Stoics: The Exaltation of Moral Intention

IN OUR LAST POSTING, we discussed the Stoic concept of duty--a notion encapsulated in Greek in the word καθῆκον, kathēkon, pl., καθήκοντα, kathēkonta, and the Latin word officium--a term which ought to be understood as meeting fittingness or conformity with nature.  While this was an important, even central, concept of Stoic ethics, it ought not to be understood as being sufficient for virtue.  There was more to virtue than mere conformity with nature.

For example, in his De finibus (written ca. 44 B.C.), Cicero outlined five steps requisite for moral development.  In order to do one's duty, in order to comply with nature, five things were required. These five steps were viewed as a sort of hierarchical ladder, from low to high, and it was only in completing the fifth and highest rung that one could say that virtue had been achieved.

The first such rung in the Ciceronian schema was the lowest, and it was one that humans shared with the brute animals.  This was the innate inclination that all animals have to preserve their own nature or existence.  The inclination towards self-preservation is a strong natural instinct, and it is one found present in both brute animals as well as reasonable man.  It was expected that man, to comply with his duty, should strive to effect, to realize that inclination towards self-preservation and therefore avoid self-destructive behavior and strive also to incorporate behavior that allowed one to thrive (eating, procreation, etc.)

Life alone was clearly not sufficient to live a virtuous life.  What had to be done was to develop a sort of habitual preferential attitude toward duty, so that duty became a sort of second nature.  Cicero viewed this process as having three steps, each one being an increased perfection of the virtue of duty.  (See De finibus, III.20)  The first step occurred as one held on to what is good and rejected what was evil so that one developed a preference for the former and a dis-preference for the latter (ut ea teneat quae secundum naturam sint pellatque contraria; qua inventa selectione et item rejectione).  That developed preference matures into a dutiful preference (cum officio selectio), then finally a permanent dutiful preference, which leads to the threshold of an unwavering, constant and harmonious accord with nature (ea perpetua, tum ad extremum constans consentaneaque naturae).  It is in this final step where good, that is virtue, can be said to first exist.

Young Cicero Reading, fresco by Vincenzo Foppa

This internalization of what is in accord with nature is at the heart of Stoic virtue.  It should be stressed that this interiorization was not a utilitarian or consequentialist ethic.  The focus is not on the external act as much as the internal disposition of the actor.  Though at first focus is on the act and its conformity with nature, the objective is to develop an keen sense of the order in nature, of the desirability of one's acts in conformity with that order, and an interior disposition and ready duty to conform to that order, and so, finally, to live a life fitting and harmoniously compliant with the order of nature.

As Houser puts it:

At first, we concentrate on 'things done in accord with nature,' but virtue refocuses on 'seeing the order of things that should be done,' order that is not an individual action but the plan that organizes individual actions. Virtue leads us to perform actions with consequences 'finely done (honeste facta),' to be sure, but virtue consists in 'the fine itself (ipsumque honestum),' that is, in the inter character and habit of virtue. The safe focuses on inner intention and character (diathesis), because these are what constitute virtue, properly speaking. The Stoic conception of virtue, then manifests 'the exaltation of moral intention.'

Houser, 22 (quoting Cicero, De finibus, and P. Donini, "Stoic Ethics," in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, 717)

Taking the Aristotelian example of an archer striving to hit the target, for the Stoic hitting the target--while important--is not what determined whether the archer was virtuous.  What was important was not the success of hitting the target, what was important was "to do all he can do aim straight."  If external forces resulted in the arrow missing the mark, that was not the result of lack of virtue, but rather non-moral forces at work.  Virtue consisted not so much in success, but in an internal disposition which strove for success by conforming oneself to the order in nature steadily and with unflappable resolve.

This internal disposition, of course, reached full flower in the apothegms of Epictetus, the words of Seneca, and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

Stoics: Kathēkon or Officium: Our Duty to Nature

IN OUR LAST POSTING, we noted how the Stoics branded as "indifferent" or pre-moral a number of goods which Plato, but particularly Aristotle, had labeled as part of the good life.  The Stoics were not, however, blind that humans gravitated to those supposedly indifferent goods.  Why was it most men preferred wealth (a supposedly "indifferent" good) than poverty?  Why did most men prefer fame (another supposedly "indifferent" good) than being ignored?  It would seem that the Stoic adiaphora were often proēgmena.

To explain why there was this apparent desire for the adiaphora, the Stoics cleverly coined some neologisms--some new words--and so developed an entirely new moral vocabulary and moral category.  They recognized that all animals, including humans, have impulses (hormē [ὁρμή] in Greek, appetitio animi, in Latin), and these latched on to the supposedly indifferent things, the adiaphora.

The Stoics recognized that the animal impulse shared by man perceived these adiaphora as have some sort of value or worth: they were estimable (axion [ἀξιον], in Greek, aestimabile, in Latin).  This perceived value or worth is what made them preferred (proēgmenon [προηγμένον] in Greek, praepositum or selectum, in Latin).  On the other hand, some of these adiaphora were seen as having a dis-value (apaxion), and were therefore dis-preferred (apoproēgmenon, in Greek, reiectum, in Latin).

Depiction of the Stoa Poikile (Painted Stoa) 

from which the Stoics derived their name

To avoid a lapse into subjectivism--to avoid the preferred and dis-preferred to being mere whim, mere wants, arbitrary desires--the Stoics sought to put some sort of objective (though not moral) reason or ratio behind these impulses.  They found the objective guide in nature (physis).  Impulses that were in accord with nature (kata physin) were preferred; those against or contrary to nature were dis-preferred.  Above and beyond my nature was a cosmic logos (in Latin, ratio) that provided the sort of common or universal law behind the natural law specific to particular animals.

Those actions that were in accord with nature (kata physin) were considered proper (oikeion [οἰκεῖον]), while those that were contrary to nature were considered alien (allotrion [ἀλλότριον]. These proper actions were also called dutiful or appropriate (kathēkon [καθῆκον], a word that became in Latin as officium.  Whenever we see, as, for example in Cicero, the use of the term officium (often translated as "duty"), it has the meaning of kathēkon or a duty arising from or based upon one's nature.  This notion of duty to one's nature was, of course, a principle that would have a profound effect on moral philosophy and would eventually (with important modifications) be incorporated into Christian thought and given Scriptural dignity via reference by St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans.

Natural Law in Cicero's De republica

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, "Tully" as he is known to his English-speaking friends, was Republican Rome's great advocate of the philosophy of natural law. He was, one must probably accede, not the most original thinker, but that is not necessarily a fatal defect in the area of morals. His facility of expression, his rhetorical power, the ebullience of his devotion to the natural law, the genius in his packaging all make up for any deficiency in his originality. His greatest contribution to the doctrine of natural law then cannot be said to be in some new insight. His great contribution is in remolding the Platonic/Aristotelian/Stoic thinking on the natural law, a teaching largely found in Greek sources, so as to Latinize it for his Roman countrymen in a manner they could readily comprehend. So Latinized, it entered into the blood of jurists to thicken it, until relative modern times where the Ciceronian corpuscles seems to have been thinned out by a sort of intellectual transfusion with Positivistic platelets.

Cicero's devotion to the natural law is already found in some of his early writings, before he devoted himself to the philosophical project as an adult. For example, in is found already solid in his youthful work De inventione Rhetorica. Cicero finds virtue to be a "habit of the mind [in tune] with nature," virtus est animi habitus naturae. II.53.159. One of the virtues is, of course, justice, and justice is a "habit of the soul which accords a fitting dignity to everything, conserving a due regard to the general welfare." (Iustitia est habitus animi communi utilitate conservata suam cuique tribuens dignitatem.) Like the genus virtue, of which justice is one species, justice's "initial principle proceeds from nature," eius initium est ab natura profectum. Finally, the "natural right is," according to Cicero, "that which has not born with the opinions of men, but has been implanted by some innate power, like religion, piety, gratitude, vindication, obedience to one's superiors, truth." Naturae ius est, quod non opinio genuit, sed quaedam in natura vis insevit, ut religionem, pietatem, gratiam, vindicationem, observantiam, veritatem. II.53.161. So here is the full Monty of morality already in the young Cicero: virtue to justice to natural law.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

By the time Cicero undertakes his more ambitious philosophical project in his later years, Cicero begins with the conviction, a conviction we see that he had in his youth, that the practical life was under a regulatory order, an order of nature (natura), an order that deployed itself in ontological, anthropological, and moral dimensions. The natural law (lex naturae), a law that governed the moral life of man, was not to be viewed as something separate from a general philosophy of man or a comprehensive view of reality, but was to be seen as springing forth from these foundations, as a tree branch from the trunk. It intimately affected both man's individual and his social relations.

Dream of Scipio by Raphael

This sort of view is clearly comprehended by his works on political philosophy, De republica (On the Commonwealth) and De legibus (On Laws). We shall look at Cicero's De republica in this posting, and the De legibus in the next several postings.

Cicero wrote his dialogue on Roman politics De republica between 54 and 51 B.C. Composed of six books, De republica explores forms of government within the context of justifying moral ordering in practical life and in the public life. Alas, this philosophical work which is in the form of a dialogue, survives only in part, found by chance as a palimpsest in 1822 in a Vatican Library manuscript under some text of St. Augustine, and that surviving part has been supplemented from random other sources--a pastiche of Nonius, Lactantius, Augustine and others who quoted or referred to the Ciceronian work, so there are huge gaps in our patrimony. Be that as it may, in those excerpts of the De republica we do have Cicero presents a group dialogue between Scipio Aemilianus, or Scipio Africanus Minor, and a variety of other participants, including Gaius Fannius, Gaius Laelius, Manius Manilius, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, Spurius Mummius, Lucius Furius Philus, Publius Rutilius Rufus, and Quintus Aelius Tubero.

The dialogue takes place in Campus Martius, in Scipio's country estate outside Rome, over three days during the Latin holidays or Feriae Latine, with two books devoted to each day. The sun is in the throes of an eclipse, perhaps symbolic of the eclipse of Republican values as Rome turned empire. The first two books deal with Constitutional theory. The second two books deal with the issue of justice and its function in civil life, and in this section the natural law features prominently, particularly as advanced by the protagonist Laeilius, Scipio's intimate as there was "something like a law between them in their friendship," fuit enim hoc in amicitia quasi quoddam ius inter illos. De rep., I.18. The last book contains the famous passage in which Scipio describes a dream. This is the Somnium Scipionis or "Scipio's Dream" in which Scipio is visited by his dead adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus, the great hero of the Second Punic War, and is the vehicle for Cicero to present his cosmological vision which emphasizes the important of an eternal life and final judgment in the scheme of morals and the political life. It is, of course, modeled after Plato's Myth of Er which is to be found in the latter's work The Republic, and which through Macrobius's Commentary had such large influence upon the middle ages, including the likes of Boethius, Dante, and Chaucer. We find it in art, as the subject of Raphael's brush and the music of the young Mozart (see the opera Il sogno de Scipione, K. 126).

On the Commonwealth [the De republica] was the first, and perhaps the only, serious attempt by a Roman to analyze the structure and values of republican government and imperial rule. In adapting Platonic and Aristotelian theories based on the small, self-contained, and relatively homogeneous society of the polis to the conditions of the Roman imperium, Cicero made use of Stoic ideas of the cosmopolis and of natural law to develop a complex and ambitious argument, linking the traditional values and institutions of republic Rome on the one hand to the Aristotelian ideas of civic virtue and on the other to the order of the universe itself. Stoic moral theory made it possible for Cicero to construct an image of society ruled not by a Platonic intellectual elite . . . but by all those whose recognition of their own moral capacities, as part of a cosmic whole, led them to contribute to the creation and preservation of a society which reflected and incorporated the natural justice of the universe.

De rep., xvii-xviii.*

Among the participants of Cicero's dialogue De republica, we find in general two models of human existence, of moral and political reality. The first, espoused by Scipio Aemilianus and Gaius Laelius is based upon a natural law philosophy, and seeks to base both moral and political life on some extra-human, even cosmological standard. The second theory, advanced by Lucius Furius Philus, a Machiavellian avant la lettre, rejects such extra-human standard and insists that all standards are conventional and relative, and that justice "is something civil and not natural at all," ius enim de quo quaerimus civile est aliquod, naturale nullum, that "nature . . . is [not] the mother of justice," iustitiae non natura . . . mater est. III.13, 23. Philus, as St. Augustine in his De civitate Dei put it "gave a careful presentation of he case of injustice against justice." De civ. Dei, 2.21 (egitque sedulo pro iniustitia contra iustitiam).

Scipio Aemilianus finds the foundation of justice and law in the order of things, and order which is based upon reason or mind (mens). It is, in fact, the same ratio ordinis that founds the central core of Thomistic natural law. Scipio Aemilianus finds his mentors not with those who would found their politics on legend or on myth, but with those who would found their politics on the recognition of an order or mind which governs the entirety of reality:

LAELIUS: And who are those instructors?
SCIPIO: Men who, through their investigation of the universe, have recognized that this entire world is ruled by a single mind (qui natura omnium rerum pervestiganda senserunt omnem hunc mundum mente).

De rep., I.57. Scipio is convinced of such an a natural order, divine and eternal, which must serve as the basis for moral and political life. It is nature itself which compels us to live in common: idque ipsa natura non invitaret solum sed etiam cogeret. De rep., I.39b. It is nature herself which provides the law for such common life. "He alone can truly claim all things as his own, not under the law of the Roman people, but by the common law of nature (nec civili nexo sed communi lege naturae) . . . ." De rep., I.27. The law of Rome qua law of Rome is parochial. There is a law that is wholly beyond the law of Rome and which frees man from the limited focus of his time and place. There is a reality beyond this world that is not subject to the vicissitudes, the perishability, the vanity, of the mundane, but is eternal, lasting, divine.

What power, what office, what kingdom can be grander than to look down on all things human and to think of them as less important than wisdom, and to turn over in his mind nothing except what is eternal and divine?

Quod autem imperium, qui magistratus, quod regnum potest esse praestantius, quam despicientem omnia humana et inferiora sapientia ducentem nihil umquam nisi sempiternum et divinum animo volutare?

De rep., I.28. This eternal, divine Reason or Mind is the "ontic plane," that is the basis of all natural order in the world and all moral life. Estrada, 12. It is this divine Reason which diffuses itself throughout all existence.

This view of reality is what informs law, and it is most earnestly argued by Scipio's friend Laelius. As Zetzel puts it in his introduction to Cicero's work:

Laelius advances a very different argument in favor of justice. This speech is unfortunately very fragmentary: but it is clear that Laelius argued in Stoic terms from the existence of natural affection to the existence of natural and permanent moral values, and thus to natural law defined as right reason and explained as a fundamental feature of the structure of the cosmos itself.

De rep., xiv. It is during the course of the Laelian's teaching that we can have this encapsulation of the Ciceronian doctrine in this paean to the natural law:

True law is right reason, consonant with nature, spread through all people. It is constant and eternal; it summons to duty by its orders, it deters from crime by its prohibitions. Its order and prohibitions to good people are never given in vain; but it does not move the wicked by these orders or prohibitions. It is wrong to pass laws obviating this law; it is not permitted to abrogate any of it; it cannot be totally repealed. We cannot be released from this law by the senate or the people, and it needs no exegete or interpreter like Sextus Aelius.** There will not be one law at Rome and another at Athens, one now and another later; but all nations at all times will be bound by this one eternal and unchangeable law, and the god will be the one common master and general (so to speak) of all people. He is the author, expounder, and mover of his law; and the person who does not obey it will be in exile from himself. Insofar as he scorns his nature as a human being, by this very fact he will pay the greatest penalty, even if he escapes all other things that are generally recognized as punishments.

Est quidem vera lex recta ratio, naturae congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiterna, quae vocet ad officium iubendo, vetando a fraude deterreat, quae tamen neque probos frustra iubet, aut vetat, nec improbos iubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nec obrogari fas est, neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque tota abrogari potest; nec vero aut per senatum, aut per populum solvi hac lege possumus; neque est quaerendus explanator aut interpres eius alius; nec erit alia lex Romae, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac: sed et omnes gentes et omni tempore una lex et sempiterna et immutabilis continebit, unusque erit communis quasi magister et imperator omnium deus, ille legis huius inventor, disceptator, lator; cui qui no parebit, ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernatus hoc ipso luet maximas poenas, etia si cetera supplicia, quae putantur, effugerit.

De rep., III.33 [cf. Lactantius, Inst., VI.8, 6-9]

Cicero mined for his philosophy in the rich veins of the Socratic-Platonic idealistic tradition, taken up an modified by Aristotle and the Stoics. He brings this precious intellectual tradition and melds it into tight and orderly Latin philosophical ingots. There are two phases or emphases. The first is the notion of the virtuous man. The second relates to the divine or eternal founding of the world's order, an immutable backing behind a world that is subject to mutability. This divine or eternal reason is the source of law even in the mutable world, and it defines the good, thereby reaching back to define what is virtuous.

This concept of reality bespeaks a teleology constitutive of a natural universal order, in which Cicero has brought about the convergence of two of the most salient teleological theories of Antiquity, namely Platonism and Stoicism; which, beyond undeniable differences in doctrine . . . share the vision of a cosmos that has been penetrated in its whole by divine rationality.

Estrada, 13. Even here, Cicero was not original. It is clear that this blend was part of the teachings of Antiochus of Ascalon, scholarch of Plato's Academy, "who, in an effort to make the school's approach return to its initial identity, fused together into a common heritage the teachings of Plato with those of Aristotle and the Stoics, as documented by Cicero himself." Estrada, 13.

For Cicero, human nature is not something separate and apart from the nature of the cosmos, but is integrally tied to it. Cicero's appeal to nature is "an appeal to nature considered as a whole, and to human nature, as part of that whole, in the justificatory way of moral order." Estrada, 13.

This vision of the nature of man fitted into nature as a whole and linked to divine and eternal reason is what gives the human soul a sort of divinity or dignity. This is the impetus behind Scipio's Dream, where the human soul, following Platonic paradigms, is given a divine origin, which means that man has an eternal destiny beyond that of this world. It is this eternal destiny which he ought to keep in mind when he lives his life on earth. He must live his life on earth sub specie aeternitatis.

There is in man, then a sort of seed or inclination, an "inchoate 'humanitas' that reveals itself in his specific natural inclinations." Estrada, 13-14. It is these inclinations that virtually compel man's need to live virtuously (necessitas virtutis), living for others, open to love (amor) and to the common good. Hos definio, tantam esse necessitate virtutis generi hominum a natura tantumque amorem ad communem salute defendendam datum. "I make this one assertion," Cicero begins his dialogue, "nature has given men such a need for virtue and such a desire [love] to defend the common safety that this force has overcome all the enticements of pleasure and ease." De rep.I.1. It is for this reason that man is "strongly drawn to try to increase the resources of the human race," "eager to make human life safe and better by our plans and efforts." "It is the spur of nature herself that goads us on to this pleasure." Ad hanc voluptatem ipsius naturae stimulis incitamur. De rep. I.3. It is the following of this inclination, this natural law, that leads us into eternal life if there is any hope for one. Cicero is no Hobbesian.

Cicero has a noble view of man, and as we have written before, it was, with baptism proper to anyone encountering Christ, injected into the heart of the New Testament by St. Paul. The old Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Ciceronian wine was put into the new wineskin of the New Testament by the master evangelic and apostolic vintner, St. Paul. And in this he did well, and we trust that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. For Jesus taught that new wine should not be put into old wineskins, and he taught that new wine should be put into new wineskins. (Matthew 9:14-17, Mark 2:18-22, Luke 5:33-39.) But the Lord did not teach that old wine could not be put into new wineskins. And St. Paul seized on that liberty, and did so in his great Epistle to the Romans (cf. Rom. 2:14), and we are still drinking the delight of that inexhaustible vintage and shall until the end of time.

We do, however, wish the rest of the world were drinking with us, for they would be in far better company than they're with, and there would be far more rejoicing, and much less sorrow, on account of the better wine. We are in a time like the characters of Cicero's dialogue De republica where the sun of the natural moral law is eclipsed. It is time for the eclipsing of moral values of the natural law to end. Then shall the Catholic sun shine unabated with Bellocian glee:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

_____________________________________
*All cites and quotations of Cicero's De republica are taken from Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the Laws (James E. G. Zetzel, ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). I have also drawn on Laura E. Corso de Estrada, "Marcus Tullius Cicero and the Role of Nature in the Knowledge of Moral Good," in Natural Law: Historical, Systematic, and Juridical Approaches (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 9-22 (herein "Estrada")
**Sextus Aelius Paetus Catus (fl. 198-194 B.C.) or Sextus Aelius was a Roman Republican consul, elected to that post in 198 B.C. He was highly regarded as a result of a commentary on the Twelve Tables, the traditional laws of Rome. Sextus Aelius's elder brother, Publius Aelius Paetus, was also a consul and famous jurist.

Girolamo Zanchi on Human Law, Part 3

Girolamo Zanchi

ZANCHI CONCLUDES HIS TREATMENT on the relationship between human or political law and the natural law by addressing the issue of the construction or enforcement of human law, and by pointing out two significant distinctions between human law and the natural law.

With respect to the first issue, Zanchi insists that the natural law has a role in the application of human law in certain situations where the law--if enforced according to the letter--results in injustice. His reasoning as as follows.

Human laws, that is, positive laws of the State, have as their aim the promotion of the common good. On occasion, however, enforcement of the letter of this law may actually result in "the ruin of those people for whose sake it was enacted," thus contradicting its purpose. There are therefore instances where the "letter of the law" should not be followed; rather, the "purpose of the law and the spirit of the law-giver must be examined and followed." This appears to be an application by Zanchi of the legal maxim salus populi suprema lex est, the welfare of the people is the supreme law, a principle as old as the Roman Twelve Tables (Compare Cicero, De Legibus, 3.3.8 ("ollis salus populi suprema lex esto")

As an example of such an instance, Zanchi supposes a human law that provides that no person is allowed to open the city gates if the city is being besieged. Obviously, this law is unobjectionable from a general perspective, and it seeks to protect the citizens and promote the common good when the city is under seige by preventing the city from being occupied by enemy force. Thus, this law would derive from the natural law.

Zanchi then posits the situation where the city is under seige, and the city's army is outside the walls engaged in battle with the opposing army. The city's army retreats and seeks entry into the safety of the very city which they are defending. If the letter of the law is obeyed in this circumstance, the city's army will be slaughtered and without its army the city will ultimately be captured, defeating the law's purpose and the natural law. "[W]ho does not see that in such a case the city gates must be opened despite the letter of the law . . . .?" (345) Clearly, the letter of the law ought not to be followed in such and similar instances, but the purpose of the law, the intent of the legislator, and the natural law override the law's letter.

Justinian's Codex recognized this principle (1.14.5): "There is no doubt that he violates the law, who, adhering to its letter, violates its spirit . . . ." (Non dubium est in legem committere eum, qui verba legis amplexus contra legis nititur voluntatem . . . .). Similarly, this principle is carried forward in the teaching of the Church fathers and ecclesiastics, and applies in the context of divine law as well as human law. "Some law-followers," Zanchi states, "have actually sinned against the will of God" even when externally obeying the letter of the divine law itself because they act against its principle, its spirit. As examples of this, Zanchi cites the various encounters between Jesus and the Pharisees and Scribes related in the Gospel. These are examples where the letter of the law and the spirit of the law conflict. Thus, plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath did not violate the divine injunction to keep the Sabbath day holy (Mark 2:23-28; Matt. 12:1-7), nor did curing a man on the Sabbath (Matt.12:9-14), since they conformed to the purpose of the law, and the enforcement of the letter of the law contradicted its purpose.

Zanchi thus concludes:

Laws are enacted from natural law for the common good and the welfare of human beings, and only for as long as they do so do they have the power to obligate. If, therefore, it should happen that by sticking to the letter of the law, we act against the welfare of human beings, we have acted more against the law than in accordance with it.

(346) However, Zanchi cautions that this principle is not to be used without some restriction. The power to determine in the first instance when enforcement of the letter of the law violates the natural law--and therefore ought not to be obeyed--is with the authorities, assuming that they may coveniently be available. "When, however," the authorities "cannot be easily consulted and there is a danger in delay, and the case of the law is clear to each person," then in such instance "it is appropriate for the person involved, to whom the responsibility falls, or on whom the burden of the State is conferred," when the purpose "of the law is lost, to follow his own interpretation of the law." (346)

Zanchi completes his treatment of human laws by pointing out two fundamental distinctions between the human law and the natural law. The first is that, while human law changes, the natural law does not and cannot. The second difference is that human law only governs external acts, whereas the natural law covers both external and internal acts. He explores those two issues.

First, Zanchi observes that the natural law is unchanging, whereas human law changes depending on the contingencies of time, place, and personality. For this reason, there may be disagreement between human law and natural law. The natural law cannot change for the very simple reason that it "is simply certain, general eternal aspects of God's will, the revelation of the rule for doing and avoiding, written on the hearts of human beings." (347) Human laws, on the other hand, "cannot be eternal and unchangeable because their circumstances," in terms of "place, time, and personality" vary. (347) This distinction between the two is what makes St. Augustine state in his De libero arbitrio (On Free Will) [1.6.14.48] that temporary laws may be suspended for a time (Appellemus ergo istam legem, si placet, temporalem, quae quamquam iusta sit, commutari tamen per tempora iuste potest.)

It follows that human laws must change to conform to the natural law. Human law must therefore change in two situations. First, the development in human reason, as a community advances from relative imperfection to relative greater perfection, demands that the human law be adapted to reason's development. Laws ought to reflect the same development one sees in philosophy or other sciences. Second, differences and varieties in people, communities, or States require different laws adapted to their specific situations. As an example of how the state of a people affects laws, Zanchi again refers to St. Augustine. If a people is virtuous, it may be acceptable for them to elect their own magistrates. However, if the people become depraved, then allowing them to elect their own magistrates may result in the election of criminals, and so the law allowing for participatory elections should be changed. (De Libero Arbitrio, 1.6.14.45-46)

[Zanchi then applies this principle to the Church, and gives as an unfortunate example the selection of ministers; however, here he displays the prejudice of the Reformers which fails to give sufficient deference to the teachings of Christ on Church governance and its constitution.]

How, then, can human laws change, but the natural law not change?

The response to this . . . is quite simple: Anything that human laws retain from natural law cannot be changed, but anything that differs from it because of the particular circumstances and that impedes the public good more than it advances it must be changed. In addition, human laws by their own nature have their own individual circumstances. Thus, because circumstances change, it follows that the [human] law can change entirely too. Still, natural law maintains its general principles without any particular circumstances. Thus, it remains immutable.

(348) The second big difference between the natural law and human law is that the natural law is broader, more extensive than human law. The natural law "prohibits all vices and crimes, in general, both internal and external ones." Thus, the natural law "regulates not only external worship but also internal worship." (348) Likewise, the natural law, in particular the "Golden Rule," prohibits not only external injury to our neighbor, but internal injuries, such as nursing hatred and envy. "Love is commanded," by the natural law, "because we, ourselves, want to be loved."

In contradistinction with the natural law which governs both external and internal fora, human or political laws only relate to "external crimes" and "external duties." (349) Human laws do not reach into the inner part of man. The reason for this is that human laws have limited scope and purpose. Since human or political laws look only toward promoting the common good, they do not look at the private good of an individual except perhaps accidentally.

Moreover, even in externals, human law is limited. There is a prudential aspect in human law that is absent in the natural law. Human laws simply cannot prohibit every external wrong without resulting in greater harm to the common good. Human laws can only prohibit those wrongs that prudently can be prevented. Where something cannot be prevented, either as a result of human nature, custom, or the people's wishes, human law ought not be applied because it would be vain and fruitless or would result in greater harm. Thus Proverbs 30:33: "Pressing the nose produces blood" (qui vehementer emungitur elicit sanguinem). Zanchi suggests that Christ recognized this principle when, as related in Matthew 9:17, he says that if new wine is put into old wineskins, the old wineskins will burst and the wine will be lost. The new wine represents "harsher and stronger ideas," and if people are not ready for them "the people will fall from bad to worse and become more corrupt" by trying to hoist these ideas upon them. Thus, human or political law requires prudent and wise application. This element of human laws gives rise to one of the more important principles of human legislation: "It is essential that the laws be possible. By possible I mean, in accordance with both nature and the customs of the people." (349).

In conclusion, Zanchi's treatment of the natural law is substantially more traditional and classical than Calvin's treatment, though it appears more influenced by the Protestant Reformers' ideas than Vermigli, whose doctrines were reviewed in earlier posts on this blog. Zanchi's treatment, however, is much more complete and methodical than Calvin's and Vermigli's treatment of the natural law. Zanchi, nevertheless, does provide some basis for a Protestant tradition of the natural law, a tradition that, as we discussed in earlier blogs, Karl Barth vehemently, and perhaps--applying strictly the underlying principles of the Reformer's theology--logically rejected.

Doctrines of the natural law will invariably be affected by one's theological or philosophical presuppositions. Theological error will often find outlet in a false view of the natural law. Thus, for example, Calvin's theological error with respect to the depravity of man marred his view of natural law. A fortiori, Barth's theological error entirely blinded him to the continuing validity of the natural law. Similarly, one's philosophical presuppositions can affect one's doctrine of the natural law. Thus, someone with a nominalist or materialist, mechanistic philosophy (as distinguished from someone with a realist philosophy or a philosophy open to the existence of God) will be seriously hampered in his ability to grasp the possibilty eternal or natural law. Theological and philosophical traditions, in addition to our own culture's customs and our own internal passions and vices, can render our vision astigmatic, myopic, hyperopic . . . indeed, can make us even blind to the fullness of the eternal and the natural law, just as it can blind us to the Gospel.

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, Reason

ST. THOMAS ADDRESSES the definition of law in Question 90 of his so-called “Treatise on Law” (which is actually part of his Summa Theologica, specifically Questions 90-97 of the first part of the second part of this multi-volume work). St. Thomas first addresses the issue of whether the law is something that is based upon the faculty of practical reason of the law giver, or something else, in particular, the will of the law giver.

Relying principally on the insights in Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas concludes that law must principally pertain to reason, and not to the will. He reaches this conclusion because the “rule and measure” of all human acts must be the reason, since reason, and not will, is the proper faculty to direct the end of man. Since law is something that induces man to act, or restrains him from acting, it must accord with the “rule and measure” directing all human acts, which is reason. Ultimately, in St. Thomas's view, it is at the bar of reason to which law is answerable. Naturally, this determination would apply to all law. Thus Eternal Law, the Natural Law, Divine Law, and Human Law would all conform to Reason. Although the Natural Law and Human Law operate under the right reason of man, all manner of law is ultimately subject to conformity with the Divine Reason.

In his handling of the issue, it is apparent that St. Thomas recognizes that the word "law" may be used in an inexact sense. He observes that it is precisely in an imprecise sense that St. Paul uses it when he talks about the “law in my members” in Romans 7:23 to refer to the disposition or tendency toward sin that is referred to as concupiscence. This "law" is not actual law, since it is not based upon reason, but a disordered disposition. Nor is such law actually in the members of a human being, since reason is not be found in the bodily members, but only in the intellect Nevertheless, the term "law" may imprecisely be used to refer to concupiscence because it tugs on us though in a different manner than law, strictly defined, does. Similarly, the "laws of nature," such as scientific "laws," are not strictly laws, but are called laws only in a manner of speaking.

The reason that St. Thomas refers to in his definition of law is what is called the practical reason (ratio practica). This sort of reasoning should be distinguished from the speculative or theoretical reason. The speculative or theoretical reason, entirely intellectual, works by means of argument, applying syllogistic thinking to definitions and propositions to arrive at truths. Speculative or theoretical reason is thus used by humans to determine what is or what one ought to assent to or believe in, that is, what is true, and not what one is supposed to do, that is, to do good and avoid evil.

On the other hand, practical reason is the faculty that man uses to determine what he is supposed to do, and as such it informs us of what is good and what is evil. It relates to one's intent or end (purpose) in acting and is the basis or odering that end. (Some philsophers, such as David Hume, reject the suggestion that practical reason is able to determine what is good and what is evil, and they hold that practical reason is purely instrumental, but that is another issue for another day.)

Because practical reason relates to action, it is a combination of both reason and will. As R. J. Henle puts it: "The act of Practical Reason is a composite one and involves an interplay of will and intellect." R. J. Henle, S.J., ed. The Treatise on Law (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1993), [314], 65.

Practical reason similarly uses a syllogistic thinking, applying it to definitions and propositions. But in the practical reason, the “universal propositions of the practical intellect that are directed to actions have the nature of law.” ST IaIIae Q.90, art.1, ad.2. Sometimes, these universal propositions are applied as a result of habit. At other times, these propositions are applied with full awareness and express consideration.

In assessing the interplay of reason and will in the faculty of practical reasoning, St. Thomas insists that reason is preeminent over will. Therefore, law pertains primarily to the reason, and not the will. In taking this position, St. Thomas rejects any implication to the contrary that may have been inferred in the Institutes of the Emperor Justinian. The legal text referred to by St. Thomas defined law in terms of the will of the emperor: Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem. Inst., I.ii.6. (“Whatsoever pleases the sovereign has the force of law.”) In the Middle Ages, the Institutes and Digest (which with the other laws known as the Novellae) were known as the Corpus Juris Civilis or Codex of the Emperor Justinian. These laws were held in great esteem because of their antiquity and because of the reputation of Justinian as a Christian emperor (the Eastern Church considered him a saint). Justinian's Code, therefore, was to considered to be written reason (ratio scripta), and so was applied to human law as the Scriptures were applied to Divine belief. In his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas calls the Emperor Justinian, "the Jurist," like he calls Aristotle, "the Philosopher."

St. Thomas rejects the notion that it is the will which moves us to act; rather, St. Thomas believes that the law is what commands and what forbids, and that this command is properly something pertaining to reason, and it is not something the will engages in except after reason has done its task. While the a person may will a certain end, the reason is what should determine that end, and which issues the command that ordains to that end. Without reason's ordering and guidance, there would be no rule of reason behind that act of will. In St. Thomas’s view, therefore Justinian "the Jurist" must be understood as implying that the will of the sovereign is in accord with some rule of reason. Otherwise, St. Thomas urges, "the sovereign’s will would savor of lawlessness rather than of law." Therefore, St. Thomas concludes, the source of moral obligations, and similarly legal obligations, are based upon a "reasonable will" (rationabile . . . voluntate) or a "will regulated by reason" (voluntate . . . ratione regulata). ST IaIIae, Q. 97, art. 3, resp.

It is apparent that St. Thomas's doctrine would exclude any theory of law that places something other than right reason at the helm of law, whether that something else is the will (even the alleged Divine will), convenience, custom, politics, power, freedom, the genius of the peoples, any idealogy, or anything else. Though these latter factors may have a role to play in fashioning human law, in St. Thomas's view they must always play a subordinate role to rightly-fashioned practical reason. (recta ratio practica).

The French scholar Jean Gerson (1363-1429) is in full compliance with St. Thomas when he states: "Lex est recta ratio practica secundum quam motus et operationes rerum in suos fines ordinatate regulantur." "Law is right practical reason according to which the mode and operations of things are regulated to their final end." Jean Gerson, Oevres Complètes, IX, ed. P. Glorieux (Paris, 1973), p. 134, quoted in Latin in Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 27.

In this, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Jean Gerson are united. This teaching is our heritage.

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.

Lex Vera: Sancte Cicero Ora Pro Nobis?

There are 3,706 citations or quotations in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Of these, all but one are citations to or quotations from Christian sources—to Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, Conciliar Documents, Papal Encyclicals, the Liturgy, the wisdom of the Saints. There is only one citation or quotation in the entire Catechism to a Pagan author. That quotation is found in § 1956 of the Catholic Catechism, where the Catechism treats of the Natural Law. The Catechims states:

For there is a true law: right reason. It is in conformity with nature, is diffused among all men, and is immutable and eternal; its orders summon to duty; its prohibitions turn away from offense . . . . To replace it with a contrary law is a sacrilege; failure to apply even one of its provisions is forbidden; no one can abrogate it entirely.

Not unremarkably, the Church’s teaching is announced via a quotation. What is remarkable is that the Catholic Church, in the Catechism, selected this particular quotation. The quotation is taken from the writings of the Roman Statesman and Lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero (ca. 106-43 BC). Specifically, to Book III, section 33 of his Republic. See Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the Laws (James E. G. Zetzel, ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 71.

It is fitting that the Church relies on a pagan to announce to the faithful that there is a Natural Law. And so the Church should, for the point is that the Natural Law, being based upon Reason, is available and accessible to all human persons universally. Because we are brothers, under one God, we have but one Law. Unless operating under ignorance, or bias, or blinded by convention, the virtuous pagan will see it, as will all men and women of good will, and so virtuous pagans, men and women of good will, and Christians can work together for just and equitable laws in the City of Man.



The great Catholic humanist Erasmus, it has been written, exclaimed upon reading Cicero's De Senectute, "Vix me contineo, quin exclamen: Sancte Cicero, ora pro nobis." (Translation: "I can hardly refrain from crying out, Holy Cicero, pray for us.") Though perhaps we would not go so far as Erasmus in treating Cicero as a saint, we surely can recognize in words of Cicero, especially those selected by the Church in its Catechism, a reflection of the the Eternal Law that God has placed in the heart and consciences of men and women. Cicero had learned his doctrine from the Stoics.

Perhaps St. Paul knew of the words of Cicero when he wrote his epistle to the Romans: "For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus." Romans 2:14-16.