DeTestimonio Quatuor Testibus: Consilium Divino

LIFE, INCLUDING HUMAN LIFE, it would seem, has to be one of two things: either it is a product of design, or not a product of design. There either is, or there is not, a Mind behind creation. And this Mind designed man, including his Deep Conscience. Man and the Deep Conscience is either "the result of a meaningless and purposeless process that did not have us in mind," the truth championed by Darwin, or it is the result of a meaningful and purposeful process that had us it mind. Budziszewski (2003), 83 (quoting Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution).

The Darwinian mechanism of natural selection no longer appears plausible as an explanation of reality. The incremental, marginal improvements required by Darwinian theory seem implausible in light of our modern understanding of the complex nature of life. The time demanded to make the uncountable chance modifications even reach the possibility of probability is immense. We may not have the billions upon billions of years of evolutionary process which is required to make the "'impossible' become[] possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain." Budziszewski (2003) (quoting George Wald "The Origin of Life") But even if Darwinian evolution adequately explained the nature of things, it would not explain life. And even if it explained life, it would not explain from where the components of life came. And even if it explained where the components of life came, it would not explain why those components existed, and not some other, and why those components came together to yield life. Life, and the underlying mix, seems, in the words of Fred Hoyle, a "put-up job," something "monkeyed with" by a "superintellect," quod Deus dicitur. The faith of the materialist is predicated upon irrational presuppositions. No, the faith of the materialist seems contrived.

We recognize immediately that nature requires an explanation beyond itself, that the things in nature are designed, that design requires personal agency. In short, we recognize immediately that we are created by the one true God.

Budziszewski (2003), 84.

Not only does the external design of things acclaim the existence of God, but there is an internal witness in man that fits with the conclusions of the external data. "He has also set eternity in their heart," Ecclesiastes tells us (3:11). There is in man a sensus divinitatis, an internus aeternus, a desire for the Other which is manifested in man and expresses itself in a panoply of religions which are nothing other than efforts to assuage this yearning or provide some outlet for it. A Darwinian materialist has one heck of a time justifying the existence of the nearly universal impulse in man. Why would a thirst of God, something without temporal "survival value," have been designed in man by an impersonal happenstance? "The best explanation for the sensus divinitatis," for an unbiased mind, would seem unquestionably to be "that we were designed by the Divinity to have it." Budziszewski (2003), 85.

The internal urge for God together with the external order of the cosmos bear witness to God's existence and his being the cause of the physical and moral orders, of truth and of right, of what is, and what is good. The witness of design is compelling: "For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable." (Rom. 1:20)

Ignorance of the Wrong-God and Law

IF OUR ULTIMATE END IS GOD, and not any created thing, and our end therefore ordained to God, how is it that we attain that ultimate end? There is an ordination of ends, but there is also an ordination of means. The ordination of means, like the ordination of our final end, is also one that is based upon our nature. The means to our ultimate end requires acts consonant with our nature, that is, acts that are reasonable. "Man's nature is rational and only through rational action will he obtain his end." Bertke, 28. It is our rational ordination to God as our last end that is the basis of all moral law: indeed all law.

Here we must distinguish between or ordination in general, and our choice in the concrete or particular:

The human person is free not to act; but when he does act, of necessity he must end to an ultimate end. The ultimate end must be the total good of the person as proposed by the intellect. Hence underlying every human action is the desire for complete happiness. Everything willed is ordained to this ultimate end.

Bertke, 29. We are, willy nilly, ordained necessarily to God. And yet, in our selection of means, things are not so necessary. We are free in the selection of means, and the upshot of this is that we have both the boon and burden of freedom:

Only in the possession of uncreated being, the essence of God, will satisfaction for the will and perfect happiness be found. But here tragedy enters. Man does not always seek the true perfection of his being. He can seek the ultimate in things which, of their nature are particular, by deliberately turning aside from the true ontological end of his nature.

Bertke, 29.

The tragedy, though real enough in all our lives (Exi a me, quia homo peccator sum, Domine!) is meant to be avoided. And this is where the precepts come in. The precepts guide us to prevent us from tragically choosing, mistaking a lesser good for the ultimate good, or choosing a lesser good in a way that distracts us, or places us in opposition with, our own ultimate good. The precepts are not, in this sense prohibitions that restrict us, but are, in fact, affirmative guides which promote our freedom, our happiness, our flourishing. "Man must tend to an ultimate end; the precepts prescribe that he take the necessary means to his true ultimate end." Bertke, 30.

There is accordingly a direct nexus between the precepts and our ultimate end, as the precepts are intended to inform our acts so as to ordinate them toward our ultimate end. So we find in that "transcendental relation" between precept and ultimate end the "proximate source of the natural law's obligation." Bertke, 30. The ultimate basis (as distinguished from the proximate basis) of the natural law is the Eternal Law. The natural moral law is therefore a "secondary and true cause of moral obligation," albeit it "only a cause in virtue of the Eternal Law." The natural moral law "has the same relation of dependence on the Eternal Law as all secondary causes have upon their first cause." Bertke, 30-31.

Because natural law is the proximate source of obligation (and not the ultimate source of obligation), we can have an awareness of its demands even if we do not have a complete awareness of God's existence or of our supernatural destiny. Although living in conformity with the natural moral law would naturally allow itself to knowing of God by natural reason, the knowledge of God is something that is not necessary to the intellectual feltness arising from the moral compulsion of the natural law. Bertke explains:

Though the basis of obligation is to be ultimately found in the Eternal Law, it is not to be supposed that the perception of the idea of obligation depends upon a knowledge of the Supreme Being. St. Thomas holds that the basic precept "do good" is self-evident to all men while God's existence is not self-evident quoad nos [from our vantage point]. And since this self-evident precept implies obligation, it follows that the concept of obligation may be perceived prior to, or even without, a knowledge of God's existence. In practice, all that is required for the notion of obligation is the general and confused knowledge of human nature and its end together with its essential relations (though not necessarily all of them). Nor is knowledge of a perfect sanction or punishment required; everything necessary is contained in the perception that an action leads to, or is useful for, attainment of the end of human nature and that its contrary, being out of harmony with such an end, leads to unhappiness.

Bertke, 30. But this must be understood as a minimalistic analysis. For in practice, the knowledge of the God behind the natural moral law, and belief in God and in his sanction for violation of the natural moral law is a necessity. (Just like in practice Christ and His Church, in particular the merciful office of the Ecclesia docens is needful.) The natural moral law is, as it were, hamstrung without a knowledge of God and the Eternal Law in which that natural law participates. The natural law is not autonomous, but theonomous. Accordingly, the following propositions are condemned by Pope St. Pius IX:

Humana ratio, nullo prorsus Dei respectu habito, unicus est veri et falsi, boni et mali arbiter, sibi ipsi est lex et naturalibus suis viribus ad hominum ac populorum bonum curandum sufficit.

Human reason, without any regard to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, of good and evil; it is its own law to itself, and suffices by its natural force to secure the welfare of men and of nations.

Morum leges divina haud egent sanctione, minimeque opus est ut humanae leges ad naturae jus confirmentur aut obligandi vim a Deo accipiant.

Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction, and there is no necessity that human laws should be conformable to the law of nature, and receive their sanction from God.*

The natural moral law, it ought to go without saying, does not provide man an independent realm of action whereby he can act ostracized from God, apart from God, or act as if God did not exist. Though the inclinations and the faculties and the propositions (at least some) of this natural law can be known self-evidently, and the knowledge of God is not self-evident, one ought not to posit a vision of natural moral law that is atheistic, even in theory. One ought not to go down that path that the Dutch jurist dared mention: etiamsi daremus non esse Deum. One does not live life shorn of propositional reason, shorn of Grace, ignorant of all revelation, acting life out limited to self-evident principles and ignoring conclusions that are based upon them. It would be as foolish as a man stripping down to his underwear when he is aware that he is taking a trip to the North Pole.

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*Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors), Prosp. 3, 56.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Nature, Reason, God, Part 2

WE FINISHED OUR LAST POSTING WITH THE QUESTION "Why do things exist? In addressing this question Finnis asks whether the principle of sufficient reason* compels the conclusion that there must be an answer to the question of the fact of "sheer existence," of "Why things are?"

Finnis admits that the proponents of natural law which in his Natural Law and Natural Rights he has not "reproduced or defended,"** thought, based upon the principle of sufficient reason, that there was such an answer, whereas the likes of Hume and Kant did not. NLNR, 384. From a philosophical standpoint, he rejects the principle of sufficient reason, but wonders if--despite the absence of such a principle--the question as to "why the whole state of affairs causing the first-mentioned state of affairs to exist itself exists?" may persist and be answerable. NLNR, 385. Finnis believes that the contingency of the world is at the heart of the answer to the question of whether there is a God (defined as an uncaused cause or uncaused causing). In other words, in assessing the contingency of the world, that all things must have an explicating cause, is there an infinity of causes (which necessarily is the skeptic's answer) or is there reasonably a first cause, an uncaused cause (which, if the question is not ignored, is the only other answer other than that of the skeptics)?

While Finnis rejects finding the answer to such a question in the principle of sufficient reason, Finnis suggests that self-evident principles of theoretical rationality (as distinguished from practical rationality) hold the clue to answering that question. One of those self-evident principles is the following:

If a question of a certain form has been asked and answered, one can except another question of the same general form to be answerable, and: If a theoretical question can be partially answered by positing a theoretical entity [that is, an entity of which we have no experience via the senses], and to do so allows the raising of further questions which, if answered, might well provide a more satisfying answer to the initial question, the one ought to posit such a theoretical entity--unless there are good reasons for not doing so.

NLNR, 385.***

We ask and are able to answer questions of the form, "Why does X exist?" as a matter of course. Why does the oxidization of iron exist? Why does George have blue eyes (why do his blue eyes exist) when both his parents had brown eyes? Why do solar eclipses exist? It follows that if the question, "Why does X exist?" may be asked of a particular state of affairs (say, iron, a person's eyes, the sun, or any subject of our myriad sciences), then it may be asked of the "whole set of states of affairs which initially explain why the particular state of affairs first under consideration itself exists." NLNR, 385. The answer to the question, "Why does X exist?" when said of the X that is defined as the "entire state of affairs" can be answered by positing a theoretical entity (an "uncaused cause" "uncaused causing," namely God). Further, positing that entity (the "uncaused cause," an "uncaused causing," or God) allows for the raising of further questions the answers of which allow for more satisfactory answers to the question as to why the entire state of affairs exists rather than something else or nothing. There is, therefore, good reason for positing that God as uncaused cause or uncaused causing exists. And there are no good reasons for positing that notion that God as uncaused cause does not exist. That, in a nutshell is Finnis's rendition of the argument of the existence of God based upon contingency which he appears to have borrowed from Germain Grisez (who adapted it from St. Thomas).

Five Eskimos (by Matisse)

The question, "why does X exist?" when "X" is the "state of the whole set of state of affairs" is more than the "empty project"of answering a question that is just an aggregate sum of the particular questions "why does X exist?" when that question is said of the individual Xs of a group or set. Thus Finnis rejects Paul Edwards's "Five Eskimos" argument that the question of "why does X exist?" is absurd when posited of the "the whole set of state of affairs" since if the question "why does X exist" when said of each individual of the set is answerable, there is no need to ask the question of the whole set of state of affairs: the answers to the question for each "X" answer the question for the aggregate of Xs. Here is Paul Edwards's argument:

Suppose I see a group of five Eskimos standing on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th St. and I wish to explain why the group came to New York. Investigation reveals the following stories: Eskimo No. 1 did not enjoy the extreme cold in the polar region and decided to move to a warmer climate. No. 2 is the husband of No. 1; he loves her dearly and did not wish to live without her. No. 3 is the son of Eskimos 1 and 2; he is too small and too weak to oppose his parents. No. 4 saw and advertisement in the New York Times for an Eskimo to appear on television. No. 5 is a private detective engaged by the Pinkerton Agency to keep an eye on Eskimo No. 4.

Let us assume that we have now explained in the case of each of the five Eskimos why he or she is in New York. Somebody then asks: "All right, but what about the group as a whole, why is it in New York? This would plainly be an absurd question. There is no group over and above the give members and if we have explained why each of the five members is in New York, we have ipso facto explained why the group is there. A critic of the cosmological argument would claim that it is just as absurd to ask for the cause of the series as a whole, as distinct from asking for the causes of the individual members.†

As Finnis argues, the question that asks for explanation for the whole state of affairs is different from a mere aggregation of the individual questions that ask for an explanation as to the existence of each member of a group or set. What is involved is "a matter of explaining more fully the existing of one particular state of affairs." In other words, the question seeks to go deeper than the individual sum of explanations aggregated. "The existing of that (first mentioned) state of affairs [in Edwards's example the explanation of the presence of five Eskimos in New York] is partially explained by the already postulated causing state of affairs, but only on the assumption that the whole causing state of affairs exists." NLNR, 386. The question is not why it is that five Eskimos find themselves in a corner in New York, but the question is why is it that the five Eskimos and New York exist and not some other entire contingent situation (such as four Eskimos in the corner of Krasnopesnenskaya and Barrikadnaya streets in Moscow)? So Edwards begs the question by assuming the answer (or by ignoring the deeper question). There is but one explanation for "the whole causing state of affairs."

[T]here is some state of affairs causing that whole causing set of prerequisites or conditions of the first-mentioned state of affairs, but which is not itself included in that causing set of conditions precisely because, unlike all members of that set, its existing does not require some prerequisite condition (not included in itself) to be satisfied.

NLNR, 386. In short, "[t]his newly postulated state of affairs can (and should, given the sense we are giving to 'cause') be called an uncaused causing." NLNR, 386. "Where the uncaused causing must differ, if it is to explain what needs to be explained, is in this: that to exist, it requires nothing not included in itself (That is the fact about it that we signify by 'uncaused')." NLNR, 386.

Does the "uncaused causing" exist?

The explanation of its existing can only be this: that the uncaused causing state of affairs includes, as a prerequisite to its existing, a state of affairs that exists because of what it is, i.e. because it is what it is.

NLNR, 387.

From this, Finnis seems to latch onto an ontological argument of sorts. In contrast to all other contingent state of affairs (which do not necessarily exist, and so what it is is different from the question of that it is), this uncaused causing must exist necessarily. For the uncaused causing, what it is is equivalent to that it is. The only thing we know, then of the uncaused causing is that what it is is the same as that it is. But that is enough to compel the conclusion that the necessary existence of an uncaused causing is the only adequate explanation for any contingent state of affairs to exist. "[W]ithout it [a necessary uncaused cause], no state of affairs that might not exist could exist." NLNR, 387. Since we know that there is a contingent state of affairs that exists which might not exist, then it follows that a necessary uncaused cause must exist. This "uncaused cause," this "uncaused causing" is what we call the God of philosophy, the God of reason. We are at preambula fidei, we are walking at the long edge of reason and the short edge of faith. We are the divide between faith and reason: windward is reason, leeward is faith.

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*The "principle of sufficient reason" is a philosophical principle that everything must have an explanatory reason or cause. It rejects the argument that there are brute or unexplainable facts: that there are some facts that "just are." It is aligned with the common expression, perhaps Parmenidian in origin: ex nihilo, nihil fit, nothing comes from nothing. It is the principle behind King Lear's insistence, in his conversation with his daughter Cordelia, that there must be a reason.

KING LEAR: ..what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA: Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR: Nothing?!
CORDELIA: Nothing.
KING LEAR: Nothing will come of nothing, speak again.

Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1, sc. 1, 88-92.

Finnis quotes Leibniz's formulation of the principle: "No fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise, although these reasons usually cannot be known to us." Et celui de la Raison suffisante, en vertu duquel nous considérons qu'aucun fait ne saurait se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune Enonciation véritable, sans qu'il y ait une raison suffisante, pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement, quoique ces raisons le plus souvent ne puissent point nous être connues. La Monadologie, section 32. Finnis rejects the principle as philosophically compelling: "But, in fact, this principle should not be conceded." NLNR, 384.
**It is unclear whom Finnis includes in this cryptic reference. He certainly includes Leibniz and Wolfe and most of the natural law theorists of the Enlightenment ilk who were inclined to predicate the existence of God on an argument based upon order (God the divine "watchmaker") and not contingency or causality.
***I'm not sure what self-evident principle this is. Most have been given a name (e.g., principle of non-contradiction). John Finnis cites to no source, either in his text or in his notes, as to this principle.
†Paul Edwards, "The Cosmological Argument," in Donald R. Burrill (ed.), The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion (New York: 1967).

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Nature, Reason, God, Part 1

WE ARE NEARING THE END OF our review of John Finnis's magisterial presentation of the natural law in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights. This theory is not strictly speaking classical or traditional; it departs from the classical or traditional Thomist theory by minimizing the role of "nature," by bracketing ontological (metaphysical) questions, by accepting the Humean is/ought critique, and by stressing a "pure reason" more akin to Kant than "nature in reason" akin to Aristotle or St. Thomas. Finnis's theory of natural law is within that species of theories of natural law generally called "new" or "integration" theories of natural law. It is, however, to be regarded as allied with the classical theories, and some of its insights are very valuable.

The last chapter of John Finnis's book Natural Law and Natural Rights, entitled "Nature, Reason, God," addresses the issue of whether reason is all there is, or whether there is a faculty beyond reason which we must acknowledge. Granted, reason affords us the notion of basic self-evident human values, which, in Finnis's taxonomy, are life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability, practical reasonableness, and religion.* The application of practical reasonableness in the pursuit of these basic goods in one's individual life is the basis of morality. And, when practical reasonableness reaches forth in the ordering of the life of a community, it is the basis of moral, right, just law. Practical reasonableness is explanatory of both the scope and limits of authority, of positive law, of rights, justice, and obligation. Reason obviously yields us much, albeit only with as much detail as the subject matter allows. For a large part of our questions, there will not be ready black-and-white, binary answers, but a sort of range of possibilities of right ways to instantiate the basic human goods, all of which consider the historical, cultural, and other practical contingencies under which man operates hinc et nunc, here and now.

But does reason provide us all answers? What does reason say to the necessary limits of the basic human values? What does reason say about the fact that life, for any individual, ends sometimes after long bouts with difficult neurological diseases, painful cancers, or the tragedy of accidents or war? How does reason respond to the fact that knowledge fades, that the most erudite genius sometimes lapses into the babbling nonsense of senility? All the knowledge in that brain of Pasteur, Einstein, Beethoven, Da Vinci, vanished with their death. Does reason have a response of why both play and art, as satisfying as they are, do not fully satisfy, but leave a wistful yearning that there must be something else? Friendships among men--even the most paradigmatic--are ended by death. Empires, nations, ideas, families, ruling cadres all come and go: there is a rise and a fall to all things. Nothing lasts. The reality of decay abounds. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. (Eccl. 1:2) All these basic goods are like the beauty that Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of in his poem, "The Leaden Echo":

How to keep — is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?
. . . .
No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,
. . . .
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there’s none; no no no there’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

Reason leads us to the Finis Gloriae Mundi and the In Ictu Oculi of Juan de Valdés Leal. But there it hesitates. Reason is stopped, checked, flummoxed by the awareness that all things are subject to corruption, to decay, to death. Reason is stayed by the memento mori. "Remember, man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return," we hear at the beginning of the Lenten season. "Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris." Reason may rationalize (which is not really reason, but an escape from reason, an ersatz reason) seek to ignore the question, and then it is not unlike the woman in her boudoir in C. Allan Gilbert's All is Vanity (1892). Looking into the mirror, reason sees itself as fully alive: it explains the here-and-now, but if it looks at the greater picture, does not the ephemerality of youth, of life, of beauty, of all things temporal held so dear show everything to be vanity? Is not the specter of death, and its radical limitation upon all our projects, everywhere, in everything? How does reason take us out all-is-vanity despair? How does reason answer the question, "What, in the long run, is the point of it all?" Does the vanity not lead one to "despair, despair, despair, despair"?

C. Allan Gilbert's "All is Vanity"

In view of these questions, can morality--and by extension--law rest content through a studied, calculated disregard, by simply wearing blinders or remaining oblivious to, and in feigned ignorance of, the great questions of life's meaning, and remain, like Gilbert's woman in her boudoir? Can we bracket law from these questions? No. Decay, corruption, death are realities that demand an answer.

Reasoning about law, like reasoning about anything, ultimately leads us to the fundamental question about the basis of reality itself. The entire construct of law begins with the awareness that man has a certain ensemble of inclinations, essential to his makeup, to his nature. And from this we must recognize a sort of design, an ordering, one which is a "given." And so we must as a given, but by whom?

The fact that human beings have a certain range of urges, drives, or inclinations; and the fact that these have a certain correspondence, parallelism, or 'fit' with the states of affairs that anyone intelligent would consider [to] constitute human flourishing; and the fact that without reasonable direction the inclinations will bring about individual and communal ruin ('natural sanctions'); and the fact that certain psychological, biological, climatic, physical, mechanical, and other like principles, laws, states of affairs, or conditions affect the realization of human well-being in discoverable ways--all these are facts in an order, external to our own understanding, which our understanding can only discover [not make]. This order is often called the order of nature. . . . . The remarkable fact that there is an order of nature which . . . is amenable to human understanding calls for some explanation.

NLNR, 380-81. And yet amongst this undeniable order, there is another reality which must also be acknowledged, a reality which is the opposite of order.

But, as there is order, so there is lack of order in the world, in terms of all four orders: waste in physical nature, error in reasonings, breakdown in culture, unreasonableness in human attitudes and actions.

NLNR, 381. There is, then, an order and disorder, good and evil, yin and yang, an ambiguity in the world. How explain both the order and the disorder, the good and evil, the ambiguity in both man and in the cosmos? So it would seem that "direct speculative questions about the significance, implications, or source of the orderliness of things yield, by themselves, no clear or certain answers." NLNR, 382. The moment that the orderliness of the world would lead you to infer God, in from stage left comes disorderliness, a disorderliness which seems to contradict the inference of a Providential God. What things are raises questions, but perhaps not definitive answers.

And yet if what things are does not provide the basis for any clear conclusions, what of the fact that things are? What of the fact of being, of "sheer existence"? Is there an answer to the question, "Why things are?"

We will address Finnis's view of the matter in the next post.
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*The basic good of knowledge is treated in the blog posting Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: To Know is Good. The other basic values are generally treated in the posting Natural Law's Modern Cousin German: The Seven Basic Values.