Girolamo Zanchi: The Eternal Law

GIROLAMO (JEROME) ZANCHI (1516-90), an Italian Reformer, is an important figure in the Protestant natural law tradition. As Grabill summarizes it, "Zanchi's contribution to the development of the Protestant natural-law tradition is immense . . . ." Grabill, 133. Contrary to both Calvin (1509-64) and Vermigli (1499-1562), however, Zanchi provided a more synthetic view of the natural law, and its relationship to the eternal law, divine law, and human law. His most exhaustive treatment of law is found in Chapter 10 of the fourth volume of his Operum theologicum, called "On the Law in General." Zanchi's exhaustive and synthetic treatment of the natural law within the scope of his Protestant "Summa," and his reliance upon Thomistic methodology and philosophy in crafting it, is what made Patrick Donnelly, S.J., refer to him as "Calvinist Thomist." Grabill, 134 (citing "Calvinist Thomism," Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1976), 444).

Thankfully, Zanchi's "On the Law in General" has been translated Jeffrey J. Veenstra, and is readily available from the Acton Institute. Quotes from Zanchi's "On the Law in General" will be from this translation found in Volume 6, No. 1 (Spring 2003) 305-98 of the Acton's Institute's Journal of Markets & Morality. Zanchi's work is organized in a series of Theses, which are supported or amplified by discussion.

In the next series of blog postings, we will discuss Zanchi's view on the eternal law, and its expressions in the natural law, divine law, and human law.

At the outset of his treatment on law, Zanchi, following St. Paul's teaching in Romans 3:20, observes that law has different functions, and that, in addition to providing for desert and punishment, it has the "chief and essential function" of "teaching what should be done or what should be avoided, and commanding and obligating that these things are done or avoided." (318) These purposes of the law--to teach and to obligate--are suggested by the very terms for law in Hebrew and in Italian. In Hebrew, the law is torah, which means teaching. In Italian, the word for law is áligando, which means something which binds or obligates.

At its most basic, law aims toward justice which, following Justinian's Digest, is the constant and consistent desire to give fairly to all what they deserve. This includes God first, and then our neighbors. This was Christ's teaching. (319) Any act or omission that does not result in justice to God or neighbor is sin. The principal end of law, like that of all human acts or institutions, is to glorify God. (319-20) The second end of law is to further our good, the good of our neighbor, and the common good of the church and all men. (320). For Zanchi, then, "the primary goal of all good laws , which is first and foremost the glory of God, and then secondarily the good of one's neighbor understood both privately and publicly." Grabill, 135.

Quoting St. Augustine's On the Free Will (1.1, 2.93.3), and observing that the pagan Cicero concluded likewise, Zanchi maintains: "All laws have flowed from the eternal law of God." (320) A good law is one that reveals God will, is promulgated by magistrates with authority from God, and one that conforms to "reason and common sense" and "wisdom," which are likewise gifts from God. (320-21) Zanchi therefore teaches that "all good laws must ultimately participate in the divine wisdom, even though their moral content may be proximately derived from right reason." Grabill, 136. Because the ultimate authority and content of a good law is from God, St. James is correct: "'There is one lawgiver . . . who is able to save and to destroy.' (James 4:12) All other lawgivers derive from this one; thus every law has its origin in God." (321) So to Zanchi, "God must be seen as the primary (but not necessarily proximate) origin and source of good laws." Grabill, 135.

This is also the conclusion that is reached from the notion that the world is governed by Divine Providence:

Augustine, and later, Aquinas, concluded that at first and eternal law dwelt in God who is the most perfect embodiment of reason, and by this reason, God rules the world and thus is the reason for all things that happen. They, they argue, this reason was imparted to human beings and by it we rule our own activities, and from it flow out our laws.

(321) In keeping with his philosophical realism, and contrary to many of the reformers such as Luther and Calvin, Zanchi maintains the existence of an eternal law, something "in step with the Augustinian via antiqua tradition," Grabill, 136: "Law was established as the eternal will and rule for what must be done or avoided for God's glory and for the good of each individual privately and of the entire human race . . . ." (321) "From this analysis," Grabill observes, "it should be clear that Zanchi accepts the metaphysical and epistemological parameters of the realist natural-law tradition . . . ." Grabill, 136.

The eternal law of God is revealed in various ways. "He . . . inscribe[s] his will on the hearts of all people in his own way," the publishes it verbally to Adam, the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, on occasion through angels or miracles, even through "ordinary persons." (322) God spoke in written form in Moses, the prophets, and the apostles. Even to nations outside of the Jews, God has spoken, through a sort of divine inspiration, or through scholars and teachers and lawgivers such as Solon, Lycurgus, Romulus, and Numa.* It is through the various ways that God's eternal law has been made manifest that allows for the division of the eternal law into natural law, divine law, and human law. It is usually through a combination of divine law, natural law, and human law that God's eternal law is made known. "Even if, in fact, all just laws come from God, and have been established by the eternal reason of his will and even if in this respect, they are all divine, still because of the variety of people and of methods by which they have been revealed and spread, they occur in three types: natural law, human laws, and divine laws." (323 (Thesis 7)). "It is important," Grabill reminds us, "to keep in mind the differences between people to whom God's will was revealed and the methods God used to reveal his will," Grabill, 137, as these differences are what Zanchi relies on in coming to his further distinctions.

In our next blog posting, we will review Zanchi's view on the natural law.

*Solon (638 BC–558 BC) was the famed lawgiver of the Athenians. Lycurgus (ca. 800-730 BC) played an analogous role with the Spartans. Romulus (traditionally c. 771 - c. 717 BC) and Numa Pomplius (753-673 BC) were the first and second kings of Rome, respectively.

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.

Title Page to Calvin's Institute of Christian Religion

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.

The Four Requirements of a Classical Natural Law Theory

FROM BOTH A CLASSICAL AND CHRISTIAN perspective, a Natural Law theory will require a combination of four elements. It will require an epistemology (a theory of knowledge) that is "realist," that is, one which maintains that objective reality is communicated or translated from the object to the subject in a manner that is both reliable and true. Unlike the Kantian critique, it insists we are able to know the "ding an sich," the thing in itself. It will require a metaphysical understanding of nature that sees nature as have an "end," a reason, a blueprint in it. It will suppose a natural theology. In other words, it will acknowledge a Divine Creator and Orderer of the natural world. It will suppose that man is free and rational, and must use these faculties, and not only impulse, in knowing and doing good. Simply put, it will require that man (i) know (ii) himself and his nature, (iii) that that nature has a purpose or end, placed there by God, which informs him of the good, and (iv) that he is free, both in his reason and will, to do that good. Without these, any theory of law and morality, even one given the title natural law, will, at best, limp or falter. These requirements of a classical natural law are well-summarized by John Courtney Murray, S.J.

Natural law supposes a realist epistemology, that asserts the real to be the measure of knowledge, and also asserts the possibility of intelligence reaching the real, i.e., the nature of things--in the case, the nature of man as a unitary and constant concept beneath all individual differences. Secondly, it supposes a metaphysic of nature, especially the idea that nature is a teleological concept, that the "form" of the thing is its "final cause," the goal of its becoming; in the case, that there is a natural inclination in man to become what in nature and destination he is--to achieve the fullness of his own being. Thirdly, it supposes a natural theology, asserting that there is a God, Who is eternal Reason, Nous, at the summit of the order of being, Who is the author of all nature, and Who wills that the order of nature be fulfilled in all its purposes, as these are inherent in the natures found in the order. Finally, it supposes a morality, especially the principle that for man, a rational being, the order of nature is not an order of necessity, to be fulfilled blindly, but an order of reason and therefore of freedom. The order of being that confronts his intelligence is an order of "oughtness" for his will; the moral order is a prolongation of the metaphysical order into the dimensions of human freedom.

John Courtney Murray, S.J., We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Lanham: Sheed & Ward, 1960), 327-28.

The philosopher Kant denied the first. In different ways, René Descartes and David Hume denied the second. Nietzsche denied the third. Calvin denied the fourth. These are some of the enemies of the Natural Law.

Theologia Corporis-1-Ab Initio

TO ENGAGE US INTO CONVERSATION WITH CHRIST is what John Paul II asks us to do in approaching matters of marriage and family life. In sort of an Ignatian mediation, we are asked to imagine ourselves among the crowd in Judea. We have seen this God-Man heal persons of various ills, and he fascinates us. A small group of Pharisees approach Christ with questions of marriage, and, more specifically, its dissolution--divorce, but in a spirit of challenge, rather than as disciples open to his teaching. "Is it lawful," they ask him, "for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?" Matt. 19:3.

In response, Christ refers them to fundamentals, from the beginning, ab initio. Christ refers them to Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures. He refers them to the creation of man. He refers them to the creation of woman. He refers them to the first marriage. Ab initio. Christ does not refer to the Law of Moses to answer a question about the Law of Moses, of which the Pharisees are the greatest representatives. He does not refer his questioners to any divinely promulgated law, but to the First Law, the Law of Nature, the Law that inheres in the created order and reflects in a primordial manner, the Eternal Law, the law in the mind of God. His teaching is thus to all men, for all times, and not only to the Jews in Judea in the 1st century A.D. Were we to ask the Lord, "the laws of the State allow for divorce . . . ," or "Science has given us birth control . . . ," or "Advocates of human rights claim that two persons of the same sex may marry . . . " In arriving at answers, Christ would say, "Turn ab initio." Go back to the beginning, to the Natural Law in created nature.

To John Paul II, Christ's invocation of the beginning, his focus on the ab initio, is fundamental; it is the operative and normative basis for the entirety of Christ's teaching, and so John Paul II seeks to "try to penetrate into the 'beginning'" to which Christ appealed. [1.5, 133]

There are two narratives regarding creation in Genesis (Gen. 1:1-2:4, the so-called Priestly or Elohist version because it uses the word Elohim to refer to God; and Gen. 2:5-25, the so-called Yahwist version, because it uses the word Yahweh to refer to God). In his answer, Christ refers to them both. [As an aside, Christ's reference to both versions of the creation story may be something that biblical scholars of the critical school may keep in mind when they try to pit one version of scripture to another, as if putting truth against truth, seeking to separate and divide, instead of accepting both as God's word and finding the truth in a fruitful synthesis or harmony of truths.]

What does Christ teach by referencing the Elohist creation story? It is a reference to the objective order. He wishes to teach us that Man is in the world, part of created nature; yet he is also above the world, made in the image of God. He shares in the brute creation (that which is "separated" "called" "put" from chaos), and in the living creation (that which is "created" or "blessed"). [2.3 & n.1, 135] Yet when it comes to man, there is, as it were, a divine pause. "[T]he Creator seems to halt before calling [man] to existence, as if he entered back into himself to make a decision, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.' (Gen. 1:27)." [2.3, 135] Christ's reference to the ab initio in Genesis is therefore a reference to the rich ensemble that is man, who, at the instruction of the Lord, must answer questions about his end and the good by reference to cosmology, but also to theology; he must refer both to the natural and to the supernatural; he must refer to the physical and the metaphysical; he must refer to body and the soul; to the contingent here, and to the absolute beyond. He must also recall that he is both man, and woman.

Christ's invocation of the Yahwist creation narrative, on the other hand, is more a reference to the subjective order, the areas of psychology, of conscience. "One could say that Genesis 2 presents the creation of man especially in the aspect of subjectivity." [3.1, 138-39] But it is not as if the objective order is opposed to the subjective order. "When we compare the two accounts [of creation], we reach the conviction that this subjectivity corresponds to the objective reality of man created in the 'image of God.'" [3.1, 139]

In referring back to the Yahwist creation narrative, Christ also places us within the context of man's own history, specifically, the creation of man and woman, and the narrative of the Fall. It is significant that the "beginning" to which Christ refers, the ab initio, is the reality of man before the fall. In answering the question the Pharisees posed to him regarding divorce, Christ refers to man in the state of paradise. There is sufficiently left of this order for us to be able to refer to it even now. Theologians distinguish the state of man before the fall, in his state of original innocence, his status naturae integrae, from his state after the fall, in his state of sinfulness, his status naturae lapsae. [3.3, 141] The following is key:

When Christ, appealing to the 'beginning,' directs the attention of his interlocutors to the words written in Genesis 2:24, he orders them in some sense to pass beyond the boundary that runs, in the Yahwist text of Genesis, between man's first and second situation. He . . . appeals to the words of the first divine order, expressly linked in this text with man's state of original innocence. This means that this order has not lost its force, although man has lost his primeval innocence. Christ's answer is decisive and clear. For this reason, we must draw the normative conclusions from it, which have an essential significance not only for ethics, but above all for the theology of man and the theology of the body . . . .

[3.4, 141-42]

One may note, that on this insight of John Paul II alone, the entirety of Calvin's (and to a slightly lesser extent Luther's) notion of man's "total depravity" is blown to smithereens and shown to be manifestly unscriptural. Similarly, the Lutheran theologian Karl Barth's vehement, even vituperative rejection of natural theology and natural law is found wanting. If you want better to follow Christ, throw away your copy of Christian Institutes Presbyterians, and your Church Dogmatics Lutherans! Instead, follow Christ's lead and

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchang'd, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744), An Essay on Criticism, Part 1.

This includes the art of being human, which is what morality and the theology of the body is all about.