Law, Sit Up Higher: Richard Hooker and the Natural Law, Part 14

PERFECT HAPPINESS IS NOT MAN'S LOT IN HIS EARTHLY LIFE. It is not man's lot so long as he is living in time and space, in the sublunary world. Here, man is subject to imperfection, to "griefs of body," and "defects of mind." The best things do not come to us without pain, and the constant and continual effort required to maintain those goods which are most desirous as perfecting us make us weary. In this world, we are subject to the tedium of time, to the burdens of labor. Not so is it for those "in a state of bliss," something which arises "when our union with God is complete." I.11.3, 113.

While our intellect and will may be limited during the span of our temporal life, it is not so before God when we are in complete union with him.

Complete union with him must be according unto every power and faculty of our minds apt to receive so glorious an object. Capable we are of God both by understanding and will, by understanding that he is that sovereign truth, which comprehends the rich treasures of all wisdom; by will, as he is that sea of goodness, whereof who so tastes shall thirst no more.

I.11.3, 113. There is a remarkable fit between our intellect and will, and God. But how is this so? In answer to this, Hooker explores the differences between man's temporal life, and his life hereafter, and he enters thereby into a discussion of the difference between man's natural and supernatural life.

Man's will in this life is moved principally by a self-regarding desire. When in union with God, this self-regarding desire will be, as it were, replaced by a selfless, supernatural love cum natural desire. So the dross of selfishness by which our desires move us in this world will be transformed, by the grace of glory, into the pure caritas of God. "As the will does not work upon that object [good] by desire, which is as it were a motion towards the end as yet unobtained, so likewise upon the same hereafter received it shall work also by love." I.11.3, 113.

Hooker here misquotes St. Augustine: Appetitus inhiantis fit amor fruentis, which he freely translates as: "The longing disposition of them that thirst is changed into the sweet affection of them that taste and are replenished." I.11.3, 133. [The quote, from St. Augustine's De Trinitate (IX.18) should be: Appetitus quo inhiatur rei cognoscendae fit amor cognitae, , that is, "the desire which led us to long for the knowing of the thing, becomes the love of the thing when known." The intendment is the same. One thinks here of Psalm 41:2-3: "As the hart panteth after the fountains of water; so my soul panteth after thee, O God. My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? Sicut areola praeparata ad inrigationes aquarum sic anima mea praeparata est ad te Deus; sitivit anima mea Deum fortem viventem quando veniam et parebo ante faciem tuam.]

This remarkable transformation, purification, refinement of our desires into love is the apostolic "crown which withereth not." I.11.3, 113 (cf. 2 Tim. 4:8 and 1 Pet. 1:4).

Whereas we now love the thing that is good, but good especially in respect of benefit unto us, we shall then love the thing that is good, only or principally for the goodness of beauty in itself. The soul being in this sort as it is active, perfected by love of that infinite good, shall, as it is receptive, be also perfected with those supernatural passions of joy, peace, and delight. All this is endless and everlasting.

I.11.13, 113.

Hooker clarifies that this transformational destiny of man is not one that is inherited or obtained by his own nature, his own powers. Rather, this is a supernatural destiny, one that is given, as gift, by God. This supernatural destiny "does neither depend upon the nature of the thing itself, nor proceed from any natural necessity that our souls should so exercise themselves." I.11.3, 113. No, this supernatural destiny proceeds "from the will of God, which does both freely perfect our nature in so high a degree and continue it so perfected." I.11.13, 113. So while this grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it, this grace is clearly supernatural.

This dignity is man's alone. Brute creation does not enjoy this grace. "Under man no creature in the world is capable of felicity and bliss." I.11.13, 113. And this for two reasons. First, the perfection of brute creation is that which is best for them. Second, the good sought by brute creation is always some external good lesser than themselves. Contrariwise, our perfection is the best simpliciter and absolutissimum, that is God, the perfectissimum. This a remarkable calling, and one that should not lead to hubris, but to humble marvel and wonder, even praise of God, such as that expressed by David in Psalm 8:5-10:

What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him?
Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour:
And hast set him over the works of thy hands.
Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields.
The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea.
O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in all the earth!

Man is designed to be happy; it is a fundamental aspect of his nature. So intrinsic is this desire for happiness, that one may even say that man is compelled to seek his happiness. The desire to be happy "in man is natural. It is not in our power not to do the same: how should it then be in our power to do it coldly or remissly?" I.11.4, 114. For Hooker, this desire for happiness is, as it were, an involuntary response; like the heart, it beats and throbs willy nilly. A man who does not desire happiness is an oxymoron, a metaphysical impossibility, a non-man. It is impossible for man to desire unhappiness, or even to give a lie to it: "so that our desire being natural is also in that degree of earnestness whereunto nothing can be added." I.11.4, 114.

What then can be inferred from this intrinsic desire for happiness we find in man? What, further, can we infer from the fact that in this world man simply is unable to fulfill this desire? Applying reason to these two facts allows us to anticipate man's eternal destiny.

And is it probable that God should frame the hearts of all men so desirous of that which no man may obtain? It is an axiom of nature that natural desire cannot utterly be frustrate. This desire of ours being natural should be frustrate, if that which may satisfy the same were a thing impossible for man to aspire unto.

I.11.4, 114.

[In Keble's version of Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, cite is made to St. Thomas as author of the Commentary on Aristotle referred to by Hooker: "Si comprehensio esset impossibilis, tunc desiderium esset otiosum: et concessum est ab omnibus, quod nulla res est otiosa in fundamento naturæ et creaturæ." But from what I've gathered, this is not St. Thomas Aquinas, but a Latin translation of Averroes's Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. Regardless, it is a principle that the pagan Aristotle, the Muslim Averroes, and the Christian St. Thomas all shared.]

Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

Consonant with both man's nature and supernatural destiny, man seeks a "triple perfection," a sensual, an intellectual, and a spiritual or divine perfection.

Man does seek a triple perfection, first a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requires either as necessary supplements, or as beauties and ornaments thereof; then an intellectual, consisting in those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly, a spiritual and divine, consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but cannot here attain unto them.

I.11.4, 114.

It is error to forget the tripartite destiny of man, to overemphasize one at the exclusion of the other, or to disregard any one of them. Those that focus merely on the first perfection are, in essence, atheists, or perhaps better, idolaters.

They that make the first of these three the scope of their whole life, as said by the Apostle [Paul] to have no God, but only their belly, to be earthly minded men.

I.11.14, 114. To desire the second perfection is not as vicious, for the second perfection leads to knowledge and to virtue, to moral and civil perfection. And yet, the second perfection, though apparently a good, does not satisfy. Hooker's conclusion is worthy of being quoted in full:

That there is somewhat higher than either of these no other proof is needed, than the very process of man's desire, which being natural should be frustrate if there were not some farther thing wherein it might rest at the length contended, which in the former [two perfections] it cannot do. For man does not seem to rest satisfied either with fruition of that wherewith his life is preserved, or with performance of such actions as advance him most deservedly in estimation; but does further covet, yea oftentimes manifestly pursue with great sedulousness and earnestness that which cannot stand him in any stead for vital use; that which exceeds the reach of his sense; yea, somewhat above capacity of reason, somewhat divine and heavenly, which with hidden exultation it rather surmises than conceives; somewhat it seeks and what that is directly it knows not, yet very intentive desire thereof does so incite it, that all other known delights and pleasures are laid aside, they give place to the search of this but only suspected desire. If the soul of man did serve only to give him being in this life, then things appertaining unto this life would content him, as we see they do other creatures: which creatures enjoying what they live by, seek no further, but this contentation [i.e., satisfaction] does show a kind of acknowledgment that there is no higher good which does any way belong to them. With us it is otherwise. For although the beauties, riches, honors, sciences, virtues, and perfections of all men living were in the present possession of one: yet somewhat beyond and above all this there would still be sought and earnestly thirsted for. Sot that nature even in this life does plainly claim and call for a more divine perfection, than either of these that have been mentioned.

I.11.4,114-15. For Hooker it is clear: Anima naturaliter Christiana!

Hooker's argument (and Tertullian's anima naturaliter Christiana) is none other than the argument that Orestes Brownson advanced in his Essay, "Labor and Association," found in Volume 10 of his Works (pp. 51-52):

Man is never satisfied by the possession of the natural objects to which he is naturally drawn. All experience proves it; the experience of each particular man proves it; else wherefore this deep wail from the heart of every one who lives simply the life of nature, this outbreak of despair, Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas? Build man the most splendid palace; lavish on it all the decorations of the most perfect art; furnish it with the most exquisite and most expensive taste; lodge him in it on the soft, voluptuous couch; spread his table with the most delicate viands and the rarest fruits; refresh him with the most costly wines; regale him with the richest music; rain down upon him the most fragrant odors; ravish him with beauty; gratify every sense, every taste, every wish, as soon as formed; and the poor wretch will sigh for he knows not what, and behold with envy even the ragged beggar feeding on offal. No variety, no change, no art, can satisfy him. All that nature or art can offer palls upon his senses and his heart,— is to him poor, mean, and despicable. There arise in him wants which are too vast for nature, which swell out beyond the bounds of the universe, and cannot, and will not, be satisfied with any thing less than the infinite and eternal God. Never yet did nature suffice for man, and it never will.

This great and solemn fact, which it is vain to attempt to deny,—a fact deep graven on all hearts that have experience, that have lived the natural life,—should lead thoughtful men to ask,—nay, it does lead thoughtful men to ask,—if, after all, it be not a mistake to attempt to satisfy ourselves with the vain and perishing things of this world; if the inability to find our satisfaction in nature be not a strong presumption that our Creator did not design us for a natural destiny; if, in fact, he did not intend us for an end above nature; and therefore, that our precise error is in seeking a natural destiny in opposition to his design, in neglecting our true destiny for a false destiny, that is, neglecting true good and pursuing real evil. We should suppose that this universal experience of all men would have created, at least, a doubt, in the minds of our friends, as to the soundness of their assumption of the natural as the true destiny of man on this globe.

Indeed.

How then is this third perfection which is intimated, suggested, implied by our disaffection with all the world's sensual and intellectual goods, but not naturally known or naturally available to us, obtained? The answer to that question is what Hooker next turns to.

Portrait of Richard Hooker

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.]

Lex Gratiae supponit et elevavit Legem Naturae

TWO LAWS GOVERN THE CHRISTIAN: the natural law, the lex naturae, and the law of grace, the lex gratiae. It is a common Catholic principle: Gratia elevavit naturam; therefore, gratia supponit naturam. Grace elevates nature; therefore, grace supposes nature. Both the natural law and the law of grace, obtain from the same source, and consequently are not competitors, but partners, in the redemption of man, his sanctification, and his salvation. To suggest that the law of grace contradicts the natural law is a falsehood, equally as false as suggesting that reason and revelation contradict. Both Christ and his Church demand more of us than simply obedience to the natural law, but obedience and conformity to the natural law is a sine qua non of the Catholic moral life.

Orestes Brownson, in this excerpt from his The Two Brothers, addresses the distinction, and yet complementarity, of the law of nature and the law of grace.

"The law of nature falls, to some extent, under the jurisdiction of reason, and reason, to that extent, is its legal keeper and judge, and has the right to sit in judgment on its infractions. As the law of nature and that of grace both have the same origin, are enacted by the same sovereign Lawgiver, and as the latter confessedly presupposes the former and confirms it, it can never authorize what the former prohibits, any more than the former can authorize what the latter prohibits, unless we may suppose, what is not supposable, that God may be in contradiction with himself. The law of grace transcends the law of nature, but does not and cannot enjoin what it forbids."

[From Brownson's Works, "The Two Brothers" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1902), Vol. 6, p. 333.]

Brownson on Natural Law: The Church as Custodian and the State

THE CHURCH IS THE CUSTODIAN OF THE NATURAL LAW, and so it has a divinely appointed role in helping form, or undergird the secular law. The secular law, though it has its own area of competence, must in all regards be subordinate to the Natural Law. The notion of two separate and independent spheres of activity--one secular, the other sacred--is simply false. There is no bifurcation of the law in moral man and political man, though in the immoral political man there may be. The notion of pure separation of Church and State is, from a Catholic viewpoint, unacceptable. It presents a recipe for a schizophrenic polity, working at odds, much like the body politic with its corpus callosum severed, and so the left hemisphere of the brain is unable to communicate to the right hemisphere of the brain. Such a man, like such a body politic, operates under serious disadvantage or disorder.

A political philosophy of pure secularism, being practically atheist, is sinful and constitutes a state of rebellion against God. Likewise, the modern legal notion that human law need not be subordinate to, or validly deferent to, the natural law is a false, in fact evil, legal philosophy. The notion that positive laws can have authority or validity independent of, or even in conflict with, the content of the natural law is a false doctrine. The modern politician and legislator, not unlike the emperor of old, must acknowledge the teaching Church, the ecclesia docens, that is the priesthood. "For the Emperor," St. Ambrose wrote in his sermon against Auxentius, "is within the Church, not above it." Imperator enim intra ecclesiam non supra ecclesiam est. (Sermo contra Auxentium de basilicis tradendis, No. 36). The politician, the legislator, the judge, the governor or president--replace emperor with any civil or political office you wish--is within the Church, not above her, and, even if outside her, certainly has not right to act against her. Lift up your gates, you rulers and all peoples, and let the King of Glory into the halls where your laws are made and the courts where they are enforced. Anything else is bound to lead to injustice and to tyranny.

Lift up your gates,
O ye princes, and be ye lifted up,
O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in
Who is the King of Glory?
The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory.

Psalm 23 (24): 9-10.

This is Brownson's message in this excerpt taken from his writings.

"The priesthood, as Catholicity teaches, is the sole depository, guardian, and interpreter of the law of God, and therefore represents for us the sole and absolute legislature, not, of course, by virtue of the humanity of its members, but by divine constitution, appointment, and assistance. The authority of the priesthood, then, extends to the whole of practical life, and that practical life is moral, therefore good, only inasmuch as it is submissive or obedient to the law as they promulgate and declare it. There is, then, and can be, no order of life, individual or social, that has or can have any autonomy in the face of the Church, or that is or can be pronounced morally good, save in so far as subject to her and informed by obedience to her as representative of the authority of God as universal, absolute legislator. This, if we understand the author [Gioberti], is what his own dialectics require us to assert. Secular culture, then, in order to be moral, in order to have any right to be, must be the product of sacerdotal culture, receive its law and its informing spirit from the Divinely authorized priesthood, and be in all things dependent on it, and subject to it. Hence, the schism we spoke of in the beginning is not to be healed by a union of secular culture with the sacerdotal, but by the absolute subjection of the former to the latter, because the former, in so far as it does not proceed from the latter and depend on it, proceeds from human activity, not subject to the law of God, and therefore is not moral."

[From Brownson's Works, "Vincenzo Gioberti" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1898), Vol. 2, p. 128.]

Brownson on Natural Law: The Obligation to Believe?

IN THIS CONTROVERSIAL excerpt, Orestes Brownson insists that assent to the Gospel is required by both divine law and the natural law. This is because it is not unreasonable to believe in the Gospel, but is reasonable. From a purely human faith standpoint, then, there is an obligation to believe in God, and, for those who have heard the Gospel, a duty to believe in Jesus Christ and his Church, which duty, to be fulfilled, ultimately relies upon a gift of God, that is, grace. For the act of faith, though reasonable, is ultimately a supernatural act, beyond our natural capacity and intelligibility, and the act therefore requires accompanying supernatural grace.

"We also admit, and contend, that 'faith is the gift of God,' not merely because it is belief in truth which God has graciously revealed . . . but because no man can believe, even now that the truth is revealed, without the aid of divine grace, that is to say, without grace supernaturally bestowed. Faith is a virtue which has merit; but no virtue is possible without the aid of divine grace has merit; that is, merit in relation to eternal life. The grace of faith is absolutely essential to the eliciting of the act of faith.

But this considers faith in as much as it is divine faith, a gift of God, and lying wholly in the supernatural order, not as simply human faith, in which it depends on extrinsic evidence or testimony, and the obligation of a man under the simple law of nature to believe,--the only sense in which, in this discussion, we consider it. Unbelief, in those to whom the Gospel has been preached, is a sin not only against the revealed law, but also against the natural law, which it could not be, if the Gospel did not come accompanied with sufficient evidence to warrant belief in every reasonable man."

[From Brownson's Works, "The Church Against No-Church" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1900), Vol. 3, p. 369.]

Brownson on the End of Law

IN THIS EXCERPT from his critique of a reviewer Mercersburg Review, Orestes Brownson, addresses the relationship between God as our final cause or end, and the concept of law. All law, like all power, finds its source in God, and is never independent of him. The political philosophy behind modern secularism, which disdains this fact, is deeply flawed.



"The reviewer* sins against this undeniable truth, when he censures us for allowing man no autonomy, no right, collectively or individually, to be governed only by his own will, no voice in constituting the law to which he is to be subject. Nothing can be worse than this, for it supposes the law is created, and in part at least by man himself. But this cannot be. The law is not created at all; it is eternal, and, as a rule, has its seat, not in the creative will of God as such, not precisely in God regarded as first cause, but in God as final cause, that is, in God as the sovereign good, and is promulgated and enforced by God as supreme ruler, because he always rules as he creates, in accordance with and for himself as the sovereign good. The law is not only eternal, but immutable, and God himself cannot change it; for he cannot change his own immutable nature which is it. To suppose God creates it, is to suppose that he creates himself; to suppose that man creates it, is to suppose that man creates God; and to assert man's autonomy, or right to be governed only by his own will, is to deny that he is under law, or bound at all to seek God as the sovereign good. Does the reviewer maintain that we are not morally bound to seek God as our ultimate end? Does he deny all morality, and assert that man is free to live as he lists? Is he an Antinomian? We cannot believe it. Then God is himself man's law, and then man is morally bound to will what God wills, that is, to love what God loves, that is to say, God himself, as supreme good, and has no right to will or to love as his ultimate end anything else. How, then, pretend that man is his own legislator, his own lawgiver? As well might you say, man is his own maker, that man is God, nay, that man is God's maker. No laws that are not transcripts of the divine law, the eternal and immutable law, which is God himself, have any of the essential characteristics of law."


[The reviewer is the author of a piece in the Mercesburg Review who criticized Brownson's observations about Protestantism in various publications.]

[From Brownson's Works, "The Mercersburg Theology" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1900), Vol. 3, p. 74.]

Brownson on Natural Law--The True Source of Human Rights

IN THIS EXCERPT from his "Philosophical Studies on Christianity," Orestes Brownson reminds us how human rights have no real substance without reference to the source of those rights, God. In modern "rights talk," the source of rights appears to have become autonomous from God. And so in the public forum we hear such empty talk such as a "right" to free speech (as if we have a right to spread falsehood or injure or defame others), a "right" to do what we want to our body (as if we are not answerable to God for it), a "right" to homosexual marriage (as if we have a right to morbidly cohabit in sin), a "right" to a divorce (as if we have a right to rend asunder what God has joined), etc., etc. ad nauseam. There are times--amidst this clamor of "rights talk" based upon nothing but air, nay, vacuous thinking or some primeval urge or misdirected lust antithetical to the good--when one wants to scream out in exasperation like Pope Leo XIII did in his Encyclical Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus: "The world has heard enough of the so-called 'rights of man.' Let it hear something of the rights of God." The need to retrofit God into our concept of right, or perhaps retrofit our concept of right under God who is their source, was true in the late 1800s when Brownson flourished, it is even more true now.



"The dominant tendency of our age is to atheism,--to exclude God, and to put humanity or nature in the place of God. It is this tendency which it is now especially necessary to resist and guard against. If, with some of our modern writers, more attached, it would seem, to the letter than imbued with the sense of the great doctors of the church, we assign to nature a proper legislative power and represent it as competent to found rights and impose duties, or contend that man has rights of his own, in the strict sense of the word, we here and now compromise the great truths of religion, and strengthen the atheistical tendency of the age. Never in reality did any of our great theologians teach that nature has a true and proper legislative power, for they all teach that what they call the law of nature is law only inasmuch as it is a transcript of the eternal law. They all teach, after St. Paul, that non est potestas nisi a Deo [there is no power, but that it is from God], that God is the absolute lord and proprietor of the universe, that he is the fountain of all law, or sole legislator, because all dominion belongs to him. Without law, neither right nor duty is conceivable, and without God as absolute and universal legislator, law is an unmeaning term. All legislative power is his, because he is the creator and final cause of all things, by whom and for whom all things exist; and no one can rightfully exercise any legislative authority, but as his delegate or vicar. In strictness, he [God] only has rights, because he only can impose duties. Then what we call human rights, whether rights of government or of subjects, are his rights and our duties, and duties, nay, all the rights which our theologians deduce from the law of nature, are no doubt real rights, and neither individuals nor governments can violate any one of them without wrong, . . . and which, if not recognized, renders the doctrine when applied to man in relationship human government favorable either to despotism or to anarchy; but though real rights, they are divine, not human, and their violation is not merely a crime against the individual, the state, or society, but, in the strict and proper sense of the word, a sin against God. This great truth, which underlies all Catholic teaching on the subject, but which the authorities do not always clearly and distinctly state, because in their time there was little danger of its being misapprehended, needs, it seems to us, to be now distinctly and prominently brought out, and earnestly insisted on as an elementary truth of which our age has nearly lost sight, and as the precise contradictory of its dominant heresy."


[From Brownson's Works, "Philosophical Studies on Christianity" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1900), Vol. 3, p. 159-60.]

Brownson on the Natural Law--God as Final Cause is Lawgiver

IN THIS EXCERPT from his "A Letter to Protestants," Orestes Brownson stresses how it is Man's end, in God's design, toward which the natural law ultimately points. All law is founded on reason, and the reason for the law is its end. The end of the natural law is God. It is with focus on God as our last end, or final cause, that we consider him in the role of Lawgiver. It is with focus on God as our first cause, or the source of our beginning, that we consider him in his role as Creator. The Law, in other words, has no other purpose than to aim us towards God, which is our ultimate good. That is why there is ultimately no contradiction between Law, Justice, Mercy, and Love. All these have their end and fulfillment in God who is absolute Law, Justice, Mercy, and Love.



"God is the final as he is the first cause of all existences. He is our origin and end, the cause that created us, and the cause for which we are created, as you have seen in the fact that we are his and not our own, and are morally bound to render unto him the tribute of our whole being. The good of every creatures is the end for which it exists, and if we could conceive a creature existing for no end, such a creature would and could have no good. Hence God is our supreme good, because he is the supreme good in itself, and because he is our ultimate end. Our true good lies then in the possession of God, and we tend to it as we tend to him, that is, render ourselves unto him, or give him the worship that is his due, as has already been established.

The final cause is legislative, and the law every existence must be subject to is imposed by the end for which it exists. God as the first cause is our Creator; as final cause he is our Lawgiver. The law he imposes must be obeyed as the indispensable condition of attaining to our end, and without obedience to it there is and can be in the nature of things no good for us, since it is the law imposed by eternal justice, and the sovereign good; for God as the final cause of all existences is the sovereign good, and as sovereign Legislator is eternal justice."

[From Brownson's Works, "A Letter to Protestants" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1902), Vol. 5, p. 328.]

Brownson on Why the Natural Law Obliges

IN THIS EXCERPT from his "Refutation of Atheism," Orestes Brownson gives a synopsis of the natural moral law and its relationship to the Eternal Law. He distinguishes the motive for obedience to it from the duty to obey it. Ultimately, the natural law derives its obligatoriness from our status as creatures, having God as our creator, and God as our end. Our end, in God's great design in creating us, is the Eternal Law. That is, we are called to have God as our last end. Both the rejection of our creaturehood and rejection of our eschatological destiny will result in the rejection of the natural law, which is nothing other than God's Eternal Law writ in us. Our secular political philosophy ignores both our status as creatures, and our status as children of God with an eternal destiny. The next excerpts from Orestes Brownson will address the relationship of the natural law to God and to the Church that Jesus Christ founded.



"The moral law is the application of the eternal law in the moral government of rational existences, and the eternal law, according to St. Augustine, is the eternal will or reason of God. The moral law necessarily expresses both the reason and the will of God. There are here two questions which must not be confounded, namely, 1, What is the reason of the law? 2, Wherefore is the law obligatory on us as rational existences? The first question asks what is the reason or motive on the part of God in enacting the law, and, though that concerns him and not us, we may answer: Doubtless, it is the same reason he had for creating us, and is to be found in his infinite love and goodness. The second question asks, Why does the law oblige us? that is, why is it law for us: since a law that does not oblige is no law at all.

This last is the real ethical question. The answer is not, It is obligatory becuase what it enjoins is good, holy, and necessary to our perfection or beatitude. That would be a most excellent reason why we should do the things enjoined, but is no answer to the question, why are we bound to do them, and are guilty if we do not? Why is obedience to the law a duty, and disobedience a sin? It is necessary to distinguish with the theologians between the finis operantis and the finis operis, between the work one does, and the motive for which one does it. Every work that tends to realize the theological order is good, but if we do it not from the proper motive, we are not moral or virtuous in doing it. We must have the intention of doing it in obedience to the law or will of the sovereign, who has the right to command us.

What, then, is the ground of the right of God to command us, and of our duty to obey him? The ground of both is in the creative act. God has a complete and absolute right to us, because, having made us from nothing, we are his, wholly his, and not our own. He created us from nothing, and only his creative act stands between us and nothing; he therefore owns us, and therefore we are his, body and soul, and all that we have, can do, or acquire. He is therefore our Sovereign Lord and Proprietor, with supreme and absolute dominion over us, and the absolute right, as absolute owner, to do what he will with us. His right to command is founded on his dominion, and his dominion is founded on his creative act, and we are bound to obey him, whatever he commands, because we are his creature, absolutely his, and in no sense our own."

[From Brownson's Works, "Refutation of Atheism" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1898), Vol. 2, p. 90-91.]

Brownson on the Natural Law-The Law as Ligament

IN THIS SHORT PARAGRAPH, Brownson rejects those who would deny a telos or teleology in the natural law, which is nothing other than the expression of the Eternal Law with respect to man, and thus whose final cause is God. He also rejects the Kantian notion of autonomy, and establishes morality by linking it to our submission and obedience to God as our Alpha and our Omega, our beginning and our end.



"Man before God as final cause has no more autonomy than he has before God as first cause, that is to say, none at all. He has before God, then, no rights, no independence, but is bound to absolute submission to his law. The law is the copula, the ligament that binds man to his final end, or supreme good, and is in the second cosmic cycle what the creative act is the first; that is, the law in the order of palingenesis* is what the creative act is in the order of genesis. As there is no physical cosmos save mediante the law of God, so is there no moral cosmos save mediante the law of God. As all physical existence is from God as first cause, mediante creation, so all moral existence is from God as final cause, mediante obedience to his law. Without seeking God as final cause, as his law commands, there is no proper morality, any more than there is or can be holy living, or supernatural sanctity."

[From Brownson's Works, "Vincenzo Gioberti" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1898), Vol. 2, p. 127-28.]

*The term palingenesis or rather palingenesia is derived from Greek "palin" (which means again) and genesis (birth, becoming). Thus it may be translated by the term rebirth, regeneration, or even restoration. Conceptually, the term was used by the Stoics whose doctrine taught that the universe or cosmos was constantly being re-created by the Demiurge. The term was used by the Jewish philosopher Philo to refer to Noah and his progeny as the group that would renovate or give rebirth to humanity. The term is used by Plutarch, as it was by the Pythagoreans, to refer to metempsychosis or rebirth of souls in new bodies (as part of his belief in re-incarnation).

The term is used by Jesus in the New Testament, specifically in the Gospel of Matthew: "And Jesus said to them: Amen, I say to you, that you, who have followed me, in the regeneration (παλιγγενεσία), when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Matt. 19:28 Douay Rheims). It is also used in Titus 3:5 to refer to the rebirth of a Christian in Christ. As used in the New Testament, the term does not bear any of its Pythagorean connotations of re-incarnation or metempsychosis.