Duns Scotus: On Synderesis and Conscience

THE NOTION OF SYNDERESIS AS A SORT OF antechamber of conscience, the scintilla conscientiae or spark of conscience, has an interesting history. Some time ago, we had a posting on St. Jerome's contribution on the natural law, and, as part of it, we discussed his injection of the notion of synderesis. See St. Jerome on the Natural Law: The Scintilla of Conscience. In his discussion on Duns Scotus's understanding of synderesis and conscience, Allan Wolter has a good synopsis of this word's curious history:

St. Jerome, in the opening chapter of his Commentary on Ezechiel (PL 25, 22B), is credited with introducing the Greek term "synteresis" into Latin, referring to it as the spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae) which even Cain's sin could not eradicate from his nature. Derived from the Greek verb "syntereo" (to watch closely, to preserve or keep safe) it seems to have been nothing more than a poetic way of describing conscience. According to De Blic (1949), it was a medieval scribe who made the error of writing "synteresis" (conservation) for "syneidesis" (conscience) in copying Jerome's work on Ezechiel. The error was incorporated into the popular Glossa ordinaria and, through Peter Lombard's Sentences, passed on to the scholastic theologians, who speculated as to its exact nature, usually giving it a special function distinct from conscience.

Wolter, 45. The Scholastics, then, disputed what exactly synderesis was: how it was different from, or how it was related to, conscience; what its role was in the moral life; what its relationship was with the human will, with the human intellect; what its role was with respect to moral habits; and so forth.

With respect to whether synderesis resided principally in the intellect or principally in the will, Wolter gives a quick, if undetailed, summary of the issue:

Peter Lombard cites various views as to what "weights human nature towards good." Referring to Jerome's commentary, he says: "Man is rightly said to will good naturally, because he was established with a good and right will. For the higher 'spark of reason,' which also, as Jerome says, 'could not be extinguished in Cain,' always wills good and hates evil." (Sent. II, dist. 39) This suggests that synderesis might be either in the intellect or in the will or simply in the soul as possessing both.

Wolter, 45.

Since Peter Lombard was rather vague on the location of synderesis--in the will, in the intellect, or somehow in both--commentators on his Sentences naturally took different positions:

In one of the first known commentaries on Peter's book, attributed to Udo (Lottin, 1948, pp. 107-8), synderesis is identified with Augustine's ratio superior.* One of the first Franciscan masters at Paris, John of La Rochelle, went along with this interpretation of Udo. St. Bonaventure, on the other hand, interprets conscience as a habit of practical intellect, which inclines a person to know both general principles of moral rectitude and the goodness or badness of particular actions, whereas he sees synderesis as the "weight of the will whose function is to incline it towards the good in itself" (II Sent., dist. 39, art 2, q. 1; Opera II, p. 910).

Wolter, 46.

Blessed Duns Scotus

Scotus does not follow St. Bonaventure in assigning synderesis to the will. Following Bonaventure, Scotus could have identified his affectio justitiae with synderesis.** But Scotus viewed synderesis as having a role in the intellect, in its formation, prior to any act of will and its inclination towards the good in any free, elicited act. Scotus sees synderesis as nothing other than the practical intellect viewed from the perspective of making judgments based upon general moral principles. Synderesis is distinguished from conscience, since the latter is concerned with particular, concrete actions. Conscience follows synderesis. So while synderesis is not for Scotus as it was for Bonaventure the "weight of the will" which inclines to the good, he did view it as being a component in the prior act of intellect which was a "stimulus to good," particular when the will operated under its superior affectio justitiae, in which the person sought the good in itself, and not the lower affectio commodi, where the person sought the good for himself.

Scotus discusses these issues in his Ordinatio II, dist. 39, qq. 1-2, where he address Peter Lombard's Sentences (II, dist. 39). He asks the question, "Is synderesis in the will?" and then fashions arguments for this position and against this position, ultimately deciding that synderesis is in the practical intellect, and not in the will.

The first argument that Scotus advances as suggestive that synderesis is in the will, and not in the intellect is that synderesis "always protests against evil," and since "protest pertains to the will," it follows that synderesis must be something found in the will and not the intellect. But against this position, Scotus notes that the protest of synderesis arises because "it shows what good ought to be willed," and it is this intellectual showing that is the "occasion for protesting against evil," so it is something intellectual in nature, prior to the exercise of the will.

The second argument that might suggest that synderesis is something in the will is the notion that synderesis is understood to be "that whereby man necessarily is inclined to justice." Since St. Anselm teaches that inclinations toward what is advantageous (affectio commodi) is something in the will and it is willed necessarily, it seems to follow that inclinations to what is just (affectio justitiae) would also be something in the will. But Scotus distinguishes between these inclinations. As we have seen, Scotus divides the human will into two wills: natural will and free will. Free will, which is the power to act freely, is free to chose course between something that is advantageous to it and something that may not be advantageous to it, but rather is something that is just and contrary to its advantage. St. Anselm's statement, then, that the will wills its advantage necessarily mus be understood to refer to the natural will, which necessarily wills its own advantage, and not to the free will which can chose justice. Synderesis relates not to the natural will, but to the elicited act, and so it is something that is unrelated to the natural will that seeks its own advantage.

Similarly, St. Augustine's understanding of the will as something which necessarily inclines towards its own happiness. (Scotus refers to St. Augustine's De Trinitae, XIII.5) It would seem that our inclination towards justice is something similar to the inclination we have towards happiness. Since synderesis is what inclines a man to justice, it would suggest to be something that resides in the will. Scotus counters this argument in the same manner that he counters the argument from St. Anselm. He distinguishes between the natural will (which necessarily wills happiness defined as one's advantage) from the free will (which does not necessarily will either its advantage or justice, but is free to choose one or the other). Synderesis, then, relates not to the natural will, but to the free will, to an elicited, and not a determined and necessary, act.

Finally, Scotus argues that synderesis could be thought to be something related in the will through an argument based upon analogy. Irrational natures tend necessarily to fulfill their natures. The will, then, ought to have some similarity to this, and the "will too will have a principle necessarily inclining it towards the justice it is suited by nature to have." But this is to confuse natures. The nature of irrational objects is not free, whereas it is the dignity of rational natures to be free. So it is improper to analogize from the necessary nature of irrational creation to the free nature of rational creation. Synderesis, then, cannot be part of determined nature.

Scotus takes the position that synderesis is not something of the will, but is something that pertains to the intellect. This, he argues, is the meaning of Peter Lombard's text: "synderesis represents the higher portion of reason," to Lombard, and so it follows that "synderesis is in the intellect which is concerned with contemplation or the theoretical." Ordinatio II, dist. 39 (Wolter, 162)

Scotus also discusses conscience in this distinction. There are some arguments that might be made that conscience is something that pertains to the will. For example, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (13:18) mention is made of "good conscience." Since goodness pertains to the will (one speaks of a good will, not necessarily of a good intellect), this suggests that conscience pertains to the will. But against this, Scotus argues goodness is also attributed to habits of the practical intellect, and not only the will. Granted, goodness, when used of the practical intellect, refers to suitability to the will of what the practical intellect determines is right. So a good will pertains to a right practical intellect. Sometimes the notion of good is thus transferred from the will to the practical intellect. Such expressions sometimes go the other way, so we speak of a right will, though in reality it is the practical intellect that is right, the good will being right because it is in accord with the right as presented by the practical intellect.

Another argument that might be used to argue that conscience is something that is found in the will and not the intellect is that if conscience pertains to the intellect, then one would expect that the more one knew, the more conscientious that person would be. But this is not our experience, since we know that mere knowledge does not lead to conscientiousness. This would suggest that conscience then is not something pertaining to the intellect. Against this position, however, it also known that the will can act against what the practical reason presents to it as good. There are people, as Aristotle pointed out in his Ethics, that can recite the teachings of the philosopher Empedocles even while under the influence of passion. Failure to do what is right, then, may not be a defect of the intellect, but it could be a defect of the will. Therefore, the fact that someone with knowledge of the right may not do the right does not suggest that conscience is something in the will.

Ultimately, Scotus teaches that both synderesis and conscience pertain to the intellect, and not to the will. For Scotus, the free will and the elicited act is never necessary. It neither necessarily tends towards good or necessarily resists evil. To suggest that the will is compelled to do good would mean that there could be no sin. If synderesis always proposes what is right, and always opposes what is wrong, then it is not something that pertains to the free will, and so must be something that relates to the practical intellect. It is something that is proposed to the free will, and the free will can either act in conformity with it or act against it. Likewise, conscience is something that pertains to the intellect. For Scotus, conscience "is produced deductively by way of a practical syllogism." Conscience is not something innate, nor is it some sort of power in the soul; rather, conscience "represents an evident conclusion inferred from first practical principles." Ordinatio II, dist. 39 (Wolter, 164) Clearly, for Scotus, the conscience does not pertain to any appetitive habit or will, but is something that pertains to the practical intellect.

If synderesis is assumed to be something having an elicited act that necessarily and at all times inclines one to act justly and resit sin, then since nothing of this sort is in the will, we cannot assume it to be there. Consequently, it is in the intellect, and it cannot be assumed to be anything other than the habitual knowledge of principles which is always right. For the intellect, in virtue of its own natural light, assents to these principles immediately on the strength of their terms. And then, insofar as it depends in part upon the intellect, the free will is apt by nature to choose in accord with these principles, though such a choice may fail to follow insofar as the other, the principal cause, freely chooses otherwise, because there is no necessitating cause involved here.

According to this line of reasoning, we can also assume that conscience is the habit of making proper practical conclusion, according to which a right choice of what is to be done is apt by nature to follow, and hence it can be called a stimulus to good, insofar as free choice, as a whole, has one partial cause [practical knowledge] disposing it correctly and a volition that is right and good will follow unless there is a defect in the other partial concurring cause needed for willing.

Ordinatio II, dist. 39 (Wolter, 164-65).

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*In Book XII of his De Trinitate, St. Augustine divides human reason into ratio inferior and ratio superior, which is analogous to the difference between knowledge (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia). Ratio inferior is concerned with inferior, temporal, contingent matters (quae intendit temporalibus), while the ratio superior is concerned with metaphysical or eternal matters, most notably, God (quae intendit aeternis conspiciendis aut consulendis). See also St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T. Ia, q. 79, a. 9.
**On Scotus's notion of affectio justitiae and affectio commodi, see Duns Scotus, Proto-Existentialist.

De Testimonio Quatuor Testibus: Conscientia Profunda

IN EVERY HUMAN SCIENCE THERE must be some first principles, else we could never know anything. Knowledge builds upon knowledge, not upon nothing. As the pursuit of any knowledge requires some knowledge, else we would have no basis for starting. In the moral sciences, we have self-evident principles, the foundational principles upon which all thinking is based, and the the acceptance of which is not an article of faith, but a presupposition of reason, of rationality itself. To reject the first principles is to reject the life of reason entirely; it is to condemn oneself to absurdity, to unreality. It is, in fact, a form of insanity, not to mention a basal viciousness, to reject the reality of these first principles.

How is it that we know these first principles? In Budziszewski's presentation, he denominates the sources of these first principles as "witnesses," and he identifies four of them: the "witness of deep conscience," the "witness of design as such," the "witness of our own design," and the "witness of natural consequences." See Budziszewski (2003), 78-106.

We shall address each witness in the next four postings, beginning with the first such witness in this posting, namely the witness of "deep conscience."

Budzeszewski distinguishes between conscience in general and conscience as an"interior witness to the foundational principles of moral law." The latter is what St. Thomas called synderesis, although it also included "everyday moral rules which are both known to everyone, but which, strictly speaking, are derived." Budziszewski (2003), 79. The "deep conscience" therefore includes the most fundamental of all principles (synderesis, strictly so called) and those principles immediately derived from the foundational principles (the "belt of synderesis"). It consequently includes such self-evident principles as good ought to be done and evil avoided, gratuitous harm ought to be avoided, one ought to be fair, one ought to do unto others as one would want done to oneself (the "Golden Rule"), and so forth. It includes basic values recognized as good: friendship, life, reason, knowledge, etc. But it also includes those immediately derived principles based upon those foundational principles such as one should not murder, one should not lie, and one should not commit adultery. In Budziszewski's nomenclature, "Deep conscience, then, includes both synderesis and the belt of synderesis." Budzeszewski (2003), 79.

The other part of conscience, which Budzeszewski calls "surface conscience," is conscious moral belief, derived from syllogistic reasoning, and one which reaches into the"upper stories of moral law," that is, it is several steps removed from the self-evident principles found in "Deep Conscience." Surface Conscience is distinguishable from Deep Conscience because it can be erroneous, it can be warped, it can be squelched, it can be perverted. It includes what St. Thomas would have called the determinations or determinationes of the natural moral law. The Deep Conscience, on the other hand, is unerasable. It is that which we cannot not know. "[D]eep conscience cannot be erased, cannot be mistaken, and is the same in every human being." Budzeszewski (2003), 80. It can, unfortunately, be suppressed. "The only way to tamper with it is self-deception."

Budziszewski identifies nine ways in which Surface Conscience can be foiled.

1. insufficient experience
2. insufficient skill
3. slot
4. corrupt custom
5. passion
6. fear
   
7. wishful thinking
8. depraved ideology
9. malice

Deep conscience is the "tell-tale heart" of man. It is what feeds the furies of conscience,who will not be tamed. It is the "hound of heaven" that chased Raskolinikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment following his murder of the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, though he insisted that as a great man he was free from the ties of the moral law that bound his lessers. Above all, Deep Conscience is not feelings, it is "knowledge," a rational part of man, an intellectual feltness, as it were, which "darkly asserts itself," if one has the temerity to disclaim its existence, "regardless of the state of feelings."

Being and Natural Law: Moral Obligation

AS WE DISCUSSED IN OUR PRIOR POST, man is determined, is under an intrinsic compulsion, to seek the universal good, but has freedom in choosing particular goods. In looking about him, man, who is but one analogate of the analogon of being and the analogon of the good, is himself but a particular good among particular goods. He observes, however, that there are some particular goods, some analogates of being, namely himself and his fellow men and women, that participate in being, and hence in the good, in a more remarkable way. In humans "being has a voice," and good is sought in freedom. In these analogates of being, being and good is capable of being intellected, appreciated, held inside, and shown outside, and communicated with in a more particular way. Being and good is intellectually present in one's self and in one's fellow men in a manner in which no other particular goods--animal, vegetable, or mineral, or other tangible or intangible good--participates. This awareness--that we ourselves and our fellow man with us are "intellectors of good," what Dr. Knasas referred to as the phenomenon of seeing men as "epiphanies of being"*--immediately imposes a sense of obligation, a constraint or felt necessity, that these particular goods ought to be treated in a manner differently than those particular goods that are not "intellectors of good," but merely participate passively, as it were, in the good.

Because being as the good is intellectually present in a human, a human is a special analogate of being as the good. In the human, being as the good burns more brightly than it does in analogates like animals, plants, and miners. . . . Does it not make a world of difference in our estimation of the human? Does not the fact of the heightened intellectual presence of being as the good in our fellows issue to our freedom a command of respect and solicitude? . . . . This command is the initial appearance of obligation, moral necessity.

The awareness that as "intellectors of being as good" we carry in ourselves this light of being in a special way is what imposes, then, the obligations to cherish ourselves, and the equal obligation to cherish the other. Love your neighbor as yourself becomes the fundamental norm. Love your fellow "intellector of being" as you love yourself inasmuch as you also are an "intellector of being." To strike at oneself--to commit suicide, engage in self-mutilation, abuse oneself--is immediately enjoined. To strike at others, to murder them or to assault them, to abuse them is likewise an apparent injunction. For any assault on the special presence of being in these particular goods we call humans is unseemly. This is the "grand fact" that is the source of moral "oughtness," that men are intellectors of being as the good, and that they deserve a greater solicitude and respect, that is a moral response, than those who do not participate in being and good in the same intimate way.

So to summarize: we have advanced, from the real, to the intellection of the real, to analogical thinking, to an awareness of being and the good--the ratio entis and the ratio boni--to the awareness of their equivalency, to an understanding of an intrinsic compulsory thirst for being and the good which manifests itself in an awareness that we have freedom to chose those particular goods about us, and in the exercise of that freedom we come to see that certain particular goods, namely ourselves and our fellow human beings, share in being as good, in the ratio entis and the ratio boni, in an especial way, and that this demands from us an obligatory response of respect, of solicitude, of care. From reality itself we have thus walked step by step to the threshold of moral obligation. From "is" we have come to "ought" via being and its equivalency with good through a path that Hume never sought to travel as he wallowed in his skepticism. The cause for oughtness is to be found then in reality itself, in the ratio entis and the ratio boni and the ratio veri, which is at the heart of all that is, all that is good, and all that is true, and in the fact that we as men participate in being, the good, and the true in a special way from the rest of the analogates of being.

With this background, Dr. Knasas delved into article 94, q. 2 of the IaIIae of St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae. In the moral quest, like in the intellectual quest, we have to begin from somewhere. There is not infinite regress in the journey: there has to be a place from where we take leave. These are the self-evident principles, the principia per se nota. As St. Thomas explains something is self-evident in two ways or modes. First, it may be self evident in itself (secundum se), or it may be self-evident in a subjective sense (quoad nos). In other words, a proposition may in fact be self-evident without someone knowing it or recognizing it. A man may not see the self-evident because he is unlearned (or badly educated).

The reason for this is that a self-evident principle exists when the predicate is contained in the notion of the subject, so that when I say X=Y is a self-evident principle, the Y is already contained in the X in some manner (without being merely tautological). We have, therefore, to know the definition of the subject, of X, before we can see the self-evident nature of the proposition. If we do not know the definition of the subject, of X, or if we do not know the meaning of Y, we will fail to see the self-evident nature of the proposition.

Some principles are so obvious that they are self-evident to all. These are propositiones quarum termini sunt omnibus noti, propositions whose terms everyone recognizes as self-evident. There are, of course, a handful of such self-evident propositions which are often restatements or necessary corollaries of others, including the principle of being or existence ("being is"), the principle of identity ("whatever is, is"), the principle of excluded middle ("something either is or is not, but not both," or "there is no middle ground between being and non-being"), the principle of non-contradiction ("nothing can be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect," or "being as necessarily contradictory to non-being"), the principle of difference ("that which is is not that which is not, and that which is not cannot be identified with that which is"), the principle of sufficient reason ("everything which is possesses a sufficient reason for its existence"), the principle of causality ("non-being cannot cause being" or "nothing comes from nothing"), the principle efficient causality ("every effect must have a cause"), the principle of finality ("every agent acts for an end"), and so forth. As examples of these universally-held self-evident principles, St. Thomas cites two of Euclid's five principles or common notions ("things equal to one another and the same are equal to one another") and ("every whole is greater than its part").

There is a certain order in which we grasp these universally self-evident principles, as if one foot goes before the other. We first apprehend being, that transcendental--the analogon whose analogates includes all things. And from this we take the second step that being is not equivalent to non-being, and from here all other of the universally self-evident principles of the speculative or theoretical intellect are based. From here we start walking syllogistically.

What occurs with the speculative or theoretical intellect--which seeks being as truth--occurs in an analogous fashion in the practical intellect--which seeks being as the good and is directed to action. With the practical intellect we first apprehend that transcendental the good, and this leads to that second step which is that good is that which all things seek after. And from this comes the first precept of law: good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided (bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum). This principle, that good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided, is the foundation upon which the natural law rests. In contrast with the first principle of speculative reason, the first principle of practical reason is a command, an imperative: good ought to be done, should be done, must be done. From here, analogous to the speculative intellect, we begin our syllogistic journey into the realm of morality and ethics.

The need for such self-evident principles of speculative reason and of practical reason are obvious:

[T]o avoid debilitating infinite regress [in thought], we come to the realization that we know some reasons not because they are themselves demonstrated but because they are just obviously true.

The self-evident principles, however, are not given us a priori. The self-evident principles themselves are built upon reality, a reality which impresses itself upon our mind through the senses. These principles are obtained by man a posteriori, though they exist in reality which is a priori to us. These principles are objectively outside of us in the real, and through the senses and our process of intellection and apprehension of being we grasp them as being part of the real. This is fundamental to the realist view, and it is what distinguishes the self-evident principles in Thomistic realism from the self-evident principles arising out of the positivism of someone like A. J. Ayer**:

[I]n back of self-evident propositions as a basis for reasoning lies the previously noted*** capacity of the intellect to apprehend commonalities in the real things provided by sensation. . . . For [A. J.] Ayer, self-evident propositions do not express the way reality is. They express only how we want our words to be used. In other words, behind a self-evident proposition, Ayer does not see an intellectual insight into the real, but [rather he sees] a human decision that is basically arbitrary.

Dr. Knasas explored the link between the first principle of speculative reason and the first principle of practical reason. The first principles have an intimate relationship to their respective analagons. The first principle of speculative reason is based upon the "steadfastness" nature of being. That "steadfastness" is communicated to each analogate of the analogon of being. Our perception of this leads to the first principle of speculative reason: being is being, and excludes non-being: a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.

There is a similar intimate relationship between the first principle of practical reason and its respective analogon, the good (bonum). Instead of "steadfastness," which is the central feature of being, we have "desirability" as the central aspect of the good. This "desirability" is what fees the first principle of practical reason: good ought to be done, and its opposite avoided. There is thus an intimate relationship between the characteristic feature of the analogon and the respective first principle.

As an aside, St. Thomas does not equate being with the good in article 94 of the IaIIae of the Summa Theologiae. But the equivalency is found elsewhere in the Summa, specifically in Ia, q. 5, arts. 1-3. St. Thomas is forthright: Every being, as being, is good (ens, inquantum est ens, est bonum) (Iª q. 5 a. 3 co.)

The issue is not so neat, however. For a principle to be self-evident, the predicate must in some manner exist in the subject. If the first principle of practical reason is that good ought to be done and its opposite avoided, how is it that the "oughtness" is contained in the notion of the "good"? Oughtness is not compulsion. Oughtness is not untrammeled freedom. Oughtness is obligation within freedom.

If "the good" in the first principle of practical reason is understood as the transcendental good, then it does not seem to lead to moral obligation. The reason for this is that one is not free to reject the transcendental good. The will, as we mentioned earlier in this posting, is captured in "automatic rush of appetite," an "initial eruption of the will," an "engendered volitional dynamism," as so compelled to seek the good. "There is no moral necessity here because there is no freedom." There is no moral necessity because there is necessity pure and simple. "The will acts automatically." Obviously this cannot be the source of the first principle of practical reason: there cannot be any "oughtness" if one is compelled and there is no freedom.

On the other hand, if "the good" in the first principle of practical reason is understood as particular goods--that is the analogates of the analogon "the good" as instantiated all its diversity and particularity--then there is similarly no moral obligation, although for exactly the opposite reason. Here, there is nothing to distinguish between one particular good and another. There is nothing but absolute freedom, and no oughtness that might impinge upon our arbitrary freedom. We are, as it were, in a Baskin Robbins free to choose whatever we will, and de gustibus non est disputandum. We are outside the realm of ought.

So where is it between "necessary volition" (a curious oxymoron) and "raw freedom" that we find oughtness? Here we have to go back to Thomistic epistemology. We have to go back to things. The question we must ask is: "In what things do we perceive the good so that the obligation arises?" It is in those things that are "intellectors and willers of the good."

Among all the analogates of the good, intellectors and willers have the analogon in an especially intense manner. Before such instances we are free undoubtedly, but we are also morally constrained. In humans, the ratio boni burns more brightly that it does in other instances . . . Can that fact leave us unconstrained?

Man stands midway between "the good" simpliciter, transcendentally, and "the good" in its most diverse particularity. Man shares in the particular, but man also touches, incarnates in a manner of speaking the universal good in a unique way. There is a spark of "the good" in him that is found in no other particular good, and so, like the man whom we confront who straddles the universal and the particular, we straddle between absolute freedom and absolute determinism. Right smack dab in the middle is the compulsion in freedom, the oughtness in liberty, that is the very definition of morality. So when we say that good ought to be done and evil avoided, the "good" in that first principle "is the ratio boni as specifically in the human instance."

All this discussion seems esoteric, hardly the type of thinking that the typical man-on-the-street engages in. But what we have described is a process that is virtually automatic and natural in us, so naturally do we engage in it that it is virtually "hidden in the human psyche," though it produces "conscious effects." The reality of the process that is dissected by the philosopher is evidenced by shadowy notions of our dignity, by the fellow-feeling we have for our fellow man, by our ability to visualize ourselves apart from the world and yet realize that somehow "human relations run by special rules," special rules that are part of reality, a reality of which we are part, which we have not made, but which we discover.

The source of these "half-conscious realization about special rules and human relations" is what St. Thomas Aquinas calls "synderesis." For Aquinas, synderesis is the habitual possession of the first principles of practical reason. But this habitual possession is not something a priori, but like all Thomistic thought it is based upon his a posteriori epistemology. The ratio entis as well as the ratio boni result from abstraction derived from sensible things, from our contact with reality. The natural law, the moral law, is something that is in some way external to us, outside of us, and beyond us, which impresses upon us through the senses, and which, through our habitual possession of by synderesis, becomes most internalized so that it also becomes our law. There is a fit between the law outside and the law inside, and the law outside, which is real, informs the law inside us, which is an accurate and correct reflection or copy as it were of what is outside us. The natural moral law is unquestionably real. To reject the natural moral law is to fall into the abyss of the unreal.

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*There is an interesting overlap between this concept of seeing men as "epiphanies of being" and W. H. Auden's "epiphany" that he described in his poem "Law Like Love" and "A Summer Night." See "Law Like Love" The Timid Analogy. What W. H. Auden described poetically, Dr. Knasas has sought to explain philosophically.
**Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-1989), a British philosopher associated with the British humanist movement, who advanced logical positivism in such books as Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).
***Dr. Knasas adverts to the epistemological or metaphysical basis of our knowledge, which we discussed in our postings on his lectures entitled Being and Natural Law: Tarantulas and other Nightmares, Being and Natural Law: The Bent Twig and Epistemology, and Being and Natural law: On Vilnius and Kaunas and Koufax and Mays.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 13: Conscience

CONSCIENCE IS ADDRESSED by Cardinal Mercier as the last topic of his discussion on general ethics. He adopts the classical scholastic distinction between synteresis and conscience. Synteresis is, as it were, the foundation of conscience. Synteresis is the "habitual disposition" within man that provides the general premise to the judgment of conscience.

We have a special natural facility disposing us to know the means which lead us to our end, a facility or 'habit' which the Scholasatics called 'habitus prinipiorum rationis practicae' or, more briefly, 'synteresis'

[239(44)] That general premise is then applied to the contingent circumstance which provides the minor premise and the resulting judgment or conclusion is that aspect of the practical reasoning we call conscience. "Conscience is that "act by which the reason applies a universal principle of morality to some particular case . . . [C]onscientia nihil aliud est quam applicatio scientiae ad aliquem actum." [259(68)] (quoting St. Thomas, S. T., Ia-IIae, q. 19, a. 5).

The principles of morality are immutable and generally known by men, "so they are without excuse" (Rom. 1:20), but the "application of these principles to the conduct of actual life varies with particular cases and allows a measure of ignorance and error." [259(69)] Since, in practice, no man can act except in the concrete, conscience is involved in each human act. If so, that presents the problem of how the judgment of conscience, being non-infallible and subject, indeed (if not properly informed) even prone, to error can be relied upon by man. How can man rely on a potentially unreliable guide?

First, Mercier disabuses us of any expectation that the human conscience involves decision-making where one should expect the precision of mathematics. Because of the subject matter, it would be unreasonable to expect the clarity that is attached to mathematical judgment to be the standard in moral judgment. Moral certainty is thus different than arithmetical certainty. [259-60(69)]

Man cannot act on a doubtful conscience. "To do an act when in doubt whether it is good or bad would be to will good or evil indifferently; and to hold the will indifferent to good or evil is to do evil, since the will must choose good alone and must eschew evil." [260(69)] Therefore, when confronting a doubtful conscience, man must do what he can to overcome any doubts. If, after have expended requisite efforts, someone is unable to come to a resolution and he concludes that the matter before him is simply invincibly doubtful then what is he to do?

Even when confronting a situation where what is good and what is evil is invincibly doubtful, man has to act reasonably. In doubt that cannot be overcome through reasonable efforts, man must take the most reasonable course of action. Is he stymied by the fact that he confronts a situation that is invincibly doubtful?

The answer is no. Man can have recourse, in a case of invincible doubt, to an indirect form of reasoning, a reflex principle, that allows him a reasonable and certain conscience and so allows him to act even in cases of invincible doubt. The reflex principle acts upon the rule that if man is not able to be convinced, after serious effort, that an act is unlawful he can prudently regard it as lawful. When is prudence able to kick in? When can a man prudently regard something that cannot be determined to be unlawful as lawful?

Here we get into different solutions, and these bring us to different schools of moral thought: rigorism, probabiliorism, equiprobabilism, probablism, and laxism. Rigorism, the strictest of all schools of thought on the issue of the application of the reflex principle when confronting invincible doubt, would require that, to act prudently when confronting an act where there is some doubt about what is lawful and what is unlawful, we ought to hold that an act is unlawful unless the reason suggesting that an act is unlawful is apparent only or futile. Laxism, which is at the opposite of the spectrum and is the least strict in applying the reflex principle in cases of invincible doubt, allows us to choose an act as lawful unless the reasons supporting that act as unlawful have a high degree of probability. Put shortly, in cases of invincible doubt, rigorism places high bias against the lawfulness of an act, whereas laxism places a high bias against the unlawfulness of an act. These two positions--rigorism and laxism--are "controvertible," [261(69)] meaning that they are not reasonable and ought to be rejected. [In fact, though not mentioned by Mercier, these two extremes have been rejected by the Church.]

In between rigorism and laxism are probabiliorists, equiprobabilists, and probabilists. The probabilist would hold that an act is, through the reflex principle, formally lawful when the lawfulness of an act is supported by a seriously probable reason, even though there is probable reason that the act is unlawful, even if these reasons are equal to or higher than those supporting the lawfulness of an act. In other words, as long as there is some serious probability that an act is lawful, even if there is probability than act act is unlawful, the actor may prudently determine, in cases if invincible ignorance, that the act is lawful. Equiprobabilists would require that, before an agent can regard as lawful a certain act, the probable reasons supporting the lawfulness of the act must be at least as probable as those supporting the unlawfulness of the act. Probabiliorists would require that, before an agent can regard an act as lawful under the reflex principle, the probable reasons supporting the lawfulness of the act must be more probable than the probable reasons supporting the unlawfulness of the act.

Whether a probabiliorist, an equiprobabilist, or a probabilist, we are confronted with the possibility of erroneous conscience. Can an erroneous conscience bind? More extreme, can a conscience that has a probability of being erroneous, and made formally certain only by the prudential application of a reflex principle, bind? Yes, Mercier concludes, but not simply and in all cases (as a conscience that is certain and not erroneous), a conscience that is erroneous binds, but only while its erroneous state lasts. If the error is ever discovered, it ceases to bind. Mercier quotes St. Thomas Aquinas's De veritate:

Although an erroneous conscience may dictate something not in accordance with the law of God, the person in error nevertheless accepts it as the real law of God; and so, strictly speaking, if he depart from this he will depart from the law of God. . . . The erroneous conscience does not bind simply and in all cases, but it binds only whilst it lasts.

[262(69)] (quoting De veritate, q.17, a. 4)

St. Albert the Great: The Natural Law and Practical Reasoning

ST. ALBERT'S NOTION OF NATURAL LAW AS HABITUS must be understood and coupled with his notion of synderesis and practical reasoning. The principles of natural right (ius naturale) which are a habitus are part and parcel of practical reason. "More specifically," Cunningham states, the principles of natural right "inhere in an active power of reason called by some 'naturale iudicatorium,' by the Greeks 'synderesis.'" Cunningham, 489 (citing De bono V, 1, 1).

Though St. Albert does not expand on the notion of synderesis in his De bono, he did so in an earlier work entitled De homine, and in a fragment entitled Quaestio de synderesi which has been attributed to him. Cunningham, 491; Cunningham (2006), 222. In his De homine, St. Albert describes synderesis as "a special power (vis) of the soul in which are inscribed the universal principles of natural right." Cunningham, 489 (citing De homine, qu. 71, art. 1). In his Quaestio de synderesi, St. Albert states that "synderesis is a certain kind of motive power in possession of the universal principles of natural right [quaedam potentia motiva per habitum universalium ius], having something of knowledge and something of appetition, but situated more on the side of knowledge." Following St. Jerome, he also calls it the "light" and the "spark of conscience." Cunningham (2006), 222. These informing principles of natural right embedded in that active power of synderesis "serve as formal determinations directing and assisting the practical intellect of man in his operations." Cunningham, 491. St. Albert then takes the notions of first principles (such as the principle of non-contradiction or excluded middle) and their role in speculative or theoretical reasoning, and analogizes them so as to apply them to practical or moral reasoning.

Just as in the theoretical intellect there are certain innately implanted first principles aiding man in the area of speculative truth, so too in the practical order of human moral acts there are certain universal directive principles through which the practical intellect is aided in its discrimination between moral good and evil, principles moreover which are not acquired by man, but which are simply the content of natural law inscribed upon the human mind. The subject or substratum of these is synderesis.

Cunningham, 489.

Albertus Magnus, Fresco by Tommaso da Modena

Though St. Albert uses the terms potentia and vis (power and force) to describe synderesis, it would be wrong to understand him as proposing a new faculty or power distinct from, and separate of, either the will or the intellect. Synderesis in fact, is "simply the practical intellect itself considered as endowed with the univeral principles of natural right, and thereby innately habituated to an abstract understanding of human goodness." Cunningham (2006), 223 (citing Lottin, PEM, vol. 2, 342). Using the habitus of the ius naturale which inheres in the subject or substratum of synderesis as the first principles of practical reason, St. Albert is able to further refine moral decision-making and the role that the natural law (ius naturale), synderesis, and conscience play. Cunningham, 489.

In clarifying the role the ius naturale, synderesis, and conscience play in moral decision-making, St. Albert makes yet another innovation, "perhaps, his most striking innovation in these questions." Crowe, 133. In a sense, there is a watershed in the doctrine of conscience, pre-Albertinian and post-Albertinian. Prior to St. Albert's innovation, most theologians had identified conscience with the natural law, with synderesis, with free will, or with some sort of habitus, whether innate, acquired, or a combination of both. And there may have been a sort of feeling out for some better concept of conscience during St. Albert's time. But Albert's great innovation was to clear the brush in this area, and he did so by separating synderesis from conscience and the ius naturale, and identifying conscience as an act of reason. Crowe, 134.

Dicimus quod conscientia conclusio est rationis practicae ex duobus praemissis, quorum maior synderesis et minor rationis. . . . . Maior autem istius syllogismi est synderesis, cuius est inclinare in bonum per universales rationes boni. Minor vero est rationis cuius est conferre particulare ad universale. Conclusio autem est conscientiae.

Summa de creaturis, II. q. 72, a. 1 (quoted in Crowe, 134 n. 75). In short, the Albertian contribution was to render moral thinking clearly rational:

The practical syllogism uses a major premiss, provided by synderesis, and a minor premise, the work of reason (which brings the particular under the general rule laid down in the major premiss); and conscience draws the conclusion.

Crowe, 134 (citing Summa de creaturis, II, q. 72, a. 1). So, for example, the synderesis would yield the major premise: I should not kill an innocent, as it is an evil; reason supplies the minor premise: abortion is the killing of an innocent child; conscience draws the conclusion: abortion is evil an prohibited by the natural law.

Albertus Magnus by Fra Angelico

Crowe explains the significance of Albert's teaching on conscience:

The idea of synderesis as the habitual knowledge of first moral principles, providing the major premiss of the practical syllogism in which the actual drawing of the conclusion was the work of conscience, was an extremely important one. As has already been suggested, it went a good deal beyond the function Aristotle saw in the practical syllogism. In fact the practical syllogism, as Albert saw it, will play a vital part in the great natural law synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas . . . .

Crowe, 134-35. It is this notion of ius naturale, synderesis, conscience, and practical reason that led St. Albert to reject the Ulpian notion that brute animals participate in natural law. "More than any thinker before him, . . . Albert has attempted to delineate the close union between right and reason." Cunningham, 491. Because the entirety of the moral reasoning in man was rational, the natural law, which was at the heart of that reasoning, was likewise to be found only in rational agents. We shall address the issue of St. Albert's rejection of the Decretists and their continued reliance on Ulpian's definition of the natural law in our next blog entry.

St. Jerome on the Natural Law: The Scintilla of Conscience

SAINT JEROME IS NOT TO BE NEGLECTED in considering the teachings of the natural law as found in the Church Fathers. St. Jerome, or Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (ca. 347 – 420 A.D.), was the son of Eusebius of Stridon, a town on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. St. Jerome is therefore sometimes referred to as “the Dalmation.” St. Jerome was born into a Christian family, and one that valued a classical education highly. He pursued rhetorical and philosophical studies under Aelius Donatus at Rome, and became accomplished in both Latin and Greek. Though born into a Christian family, he does not appear to have taken his faith seriously until sometime during his student years, and then through a series of stages of increasing fervor. On a journey through Thrace and Asia Minor in 373, Jerome became ill, and, during his illness, experienced a vision that made him disdain his secular studies and devote himself to the study of Scripture, and to an ascetic life.

The Ascetic Jerome: Detail of Unfinished Work by da Vinci

After this transformational experience, St. Jerome spent some time in the desert of Chalcis, southwest of the city of Antioch, and there, in the company of hermits, tried to learn Hebrew and advance in the study of the Scriptures. He returned to Antioch to be ordained, and then traveled to Constantinople to study Scripture under the famous St. Gregory Nazianzen. After two years in Constantinople, St. Jerome returned to Rome, and became a confidant of Pope Damasus I.

St. Jerome was forced to leave Rome after the death of Pope Damasus I, as his criticism of the secular clergy in that city had earned him many enemies and the death of the Pope left him without a protector. Therefore, in 385, St. Jerome returned to Antioch, and then, with a group of pilgrims, traveled to the Holy Land. He then spent some time at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, and thereafter returned to Palestine in 388, where he remained the rest of his life in a hermit’s cell near the town of Bethlehem. For more than thirty years, writing from his cell in Bethlehem, St. Jerome led a tremendously productive life.

St. Jerome in his Cell by Domenico Ghirlandaio

St. Jerome’s accomplishments are legion. He is known as having translated the Scriptures into Latin (the Vulgate), using the original Greek and Hebrew texts as the basis of his translation. His writings are vast and accomplished, and include commentaries on Scripture, letters, historical, biographical, and hagiographical works, as well as numerous polemical and theological works. His literary corpus is extensive and monumental, perhaps only outdone by St. Augustine’s even vaster literary output. St. Jerome is considered both a Father of the Church and a Doctor of the Church.

St. Jerome’s doctrine of the natural law falls within the general scope of the other fathers we have reviewed over the last several weeks. Like the other Church Fathers, St. Jerome judiciously and critically borrowed from Stoic, Platonic, and Ciceronian sources to fill in, as it were, the Pauline notion of the natural law as found in his Epistle to the Romans 2:14-16. St. Jerome also used biblical imagery and his understanding of salvation history in deriving his concept of the natural moral law. What he offers to his reader, is a robust, expansive, and universal notion of the natural law. He insisted that the natural law remained part of the divine plan in man even after the Fall, and that the natural law served the purpose of providing foundational principles of moral action, a rule and guide of directing one to the good, and one able to inform man where and how he has erred and where, therefore, he was in need of repentance and God’s mercy. St. Jerome stressed the role of conscience as a handmaid of the natural moral law, and brought forth the notion of synderesis as a scintilla conscientiae, the spark of conscience which made man unique among God’s creation in terms of being self-guided by an internalized natural law. He insisted that the natural law was not abrogated by the Gospel, and it was error to suggest that the natural law did not retain its validity or dignity. However, consistent with his Christocentric and Scriptural emphasis (as St. Jerome famously stated in his Commentary on Isaiah, "ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ," ignoratio Scripturarum, ignoratio Christi est. Comm. in Isaiam libri xviii prol.: PL 24, 17B), the natural law he advanced was not to be considered as a parallel means of salvation, but had to be supplemented, lifted, given sight by faith in Christ, and in Christ it was transformed into the twofold love of God and neighbor.

For the Church Fathers, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 2:14-16 offered only the foundation for theological elaborations on the matter of the natural moral law. The Sacred Scriptures did not contain a profound theological elaboration of the concept of the natural law, much less a philosophically robust one. And so, in elaborating upon the Pauline concept, the Church Fathers were compelled to borrow from contemporary philosophical schools whose thought could be appropriately adapted to the teachings of Scripture and the traditions of the Church. The Stoic philosophy was clearly the most adaptable, and most consistent with the Biblical view of man and law. Severino Visintainer, La dottrina del peccato in San Girolamo (Rome: Libreria Editrice Dell'Universitá Gregoriana, 1962), 3-4.

St. Jerome by El Greco

Inasmuch as nature was created by God, it participated in a distant sense in God itself, and was manifestly good. The Church Fathers, and one must include here even the severely ascetic St. Jerome, insisted—against the heretical and dualistic Gnostic sects—that creation, and hence human nature, was good. This was true even in the area of marriage and the conjugal act. “One ought not to be ashamed of nature, but it is to be venerated,” natura non erubescenda, sed veneranda est, St. Jerome observed in his Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. Because nature was to be venerated, and was not to be something of which one should be ashamed, one ought not to regard nature as affording the false scruples of prudishness any purchase. Marriage and procreation, like all things pertaining to the nature of man, far from being evil and the work of the devil, are created by God and therefore fundamentally good. Com. ad Gal. 4.19; PL 26:211. St. Jerome is no advocate of a Lutheran or Calvinistic "total depravity" notion of man. He would have been intemperately disdainful of it as an enormity, a falsehood, a heresy.

This generally optimistic concept of nature, even after the Fall, is central to St. Jerome’s teaching on the natural moral law. Such an optimistic view of post-lapsarian natural man is not to be considered as contradictory to the Gospel and the need for the supernatural life, the product of faith and grace. One must not forget that St. Jerome was one of the staunch adversaries of Pelagius, and authored both his Letter to Ctesiphon and his Dialogue against the Pelagians against any concept that man could be virtuous without the need of supernatural grace, the fruit of faith in Jesus Christ, or the sacramental life of the Church he founded.

But the need for Christ and for faith and grace did not for all that nullify the importance of the natural law. After the Fall of mankind, the natural law retained sufficient vitality so as to govern the moral decisions of man. The natural law walked out with man when he was barred from Garden of Eden. It remained even in the greatest of sinners, the spark of conscience and the natural moral law remaining even in the breast of the first murderer, Cain. In his letter to a certain woman named Algasia, St. Jerome writes that the natural law is written in the heart, as St. Paul teaches, and that:

[T]his law, which is written in the heart, encompasses all nations, and no man is there, who is ignorant of the law, inasmuch as the whole world is under sin and all men are violators of the law (praevaricatores legis), and on that account the heart of all men is written the just judgment of God (iustum iudicium Dei est scribentis in corde generis humani): what you do not wish done to you, do not do unto others (quod tibi fieri nolueris, alteris ne feceris). Who is ignorant of the fact that homicide, adultery, theft, and all concupiscence are evil of themselves, and do not wish these evils done to them? If they did not recognize them as evil, they would not want them done to them. And it is through this natural law that Cain recognized his sin, saying “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” (Maior cause mea quam ut dimittar). And Adam and Eve recognized their sin and for that reason hid under the tree of life. Pharaoh also, before the law was given by Moses, prompted by the natural law, confessed his crimes . . . this law children do not know, and so infants are ignorant of sin, inasmuch as without commandment there is no law of sin. . . .

Ep. 121. Adam and Eve, Cain, Pharaoh are all examples, before the Law of Moses was revealed, of the natural law working in man to urge him to good, to inform him of the good, and to bring him towards repentance for his failure to achieve the good. "La legge di natura si identifica quindi, per metonimia, con la conscienza stessa: forse non solo nella individualità, ma anche estensione e comprensione." Visintainer, 10 (The natural law is identified, therefore, by metonomy with conscience itself, but not only in its individuality, but also its expansion and comprehension). As we shall see, St. Jerome advances a significant role of conscience, or synderesis, in the application of the natural law.

St. Jerome insists that the natural law remains pleasing to God, part of his plan, a law the compliance of which he finds pleasing. The pagan Gentile who follows the natural law is more pleasing than the Jew who violates the written law:

We understand that the Lord accepts the good life even of the Gentiles and philosophers. He regards those who behave justly one way, and those who behave unjustly in another way. Those who neglect the written law will be condemned in comparison with the one who serves the natural law.

Intelligimus etiam gentilium et philosophorum bonam vitam recipere Dominum, et aliter habere eos qui iuste, aliter qui iniuste agant, et ad comparationem eius qui naturali legi serviat, condemnari eos qui scriptam legem negligent.

Com. in Mt. 25.26-29; PL 26:208 (Scheck, trans.); Visintainer, 5. Because the natural law retains validity even after the Mosaic law has been revealed, the just pagan may be preferred to the unjust Jew. St. Jerome has the following to say in reference to Christ's words in the Gospel of Matthew 11:21-22: "Woe to you, Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida; for if in Tyre and Sidon had been done the miracles which were done in you, they would have done penance long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you: It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment that for you."

To them [Chorazin and Bethsaida] he prefers Tyre and Sidon, cities that were surrendered to idolatry and vice. Now the reason they are preferred is because Tyre and Sidon only trampled upon natural law, but these, after transgressing natural and written law, even slighted the signs that were done among them.

Praeferuntum quod Tyrus et Sidon naturalem tantum legem calcaverint, istae vero post transgressionem naturalis legis et scriptae, etitam signa quae apud eos facta sunt, parvi, duxerint.

Com. in Mat. 11:21-22) (Scheck, trans.). Christ can prefer the pagan Phoenecian cities of Tyrus and Sidon over the Jewish Galilean cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida because the latter violated the natural law, the Mosaic law, and ignored the signs that were intended to move them to repentance. Implied is the supposition that Tyrus and Sidon would realize they had violated the natural law were they confronted by the same signs.

Though Christ abrogated the ceremonial and ritual laws of the Mosaic law, he did not abrogate the entirety of that law, at least not that part that is consistent with the natural law. Christ's coming and the announcement of the Gospel did not supplant the natural moral law. "Essere liberi dall Legge non significa affatto che la natura abbia cessato di porre le sue esigenze morali." Visintainer, 14 (To be free of the Law did not signify by that fact that nature had ceased to be the source of moral requirements). St. Jerome refuses to countenance the possibility that the natural law has been abrogated by Christ, that Christ had somehow ushered in a time of libertinism or lawless grace. Grace and the natural law coexist in Christ’s dispensation. One ought not to get the idea that the need to be beneath the law has ceased, that man has been freed entirely of the law. Though there has been a dispensation or abrogation of the ceremonial and ritual obligations of the Mosaic law, the obligation to follow the natural moral law has been strengthened all the more. "Le altre 'opere della legge' quelle evidentemente che si fondano sulla natura, non sono invece abolite: solo si devono ora rivestire della fede." Visintainer, 15 (The other works of the law which are evidently founded upon nature, are thereby abolished: they ought to be now dressed anew by the faith). These would include the Ten Commandments. Visintainer, 16. The natural moral law rules imperatively so long as man has a nature, and it coexists with the law of grace. “Et ita fit, ut non ideo quia sub servitute Legis esse cessatis, putetis esse vos liberos: sed sciatis magis naturae vos Lege retinere, quia non statim si lex non imperat, et natura cessavit.” Com. ad Gal. 5.17, PL 26:502; Visintainer, 4-5.

St. Jerome's insistence that the natural law was not abrogated by Christ, but was reconfirmed, does not lessen man's need for faith in Christ. “Sed ideo non justificari operatores eius (Legis, sia naturale che mosaica), quia absque fide Christi fiant.” Com. ad Gal. 2.16. The words of the law, whether the Mosaic law or the natural law, do not justify the doers of the law absent faith in Christ. In the context of interpreting Jesus' words to St. John the Baptist in regarding to the former's baptism and the latter's hesitation in administering it: "For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all justice," Matt. 3:15, Jerome states as follows: “Non addidit: iustitiam legis, sive naturae, ut nos utrumque intelligamus.” “He did not add justice ‘of the Law’ or ‘of nature,’ so that we might understand both [forms of justice]” were fulfilled by Christ's willing baptism. Com. in Mat. 3.16 (Scheck, trans.). That is to say, Christ was the fulfillment of both the Mosaic and the natural law, and we must look to him as their end and their paradigm.

Not only can the Mosaic law or the natural law not save by themselves, they do not fully enlighten. "Non solo non salva, ma nemmeno illumina; ambedue i popoli, l'ebraico e il gentile, 'alter scriptam Legem, alter naturalem sequens, sine Christo coecus erat.'" Visintainer, 6 (quoting Com. in Mt. 3:16; 26 PL 158). Absent the law of Christ, our moral knowledge is substantially reduced. Visintainer, 6. Accordingly, both Jew and Gentile were in need of the light of Christ. Neither the natural moral law, nor the Mosaic law, was complete without faith in Christ. St. Jerome refuses to apply the natural law in a wholly naturalistic way, and here he clearly departs from the Stoic thought. "Qui ci troviamo in opposizione con le categorie stoiche; ci troviamo in opposizione al naturalismo: le 'virtù naturali', senza la fede non sono virtù." Visintainer, 17 (Here we confront an opposition with the stoic categories; we encounter an opposition to naturalism: the 'natural virtue' without faith is not virtue). It is manifest, albeit implicit, that virtue is supernatural. "E' implicito, ci sembra, il concetto di 'soprannaturale' per le virtù dei credenti." Visintainer, 17 (It is implicit, it seems, the concept of the 'supernatural' in the virtue of the believer). This supernatural life is a gift that follows from the recognition of Christ.

Therefore, with reference to the two blind men that cried out “Lord have mercy on us, son of David,” as Jesus and the Apostles, followed by crowds, left Jericho, as related in Matthew 20:29-31, St. Jerome had the following observations. These two blind men are by the wayside, they do not see light, and they may stand for those who have the Law, but not the Way, that is, Christ. Or they may stand for two peoples, the Jew and the Gentile. "For both were blind, the one by following written law, the other by following natural law without Christ." Com. in Mat. 20:29-31 (Scheck, trans.)

Without the light of Christ, St. Jerome insists the natural light of the natural law is dim. The natural law, St. Jerome concedes, is fed by reason, and thus gives proper directives. For example, it allows us to see the fundamental principle of the natural law that we ought to do good, and avoid evil. “naturali lege, quae loquitur in cordibus nostris, bona quaeque facienda, et vitanda mala.” Com. ad Gal. 3, 2. It functions, even in the sinner, to whom it gives precious directives, “sed cogitatio; mea, et ratio naturalis, quam etiam peccatoribus Deus auctor inservit, retraxerunt me et deduxerunt ad sapientiam.” In Eccle. 2.33; CC 72, 253, 44 (quoted in Visintainer, at 6, n. 15). Some fundamental wrongs the natural law acting through conscience is able to see, even without the light of Christ. These include: homicide, adultery, rape, the obligation to honor one’s parents, theft. See Visintainer, at 7 n. 17. (and citations therein).

St. Jerome thus recognizes that there are two states of knowledge of the natural moral law, "due stadi di consoscenza, corrispondenti alla mente senza la fede e con la fede," as Visintainer puts it, one state of conscience corresponding to a mind without faith and another state corresponding to the mind with faith. Visintainer, 7 (citing Comm ad Gal. 1, 5; 5, 19-21; 26 PL 391, 505).

St. Jerome identifies the natural law with the recognition of sin, and thereby understands it to be part of the tools of conscience, indeed, it is at the very heart of conscience.

Ezechiel's Vision by Raphael

One of the more fascinating contributions of St. Jerome to the concept of the natural law and conscience is the matter of synderesis or synteresis. Because of his teaching on this concept, the Scholastics referred to St. Jerome as the Father of the Church that was most distinguished in the area of synderesis or conscience. Visintainer, 11. "The word synderesis," Crowe states in his The Changing Profile of the Natural Law, "is hardly found in present-day moral theology." But that was not always so. The term synderesis was adopted by the Scholastics (see, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T. I, q. 79, art. 12) to mean the natural capacity, disposition, or habit (habitus) of practical reason that apprehends intuitively the universal first principles of human action. The first such principle that is apprehended is the “good,” just as the first such principle apprehended by the speculative reason is “being.” Synderesis also includes the capacity to judge one’s actions, either prospectively or retrospectively, in light of those first principles. "It made a sudden appearance in the thirteenth century, enjoyed its crowded hour of glorious life and faded away before the end of the century." Crowe, at 123. The term synderesis is found in St. Jerome’s Commentary on Ezechiel, where it lay fallow for centuries until apparently revived in the Sentences of a certain Master Udo written in 1160-65, and then had a sporadic life until the thirteenth century, where it enjoyed its ephemeral life in the treatment of the moral life in the Scholastic theologians. Crowe, 124-25 ff. Interestingly, the use of synderesis or synteresis is probably a scrivener’s error, as it is likely that St. Jerome would have used the Greek word syneidesis, συνείδησης, the common Greek term for conscience or conscientia. The term was probably inaccurately transcribed as συντηρησις, from whence the term synderesis was born.

In his Commentary on Ezekiel’s vision found in Ezekiel 1:4-10 (of the four winged creatures, with four faces, being the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle), St. Jerome interprets the vision as follows. He sees the man as symbolizing the rational faculties in man, that part which is reason, and understanding, and thought of internal counsel, even virtue and wisdom (rationem et cognitionem, et mentem, et consilium, eademque virtutem atque sapientiam in cerebrice arece ponenentes). The lion is that which is of ferocity in us (feritatem vero et iracundiam atque violentiam in leone, qui consistat in felle). The ox is libidinousness, luxury, an all kinds of voluptuousness and cupidity (porro libidinem, luxuriam, et omnium voluptatum cupidinem in jecora, id est, in vitulo qui terrae operibus haereat). The man is thus considered to be symbol of the rational in man, (rationale animae, τὸ λογικόν, to logikon), and the lion is considered the irascible part of man (irascitivum, or τὸ θυμικόν, to thymikon), the ox the concupiscible in man (concupiscitivum, or τὸ ἐπιθυμετικόν, to epithymetikon). The eagle is understood, St. Jerome states, as what the Greeks have called synderisis, the spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae) a fourth power which is above the other three (supra haec et extra haec tria). Com. i n Hiezech. 1, 7 (PL 25:10); see also Visintainer, at 11-12.

Thus, in a splendid image redolent of St. Justin Martyr's adoption of Plato's charioteer, and conceptually similar to his notion of the spermatikos logos (σπερματικός λόγος) or zotikon pneuma (ζωτικόν πνεύμα), St. Jerome places the spark of conscience, the eagle of man, at the zenith of man's faculties. All our other faculties, rational, irascible, concupiscible are to be ordered, ruled, and judged by the natural law (lex naturalis) under the guidance of the spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae). It is the vice-regent of God in man, the still, silent, but imperious voice of the natural moral law.

St. Jerome in his Study by van Eyck