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

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Pietro Vermigli by Hans Asper (1560)

THE REFORMER PETER MARTYR VERMIGLI presents us with a notion of the natural law that is more compatible with the Classical and Roman Catholic understanding of that doctrine. Far less pessimistic that his contemporary John Calvin, the Italian Reformer remained more faithful to his Aristotelian and Roman Catholic sources, at least in the area of the natural moral law, than Calvin. In the area of the natural law at least, he writes more in tune with the realism of the via antiqua than with the nominalism of the via moderna. In fact, contrary to so many of the Reformers, Vermigli did not disdain Aristotle, but even wrote a commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics. This stands in direct contrast with Luther, who claimed in his "Open Letter to the Christian Nobility" that "God has sent [Aristotle] as a plague upon us for our sins." Moreover, Vermigli's view in the area of natural theology is "broadly Thomistic with a strong Augustinian accent," thus assuring a more traditional bent. Grabill, 102.

Aristotle

Born in Florence, Italy, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1500-1562), originally Piero Mariano, was admitted into the Augustinian order, and was named after St. Peter Martyr. He was educated at the Augustinian friary in Fiesole, and then transferred to St. John of Verdara near Padua. Graduating in 1527, he preached in Brescia, Pisa, Venice, and Rome. In 1530, Peter Martyr was elected abbot of the Augustinian friary at Spoleto, and in 1533, prior of the convent of St. Peter ad Aram in Naples. Exposed to the influence of Protestant theologians' works, including Martin Bucher and Huldrych Zwingli, and eventually succumbing to their views, Peter Martyr drew the ire of authorities, including those of the Spanish viceroy of Naples and the superiors of his order. Summoned to appear before a chapter of his order and facing likely disciplining, Peter Martyr instead escaped to Pisa and then to Zürich and Basel, ultimately settling at Strasbourg where, in violation of his vows, he married his first wife Catherine Dammartin of Metz, and was appointed professor of theology. As Grabill summarizes it, "he was forced to move every five years on average . . . . [a]s a result, his institutional gravitas was in a state of near constant flux." Grabill, 99. Accepting an invitation by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, Vermigli was appointed regius professor of divinity at Oxford where he was actively involved in a variety of theological disputes. When the Catholic Queen Mary assumed the throne, Vermigli returned to Strasbourg where he taught theology. Vermigli ultimately settled in Zürich accepting a chair of Hebrew, whence he spent the rest of his days. He participated in the Colloquy at Poissy, a failed effort in 1561 to reconcile the Calvinist Huguenots and Catholics in France. A prolific writer, Vermigli published Biblical commentaries and various treatises. He died in 1562.

Similar to Calvin, Vermigli did not undertake to fashion a synthetic analysis of the natural law in the manner of St. Thomas. Yet his attendance to the notion of a nature-based morality independent--yet consistent with--revealed morality was more focused than Calvin. Vermigli's treatment of the natural law is most manifest in his exegesis of the first two chapters of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. This is not unexpected, since the first two chapters of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is the textus classicus when it comes to the Scriptural warrant for the natural law. In his treatment of this text, Vermigli shows marked differences from Calvin. "The fundamental differences between Calvin and Vermigli have to do with the latter's more extensive and disciplined use of natural theology/natural law. . . . While Vermigli acknowledges reason's post-lapsarian limitations, he is more sanguine than Calvin regarding its ability to grasp the precepts of the natural law through sense experience, moral intuition, and dialectics." Grabill, 102, 103-04.

St. Paul

Unquestionably, Vermigli believes in the existence of a natural theology: both the world and our minds are constructed so as to be able to glean from creation the existence of divinity. "God has planted prolepsis in our minds," Vermigli states, "that is, anticipations and notions through which we are led to conceive noble and exalted opinions about the divine nature." Grabill, 110 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 21r; CP, 1.2.3).

That natural knowledge outside of revelation is also found in the area of morality. Vermigli suggests that there is a natural moral theology that finds its roots in the imago Dei, the image of God, that is in man, and which persists, albeit in an attenuated or weakened fashion, in post-lapsarian man. Since our souls are akin to God their creator, they reflect "justice, wisdom, and many other most noble habits," and "also the knowledge of what is right and honest, and what is wrong and unclean." Grabill, 111 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 22v; CP, 1.2.4) Without doubt, Vermigli departs from Calvin's pessimistic assessment of man's ability to know of God and his law. Grabill, 113-14.

Following St. Thomas's commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Vermigli distinguishes between two types of knowledge of God. The first is "effectual," and second "frigid" or ineffectual. Effectual knowledge of God leads to spiritual transformation that is expressed by good deeds. Grabill, 114. Truth obtained through Faith, as distinguished from truth obtained through Reason or Nature, is "more likely to lead to action." Grabill, at 114. Therefore, he affirms with St. Thomas that, without Faith and the aid of God's grace, the "natural law is ineffective in leading human beings to the good." Grabill, 114. "Surely," states Vermigli,

this does not happen because one truth by itself and taken on its own is stronger than another. Truth has the same nature on both sides; the difference arises from the ways and means by which it is perceived. Natural strength is corrupt, weakened and defiled through sin, so that the truth that it grasps has no effect. But faith has joined with it the divine inspiration and power of the Holy Spirit so that it apprehends truth effectively. Hence the difference consists in the faculty by which truth is apprehended. This should not be taken to deny that more than we know through nature is revealed to us by the Scriptures, the New as well as the Old Testament. But we have drawn a comparison between the same truth when known by nature and when perceived by faith.

Grabill, 114 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, ff. 20r-21v; CP, 1.2.11) . To have effective knowledge of the natural law, that is, knowledge that results in an ability to follow that law, requires, in the ultimate analysis following the Fall, Faith and Grace in Christ. True: external compliance to the natural law may be found in other cultures and times:

[N]o nation is so savage or barbarous that it is not touched by some sense of right, justice, and honesty. . . . We might say instead that by this freedom our works may agree with the civil or economic law, which has regard to outward acts and is not so much concerned with the will.

Grabill, 117 (quoting Vermigli, "Free Will," f. 102, par. 4). While perhaps the natural law or even the Mosaic law may be followed externally and imperfectly or partially either as a result of natural goodness or the threat of human law, it is impossible for wounded, fallen man to follow the natural law perfectly, that is, with full internal assent. To follow the natural law with such full internal assent requires us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength, clearly an act that requires Faith and Grace. Grabill, 116.

For Vermigli (and unlike Calvin), the natural law is not principally condemnatory, though it has a role in informing the conscience and the internal forum. "Vermigli contends that God did not reveal such natural knowledge for the sole purpose of establishing his wrath against the Gentiles," Grabill, 115, but rather to force us to "admit that they were too weak while knowing what they should do," and so to make then "run to Christ." Grabill, 116 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 23v; CP, 1.2.8 "proinde necessarium esse, ad Christum confugere").

For Vermigli, the natural law has a more positive role of prompting man towards God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. This places him opposite Calvin. In almost a Kantian manner, Calvin appears to have maintained that although the natural law may be objectively manifest in the created order, since the Fall man had no ability subjectively to inform himself of that order. Thus, post-lapsarian man had no ability to know the moral Ding an sich that was vouchsafed us in the created order. Vermigli, on the other hand, contended that even after the Fall, man had the ability subjectively to comprehend and so to know the natural law manifest in the created order, but man's knowledge, though real, was not effectual without Faith and Grace. For Vermigli, the corruption of man, therefore, was more manifest in the will than in reason.

Vermigli properly insisted that the knowledge of moral good acquired by nature does not vitiate the need for revelation. "In Vermigli's judgment the phrase by nature [in Romans 2:14] should not be construed in such a way as to exclude divine revelation or assistance vis-à-vis the requirements of morality." Grabill, 117.

In sum,

Vermigli distinguishes two principal uses for why knowledge of the moral law was implanted in the human mind. The first, corresponding with a "frigid" knowledge of God, exists to nullify any excuse by providing objective and universally accessible knowledge of the moral law and the judgment to come. The second, corresponding with an "effectual" knowledge of God, exists to increase human "readiness" and "strength" to do that which is known to be just and honest. It is the second use, as Vermigli insists, that prods humanity to pursue true righteousness and that serves to renew God's image in us.

Grabill, 119-20.

To quote Vermigli:

The image of God in which man was created, is not utterly blotted out but obfuscated in the fall, and for that reason is in need of renewal by God. So natural knowledge is not fully quenched in our minds, but much of it still remains, which Paul now touches upon.

Grabill, 120 (quoting Vermigli, Romans, f. 44 r).

The contrast between Vermigli's teaching on the one hand with Calvin or Barth's teaching on the other hand is striking. If there is to be dialogue between the Classical and Catholic view of the natural law and the Reformed or Protestant tradition, it must be through the likes of someone like Vermigli, and not someone like Calvin or Barth. In the area of natural law, the latter two are simply too far down the path of error to allow for easy reconciliation or rapprochement.

John Calvin and the Natural Law: Introduction

John Calvin

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

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

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

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

Title Page to Calvin's Institute of Christian Religion

A Little Bit of Plato in St. Thomas

THERE ARE INDISPUTABLE PLATONIC precursors to St. Thomas Aquinas's definition of law. As previously related in this blog, St. Thomas defines law as "nothing other than a certain dictate of reason (rationis ordinatio) for the common good, made by him who has the care of the community and promulgated." ST. IaIIae, Q.90, art.4. "There are no elements," in this definition, "which were not insisted upon by Plato." [Huntington Cairns, Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1956), 173.] Thus, we may find it useful to link St. Thomas's concepts to their Platonic analogues:

Law is ultimately based upon a theological foundation:

"To whom," says the Athenian to Clinias, "do you ascribe the authorship of your legal arrangements, Strangers? To a god or to some man?" "To a god, Stranger, most rightfully to a god." 624A. The laws "form a task especially for God." 835C.

Law is a form of reason:

Reason's ordering is given the name of law, Laws 714A. The admirable law bears a name akin to reason (nomos = nous). Laws, 957C. See also Laws, 890D.

Law must be made for the common good:

"The law is not concerned with the special happiness of any class in the state, but is trying to produce this condition in the city as a whole, harmonizing and adapting the citizens to one another by persuasion and compulsion, and requiring them to impart to one another any benefit." Rep., 519E

Law must be made by one in authority, that is in care of the community:

See, e.g., Rep., 520D et seq. (In discussing the appropriate authorities to govern the state, the discussion implies that the laws will be passed by those in charge of the community.)

Law must be promulgated:

Here, implicitly, the fact that laws tend to virtuous of the citizens implies that they have knowledge of them. "Every legislator who is worth his salt will most assuredly legislate always with a single eye to the highest goodness and to that alone." Laws, 630C. "Do you now, in turn, keep a watch on my present lawmaking, as you follow it, in case I should enact any law either not tending to virtue at all, or tending only to a part of it. For I lay it down as an axiom that no law is rightly enacted which does not aim always, like an archer, at that object . . ." Laws, 705E. (It is clear that the concept of promulgation is only implicit, as Cairns suggests, Plato "did not develop the idea of promulgation qua promulgation; rather, he took it so much for granted, even to the extent of arranging that the laws should be written in persuasive and readable form, that the idea that there might be secret laws did not occur to him." Cairns, 174, n. 21.)

May all our laws be farious!

THE WORD NEFARIOUS is common enough. The etymology of nefarious is itself interesting, and reveals a gap in our language. The word nefarious comes to us from Latin nefarius, a combination of the negative prefix "ne" (=not) and "fari" (=speak). In Latin, the word nefarius was an adjective derived from the noun nefas, the word for crime or great wickedness. The word nefas is a compound word derived from the combination of ne (not) and fas (right, divine law, divine speech). Fas is perhaps the Western equivalent to the Eastern notion of dharma, or the Greek themis. As St. Isidore defined it in his Etymologies: Fas lex divina est, ius lex humana. Etym. V, ii. 2. Fas is divine law, ius is human law. The Roman historian Livy states in Book 33 of his History of Rome regarding the Isthmian Games and in reference to the Romans: "There is," people said, "one nation which at its own cost, through its own exertions, at its own risk has gone to war on behalf of the liberty of others. It renders this service not to those across its frontiers, or to the peoples of neighbouring States or to those who dwell on the same mainland, but it crosses the seas in order that nowhere in the wide world may injustice and tyranny exist, but that right and equity and law may be everywhere supreme. (ubique ius fas lex potentissima sint) By this single proclamation of the herald all the cities in Greece and Asia recover their liberty." Livy, 33.33, 7. The notion of fas carried with it the notion that there was a law (fas) above the law (lex and ius). Accordingly, someone who was nefarius was someone who engaged in nefas, that is one who was not in accord with, who had departed from, the divine law or divine utterance (fas). In Latin there was a common saying: per fas aut (or et) nefas, meaning through right or wrong, or as we may say it, by hook or by crook.

It is unfortunate that the positive notion of farius did not also come into our language. In other words, though a law may be said to be nefarious, it would be a neologism to say that a law is farious or in accord with divine law. Though the adjective farious is not commonly used in the English as meaning in accord with divine law, it has found its way into common use in the fields of biology or botany. The word farious is used by biologists and botanists in the sense of arrangement, order, or ways. Thus, bifarious is an adjective that describes plants pointing in two ways, or in two rows. The word also finds use in unifarious (one part, row, ordering, or ranks), trifarious (three ranks), quadrifarious (arranged in four ranks), quinquefarious (five), septifarious (seven), and omnifarious, or plurifarious (many orderings or ranks). More commonly, we see the concept in the word multifarious, a word which has found its way in common English usage, and which means including many parts or things, a great multiplicity of parts or ways or orderings.

White Veratrum (Veratrum album)
and its trifariously arranged leaves

Used in its original sense, a nefarious law is no law at all, something with which St. Augustine in his On the City of God, St. Thomas in his Summa Theologiae, or Martin Luther King in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" would be in agreement. A farious law, on the other hand, is a law consonant with divine law, with the natural law. A farious law is one that binds in conscience, for even human law, if consonant with divine law, binds in conscience. A farious law is one that is not crooked or out of the way, but, quite the opposite, is straight, singular, and on the way.

May all our laws be farious!

The Need for Revelation: "Pis-Aller" by Matthew Arnold

IN HIS POEM "PIS ALLER,"* the poet Matthew Arnold writes about the practical need we have for the natural law to be revealed in the divine positive law. Though in theory the natural law is available to all men, regardless of culture and time and place, most men have impediments--individual, cultural, religious, or intellectual--that may frustrate the ability to discern the natural law. Though Arnold would surely have disclaimed it, this practical difficulty also explains the need for the Magisterium, that is, the teaching Church or ecclesia docens, in teaching all men of the existence and the content of the natural law. It is part of the Church's competency to teach about the natural law, and to do so infallibly through God's own promise.

Man is blind because of sin,
Revelation makes him sure;
Without that, who looks within,
Looks in vain, for all's obscure.

Nay, look closer into man!
Tell me, can you find indeed
Nothing sure, no moral plan
Clear prescribed, without your creed?

No, I nothing can perceive!
Without that, all's dark for men.
That, or nothing, I believe.--
For God's sake, believe it then!

This is in accordance with St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching on the natural moral law and the practical need for revelation. In his Summa Theologiae (IaIIae, q. 91, art. 4), St. Thomas states:

Besides the natural and the human law it was necessary for the directing of human conduct to have a Divine law. And this for four reasons, . . . [the second being] because, on account of the uncertainty of human judgment, especially on contingent and particular matters, different people form different judgments on human acts; whence also different and contrary laws result. In order, therefore, that man may know without any doubt what he ought to do and what he ought to avoid, it was necessary for man to be directed in his proper acts by a law given by God, for it is certain that such a law cannot err. [Ut ergo homo absque omni dubitatione scire possit quid ei sit agendum et quid vitandum, necessarium fuit ut in actibus propriis dirigeretur per legem divinitus datam, de qua constat quod non potest errare.]

Matthew Arnold

*"pis aller" is a French word meaning worse (pis) and to go (aller). It means the final recourse or expedient, the last resort, last device, a dernier ressort, or stop gap measure.

Universal Ethic-Perception of Moral Values 1-Introduction

Chapter II: The Perception of Moral Values

36. The examination of the great moral wisdom traditions carried out in the first chapter shows that some types of human conduct are recognized, in the majority of cultures, as expressions of a certain excellence in the manner in which a human being lives and realizes an authentic humanity: acts of courage, patience when tried or in confronting the difficulties of life, compassion toward the weak, moderation in the use of material goods, a responsible attitude in confronting the environment, dedication to the common good . . . . Such ethical behaviors define the grand lines of an ideal, one properly considered moral, of a life “according to nature,” that is to say, one which conforms to the basic nature of the human subject. On the other hand, other kinds of conduct are universally recognized as objects of reproof: murder, theft, lying, anger, lust, greed . . . . These appear to be attacks on the dignity of the human person and to the just requirements of life in society. As a result of such consent, there has been justification in seeing a manifestation that there is something human in the human being, that is to say, a "human nature," regardless of various cultures. But, while such an agreement with respect to the moral quality of some behaviors exists, there coexists at the same time a great variety of explanatory theories. These are addressed in the fundamental doctrines of the Upanishads in Hinduism, or in the four "noble truths" in Buddhism, or in the Dào of Lao-Tse, or in the "nature" of the Stoic. Every school of wisdom or philosophical system includes an effort to understand the moral act within some general framework of explanation which intends to legitimate the distinctions between that which is good and that which is evil. We have to deal with a variety of justifications which renders difficult any dialogue regarding the foundation of normal norms.

37. Nevertheless, independently from the theoretical justifications of concept of natural law, it is possible to discover the immediate data of the conscience to which such justifications seek to render an account. The object of this chapter is precisely to show how common moral values are considered to constitute the natural law. We will see then how the concept of natural law bases itself on an explanatory framework that founds and legitimates moral values in a way that can be shared among many. To do this, the presentation of the natural law in St. Thomas Aquinas appears especially pertinent because, among other things, it places the natural law as the center of a morality which supports the dignity of the human person and recognizes his capacity of discernment.(44)


(44) Cf. Id., Encyclical Veritatis splendor, n. 44: "The Church has resorted often to the Thomist doctrine of the natural law, integrating it into its moral teaching.”

Universal Ethic-Convergences 7-Further Evolution

1.5. Further evolution

28. The modern story of the idea of natural law presents itself in certain aspects like a legitimate development of the teaching of medieval Scholasticism in a more complex cultural context, marked particularly with a greater sensitivity to subjective morality. Following these developments, we may point to the work of the 16th century Spanish theologians who, in the manner of the Dominican Francesco de Vitoria, resorted to the natural law to battle the imperialist ideology of some Christian States of Europe and to defend the rights of the non-Christian peoples of the Americas. In fact, such rights are inherent in human nature, and do not depend on any concrete circumstances or upon the Christian faith. The idea of natural law, moreover, concurred with the Spanish theologians’ efforts in finding the basis, that is, a universal norm, which regulated the relationship between peoples and States


29. But, from another perspective, in the modern period the idea of the natural law assumed an orientation which contributed to making it difficult to accept today. In the last centuries of the middle ages, there developed in the Scholasticism a voluntaristic current, whose cultural hegemony changed deeply the idea of the natural law. Voluntarism aimed at valuing the transcendent nature of the free subject in relation to all other contingencies. Against naturalism, which tended to tie God to the laws of nature, voluntarism sought to highlight the unilateral and absolute freedom of God, at the risk compromising His wisdom and of rendering His decisions arbitrary. In addition, against rationalism, suspected of subduing the human person to the order of the world, it exalted an understanding of liberty of pure indifference, one of pure power to choose the opposite, and thus risked detaching the person from his natural inclinations and the objective good.(34)

30. The results of the voluntarism on the doctrine of the natural law were numerous. First of all, while in St. Thomas of Aquinas the law was understood as a work of reason and an expression of a wisdom, voluntarism resulted in binding the law to the will alone, and to a will detached from its intrinsic ordination to the good. Following that reasoning, all the force of the law was seen to reside solely in the will of the lawgiver. So the law was expropriated of its intrinsic intelligibility. Under such conditions, morality was reduced to obedience to the commandments which disclosed the will of the legislator. Thomas Hobbes would therefore declare: "It is authority, not truth, that makes law” (auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem).(35) Modern man, in love with autonomy, could not rise up against a such vision of law. Thus, on the pretext of protecting the absolute sovereignty of God over nature, voluntarism lost any inner intelligibility. The thesis of the potentia Dei absoluta [absolute power of God], according to which God could work independently from his wisdom and goodness, relativized all existing intelligible structures and weakened the natural knowledge man was able to comprehend. Nature ceased to be a criterion in which one could recognize the wise will of God: man could receive such knowledge only from revelation.

31. From another angle, several factors led to the secularization of the notion of the natural law. Among these, one may mention the increasing divorce between Faith and Reason that characterized the end of the medieval age, and also some aspects of the Reformation, (36) but above all the desire to overcome the violent religious conflicts that bloodied Europe at the dawn of the modern age. There was a desire to find a source for the political unity of the human community, putting between parentheses so to speak, religious confessions. Now the doctrine of the natural law prescinds from any particular religious revelation, and therefore from every confessional theology. It claims to base itself only on the light of reason common to all of men and, presents itself as the ultimate norm in the secular field.

32. Additionally, modern rationalism made the existence of an absolute and normative order of intelligible essences accessible to reason, and entirely relativized their reference to God as the ultimate foundation of the natural law. The necessary order of essences, eternal and immutable, were certainly actualized by God, but, it was believed, they already possessed such coherence and rationality. The reference to God ought to be therefore optional. The natural law may be imposed upon all men "even if God did not exist (etsi Deus not daretur).”(37)

33. The modern rationalist model of the natural law is characterized by: (1) the existential belief in an unchanging and ahistoric human nature, of which reason can select perfectly the definition and the essential properties; (2) the placing between parentheses the concrete situation of the human persons in salvation history, marked by sin, and by grace, whose influence on the knowledge and on the practice of the natural law is however decisive; (3) the ideal that it is possible for reason to deduct a priori the precepts of the natural law from the essential definition of the human being; (4) from the expansive extension given to the principles so deduced, the natural law appears as if it were a code of laws already known, which rules govern almost the entirety of behavior. This tendency of extending the field of the determinations of the natural law existed at the origin of the serious crisis when, particularly with the progress of the human sciences, Western thought became much more conscious of the historicity of human institutions and of the cultural relativity of numerous behaviors that at times were justified by referring to the evidences of the natural law. This difference between a maximalist theory of natural law and the complexity of the empirical data explains in part the disaffection with the idea of a natural law. Because the notion of natural law can serve to elaborate a universal ethic in a secularized an pluralistic society like ours, it is necessary therefore to avoid presenting it in the rigid shape that it assumed, particularly in modern rationalism.

(34) Cf. Benedict XVI, Lecture at Regensburg on the Occasion of the Meeting with the Respresentatives of Science. (12 September 2006), in AAS 98 (2006) 733: "In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach . . . the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions."

(35) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, c. 26 “In the constituted state, the interpretation of the laws of nature do not depend on doctors, on the scribes who address issues of moral philosophy, but on the civil authority. In fact the only possible doctrine that is true is, that authority, not truth, is what makes law.” [Editor's note: the statement auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem is found only in Chapter 26 of Hobbe’s Latin version of Leviathan, not in the English]

(36) The position of the Reformers with regard to the natural law is not monolithic. Those like Martin Luther and John Calvin, being based on St. Paul, recognized the existence of the natural law as an ethical rule, even if is radically incapable of justifying man. "Nothing, indeed is more common, than for man to be sufficiently instructed in a right course of conduct by natural law, of which the Apostle here speaks. . . . .The end of the natural law, therefore, is to render man inexcusable, and may be not improperly defined--the judgment of conscience distinguishing sufficiently between just and unjust, and by convicting men on their own testimony depriving them of all pretext for ignorance." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, c. 2, 22) (Henry Beveridge, trans.). In the three centuries following the Reformation, for the Protestants, the natural law served as the foundation of jurisprudence. Only with the secularization of the natural law in the 19th century, did Protestant theology keep a distance from it. From that time forward there arose an opposition between Protestant and Catholic opinions on the question of the natural law. But today, Protestant ethics seems to be displaying a new interest in the notion of natural law.

(37) This expression has its origin in Hugo Grotius, De iure belli et pacis, Prolegomena: "Haec quidem quae iam diximus locum aliquem haberent, etsi daremus, quod sine summo scelere dari nequit, non esse Deum."

Universal Ethic-Convergences 6-The Development of Christian Tradition

1.4. The development of Christian tradition

26. For the Fathers of the Church the sequi naturam [follow nature] and the sequela Christi [following of Christ] are not opposed. To the contrary, they generally adopted the Stoic idea according to which nature and reason indicated to human beings their moral obligations. To follow nature was to follow the personal Logos, the Word of God. In fact, the doctrine of the natural law supplied a base which biblical morality completed. Moreover, it served to explain how the pagan, independently from biblical revelation, possessed a conception of morality regarded as positive. This is indicated in the view that the teachings of nature corresponded with the teachings of Revelation: "From God come the law of nature and the law of revelation, which are aggregately one."(29) Nevertheless, the Fathers of the Church do not adopt purely and simply the Stoic doctrine, but they modified it and developed it. On the one hand, the anthropology of biblical inspiration sees man as the imago Dei [image of God], the fullness of truth of which was revealed in Christ, and this concept prohibited reducing the human person to a simple element of the cosmos. Called to communion with the living God, humankind transcended the cosmos simply by integrating itself in it. On the other hand, the harmony of nature and of reason was not founded upon the immanent vision of a pantheistic cosmos, but on the common reference to the transcendent wisdom of the Creator. To act in accordance with reason meant to follow the orientation that Christ, as divine Logos, had placed in man through the logoi spermatikoi [seeds of the Word] in the human reason. To act against reason constituted an offense against this orientation. Very significant is the definition of St. Augustine: "The eternal law is the divine reason or the will of God, which commands preservation of the natural order and forbids its disturbance."(30) More precisely, according to St. Augustine, the rules of a straight life and of justice are expressed in the Word of God, which imprints them in the heart of man "in the manner a seal that is impressed upon wax from signet ring without leaving the ring."(31) In addition, in the Fathers the natural law was included within the ambit of salvation history, which distinguished different states of nature (original nature, fallen nature, restored nature), in which the natural law is realized in diverse manners. The patristic doctrine of the natural law was transmitted to the medieval age, together with the related concept of the “right of the people (ius gentium)," according to which there existed, outside the Roman law (ius civile), universal principles of right or law which regulated the relations between all peoples and were obligatory upon all.(32)

27. In the medieval age the doctrine of natural law reached a certain maturity, and took on a “classic” form, which constitutes the background of all the discussions that follow. It was characterized by four elements. In the first place, in conformity with the nature of scholastic thought that sought to obtain truth from wherever it could be found, it assumed the previous reflections on the natural law, pagan or Christian, and attempted to propose a synthesis. In the second place, in conformity with the systematic nature of the scholastic thought, it placed the natural law in a general metaphysical and theological framework. The natural law was understood to be a participation of the rational creature in the divine eternal law, thanks to which he entered in a knowing and free manner in the designs of Providence. The natural law was not considered a completely closed and entire set of moral rules, but a source of constant inspiration, present and operative in the various stages of the economy of salvation. In third place, with the place of conscience in the proper weighing of man's nature, which was in part tied to the rediscovery of Aristotelian thought, the scholastic doctrine of the natural law considered the ethical and political order as an order of reason, a work of human intelligence. It defined for itself an autonomous place, distinct yet not separate, in relation to the order of religious revelation.(33) Lastly, to the eyes of the theologians and of the scholastic jurists, the natural law constituted a point of reference and a criterion in light of which the legitimacy of the positive laws and of particular customs could be assessed.

(29) Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, I, c. 29, 182, 1 [«Sources chrétiennes», 30, 176].


(30) St. Augustine, Contra Faustum, XXII, c. 27 [PL 42, col. 418]: "Lex vero aeterna est ratio divina vel voluntas Dei, ordinem naturalem conservari iubens, perturbari vetans. For example, St. Augustine condemns the lie, because it goes directly against the nature of language and its role in being the sign of thought; cf. Enchiridion, VII, 22 [Corpus christianorum, Latin series, 46, 62]: "Now clearly, language, in its proper function, was developed not as a means whereby men could deceive one another, but as a medium through which a man could communicate his thought to others. Wherefore to use language in order to deceive, and not as it was designed to be used, is a sin." (Albert C. Outler, trans.)(Et utique verba propterea sunt instituta non per quae invicem se homines fallant sed per quae in alterius quisque notitiam cogitationes suas perferat. Verbis ergo uti ad fallaciam, non ad quod instituta sunt, peccatum est.).

(31) St. Augustine, De Trinitate, XIV, XV, 21 [Corpus christianorum, series latina, 50 A, 451]: "Where indeed are these rules written, wherein even the unrighteous recognizes what is righteous, wherein he discerns that he ought to have what he himself has not? Where, then, are they written, unless in the book of that Light which is called Truth? Whence every righteous law is copied and transferred (not by migrating to it, but by being as it were impressed upon it) to the heart of the man that works righteousness; as the impression from a ring passes into the wax, yet does not leave the ring. (Arthur West Haddan, trans.) (Ubinam sunt istae regulae scriptae, ubi quid sit iustum et iniustus agnoscit, ubi cernit habendum esse quod ipse non habet? Ubi ergo scriptae sunt, nisi in libro lucis illius quae veritas dicitur, unde omnis lex iusta describitur et in cor hominis qui operatur iustitiam non migrando sed tamquam imprimendo transfertur, sicut imago ex anulo et in ceram transit et anulum non relinquit?).

32) Cf. Gaius, Institutes, 1. 1 (II sec. d.C.) (ed. J. Reinach, «Collection des universités de France», Paris, 1950, 1): "Quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id apud omnes populos peraeque custoditur vocaturque ius gentium, quasi quo iure omnes gentes utuntur. Populus itaque romanus partim suo proprio, partim communi omnium hominum iure utitur."

(33) St. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes clearly the political order whose natural foundation is reason, and the religious and supernatural order founded upon the grace of revelation. He puts himself in opposition to the Muslim and Hebrew medieval philosophers that attributed to revelation an essential political role. Cf. Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 12, a. 3, ad 11: "The society of men, inasmuch as it is ordered to the end of eternal life can preserve itself only with the laws of belief, whose start is prophecy. [...] But since this end is supernatural, or its laws ordered to such end, or prophecy is its foundation, it will be supernatural. Instead, the law by which human society ought to be governed is ordained to the civil good, and it obtains its basis with the principle of natural right placed in man. (Societas hominum secundum quod ordinatur ad finem vitae aeternae, non potest conservari nisi per iustitiam fidei, cuius principium est prophetia [...] Sed cum hic finis sit supernaturalis, et iustitia ad hunc finem ordinata, et prophetia, quae est eius principium, erit supernaturalis. Iustitia vero per quam gubernatur societas humana in ordine ad bonum civile, sufficienter potest haberi per principia iuris naturalis homini indita.)

Boardman Robinson on St. Thomas Aquinas

THE DEPICTION of St. Thomas Aquinas below is from Boardman Robinson's murals in the Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C., named the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building. Found in the lobby of that building, it is part of the series entitled "Great Codifiers of the Law." Though not in any traditional sense a "codifier" of laws, St. Thomas must be considered one of the great synthesizers of the law, particularly the Natural Law and its relationship to the Eternal Law (upwards) and to human law (downwards). St. Thomas's "Treatise on Law" is a masterful synopsis of these issues, and is one of the first places anyone should turn to in trying to understand the doctrine of Natural Law.

Boardman Robinson (1876-1952), a contemporary Canadian-American artist, was highly regarded for his book illustrations, cartoons, and other artwork, including murals. Some of his notable illustrations include Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (Random House, 1933), The Idiot (Random House, 1933), Shakespeare’s “King Lear” (Limited Editions Club, 1939), Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology (Limited Editions Club, 1942), Hermann Melville’s Moby Dick (Limited Editions Club, 1943), and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (Random House, 1944). Robinson’s murals include the Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C. (completed 1937), the Rockefeller Center in New York City, Kaufmann’s Department Store in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (“History of Commerce,” on canvas with automobile paint, 1928-29), and the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, Colorado (completed 1931), the Colorado Springs, Colorado Fine Arts Center (completed 1936), and the Englewood, Colorado Post Office (completed in 1940).

St. Thomas Aquinas: Definition of Law, Promulgation

THE LAST REQUISITE for there to be a law--in addition to it being a rule of reason, issued by proper authority, and for the common good of a perfect society--is that it be promulgated. Thomas insists that promulgation is essential to law. Roman law insisted on promulgation as essential. And St. Thomas agrees with the Gratian Decretals (Distinctio IV, C. III.) which stated that "laws are established when they are promulgated" (leges instituuntur, cum promulgantur)



St. Thomas argues that since law involves a rule or measure, it must be imposed upon those who are to be ruled and measured by it. This requires knowledge, and so for the rule to be binding, the men and women that will be subjected to it have to be notified by promulgation. In a human context, not everyone will be present at the law's promulgation; some persons will be absent, and some may not even be born. Nevertheless, they would be bound to the law despite not being present during its promulgation. Though the law requires promulgation, they are bound by notice of it, either of the promulgation itself or notice of the law having been promulgated. The promulgation that takes place at one point in time extends to the future as a result of it being written. The fact that law is written means that it is "continually promulgated" (semper eam promulgat). It is for this reason, St. Thomas says, that Isidore of Seville stated in his Etymologies (v, 3; ii, 10) that "law (lex) is derived from "to read" (legere) because it is written" (lex a legendo vocata est, quia scripta est) See ST IaIIae, Q. 90, art.4.

Even the Natural Law is promulgated. The Natural Law is promulgated by God in the very fact that God instilled it into the mind or "heart" of man so as to be known by him naturally. ST IaIIae, Q. 90, art. 4, ad.1.

St. Thomas Aquinas: Definition of Law, Authority

THE COMMON GOOD is the "first and foremost" (primo et principaliter) ordering which underlies law. We explored this in yesterday's posting. The fact that law is ordered is toward the common good suggests that only the "whole people" (totius multitudinis) who will be governed by it. Naturally, the "whole people" can be represented by someone who acts in their place and in their interest, a "viceregent" (gerentis vicem totius multitudinis). How the authority of the "whole people" is conveyed to any particular "viceregent" is not addressed by St. Thomas in these series of questions in the Summa Theologica. But regardless, it is the publically-recognized authority that has the right to issue laws. Reason alone does not make law, and so it does not belong to an individual qua individual to make law; it must be the reason of those in authority that makes law. ST IaIIae, Q. 90, art. 3, resp.

St. Thomas agrees with Aristotle that the intention of the lawgiver ought to lead men to virtue. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ii.1 Though an individual man (say a teacher, or priest) can held lead a man to virtue, unlike the lawgiver he has no coercive power to create an efficacious inducement to a life of virtue. Nicomachean Ethics, x. 9. Similarly, though a father may be head of his family, and he may issue orders or commands (aliqua praecepta vel statuta), these are not properly called laws (lex). Only the whole people, or the person to whom the whole people have assented to act on their behalf, have the authority to compel obedience, and, in a manner of speaking, to lead the population to virtue. ST IaIIae, Q.90, art. 3, resp.2, 3. That authority is found in a perfect community or society (communitas perfecta). ST IaIIae, Q.90, art. 3, resp.3.

Note:

The term "perfect society" or "perfect community" referred to by St. Thomas Aquinas does not mean a utopia, such as described by St. Thomas More in his Utopia, or by Plato in his Republic. This term is used differently in this context. The concept of the "perfect society" or "perfect community" (societas or communitas perfecta) in this context is one associated with political philosophy. A perfect society is a group that is self-sufficient or independent in its realm and has all necesary resources and conditions required to achieve its purposes. A society must thus be perfect in its end and in its means. A society perfect in its end is a society with a human purpose, complete and entire, that is, within its own order, sovereign, and so not subordinate to any higher good. A society perfect in its means is a society that has within its possession and control the means by which to achieve this purpose. In both end and means, the State is a perfect society, as is the Church founded by Christ. In his Apostolic Letter issued motu proprio and entitled Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum (1969), Pope Paul VI gave a good summary of the concept:

It is indisputable that the ends of Church and State belong to different orders, and that both are perfect societies, that is to say, they are independent in their respective spheres of action, and have proper means to achieve those ends. They possess their proper jurisdiction and all necessary means to achieve their ends. On the other hand, it must not be overlooked that they are both aiming at a similar welfare, namely that the people of God is to obtain eternal salvation . . .

Neque est infitiandum finem Ecclesiae et Rebus Publicis propositum diversi esse ordinis, atque Ecclesiam et Civitatem, in suo cuiusque ordine, esse societates perfectas, ac propriis inde pollere iuribus et mediis, suisque uti legibus, quacumque uniuscuiusque patet provincia. At verum est etiam utramque ad communis subiecti utilitatem agere, scilicet hominis, a Deo vocati ad salutem adipiscendam aeternam . . . .

Click here for a copy of Paul VI's motu proprio, Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum.

St. Thomas Aquinas: Definition of Law, Reason

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St. Thomas Aquinas's Definition of Law

IN AN OFT-QUOTED DEFINITION, St. Thomas Aquinas defines law as "nothing other than a certain dictate of reason (rationis ordinatio) for the common good, made by him who has the care of the community and promulgated." ST. IaIIae, Q.90, art.4. Perhaps the most significant emphasis of this definition is that law is based upon reason, and not upon custom, will, politics, or power. Therefore, St. Thomas is clearly outside the voluntaristic camp, those who, like the medieval Ockham, sought the essence of law in God's will as distinguished from His reason. Similarly, he departs from those who suggest a command theory of law, the most notable of these being perhaps John Austin (1790–1859) who, seeking to disassociate the law from precepts of morality, in his The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832) defined law as the command of the sovereign backed by sanctions. St. Thomas Aquinas's emphasis on the practical reason as a source of substantive values also distinguishes him from philosophers such as David Hume, who rejected the role of practical reason in legislation, as he found it only instrumental ("Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions," Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.3.4). Similarly, the German jurisprudential scholar Rudolf von Jhering, who, in his Der Zweck im Recht, saw law as merely a "means to an end" without substantive component other than the convenience of the society works outside St. Thomas's frame of reference. Although St. Thomas recognizes the role of customary law, in it focal meaning, law is more than that which merely what steps out of the practice (Übung), conventions (Sitte), and customs (Gewonhneit) of a society, something that rises from an inner, silently-working forces, the innere, stillwirkende Kräfte, of a people's consciousness. St. Thomas would therefore not be in agreement with the likes of Frederich Carl von Savigny. The concept of law envisioned by St. Thomas radically departs from the Critical Legal Studies school which claims that law is indeterminate, and ultimately that "law is politics" and nothing else. Similarly, Michel Foucalt's view that all law is nothing but power is rejected by St. Thomas Aquinas in his definition of law.

It is not that these other theories do not have some truth to them, and perhaps in some fashion they even adequately explain law, or its abuse, or a certain characteristic of it, in certain times and places. They may be valuable in ascertaining law in a loose sense, or in a sense which is not its focal sense, i.e., its sensu lato. For St. Thomas, however, the issue was what the definition of law was in sensu stricto, in its principal focal meaning. For St. Thomas, the kernel, heart, and soul of the law is reason, above all other things. Thus, a "law" may be a command of the sovereign, may be the result of the political process, may be issued by the powerful against the weak, may be perfectly customary, and yet--if it does not conform to reason--it is not law in the strict sense. Rather, though it may have indicia of being a "law," it ought, in fact, be considered tantamount to violence. ST IaIIae, Q. 93, art. 3, ad. 2.

The Eternal Law: Creation, the Wicked, and God

The relationship between the Eternal Law and creation, on the one hand, and God, on the other, is addressed by St. Thomas in Article 4 of Question 93 of the Summa Theologica. Since the Eternal Law is the "type" or ratio of the Divine governance, it follows that whatever is subject to Divine governance is subject to the Eternal Law. What of God? Is God subject to the Eternal Law? What about the evil who disobey the Eternal Law? Are they subject to the Eternal Law who refuse to abide by it? In responding to these questions, St. Thomas insists in God’s absolute freedom. He comes to the conclusions that God—Father, Son, and (by implication) the Holy Spirit—are not subject to the Eternal Law, but in fact may be said to be the Eternal Law. All other creatures, including Christ’s human nature, are subject to the Eternal Law. Even the wicked are willy nilly subject to the Eternal Law.

In handling these issues, St. Thomas bases himself on an analogy predicated upon human government. Thomas observes that those things that man does, and over which he has control, are subject to human law. But matters that relate to his intrinsic nature--for example that he should have soul, or hands, or feet--are not subject to human law. It is apparent that no ruler could decree a change in the fundamental nature of man. Though a law may be fashioned that will force a man to board a plane, no law will ever give man natural wings. While a man may be sentenced to death by hanging under human law, there is no ukase that can effect that man shall no longer have a body. There are some things that are simply outside of the scope of man’s legislative competence.

By analogical reasoning, then, Aquinas concludes that the Eternal Law governs all things created by God whether "contingent or necessary." This means that not only man, who by God's design is a creature that is to be governed by reason, but all creation operates under the Eternal Law. This includes the irrational creatures--stars, planets, rocks, trees, and animals--though they participate in the Eternal Law in a manner less noble than man (since they do not enjoy the reason or freedom that man does). ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.5, resp.

In this regard, St. Thomas observes, human laws operate in a manner differently than the Eternal Law. Human law only extends to humans, and cannot be said to operate or bind irrational creation. Even though the irrational creature is subject to man’s control and dominion, human law requires a subject upon which the law may be imprinted and which recognizes a rule of action. Though a ruler is able to issue laws that bind his subjects in this manner, he is unable to do so for the irrational creation that may be found in his domain. Irrational creation cannot be controlled by man by law, though it be controlled by him through technology. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.5, resp.

This limitation in man’s law, is not to be found with God. As Creator, God imprints upon all of his creation the principles of their proper action, and so all of creation is subject to Eternal Law. The Divine Reason and Will are substantially different than man’s reason and will, and so God is able to extend His Eternal Law across the whole of creation and imprint itself among both rational and irrational creation alike. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.5, ad.1, 2. “And thus all actions and movements of the whole of nature are subject to eternal law.” IaIIae, Q.93, art.5, resp. Though there is no part of the created world that can claim independence from God’s Eternal Law, the manner in which the that Law applies to rational creatures is distinct from the way it applies to irrational creation:

[I]rrational creatures are subject to the eternal law, through being moved by Divine providence; but not as rational creatures are, through understanding of the Divine commandment.

IaIIae, Q.93, art.5, resp.

Since man has a dual nature—participating in the rational world, but sharing animal functions with brute animals—he participates in the Eternal Law in two ways. The first way of participation is through understanding, that is through his knowledge of the Eternal Law. As we explained in prior posts, this knowledge would be obtained through Revelation or through the application of his reason to the expression of God’s law found in the created order. The second way that man participates in the Eternal Law is through a natural inclination toward that which would be consonant with the Eternal Law. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art. 6, resp. Man's sensitity to the Eternal Law (particularly as it finds promulgation in him through the Natural Law) is thus both one of Reason and one of inclination. It is not a Law of pure Reason, such as one advanced by René Descartes or Immanuel Kant. Nor is it a Law of pure Instict or Impulse, such as may have been advanced by David Hume. The Eternal Law manifests itself in man in the fullness of his created nature, that is as a being that is soul and body incarnate.

Even the wicked cannot escape from being subject to God’s law, though they disobey it. In the wicked, the knowledge of the Eternal Law can be darkened by bad habits and disordered passion, and the natural inclination towards the Law can be vitiated by vice. These can exercise such an influence over the mind and natural inclinations that they can be virtually destroyed. On the other hand, both knowledge and inclination can be developed by the good through knowledge of faith and wisdom, the development of virtuous habits, and, above all, God's Grace. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art. 6, resp. There will be varying degrees of subjection to the Eternal Law, the good being more nearly subject to the Eternal Law compared to the wicked, who are subject to the Eternal Law in an imperfect manner, and whose subjection shows itself more along the lines of suffering punishment or an interior disorder or lack of harmony, perhaps to show itself in neurotic behaviors. The wicked can never claim absolute emancipation from the Eternal Law, for to do so he would effectively have to destroy his entire nature; accordingly, even in the most evil, there will always remain some inclination toward the Eternal Law of God. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.6, ad. 2. Indeed, even the damned, in their unhappy state, are under the Eternal Law. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.6, ad. 3. "If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there." Si ascendero in caelum tu illic es, se descendero ad infernum ades. (Ps. 138:8) What to the good is a comfort (God's abiding presence and rule), to the wicked must seem oppressive.

The Christian remains under the Eternal Law of God, though in a manner of speaking he may be said to be out from under the Law, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians. See Gal. 5:18. According to St. Thomas, what St. Paul meant in writing so to the Galatians is that the Christian will not obey the Law because of fear, and he will not view it as a burden or imposition on his will or a loss of his freedom; rather, the Christian will ideally fulfill the law in willing joy, encouraged by the love of God in his heart, and the promptings of the Holy Spirit. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art. 6, ad. 1. In this manner, he may be said to be released from the Eternal Law because he lives the life of God. In fact, to the extent the Christian does the work of the Holy Spirit, he may be said to have acted outside the Eternal Law, because the Holy Spirit, being God, is not subject to the Eternal Law of God. Hence: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” 2 Cor. 3:17. The liberty of the Christian is not one from theonomianism to antinomianism; it is one from theonomianism supernomianism. It is not leaving the Law to a state of lawlessness; it is leaving the Law to be above it.

Though all creation—rational and irrational—is subject to the Eternal Law, it is different with God. Just as man cannot legislate regarding his own nature, so things that pertain to God's Nature, such as God's Will and His Essence, are not subject to the Eternal Law. And indeed, this follows from the fact that God is the Eternal Law itself. ST IaIIae, Q. 93, art.4, resp. Thus, St. Thomas rejects the notion that God's Will is subject to Eternal Law. "[S]ince God's will is His very Essence, it is subject neither to the Divine government, nor to the eternal law, but is the same thing as the eternal law." ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.4, ad.1.

St. Thomas also addresses the relationship between the promulgation of the Eternal Law by God the Father and the Divine Word, that is, God the Son. Since God the Son shares in God’s nature, it follows that He is not subject to the Eternal Law, but is the same thing as the Eternal Law. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.2, ad. 1, 2. St. Thomas argues that since the Word expresses all things that are in the Father's knowledge, "the eternal law itself is expressed" by the Word of God, not, however as a "Personal name in God," but by appropriation to the Son because the relationship (convenientiam) between "type and word," the ratio and verbum. ST IaIIae, Q.93, art.2, ad.2; see also Q. 93, art.4, ad.2. Jesus, who is the Word of God Incarnate, would not be subject to Eternal Law in his divinity, but in his humanity, he would be "subject to the Father by reason of His human nature," and therefore would be governed by the Eternal Law. ST, IaIIae, Q. 93, art.4, ad.2. Because the Word of God expresses the Eternal Law, it may justly be said that Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, expresses for us the Eternal Law in His divinity, and, in His humanity, He expresses for us complete fidelity to the Eternal Law. In Christ we have both the Eternal Law and obedience to the Eternal Law made manifest for us.

Similarly, the Holy Spirit, sharing as He does in God's Nature, is not subject to the Eternal Law. ST, IaIIae, Q.93, art.6, ad.1.



In his book An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (1652), Nathanael Culverwell calls the Eternal Law "the spring and original of all Lawes ... that fountain of Law, out of which you may see the Law of Nature bubbling and flowing forth to the sons of men." (Culverwell, 35). This English divine is on good ground, for he relied upon the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica for his guidance: "For as Aquinas does very well tell us, the Law of Nature is nothing but participatio Legis aeternae in Rationali creatura, the copying out of the eternal Law, and the imprinting of it upon the breast of a Rational being, that eternal Law was in a manner incarnated in the Law of Nature." Culverwell, 35.

The Natural Law is an expression, a particularization, a "copying out" of the Eternal Law in the rational creature that is man. Because of this intimate relationship, it follows that, now that we have focused on the Eternal Law, the Lex Aeterna, we may approach the Natural Law as it has been summarized by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica.