Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the Natural Law, Part 4

GENTILITY GRUDGINGLY RESPONDS TO INTELLECT, though she makes clear that she considers it not strictly within her duty to answer. She recognizes Intellect's dual role as Ingenio and Dyonisius, ya que a dos luces me hablas. "I am Gentility," she declares. She's been given a name that signifies whom she represents. She is named after peoples--gens or gentes--because of the sheer magnitude of people she represents.

Pues las gentes que poseo,
Por su grande multitud
Me aclaman así, advirtiendo
Que en las gentes el mayor
Número á mi cargo tengo;

Because of the people I possess,
Because of their great multitude
They call me thus, intimating
That I have in my charge
The largest number of peoples.

Indeed, prior to the coming of Christ and, later, Muhammad, the only people outside Gentility's charge is the Jew and the Atheist.

Bien que negando mis Dioses
El bárbaro Ateismo ciego,
Muchas me llevó tras sí;

Seeing that negating my gods,
That blind barbarian Atheism
Took many of my people behind him;

But that is another topic, a harbinger of what is to come later in the play. Gentility's great rule included Rome, and, by extension, all of Europe, and even Asia. She is in charge of the rites of worship to be given to the unknown God.

Hoy me merece, asistiendo
Al ceremonioso rito
De los devotos festejos
De un ignoto Dios . . .

Today it is my obligation to assist
In the ceremonious rite
Of the festive devotions
To the unknown God . . .

Gentility explains that the temple has no altar, no statute because, though the Gentiles have notice of God, it is a remote notice (noticia remota). The temple is built in the hopes and belief that the remote notice will become one day become proximate or immediate (próxima la tengamos).

Esta invocación le hacemos,
En fe de venturo Dios,
Como aclamando y pidiendo
Que al desocupado solio
Venga á llenar el asiento.

We make this invocation
In faith of the coming of God,
Acclaiming and pleading
That He will come fill the seat
Of the unoccupied canopied throne.

Gentility then anticipates Intellect's next question. It seems that Intellect would ask why it is the Gentiles expect a new God inasmuch as they already have more than three thousand gods. Why, with three thousand gods before them, do they thirst for yet another? The reason for their yearning, Gentility explains, comes from the teachings of their wise men and their learned followers, such as those from the highly-praised School of Athens, honor, parent, luster, and center of great philosophy. Of these, perhaps most significant are the Stoics, as Gentility explains to Intellect.

Los que más señalaron
Fueron los Estoicos, siendo
Cuidado de sus estudios,
De sus vígilas desvelo,
El desprecio de la vida,
Investigando, inquiriendo
Y apurando siempre humildes
(Si ya no es siempre soberbios)
La sacra naturaleza
De los Dioses, discubriendo
En una primera causa,
A cuyo cargo quisieron
Que estuviese reducido
El órden del Universo;
Destos, pues, al creer que todo
Debajo está de un gobierno,
Y que con igual arbitrio
Cuida algun poder inmenso
Desde el hombre hasta el gusano
Y desde el mayor lucero
A la menor planta, dijo
Uno habia un Dios Supremo.

Those whose teachings stand out most
Being careful with their studies,
In their sleepless vigils,
In their contempt for life,
Investigating, inquiring,
Worrying always humbly,
(If now no longer always proud)
About the sacred nature
Of the gods were the Stoics.
These discovered a First Cause
In whose charge they desired
To have reduced
The order of the Universe.
Of these, then, in believing that all
The world is under one government,
And under the self-same will,
From man to the worm,
From the North Star
To the least plant,
One of these declared
That there was but one God.

According to Fiore (29), this is a direct reference to the Natural Law.

Natural law decrees that man is dependent on God and that the act of Worship is due God by knoweldge of his existence. Calderón emphasizes the natural inclination to worship God which is imbedded in la Gentilidad. God is knowable to her although remotely.

Of all the philosophers, the Stoics seemed to have grasped the implications of natural theology and natural law most clearly as Fiore (29) explains:

The Stoic believed that the universe was animated by the Divine Logos who unified the diverse beings into a harmonious hierarchy. God, as the cause of causes, was the Divine Reason in the order and beauty of the Cosmos. Man attained happiness by leading a life that coincided with divine reason, thus obeying the laws of nature and his own conscience.

This God, Gentility continued to elaborate, was all hands, all eyes, all ears, and even cause of all causes. The Stoics provided the hope that at some future point in time, God, the cause of all causes, God, all seeing, all doing, all hearing, would come reveal himself and allow himself to be known:

Cuyos dos altos acuerdos
Pusieron en esperanzas
De que había de venir tiempo
Que este Dios, causa de causas,
De ojos, manos y oídos lleno,
Se nos declare y se dé
A conocer . . . .

For this reason, Gentility explains, the Gentiles seek to ply God with gifts, and obligate him with prayers, in this sacred mountain that rises eminently in the middle of Egyptian Heliopolis, the city of the Sun, and Athens, the seat of all Sciences, with the purpose that he come, declare himself, and make himself known.

And then, adverting to Intellect's muteness when given answer, Gentility assume that Intellect is satisfied, that he is bereft of further argument, idly suspended. Gentility recommends that Intellect participate in the happy cult of the Gentile's music in that in matters of Faith, Intellect's duty is to be silent.

(In assessing Gentility's comment to Intellect, one thinks here of the philosopher Wittgenstein's comment when confronting mystery: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." Or in the the title of the proponent of "Radical Orthodoxy," Catherine Pickstock's book, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy. Philosophy directs us to mystery, and our only response is then silence, that is, awe and worship. Ultimately, human reason becomes silent when it confronts what Rudolf Otto called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that is God. Man's only response is worship: "Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 45:11 [46:10])

Intellect admits he is at a loss for words, that he gapes in wonder at the rite of worship and its pretext or basis. Yet, like Buridan's ass, he is stuck in the middle of neither approval or disapproval, of neither proof or disproof. He is, one might say, agnostic. And yet, seemingly befuddled, he desires to talk with Thought about it.

Thought, however, has impulses of his own. He has no desire to discourse, no desire to talk, no desire to engage in intellectual wrestling or methodological doubt. His only impulse is to dance, to participate in the Gentiles' joyful worship of the God they do not know. Thought shares in the impulse, only it is more reserved, he wants more study. But Thought advises that thought must be temporarily suspended, and action is required:

Pensamiemnto: Pues va de máscara, y baile.
Todos: De tono y letra mudemos.
Gentilidad: ¿En él entras?
Ingenio: Esto solo
Es seguir mi Pensamiento.

Thought: Well go masked and dance
All: Let us move to tone and letter.
Gentility: Will you participate?
Intellect: In this alone, will I follow my Thought.

According to Fiore, the mask represents the second of St. Thomas Aquinas's proofs of God, based upon the notion of efficient cause, which results in the determination that there must be an uncaused cause, the First Cause, namely, God. [S.T. I, q. 2, art. 3]

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

Gentility, Intellect, and Thought, along with all others, then join together in harmonious worship. The music begins with the refrain:

Al sacrificio del Dios Ignorado
Acude devoto y festivo el afécto.

To the sacrifice of the Unknown God
Go with devoted and festive affection.

Which is interspersed among the following stanzas, displaying perhaps not so much a primitive notion of an anthropmorphic God with hands, ears, and voice, but rather already touching on the notion of a personal God. We have something here more than force, more than an impersonal First Cause. Indeed, we have intimations of the Trinity, the mysteries of mysteries.

Mostrando, si es causa de todas las causas,
Que humano responda á la causa el afecto.

Showing if he is the cause of all causes,
To whom mankind responds with affection.

* * *

Pidiendo, si es manos, oidos y ojos,
Que venga á tocarnos, oírnos y vernos.

Asking if he is hand, ears, and eyes
That he may touch us, hear us, and see us.

* * *

Pues ya tres mil Dioses no valen por uno,
Cuando el tres es uno y los otros son ceros.

For three thousand gods are not worth one,
When the three is one and the others are zeros.

The festivities and liturgical dance are suddenly interrupted by an earthquake, and the crowd disperses in great fear, leaving Gentility, Intellect, and Thought alone.

Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the Natural Law, Part 3

INTELLECT INTERRUPTS THE GENTILES’ REJOICINGS in their unknown God, accusing them, perhaps not very tactfully, of delivering their prayers to the wind, their prayers being an inheritance, a patrimony, that is airy, light, wind-like, a will-o'-the wisp. Yet Intellect cannot be accused of any sort of hubris, as he describes himself as an errant pilgrim (un errado Peregrino) attracted—as if by a magnet—by the lilt of their praise and yet doubt as to its efficacy. Howbeit, he asks, that it is possible that the Gentiles' ignorance of God provides a pretext that persuades them to their divine worship?

Gentility does not recognize Intellect, and accuses him of being an upstart, and one to boot that trespasses on sacrilege by doubting the efficacy of the Gentiles' prayers. (This is redolent of the Athenian accusation and trial of Socrates whose reasoning was seen as impious to the Greek gods and corruptive of the city's youth.)

The Intellect is nonplussed. To doubt the reason behind things is precisely Intellect’s role, he explains to Gentility. Doubting applied to Thought leads, and not without cause, to knowledge. “Intellect is human,” El ingenio soy humano. This notion of Intellect, he explains of himself, has three etymologies, three sources, which combine to yield the concept of Intellect which he is. The Greeks said that Intellect is the “extension of understanding" (extensión de entendimiento); The Hebrews understood Intellect to derive from the divine-like nature of the soul, a non-begotten thing added to the soul's very nature. For the Latin, the Intellect is an unbegotten and innate (ingénito) part of the soul. Indeed, the word Intellect (Ingenio) comes, via syncope caused by corrupting Hispanizations over time, from the Latin term for unbegotten (in Latin ingenitus). And to disarm Gentility from any objection to Intellect’s doubt regarding the Gentiles’ worship or rites, she should know that he is a lover of the sciences, a Philos of Sophia, to wit, a philosopher. Indeed, Philosophy is the woman whom he loves most.

Intellect goes further in proving up his credentials. He suggests that in an allegorical sense he may be called Dionysius the Areopagite, such a name signifying the pure and supreme nature of that divine-like nature of the soul that he is, its quintessence, so to speak.

Dionysius the Areopagite

Again, Calderón steers us through a three-fold etymology behind Intellect's allegorical adoption of Dionysius the Areopagite's name. Dionysius the Areopagite is a valid allegorical epithet, Intellect insists, in that Dionysius, of which the Scriptures tell (Acts 17:34), called the soul (referencing Pseudo-Dionysius’s mystical writings) the distilled divinity (divinidad destilada), that is, the most divine-like part enjoyed by the human soul. And if this does not suffice for introduction, the Intellect reminds Gentility of his historical pedigree and etymological badges. He was central to Pagan intellect and Pagan arts. He was employed by the School of Apollo, and Mars or Aries acknowledged him between the roarings of war in the military instruments of his design, as Intellect is the engineer’s art. Thus his name, Dionysius the Aeropagite, is a combination of Dionysius, and Aries and Pagus (field or land). He is a field from which theoretical and practical reason usher forth the fruit of natural philosophy and theology. So he may be known as Intellect or as Dionysius the Areopagite.

A Dionisio Aries y Pago
Cabal mi nombre, á ser vengo
A dos luces por los dos
Sentidos, en el primero
El de Dionisio Areopago,
En el segundo el Ingenio.

From Dionysius, Arius, and Pagus
Derive my name, I have come to be
Two lights through both senses.
The First, that of Dionysius Areopagus,
The second as the Intellect.

“The text allegorizes Dionysius as Igenio," Professor Stephen Rupp observes, "and its main action can be interpreted as an exploration of the human capacity to discover God by the exercise of natural reason.” Stephen Rupp, Allegories of Kingship: Calderón and the Anti-Machiavellian Tradition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 68. Ingenio or Intellect's exposition and dual allegory as Dionysius and Ingenio is a significant feature of the unity of the action in this play. Rupp elaborates:

"In the abstract terms of moral allegory he is Ingenio; in relation to the history of the early Church he is Dionysius the Areopagite. The significance of the auto rests on the unfolding of its two senses through the development of the complementary identities of its central personified abstraction. As Ingenio this character applies his power of understanding to the task of discerning God's law in Creation; as Dionysius he performs the specific historical act of converting to the Church that honors and propagates that law. The conversion of Dionysius is the logical endpoint of Ingenio's intellectual project."

Rupp, 70.

The Intellect also introduces his companion, Thought, though not in very complimentary terms:

El Pensamiento, ese loco
Que pocas veces atento
Se ve á obedecer, me asiste;
Con él y mi ciencia vengo
Deseoso de saber
Qué culto, qué rendimiento
Es este que dais á un Dios,
Si á la aclamación atiendo,
Que ignoráis; porque quisiera
Saber con qué fundamento
Se da al templo, y no al altar
Ni al simulacro.

And Thought, that crazy one,
To which I rarely am attentive
Seeks to be obeyed, assists me.
And with him, and my knowledge, I come
Desirous to know
Which worship, what obsequiousness
Is this which you give to a God,
Which you know not,
If I correctly attend your acclamation,
Because I would like
To know with what foundation
The temple has been built, but not to altar
Nor simulacrum.

It is clear that Calderón's anthropology saw that Thought is oftentimes uncontrollable and erratic, and that the Intellect must grasp Thought and discipline it. Eventually, Calderón's plan in this auto sacramental is to show that "[t]hrough true reason of state man can apprehend the laws that manifest God’s order in Creation, and so attain the religious conviction that is also granted by faith alone. In Calderón’s view reasons of state and reasons of faith lead to the same spiritual end.” Rupp, 69. That is, both reason and faith have a role in directing us to God and to his worship.

But this is to anticipate. Before we get to that conclusion, we have still some ways to go, and in the process we will meet, through the services of Intellect and Thought, some interesting personages such as Atheism, the Synagogue (representing Judaism), and Africa (representing Islam) on the way to meeting St. Paul (representing Christianity), and we will also encounter the Natural Law, the Written Law, and the Law of Grace, and all seven of the Sacraments.

In the next entry we will discuss Gentility's response to Intellect's presentation of his credentials.

Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the Natural Law, Part 2

WE LEFT OFF THE DISCUSSION OF CALDERÓN'S PLAY with Intellect and Thought joining forces to discover how it is that pagans can ascertain through nature the existence of God, and even pay him natural worship. How can they worship a God they do not know? God unknown: "Doesn't this imply a contradiction?" Thought asks.

In response to Thought's query, Intellect reasons that it is the nature of God to reveal himself, or to communicate about himself. Indeed, if God was not communicable, then God would not be God, he states. Intellect reasons thus: Any good not communicated is imperfect. However, God can never be an imperfect good. Therefore, Intellect reasons, God by nature communicates himelf to man. The prophet Habakkuk, Intellect states, speaks of how his people the Jews awaited God who would communicate, not only in great prodigies, but even in the soul and body in man.

The Parthenon

(The minor prophet Habakkuk, himself perhaps a member of Jewish temple's Levitical choir, is the Jewish analogue to the singing Gentile choir. Additionally, this book is unique in that it presents for perhaps the first time in Israelite literature man questioning the ways of God. "How long, O Lord? . . . " (Hab. 1:2, ff.) Its central message is not one of doubt, however: "the just, because of his faith, shall live." Hab. 2:4. And its conclusion equally faithful despite the initial questioning: "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and exult in my saving God," or as the Douay Rheims puts it developing the full messianic implications of this passage, "I will joy in God my Jesus." Hab. 3:18 Habakkuk's concept of faith was referred to by St. Paul in his epistles. So Habakkuk may be the Judaeo-Christian source of the Anselmian and Augustinian fides quarens intellectum, "faith seeking understanding." All this is probably why Calderón had Intellect refer to the prophet Habakkuk here.)

The Prophet Habakkuk

But Habakkuk doesn't apply to the Gentiles: Habakkuk is of another time and place. The voices of the choir that Thought and Intellect hear are not informed by the Prophets or the Law. The Jews knew God, as he had made himself manifest to them as his people. These people, Intellect observes, are of a different stock. What sort of people give to a God they do not know worship? What kind of people are both blind and yet enlightened, ya alumbrados y ciegos, as they approach the threshold of their temple?

Out upon the stage comes Music, singing, followed by men and women in Roman garb dancing before a character personifying the Gentiles, who bears a crown of laurel, an imperial mantle, and a sword and torch. A woman sings:

Dios no sabido hasta ahora,
Pues solamente por Fe.
La Gentilidad te cree
Entre los dioses que adora,
Permite que quien te ignora
te conozca, a cuyo efecto:

God unknown until now,
And known only by Faith.
The Gentiles believe you
Among the gods they adore,
Grant that he who does not know you
Recognizes you, to which effect:

A second woman completes the thought of the first, as the Gentiles dance crossing and crossed, singing "Great God whom we do not know, Shorten the time . . . ."

Ser, que sólo imaginado,
Te adivina la noticia.
Tal vez Dios de la justicia,
Y tal vez Dios del agrado;
Permite que declarado
Te merezca el amor nuestro.

Being, the very imagination of which,
Implies the message
Of perhaps God of justice
And perhaps God of pleasure;
Allow that so declared
Our love is worthy of You.

The character that represents the Gentiles (we shall call her "Gentility" so that we can refer to her in a singular personal pronoun, though the word "gentility" does not normally connote the state of being a Gentile.) looks face to face, whether to the people or to Intellect and Thought, or whether to the God she seeks, it is unclear. But she sings:

Dios de pocos prevenido
Y de muchos, esperado,
A cuyas aras postrado
Todo este pueblo ha venido;
Ya que el Templo te ha ofrecido,
Ven á poseer el Templo.

God by few prevened
And by many hoped for,
Prostrate before these altars
All these people have come;
Now that they have offered the Temple to you
Come and possess the Temple.

As the men and women, the chorus, sings: "And make that we may know you, as . . . ," when Intellect interrupts the entire group.

Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the Natural Law, Part 1

DURING THE LAST SEVERAL WEEKS we have discussed the some of the Protestant reformers' attack or modifications of the received doctrine of the natural moral law. In some cases, in particular Luther and especially Calvin, the Protestant reformers essentially denied the theoretical reason's ability to know God and the practical reason's ability to know the good. At the extreme end, we have characters such as the Calvinist theologian Karl Barth, who vehemently rejected any role of the natural law. In other cases (e.g., Melanchthon, Vermigli, and Zanchi), the Protestant reformers advanced, if somewhat modified, the received natural law doctrine. These latter allow us a foothold to enter into dialogue with Protestant on moral issues based upon an overlap of traditions.

During the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain, however, the natural law enjoyed a rugged revival. As part of its Counter-Reformation efforts, the Church insisted natural reason's ability, even if limited in practice for a variety of reasons, to apprehend God's existence and to apprehend the good. Thus, the Church insisted, without thereby reducing the need for Revelation and Grace, that there was such a thing as natural theology. The Church's efforts to maintain this teaching bore fruit in Spain, and the Church's doctrine regarding the natural law found expression not only among its theologians, but also among its playrights and poets. So the natural law frequently became a subject in the auto sacramentales, or one-act plays that addressed moral and theological issues and dogmas, and which were popular during Spain's so-called Golden Age of literature.

During the next several blog postings, we will discuss one of those auto sacramentales. Specifically, we will discuss the role of natural theology and the natural law in Pedro Calderón de la Barca's auto sacramental entitled A Dios por razón de estado, To God by Reason of the State.

Since Calderón is not well-known outside Spain, it is useful to preface these next entries with a short introduction of his life and place in literature.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-81) was one of Spain's great writers, poets, and dramatists in one of Spain's greatest literary age. Not only was he one of Spain's great writers, but he has reached international status, and is generally regarded as one of the world's great playwrights. He rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Molière, and Racine his near-contemporaries. He is perhaps best known for his play, La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream):

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ficción,
una sombra, una ilusión,
y el mayor bien es pequeño.
¡Que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son!

What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? A fiction,
A shadow, an illusion,
And the greatest profit is small;
For all of life is a dream,
And dreams, are nothing but dreams.

Calderón was born in Madrid from a mother of Flemish descent, and a father who was an hidalgo, a minor nobleman, from the area of Cantabria. His parents died when Calderón was young--his mother dying in 1610 and his father in 1615. Calderón studied at the Imperial College (Colegio Imperial), the Jesuit College in Madrid, intending to become a priest. His plans changed, however, and instead studied law at Salamanca. But he was not to be a lawyer.

Instead, Calderón began his literary career in the 1620s, writing poems and plays that received recognition from the outset. By the mid-1630s, Calderón's talents had reached the ears of the royal court, as he was made a knight of the Order of Santiago by Phillip IV in 1636 or 1637, and he was commissioned to write a series of plays for the royal theater that had recently been built in the Buen Retiro palace. He appears to have married and fathered a son, but his wife died young. Calderón became a third-order member of the Franciscans in 1650, and eventually was ordained into the priesthood in 1651.

It was then that he wrote the majority of his autos sacamentales, some of which proved controversial and were subject of inquiry by the Inquisition or its censorship. Ultimately, he wrote about 80 of these auto sacramentales. The autos sacramentales were influenced by his Jesuit education, and his reading of the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas and the Jesuit theologian Francisco Suárez. Though written within a Thomistic or Suarezian template, his plays also have a deep psychological sensitivity, and faithfully address the tensions that exist in man. They tend thus to focus on the tension between faith and reason, reason and impulse or passion, intellect and instinct, knowledge and will. They are, like much of the Spaniard and that culture's tragic sense of life, colored with a realistic or vital pessimism, but this is counterbalanced, indeed redeemed and compensated, by an optimistic view of reason and of Faith. Life is a dream, relative only to the reality of the Eternity to which we are summoned.

Calderón enjoyed favor with the court for all his life, and in 1663, he became honorary chaplain to Philip IV, an office he continued to fulfill for Philip IV's successor, John IV. Calderón wrote his last play, Hado y Divisa de Leonido y Marfisa, at the age of eighty-one.

The play A Dios por razón de estado, To God by Reason of the State, opens with its two main protagonists, Thought (El Pensamiento) who is dressed as a madman as if fleeing from the galant Intellect (Ingenio), who is seeking to detain him. The Chorus chants:

Gran Dios, que ignoramos,
abrevia el tiempo
y haz que te conozcamos,
pues te creemos.

Great God, of whom we are ignorant
Shorten the time
And grant that we may know you
In that we believe in you.

As Robert Fiore understands it,* "[t]he personified abstractions of el Ingenio and his companion el Pensamiento represent specific facets of Aquinas's [doctrine of] natural reason." (27) El Pensamiento "corresponds to the imagination and the cogitative sense which estimates what is beneficial or harmful to man." On the other hand, El Ingenio "exhibits properties of the central sense, which is the link between the external world and man's consciousness, and the memory, which operates in conjunction with reason to employ a type of syllogistic process." Thus, natural human reason is a composite of these two, though they exist in tension. (27-28) Thought and Intellect are sufficiently separate and independent that they must voluntarily cooperate and dialogue; neither has power over the other, and neither makes progress without the harmonious corroboration. After Intellect and Thought decide to travel together, the action in the play begins with Thought seeking the source and meaning of the song of the Chorus that is coming from a rustic Greek Temple on the top of a mountain:

Los dulces acentos
de una métrica armonía
(que es en repetidos ecos
sonoro enigma del aire,
cuyo sentido no entiendo),
me arrebatan a saber
qué quieren decir . . . .

The sweet accents
Of metric harmony
(which is the repeated echoing
and enigmatic sounds of the air
whose meaning I do not understand),
They take hold of me to want to know
What it is they are saying

Here is Thought, spurred by wonder, by curiosity, to seek understanding. Intellect admits that he is plagued by the same doubt, the same confusion regarding the songs of the Chorus. How it is that non-believers, Barbarians and cultures blind to Revelation, are able nevertheless to apprehend and even, in a manner, worship God. So Intellect and Though partner together in searching the answer to this question, with Thought to think it, and Intellect to know it.

As they approach the rustic temple, it has on its frontispiece the Latin inscription: "Ignoto Deo," meaning "To the Unknown God." Open to the four winds, and without altar or image, the rustic temple bears no clue as to what God is worshiped there.

Roman Altar to the Unknown God

This is a clear reference to the encounter between St. Paul and the pagan Athenians at the Areopagus, regarding the worship of the Agnostos Theos, the Unknown God, as related in the Book of Acts 17:22-17:31:

22 But Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. 23 For passing by, and seeing your idols, I found an altar also, on which was written: To the unknown God. What therefore you worship, without knowing it, that I preach to you: 24 God, who made the world, and all things therein; he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is he served with men's hands, as though he needed any thing; seeing it is he who giveth to all life, and breath, and all things: 24 "Dwelleth not in temples"... God is not contained in temples; so as to need them for his dwelling, or any other uses, as the heathens imagined. Yet by his omnipresence, he is both there and everywhere. 26 And hath made of one, all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the limits of their habitation. 27 That they should seek God, if happily they may feel after him or find him, although he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and are; as some also of your own poets said: For we are also his offspring. 29 Being therefore the offspring of God, we must not suppose the divinity to be like unto gold, or silver, or stone, the graving of art, and device of man. 30 And God indeed having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declareth unto men, that all should everywhere do penance. 31 Because he hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in equity, by the man whom he hath appointed; giving faith to all, by raising him up from the dead. 32 And when they had heard of the resurrection of the dead, some indeed mocked, but others said: We will hear thee again concerning this matter. 33 So Paul went out from among them. 34 But certain men adhering to him, did believe; among whom was also Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Indeed, St. Paul is to make his appearance later in the play.

St. Paul Preaching at the Areopagus About the Unknown God

*Citations in this posting and future ones are to Fiore are to Robert L. Fiore, "An Example of the Resurgence of Natural Law in Golden Age Spain," The Medieval Tradition of Natural Law (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987), 27-35.

Brownson on Total Depravity

THESE LAST SEVERAL WEEKS we have reviewed some of the Protestant Reformers' views on the natural law. Much of the Protestant Reformers' theology was marred by their theological doctrine of the "total depravity" of man. This doctrine led them to distrust practical reason's ability to determine and to will the good. Trying to preserve the role of Grace and avoid the shoals of Pelagianism, the Reformers failed to negotiate the mean, and ended up stuck in the maelstrom of "total depravity." Because the Reformers taught that man after the fall was entirely damaged, there was no "image of God," no natural revelation, no trace of good, or plan of any end in nature that reason could rely on to find an intrinsic law. Unlike the fairy tale, there was not even straw of God's image in man which man could spin into the gold of law. Law was absent in post-lapsarian nature; natural man was disorder and chaos, outside the pale of any natural grace; there was no good in him; man's nature was viscous sand, and had no firm rock. Such a arenic, sand-like, pessimistic conception of man was not a foundation upon which a natural law ethic can be built.

In his article "Romanism in America," Orestes Brownson displays good Catholic distrust of such dismal and dreary theories of man. He outlines a precise and accurate anthropology of man, an anthropology which must be held in order to build a natural law theory that will withstand the onslaught of storms.

We always view with great distrust all theories which are founded on the supposed intrinsic corruption of the human soul. Nothing that exists is intrinsically evil. Protestants, when they do not deny the fall, are sure to exaggerate its effects on human nature. Man's nature has become disordered, his understanding darkened, and his will attenuated, by the loss of original justice, but it remains intrinsically good, physically what it was when it first came from the hands of the Creator. It is not totally depraved, it is not wholly corrupt; for if it were, it could not be redeemed and saved. Man's intellect is still adapted to truth, and cannot think without thinking truth on some side; his will still craves good, and cannot operate on some side willing good. It is in the power of no man to think unmixed falsehood, or to will unmixed evil for the sake of evil. All thought is displayed on a substratum of truth, all will upon a substratum of good. In all error there is a truth misapprehended, misrepresented, misapplied, or abused. Here is the side of truth in your modern eclectic and humanitarian schools. All these exaggerated views of the depravity of human nature should be avoided. The fathers did not find gentile philosophy all false and all evil. They studied it, and recommended its study, as containing much that is both true and good. Protestants even are to be judged with moderation and impartiality. It would be as false as illiberal to say that they have no truth. Not all their thoughts are false, not all their judgments are erroneous, not all their volitions are evil. They are men, men as richly endowed by nature as other men,--are not unfrequently able men, highly cultivated and learned men, as were many of the ancient gentiles. Not even in them has human nature lost all its dignity, or been short of all its glory. We should be able to recognize and vindicate, if need be, the dignity and nobility of human nature in the heretical as well as in the orthodox. We render no service to religion by decrying human nature. We are not to destroy nature, as attempted by Calvinists and Jansenists, to make way for grace. Grace comes to its aid, strengthens it, and lifts it into a higher sphere. It is what nature wants, what it cries out for, and without which it cannot attain to its supernatural destiny, its supernatural beatitude. That is what Tertullian meant when he pronounced the human heart "naturally Christian."

[From Brownson's Works, "Romanism in American" (Detroit: Thorndike House, 1884), Vol. 7, pp. 524-25.]