim duce utendum est: hanc ratio observat, hanc consulit. Idem est ergo beate vivere et secundum naturam).

(19) Cicero, De legibus, I, VI, 18: "Lex est ratio summa insita in natura quae iubet ea quae facienda sunt prohibetque contraria."

St. Thomas Aquinas: Definition of Law, Authority

THE COMMON GOOD is the "first and foremost" (primo et principaliter) ordering which underlies law. We explored this in yesterday's posting. The fact that law is ordered is toward the common good suggests that only the "whole people" (totius multitudinis) who will be governed by it. Naturally, the "whole people" can be represented by someone who acts in their place and in their interest, a "viceregent" (gerentis vicem totius multitudinis). How the authority of the "whole people" is conveyed to any particular "viceregent" is not addressed by St. Thomas in these series of questions in the Summa Theologica. But regardless, it is the publically-recognized authority that has the right to issue laws. Reason alone does not make law, and so it does not belong to an individual qua individual to make law; it must be the reason of those in authority that makes law. ST IaIIae, Q. 90, art. 3, resp.

St. Thomas agrees with Aristotle that the intention of the lawgiver ought to lead men to virtue. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ii.1 Though an individual man (say a teacher, or priest) can held lead a man to virtue, unlike the lawgiver he has no coercive power to create an efficacious inducement to a life of virtue. Nicomachean Ethics, x. 9. Similarly, though a father may be head of his family, and he may issue orders or commands (aliqua praecepta vel statuta), these are not properly called laws (lex). Only the whole people, or the person to whom the whole people have assented to act on their behalf, have the authority to compel obedience, and, in a manner of speaking, to lead the population to virtue. ST IaIIae, Q.90, art. 3, resp.2, 3. That authority is found in a perfect community or society (communitas perfecta). ST IaIIae, Q.90, art. 3, resp.3.

Note:

The term "perfect society" or "perfect community" referred to by St. Thomas Aquinas does not mean a utopia, such as described by St. Thomas More in his Utopia, or by Plato in his Republic. This term is used differently in this context. The concept of the "perfect society" or "perfect community" (societas or communitas perfecta) in this context is one associated with political philosophy. A perfect society is a group that is self-sufficient or independent in its realm and has all necesary resources and conditions required to achieve its purposes. A society must thus be perfect in its end and in its means. A society perfect in its end is a society with a human purpose, complete and entire, that is, within its own order, sovereign, and so not subordinate to any higher good. A society perfect in its means is a society that has within its possession and control the means by which to achieve this purpose. In both end and means, the State is a perfect society, as is the Church founded by Christ. In his Apostolic Letter issued motu proprio and entitled Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum (1969), Pope Paul VI gave a good summary of the concept:

It is indisputable that the ends of Church and State belong to different orders, and that both are perfect societies, that is to say, they are independent in their respective spheres of action, and have proper means to achieve those ends. They possess their proper jurisdiction and all necessary means to achieve their ends. On the other hand, it must not be overlooked that they are both aiming at a similar welfare, namely that the people of God is to obtain eternal salvation . . .

Neque est infitiandum finem Ecclesiae et Rebus Publicis propositum diversi esse ordinis, atque Ecclesiam et Civitatem, in suo cuiusque ordine, esse societates perfectas, ac propriis inde pollere iuribus et mediis, suisque uti legibus, quacumque uniuscuiusque patet provincia. At verum est etiam utramque ad communis subiecti utilitatem agere, scilicet hominis, a Deo vocati ad salutem adipiscendam aeternam . . . .

Click here for a copy of Paul VI's motu proprio, Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum.

St. Thomas Aquinas: Definition of Law, The Common Good

THE LAW IS A PUBLIC THING, NOT A PRIVATE TOY. This is essentially St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching in the second article to question 90 in the "Treatise on Law." St. Thomas quotes the early encylopedist, St. Isidore of Seville, for the proposition that laws are not enacted for private benefit, but for the public good. Etymologies, v.21 (nullo privato commodo, sed pro communi civium utilitate conscripta).

St. Thomas observes that although reason is what directs the law, there must be something upon which reason is focused, the ultimate end or purpose (what is called the "final cause"). With respect to law, that focus must be the common good. The common good is based upon happiness; this happiness is "the principle in respect of all the rest." ST IaIIae, Q.90, art. 2, resp. From a natural perspective, this happiness is Aristotle's eudaemonia, what St. Thomas calls felicitas, felicity. From a supernatural perspective, this happiness is what is referred to as beatitude or eternal joy, what St. Thomas calls beatitudo.

The happiness that the law is concerned with is not any individual's happiness, but the happiness of the entire body politic, that is, the universal happiness, or happiness of the community (felicitatem communem). The law, therefore, must not have any particular individual's happiness as its end, but, rather, the happiness of the entire body politic. Quoting Aristotle, St. Thomas states that the only just law is that law which is adapted to produce and preserve happiness for the the body politic. See Aristotle, Ethics, v. 1. The law, can address individual things, and it may result in one particular individual's or one group's happiness. In itself, that is not defective so long as the law was ordained to the good of the community. It is only when the law is not it is ordered to the common good, but toward the good of a group or an individual, that it is "devoid of the nature of law" (non habeat rationem legis). ST IaIIae, Q. 90, art. 2, resp.; see also id. resps.1, 2. Thomas thus strikes a balance between individualism and collectivism.

Nathanael Culverwell describes what occurs when the law is ordered toward the common good

Law-givers should send out laws with Olive-branches in their mouths, they should be fruitful and peaceable; they should drop sweetness and fatness upon a land. Let not then Brambles make laws for Trees, lest they scratch them and tear them, and write their laws in blood. But Law-givers are to send out laws, as the Sun shoots forth his beams, with healing under their wings: and thus that elegant Moralist Plutarch speaks, God (says he) is angry with them that counterfeit his thunder and lightning, οὐσκηπτρον, οὐκεραυνὸν, οὐτρίαιναν; his Scepter, and his Thunderbolt, and his Trident, he will not let them meddle with these. He does not love they should imitate him in his absolute dominion and sovereignty; but loves to see them darting out those warm, and amiable, and cherishing ἀκτινοβολίαι, those beamings out of Justice, and goodness, and clemency. And as for Laws, they should be like so many green and pleasant pastures, into which these ποιμένεςλαων [shepherds of nations] are to lead their flocks, where they may feed sweetly and securely by those refreshing streams of justice, that run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty torrent. And this consideration would sweep down many cobweb-laws, that argue only the venom and subtilty of them that spin them; this would sweep down many an Achitophel's web and many an Haman's web, many an Herod's web; every spider's web that spreads laws only for the catching and entangling of weaker ones; such Law-givers are fit to be Domitian's play-fellows, that made it his Royal sport and pastime to catch flies, and insult over them when he had done. Whereas a Law should be a staff for a Commonwealth to lean on, and not a Reed to pierce it through. Laws should be cords of love, not nets and snares. Hence it is that those laws are most radical and fundamental, that principally tend to the conservation of the vitals and essentials of a Kingdom; and those come nearest the Law of God himself, and are participations of that eternal Law, which is the spring and original of all inferior and derivative laws. του ἀρίστου ἕνεκα πάντα τὰ νόμιμα [all laws exist for the sake of the good], as Plato speaks; and there is no such public benefit, as that which comes by laws; for all have an equal interest in them, and privilege by them. And therefore as Aristotle speaks most excellently, Νόμος ἐστὶ νους ἄνευὀρέξεως. A Law is a pure intellect, not only without a sensitive appetite, but without a will. ’Tis pure judgment without affections, a Law is impartial and makes no factions; and a Law cannot be bribed though a Judge may.

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