Brownson on Total Depravity

THESE LAST SEVERAL WEEKS we have reviewed some of the Protestant Reformers' views on the natural law. Much of the Protestant Reformers' theology was marred by their theological doctrine of the "total depravity" of man. This doctrine led them to distrust practical reason's ability to determine and to will the good. Trying to preserve the role of Grace and avoid the shoals of Pelagianism, the Reformers failed to negotiate the mean, and ended up stuck in the maelstrom of "total depravity." Because the Reformers taught that man after the fall was entirely damaged, there was no "image of God," no natural revelation, no trace of good, or plan of any end in nature that reason could rely on to find an intrinsic law. Unlike the fairy tale, there was not even straw of God's image in man which man could spin into the gold of law. Law was absent in post-lapsarian nature; natural man was disorder and chaos, outside the pale of any natural grace; there was no good in him; man's nature was viscous sand, and had no firm rock. Such a arenic, sand-like, pessimistic conception of man was not a foundation upon which a natural law ethic can be built.

In his article "Romanism in America," Orestes Brownson displays good Catholic distrust of such dismal and dreary theories of man. He outlines a precise and accurate anthropology of man, an anthropology which must be held in order to build a natural law theory that will withstand the onslaught of storms.

We always view with great distrust all theories which are founded on the supposed intrinsic corruption of the human soul. Nothing that exists is intrinsically evil. Protestants, when they do not deny the fall, are sure to exaggerate its effects on human nature. Man's nature has become disordered, his understanding darkened, and his will attenuated, by the loss of original justice, but it remains intrinsically good, physically what it was when it first came from the hands of the Creator. It is not totally depraved, it is not wholly corrupt; for if it were, it could not be redeemed and saved. Man's intellect is still adapted to truth, and cannot think without thinking truth on some side; his will still craves good, and cannot operate on some side willing good. It is in the power of no man to think unmixed falsehood, or to will unmixed evil for the sake of evil. All thought is displayed on a substratum of truth, all will upon a substratum of good. In all error there is a truth misapprehended, misrepresented, misapplied, or abused. Here is the side of truth in your modern eclectic and humanitarian schools. All these exaggerated views of the depravity of human nature should be avoided. The fathers did not find gentile philosophy all false and all evil. They studied it, and recommended its study, as containing much that is both true and good. Protestants even are to be judged with moderation and impartiality. It would be as false as illiberal to say that they have no truth. Not all their thoughts are false, not all their judgments are erroneous, not all their volitions are evil. They are men, men as richly endowed by nature as other men,--are not unfrequently able men, highly cultivated and learned men, as were many of the ancient gentiles. Not even in them has human nature lost all its dignity, or been short of all its glory. We should be able to recognize and vindicate, if need be, the dignity and nobility of human nature in the heretical as well as in the orthodox. We render no service to religion by decrying human nature. We are not to destroy nature, as attempted by Calvinists and Jansenists, to make way for grace. Grace comes to its aid, strengthens it, and lifts it into a higher sphere. It is what nature wants, what it cries out for, and without which it cannot attain to its supernatural destiny, its supernatural beatitude. That is what Tertullian meant when he pronounced the human heart "naturally Christian."

[From Brownson's Works, "Romanism in American" (Detroit: Thorndike House, 1884), Vol. 7, pp. 524-25.]

Girolamo Zanchi on the Natural Law, Part 3

THE PROTESTANT THEOLOGIAN Zanchi distinguishes three functions of the natural law. Its first function is to teach what is good, just, and upright, and distinguish it from what is evil, unjust, and shameful. By doing this, the natural defines what should be pursued, and what should be avoided. Therefore, the natural law not only has an instructive role, it also "obligates and pushes us to do good, and it protects us from evil." (330) Finally, it serves the function of convicting and condemning those who ignore its injunctions, as well as defending those who abide by it. In its condemnatory role, the natural law is found in the "heart" or in the "conscience." "Indeed, sinning against our conscience is sinning against the God who teaches and advises us from within." (331) The conscience is thus like a thousand witnesses.

Zanchi also distinguishes between "natural instinct" and "natural law." Since the Fall, our natural instinct inclines toward evil, but the natural law "teaches only what is good and prods us toward those things." The war between "natural instinct" and the "natural law" is what St. Paul references in Romans 7:23, when he speaks of the "law of members."

Zanchi also distinguishes two purposes of the natural law, a feature it shares with all law: the glory of God and the good of human beings, both in their private and public lives. (331) Zanchi elaborates further on the purpose of law as a human good. He notes that Aristotle characterized laws as making people virtuous, by both guiding and inspiring persons to attain the good. Though, as pointed out by Aristotle and St. Paul (in Romans 7:10), the law has an accidental negative--by informing one of the good it also distinguishes the evil. (332) The three highest goods to which the natural law urges (in increasing dignity) are: (1) to protect and save ourselves by adopting healthy lifestyles over unhealthy ones; (2) to encourage us to propagate by having and rearing children and attending to domestic matters; and (3) to have us know and worship God. The natural law good of knowing and worship of God is divided into two headings, analogous to those two "tables" of the Ten Commandments. "The first concerns the knowledge and worship of God, and the other concerns loving our neighbor." (332) Thus, the natural law follows revealed law.

Independent of revelation, Zanchi teaches that God is known through nature. Though Zanchi appears to maintain, consonant with Romans 1:20, that God can be known by man through his natural powers (i.e., reason) by the things that are made, he seems to take away with one hand what he concedes with the other. He insists that the knowledge of God cannot be known by man naturally through his own efforts, but is immediately imparted by God into man's heart. Here again, the Calvinistic strain drowns out the Catholic teaching that God can be known, at least in theory, by reason unaided by supernatural grace (though in practice it may be difficult or rare). Zanchi is more consistent in advancing Calvin's doctrine of total depravity, than in reconciling with Pauline teaching.

The second "table" of the natural law is essentially the "Golden Rule." "Maintain fellowship and good will among human beings; that is, do not do to another what you do not want done to you and vice versa." (333) "Christ himself," Zanchi observes, "confirmed this heading of natural law first when he reduced commands of the second tablet to the love of one's neighbor and then when he said, 'Do, therefore, to others whatever yo wish that people would do to you.'" (333) That the "Golden Rule" found in the Ten Commandments and taught by Christ also wended its way into the Gentiles is evidenced by the words of the Roman emperor Severus: "'Do not do to another what you do not wish to be done to you.'"

Zanchi is likely referencing the Historia Augusta, specifically that portion written by Aelius Lampridius, though it suggests that Emperor Severus's knowledge of the "Golden Rule" may have been derived from Jewish or Christian sources, and not from reason independent of Judaeo-Christian sources. Nevertheless, Severus considered it a fine summation of natural right, in that he appeared to have lived by it, and written it in his palace and on public buildings. The Roman historian Lampridius states that Emperor Severus, "used often to exclaim what he had heard from someone, either a Jew or a Christian, and always remembered, and he also had it announced by a herald whenever he was disciplining anyone, 'What you do not wish that a man should do to you, do not do to him.' (Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris.) And so highly did he value this sentiment that he had it written up in the Palace and in public buildings." Hist. Aug., LI.7-8.

From the "Golden Rule" are derived other laws that are also written in the hearts of all men: "Live justly; do not hurt another person. Give to each person his due, stay loyal; and other similar laws that are listed in the works of other secular writers." (333)

Zanchi closes his discussion on the natural law with three more Theses, each followed with discussion. We will discuss these in our next and last posting on the natural law as posited by Girolamo Zanchi.

Girolamo Zanchi on the Natural Law, Part 1

THE THEOLOGIAN GIROLAMO ZANCHI (1516-90) dedicates a substantial portion of his treatment on law to the natural law. At the outset of his treatment on the natural law, Zanchi discusses the meaning of the term natural law, distinguishing the term natural law as used by various authorities, including Justinian, Canon and Civil lawyers, St. Paul, and St. Thomas. In reviewing these various definitions of natural law, Zanchi aims at limiting his use of the natural law to matters pertaining only to human beings, that is matters relating to man's intellect and spiritual soul, thus excluding from within the scope of that part of human life that man shares with the brute creation. "[C]ontrary to Aquinas, Zanchi wants to limit the use of the term natural law to that which pertains to human beings, thereby excluding its extension to the animal kingdom or to things that lack intellect (such as physical regularities in nature)." Grabill, 137.

Justinian's Digest and Institutions defines natural law broadly to include the brute creation in addition to man: "Natural law is what nature teaches to all animals." (323; quoting Digest, 1.1.1.3 and Institutions, 1.2). This includes aspects of human life that would seem beyond the mere intellectual life unique to man. Thus mating, reproduction, and the rearing of young would be part of the natural law under Justinian's broad definitions.

As used by Canon lawyers and theologians, however, the term natural law is restricted to human nature. Quoting Gratian's Decretum, Zanchi defines this concept of law as "law common to all nations and that is obeyed everywhere by natural instinct and not by any statute." (324, quoting Decretum, 1.7). This broad concept of the "law of nations" (ius gentium) includes matters of moral behavior, namely, the notion of God, the duty of worshipping him, and matters relating to piety, such as obedience to one's parents or country, as well as matters of self-defense. This concept found within the ius gentium is what theologians and canon lawyers have called natural law.

St. Paul, on the other hand, puts forth a notion of natural law that pertains to individual human affairs alone, outside of the context of the ius gentium. When St. Paul speaks about the natural law, he refers to it being "written on the hearts" of men, clearly precluding thereby any reference to animals, since this "law" (which is nothing other than Scripture or divine law) cannot be said to be written in the hearts of brute animals. Based upon the Pauline concept, St. Isidore defines natural law as "that which is common for all people." (324) However, Zanchi also notes that St. Paul's notion of natural law also comprehends a more narrow view, in that in 1 Corinthians 11, he refers to the Greek custom that men should have their hair short, while women should have it long, as something taught by "nature itself." Though St. Paul characterizes it thus, it is clear that this natural law was a custom specific to the Greek, and not common to all peoples.

Finally, St. Thomas limits the term nature in "natural law" to human nature, although there is and overlap with animals, since man, in addition to his unique rational nature, shares with the brute animals a certain similarity. St. Thomas's teaching appears consonant with St. Paul's teaching as St. Thomas "in fact, teaches that whatever we find commonly inside the human heart belongs to a part of natural law." (324)

Zanchi distinguishes three levels to the natural law: (i) negatively, the impulse of self-defense or self-protection; (ii) affirmatively, the impulse toward propagation, which includes the procreation and education of children in common with the animals, and includes such matters as marriage, reproduction, and the rearing of children; and (iii) an intellectual or spiritual level, one preeminently human, which recognizes man's inclination to God, to religious worship, to "do good to those with whom they live," and the tendency towards justice, honesty, and life in common. In this last level, St. Thomas included the life of virtue and every virtuous act. "All that is contained in the law and the Gospels; that is, the lifestyle described there, particularly that people should treat their neighbors as they [themselves] want to be treated, belong to the natural law." For this reason, St. Thomas concludes that "all evil and sin is unnatural," that is contrary to the natural law. (325, quoting S.T., IaIIae, art. 94, ad. 3). The natural law thus encompasses the "Golden Rule" that was so central to Jesus' moral teachings.

Unfortunately, it is here that Zanchi betrays his Calvinistic vein. It is manifest that Zanchi has adopted Calvin's pessimistic assessment of mankind, so that man's reason, his nature, since Adam's fall is essentially totally depraved. In its purity, the natural law can only be found before the Fall and after the Fall only by a sort of special grace. In fallen man, there is, in practice, no natural law.

Now, before there was sin in the world, natural law had been perfectly instilled in human beings. Divine will and the precepts for doing some things and avoiding others had been co-created with Adam when the image of God was breathed into him. Thus, before sin, this spark of reason had been perfectly placed inside human beings. After the Fall, however, natural law was almost entirely blotted out as was any law that looks to God and the worship of him or to our neighbours and the just and fair relationship with them. The entire image of God that stands firm in justice and holiness was lost. People became completely blind in their minds, totally depraved in their hearts, and altogether corrupted, especially in those things that human beings share with animals, plants, and other substances. In particular, human beings warped this instinctual natural law: Every living thing knows that it is right and good to protect itself, but that in order to do so, people now rush to any injustice or violence.

(325-36).

Of the three levels that Zanchi identified, the first two are "extremely corrupt," and the third level "almost entirely destroyed after the Fall." So corrupt is man's post-lapsarian nature that should we "ever see a sliver of this aspect of natural law again in a human being," it must be because "it was written in that person's soul a second time in its entirety by God himself." In other words, without re-inscription, Fallen man has no real aspect of natural law left.

After this discussion, Zanchi elaborates various definitions of the natural law before concluding with a definition of his own. The various definitions that Zanchi puts forth are:

Natural law . . . is a common principle; and therefore, a distinct rule put into the hearts and minds of human beings by God himself, warning them what they should do and what they should avoid. [Zanchi states that in this definition, the term "common" is defined as "human beings' shared knowledge, judgment, and perception by which all people without distinction pondering their actions in their hearts either condemn or absolve themselves. This perception also comes from God when he speaks or inscribes his judgments in the hearts and minds of human beings."]

. . .

Natural law is a light--that underlying spark of reason by which we discern right from wrong.

. . .

Natural law is the shared opinion to which all people together agree and to which God inscribed onto each person's heart in order to establish the most beneficial customs.

Dissatisfied with these definitions, Zanchi proffers one of his own, one that he categorizes as "lengthy but full and complete." It is, in fact, the entirety of this eighth Thesis:

Natural law is the will of God, and, consequently, the divine rule and principle for knowing what to do and what not to do. It is, namely, the knowledge of what is good or bad, fair or unfair, upright or shameful, that was inscribed upon the hearts of all people by God himself also after the Fall. For this reason, we are universally taught what activities should be pursued and what should be avoided; that is, to do one thing and to avoid another, and we know that we are obligated and pushed to act for the glory of God, our own good, and the welfare of our neighbor both in private and in public. In addition, we know that if we do what should be be avoided or avoid what we should do, we are condemned; but if we do the opposite, we are defended and absolved.

(327)

Ostensibly relying on St. Paul's teaching in his epistle to the Romans (specifically, Romans 2:14-15), Zanchi seeks to distance himself from St. Thomas's view that the natural law arises in man despite his fallen state. Contrary to this, Zanchi suggests that the natural law is no longer to be found in man's fallen state, except by the grace of God who has "inscribed it anew in the minds and hearts of human beings after the fall." Grabill, 138-39 (quoting Zanchi). For Zanchi, then, as Grabill summarizes it:

'Natural law' is not so called, then, because it was passed down to us from Adam naturally--for by nature human beings are now blind and depraved--but rather because God has "reinscribed" general, natural principles of worship, goodness, fairness, and honesty into humanity at large. For Zanchi, natural law cannot be identified with either a 'relic of the original image of God' or some 'essential part of human nature' but with the knowledge of morality that has been 'restored by God because of his goodness and grafted anew in our hearts.'

Grabill, at 139.

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

(To see related posts, click on the title and scroll to the end of this post)

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.

John Calvin: The Ten Commandments of the Natural Law

John Calvin

CONSONANT WITH ITS ROLE AS JUDGE AND CONSCIENCE KEEPER, Calvin virtually equated the content of the natural law with the content of the divine law as revealed in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments of Moses. Indeed, if one were to follow Professor Clark, "the most notable difference between Thomas and Calvin," in the area of epistemology and definition of the natural law, "is that the latter defined natural law primarily in terms of the Declaogue and Thomas did not." R. S. Clark, "Calvin on the Lex Naturalis," Solus Theological Journal 6:1-2 (May-November 1998), 7-8. Essentially, Calvin short-circuited the role of Reason as a legitimate source of morality, and facilely equated the natural law with the divinely-revealed law of Moses on Mount Sinai, and, to a lesser extent, Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.

While St. Thomas viewed the natural law as overlapping with, and certainly not contradictory of, the precepts of the Decalogue or Jesus' divine teaching, St. Thomas sought to build his doctrine of the natural law on a broader, universal, and more sophisticated philosophical foundation. Relying on self-evident principles of practical reason and constructing from those, St. Thomas thus provides a non-confessional doctrine of the natural law. It is important to note that St. Thomas did not teach that the natural law and the Decalogue were at odds. What he insisted upon, however, was that the natural law--a law based upon Reason--was not in conflict with the Revealed Law of the Decalogue. The natural law began with the self-evident principle that good is to be done, and evil is to be avoided, that we ought to act in accord with reason, and then descends from there into the practical contingencies of life. S.T. IaIIae, art. 94.

Calvin, however, frowned upon philosophers, and doubted their value. Philosophers, Calvin, wrote

. . . saw things in such a way that their seeing did not direct them to the truth, much less enable them to attain it. They are like a traveler passing through a field at night (qualiter nocturni fulgetri coruscationem, qui in medio agro est viator) who in a momentary lighting flash sees far and wide, but the sight vanishes so swiftly that he is plunged again into the darkness of night before he can even take a step--let alone be direct on his way by its help.

Institutes, II.2.18. Calvin's negative assessment of the natural law and his virtual identification of the the content of the natural law with the Decalogue probably stems from Luther, and this explains Calvin's diversion from the Thomistic teaching. R.S. Clark, 11-12. It was Luther's "threads which Calvin took up in his exposition of natural law, not those of the Stoa or Thomas." R.C. Clark, 12.

Though Calvin would not have foreseen it in a European culture commonly Christian, his rejection of the Thomistic construct was to have serious repercussions. Calvin's emphasis of conscience over practical reason, and his equating the natural law with the Decalogue rather than upon a philosophical base, de-objectified the natural law, over-subjectified it. Once the Enlightenment ushered in a generation eager to reject the Mosaic dispensation as divinely revealed, Calvin's doctrine imploded into rank subjectivism and relativism. This partially explains the relativism and liberalism suffered by those polities originally fed by Calvin's strict Protestant ethos. As Marc Edouard Chenevière argued in his La pensée politique de Calvin, "Calvin broke the bonds that attached the knowledge of natural law to reason and rested it upon conscience, which he understood in conventionally modern terms as a subjective faculty that had no need for reason to authenticate its prescriptions and prohibitions." Grabill, 93 (Grabill, however, disagrees).

Title Page to Calvin's Institute of Christian Religion

All said and done, Calvin's teaching on the natural law is deficient. Because of his distrust of its inherently depraved nature post lapsus, reason was given no robust role. Instead of founding the natural law on practical reason, Calvin--following Luther--simply equated the natural law with the Ten Commandments. This was dangerously close to equating natural law and divine law. Calvin, who appears to have rejected a realist view of reality and adopted Luther's nominalism, rejected the role of eternal law and the Thomistic notion that the natural law participates in the eternal law. The result is a watered down theory of the natural law unable to provide positive guidance either to Christian or pagan. Natural law's only role relegated to the negative one of informing the non-Christian conscience of one's culpability before God. Consonant with his view of sola scriptura, the only moral law in practice was to be found in the Scriptures. Once society lost faith in the Scriptures, the natural law had no content to inform conscience, and so Calvin's recipe dissolved into a subjective and relative morality. The role of the natural law being shunted, laws that related strictly to politics, economics, and other mundane activities fell under a broad category called "general" or "common" grace, with little correspondence to the natural law, thus setting the stage for legal positivism.

John Calvin and the Natural Law: The Natural Law as Doom

John Calvin

TO RENDER MANKIND INEXCUSABLE before God was Calvin's conception of the purpose of the natural law. Calvin's doctrine of the natural law was decidedly pessimistic, and the role he allowed it to play in governing and ordering the moral life of man was restricted. Its role is largely negative, and partakes of a prosecutorial or judicial as, distinguished from a discursory or legislative, flavor. Perhaps the best place to start is by quoting John Calvin's Institutes. In the Second Chapter of the Second Book of the Institutes, Calvin provides us with a provisional definition of the natural law remarkably at odds with the definition of natural law that we find in St. Thomas Aquinas:

There is nothing more common that for a man to be sufficiently instructed in a right standard of conduct by natural law (of which the apostle is here speaking). Let us consider, however, for what purpose men have been endowed with this knowledge of the law. How far it can lead them toward the goal of reason and truth will then immediately appear. This is also clear from Paul's words, if we note their context. He had just before said that those who sinned in the law are judged through the law; they who sinned without the law perish without the law. Because it might seem absurd that the Gentiles perish without preceding judgment, Paul immediately adds that for the m conscience stands in place of law; this is sufficient reason for their just condemnation. The purpose of natural law, therefore, is to render man inexcusable. [Finis ergo legis naturalis est, ut reddatur hom inexcusabilis.] This would not be a bad definition: natural law is that apprehension of the conscience that distinguishes sufficiently between just and unjust, and which deprives men of the excuse of ignorance, while it proves them guilty by their own testimony. [Nec male hoc modo definietur, Quod sit conscientiae agnitio, inter iustum et iniustum sufficienter discernentis: ad tollendum hominibus ignorantiae praetextum, dum suo ipsourm tstimonion redarguuntur.]

Institutes, II.2.22.

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This definition of the natural law is cheap, and is a far cry from St. Thomas's positive conception of the natural law as a rule of reason, one that is "nothing else than the rational creature's participation in the eternal law." S.T. IaIIae, q. 91. In Calvin's view, the natural law is not a blueprint, a map that provides positive orientation or information about man's end. It is not a ladder that aids in man's acquisition of natural virtue. It is not a norm that informs us of our good. It is not a participation in the eternal law. Ultimately, Calvin's concept of the natural law is not really legislative, but markedly judicial. It arises, not in practical reason to guide men to the good, but only in the conscience, and then only to inform man of its infraction. As Grabill notes, Calvin's natural law view is derived from Calvin's "attributing greater weight to the post-lapsarian conscience over the pre-lapsarian reason," a reason which is not to be trusted after the fall, and that this change in emphasis is the "hallmark of his natural-law doctrine." Grabill, 73-74. For Calvin, natural law thus distills itself down to its single negative and prosecutorial or accusatory function "to affirm human culpability for actions that violate the moral law." Grabill, 71. That indefatigable inquisitor conscience, with the voices of "a thousand witnesses," Institutes, IV.10.3, "arraigns [men] as guilty before the judgment seat," Institutes IV.10.3. Natural law's role is in aid of that internal prosecutor, informing the always-certain condemnatory judgment, to render men inexcusable, to deprive them of excuse, to damn them. The natural law results in man's doom.

This limited conception of the natural moral law is also to be found in Institutes II.8.1:

Now that the inward law, which have above [II.2.22] described as written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense [quodammodo] asserts the very same things to be learned from the two Tables [i.e., the Ten Commandments]. For our conscience does not allow us to sleep a perpetual insensible sleep without being an inner witness and monitor [intus testis sit ac monitrix corum] of what we owe God, without holding before us the difference between good and evil and thus accusing us when we fail in our duty . . . .

This rather one-dimensional role of the natural law and conscience may be compared to the rich, ebullient, and positive role of conscience in traditional teaching. One may quote John Henry Cardinal Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk:

Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas . . . .

Calvin thus denatures the natural law from its positive, guiding, legislative role, one based upon practical reason, and ultimately based upon the eternal law and God's overriding plan for us and four our end. The natural law is related to nothing other than the role of a Grillo parlante of Carlo Collodi, the Jiminy Cricket of Walt Disney, though with a personality significantly less cheery, and mercilessly dour.

John Calvin and the Natural Law: Introduction

John Calvin

THERE IS SOME INCONSISTENCY in John Calvin's theological anthropology of "total depravity" and his express acceptance of the existence of a natural moral law. This inconsistency has led to varied interpretations of his thought. At one extreme perhaps is Karl Barth, who grudgingly admitted that Calvin mouthed natural law concepts, but believed that the consistent application of Calvin's doctrines of total depravity necessarily required rejection of the existence of a natural moral law. At the other extreme, one may find the Calvin scholar, John T. McNeil, who maintained that there was no essential discontinuity between Calvin's view of natural law and its medieval predecessors, making Calvin almost a crypto-Thomist.

It is a fact that Calvin's opinion of fallen man is brutally pessimistic: "such is the depravity of his nature," Calvin insists, "that he cannot move and act except in the direction of evil" (qua tamen est naturae pravitate, nisi ad malum moveri et agi). Institutes, II.3.5. A nature that cannot move and act except in the direction of evil cannot yield forth fruit that is, even in a manner, virtuous and good, much less a source of law and a latent voice of God. Yet it is indisputable, if not entirely consistent with his total depravity theory, that Calvin expressly maintained a notion of natural law, using the term lex naturalis often enough. It is found in various places in his magnum opus, the Institutes of Christian Religion, even in language traditional. "God provided man's soul with a mind, by which to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong; and, with the light of reason as guide, to distinguish what should be followed from what should be avoided." Institutes, I.15.8; see also II.2.12, 22, 24; II.8.1; IV.20.16. It is also mentioned in his Commentary on the Book of Psalms (discussing Psalm 119:52) and his Commentary on Romans (discussing Romans 2:15).

This is hardly the place to develop a full and comprehensive review of Calvin's doctrine of natural law. The literature in this area is immense, variform, and inconsistent. Any full treatment would probably be problematic anyway, since Calvin never developed any systematic treatment of the natural law. (Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering The Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 91). It appears, further, that Calvin may have adopted notions of the natural law from the intellectual milieu almost unthinkingly or unguardedly, and without fully integrating them into the fundamentals of his theological doctrine. (See R.S. Clark, Calvin on the Lex Naturalis, Stulos Theological Journal 6:1-2 (May-Nov 1998), 3.) So knowledge of what Calvin exactly thought about the natural law is probably foreclosed to us, at least with any certainty. Overarchingly, it may be said, however, that Calvin's negative assessment of man's post-lapsarian epistemic and moral abilities resulted in a severe restriction of the role and effect of the natural law in his doctrine.

Some things appear to be clear regarding Calvin's assessment of the natural law. The first is that Calvin's view of the natural law is markedly more negative that St. Thomas's view, and its role much more limited and circumscribed than the role St. Thomas gives it. Related to this view is a second feature of Calvin's doctrine of the natural law: that being that Calvin seems to have given short shrift to the role of practical reason in the natural law, emphasizing almost exclusively the role of the natural law in conscience. The third feature seems that Calvin appeared to have identified the natural law with the Ten Commandments or Decalogue and so he neglected any reason-based or philosophical basis for determining its content. The fourth feature is that Calvin, consistent with many reformers, including Luther who influenced him, nowhere links the natural law with the eternal law of God. The severance of any linkage between the natural law and the eternal law, and the collapse of the distinction between them, is probably a result of Calvin's rejection of a realistic philosophy and an adoption of a nominalistic one. There is therefore significant discontinuity between Calvin's notion of the natural law and the received teaching, perhaps most systematically framed by St. Thomas Aquinas.

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