The Natural Law Theory of Thomas Aquinas
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2021/08/77294/
http://nlnrac.org/classical/aquinas.html#_edn20
By Thomas D'Andrea
Aquinas’s Natural Law Theory
Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit
Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.[1]
They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.[2]
Romans 2:15
1. Introduction to Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was an intellectual and religious revolutionary, living at a time of great philosophical, theological and scientific development. He was a member of the Dominican Friars, which at that time was considered to be a cult, and was taught by one of the greatest intellects of the age, Albert the Great (1208–1280). In a nutshell, Aquinas wanted to modify Plato’s thinking, which had been (and continues to be) hugely influential in Christian Theology and Philosophy, principally through the contributions of St. Agustine and those who followed in the Augustinian tradition (e.g. St. Anselm). To this established tradition Aquinas sought to introduce Aristotelian ideas to science, nature, philosophy and theology.
Aquinas wrote an incredible amount — in fact one of the miracles accredited to him was the amount he wrote! His most famous work is Summa Theologica and this runs to some three and half thousand pages (depending on font and margins), and contains many fascinating and profound insights, such as his famous proofs for God’s existence (Viae Quinque – Five Ways). The book remains a fundamental basis for Catholic Philosophy and Theology. While the title suggests that this was his magnum opus and most detailed consideration of philosophical and theological ideas this, characterization is misleading. Aquinas himself regarded this as a beginner's textbook. Essentially this was philosophy and theology 101. For instance, the arguments for the existence of God contained in the Summa are extremely truncated versions of his arguments. They're faithful to his overall project and resulting worldview, but he offers much more detailed and expansive expositions of these arguments in other works. If he knew that the only exposure most undergraduates have to his arguments for the existence of God is his five arguments in the Summa, he would be greatly troubled, I believe. The Summa arguments are basically supposed to be just enough to get one started.
With respect to Aquinas on Natural Law theory we will only be focusing on a few key ideas, specifically Books I–II, questions 93–95.
Motivating Natural Law Theory: The Euthyphro Dilemma
and Divine Command Theory
Were one to ask a deeply religious individual why we should not steal, murder, lie or commit adultery. Etc., they might say “because God forbids us to do so.” Or if we ask why we should love our neighbor or give money to charity then their answer is likely to be “because God commands it”. And of course, in some sense they're right. The religious teachings from the Abrahamic religions and specifically Christianity do tell us that God forbids certain things and commands others and that we are to follow these divine directives as a matter of religious devotion and faith. One way of justifying this link between what is right and wrong and what God commands and forbids is what is called the Divine Command Theory (DCT). But the divine command theory goes beyond merely saying that we are required to do what God commands and to avoid what God forbids as a matter of religious devotion and faith. It goes on to the bolder claim that what makes an action morally right is merely the fact that God commands it and what makes an action wrong is merely the fact that God forbids it.
Inherent Problems
with Appeals to God to Explain Morality and Moral Obligation
In an effort to ground morality in something objective and universal, some have sought to appeal to God as, not only an arbiter of right and wrong, in the sense of a wise/perfect judge, but as the very source of right and wrong. But appeals to God to solve matters of morality have two main problems:
1. Not everyone believes in God.
2. Even among believers, there is disagreement about how God wants us to behave.
Atheists deny that any such thing as God exists and so God cannot be the source either of morality or moral guidance. Agnostics do not explicitly deny the existence of God, but since they claim that we cannot know whether God exists or not, neither for them can God be the source, either of morality or moral guidance. By contrast, Deists do believe in God, but think God doesn’t really care how we behave. Further, devotees of various religions have markedly different notions of precisely what it is that God commands and what God forbids. So, appeals to God to solve matters of morality present problems for theists, atheists and agnostics alike.
But even if we did all agreed that there was a God, and we agreed about how God wanted us to behave, there would remain another philosophical question. While God might be an excellent source of moral guidance and knowledge, and all of his commandments might be good and just, does God’s commanding something make it just, or does God command something because it is just? This is the question we are about to consider: The Divine Command Theory.
Divine Command Theory
The Divine Command Theory is the view which claims that what makes something morally correct is nothing other than the fact that God commands it. There are some psychological motivations or accepting this view. For instance, it assures objectivity and reliability to ethics (thus avoiding Ethical Relativism and Ethical Subjectivism). Given God’s eternal nature, what is “right” is always right, all times, places, and situations. This gives ethics a stability, clarity and universality that many find attractive. There may be theological reasons why one might wish to advocate this position, namely that nothing becomes a constraint on God, not even morality. (God’s Aseity) However, the question from the point of view of philosophy is: “What philosophical reason do we have for thinking that the Divine Command Theory is true or do we have reason to think that it is false?”
This further question has often been debated. As with so many things, this dispute is anticipated by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. In the Platonic dialogue Euthyphro the characters of Socrates and the priest of the Greek religion Euthyphro take up the issue of piety and goodness.
Quick Summary of the Dialogue:
Euthyphro
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html
Euthyphro (published c. 399–395 BC) by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue, the events of which occur in the weeks before the trial of Socrates (399 BC). It recounts a conversation between Socrates and his friend Euthyphro. In this dialogue, Socrates meets Euthyphro at the porch of the archon basileus (the 'king’s court'). Socrates tells Euthyphro that he, Socrates, is preparing to go to court to answer the charges that have been brought against him, alleged crimes of impiety, mocking the gods and corrupting the youth of Athens. Euthyphro tells Socrates that he, Euthyphro, is going to court himself to prosecute his father for binding a worker in chains and leaving him to die. If successful in this prosecution, Euthyphro’s father might very well be executed.
It is worth mentioning that, for one thing, patricide was among the worst moral offenses within Greek ethics and religion. Second, in the justice system of the time, it would have fallen to the family of the worker who had died to prosecute Euthyphro’s father for murder, not the father’s own son. Finally, Euthyphro, being a priest in the Greek religion, would seem to be blatantly diverging from custom and violating one of the strongest commandments of his religion.
Understandably then, Socrates asks Euthyphro if Euthyphro is certain that what he's doing is right. Is this truly what piety requires? Euthyphro assures Socrates that this is the right thing to do and further that Euthyphro well understands the true nature of piety. So, Socrates goes on to ask Euthyphro to define piety for him. Euthyphro’s help will clarify Socrates' case in the courtroom and assist Socrates in his defense.
Euth: Well now, I claim that the pious is what I am doing now, prosecuting someone who is guilty of wrongdoing, either of murder or temple robbery or anything else of the sort, whether it happens to be one's father or mother or whoever else, and the impious is failing to prosecute…
Soc: So remember that I did not request this from you, to teach me one or two of the many pious things, but to teach me the form[3] itself by which everything pious is pious? For you said that it's by one form that impious things are somehow impious and pious things pious…
Eventually…
Euth. Yes, I should say that what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious.
Soc. Ought we to enquire into the truth of this, Euthyphro, or simply to accept the mere statement on our own authority and that of others? What do you say?
Euth. We should enquire; and I believe that the statement will stand the test of enquiry.
Soc. We shall know better, my good friend, in a little while. The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.
This, however, leads to the main dilemma of the dialogue. Is something pious because the gods approve of it or do the gods approve of it because it is pious? Spoiler Alert: As is typical of early Platonic dialogues, this one has an “aporic[4]” ending.
The Divine Command theory is the view which claims that what makes something morally correct is nothing other than the fact that God commands it (i.e. holy because it is beloved of the gods). In response to Socrates’s question “What is goodness?” Euthyphro responds (eventually) with something like “Goodness is whatever God loves.” ( I am paraphrasing a bit here.) It is important to note that Socrates agrees with this statement and takes this to be a true and significant claim, but he pushes a bit further. This claim, even if true, is ambiguous and does not actually answer Socrates’s question. It only raises the following one:
Is something good because God loves it, or does God love it because it
is good?
If one affirms the first of the disjuncts, one is affirming the “Divine Command Theory.”
The Divine Command Theory: Things are good because God commands them and things are bad because God forbids them. It is the commands of God, and ONLY the commands of God, that makes some things right and some things wrong.
Some Uncomfortable
Implications of the Divine Command Theory
Despite the attractions I mentioned above, there are also some uncomfortable implications to this view however.
1. Philosophical Ethics becomes impossible. The only way to know what is good or bad is to ask God.
Notice, you have no way of knowing what flavor of ice cream I love without asking me. You could not reason it out on your own since there is no feature of the ice cream that makes it preferred by me; it is rather a fact about me and my preferences that determines what I love. You might find out that I like peanut butter (I do, by the way.) and then reason, well, if he likes peanut butter, he must like peanut butter ice-cream. But you’d be wrong. I hate peanut butter ice-cream. I think it’s vile. “Why?” you might ask? I don’t know; I just don’t like it.
Similarly, you cannot know what is good in the world by looking at the world, since no feature about the world makes things good or bad; it is instead a feature about God. (This is because of the next implication.) Again, you might reason, well, since God likes children, He must like in vitro fertilization. But what if you are wrong like you were about me a peanut butter ice-cream? Maybe God hates in vitro fertilization as much as I hate peanut butter ice cream. If no amount of observation and reasoning about the world or actions in the world can reveal to us the way humans ought to behave, this makes Philosophical Ethics impossible and we must rely instead entirely on revelation.
2. This, in turn, makes Ethics (and God for that matter) capricious and arbitrary.
Since something is right because God commands it, then it follows that the opposite would be just as right if God commanded that instead. This seems to trivialize all the commands of God, rendering them completely arbitrary and shows God not to act from reason and morality, but from caprice. Now you might think, well, there are certainly things (like child abuse) that God would NEVER sanction. But this presumes there is something inherently wrong with such actions, and that God, with infinite goodness and wisdom would KNOW this and for that reason never sanction such behavior.
But that is precisely what the Divine Command Theory denies (i.e. that certain actions are inherently wrong or right). God has no (moral) reason to prefer certain actions to others since actions are neither moral nor immoral apart from God’s preference. Thus, the morality or immorality of an action cannot account in any way for why God prefers or forbids since actions are neither until after he prefers or forbids.
3. We cannot praise God for being moral or just.
Further still, The Divine Command Theory seems to rob us of the ability to praise God for His morality and justice. If “good” equals “God-loved” then to say that “God is Good.” merely equals “God loves Himself. God is God-loved.” If “justice” just means “whatever God decrees” then to say, “God acts justly.” amounts only to saying “God does whatever He does.” But this says nothing about the degree to which God merits God’s love, or ours for that matter.
4. Finally, this account of morality leaves entirely mysterious what atheists and agnostics mean when they claim that something is good or that something is bad.
Clearly atheists and agnostics do NOT mean by “good” “whatever God commands or decrees or loves,” since they are, at most, unsure whether there exists a God or not. But most atheists and agnostics do NOT have similar doubts as to whether or not anything is moral or good.
So far none of these demonstrate DCT to be false, just uncomfortable. However, there is a logical problem with this view.
5. Inequivalence of Statement and Restatement
The sentence “Whatever God loves is good.” is an interesting, informative and perhaps even a controversial claim. (Recall that Socrates and Euthyphro agree on this much.) But if “good” means “God-loved” then the sentence ceases to be interesting and informative, but is rather a trivial tautology. Look what happens if we treat “good” as synonymous with “God-loved” (which we would be entitled to do if they really mean the same thing).
A: “Whatever God Loves is Good.” (Interesting)
B: “Whatever God loves is God-loved.” (Trivial)
These two should be equivalent. But
A: “Whatever God Loves is Good.” ≠ B: “Whatever God loves is God-loved.”
The reason the original sentence (A) is NOT as trivial as the second (B) can only be explained by the fact that “good” does NOT mean “God -loved.” Thus, the Divine Command Theory does not seem to be true.
To resist the Divine Command Theory then, would be to assert the alternative disjunct: God loves something because it is good. Here it is still true that “Whatever God loves is good.” That is because what is good is obvious to Him in His infinite wisdom, and because of His perfect morality He only loves the things He knows to be good. This view avoids the arbitrariness of the previous option.
On this view (i.e. the Rejection of the Divine Command Theory):
1. God/ ethics are not capricious.
2. Allows us to praise God on moral grounds.
3. The atheists/ agnostics mean the same as everyone else.
4. Philosophical Ethics is possible.
Still, this is not without its own problems. It really takes us to where Euthyphro and Socrates were at the beginning of the dialog. “What does it mean to say that something is “good?”
Soc: We must begin again from the beginning to examine what the pious is, since as far as I am concerned, I will not give up until I understand it. Do not scorn me, but applying your mind in every way, tell me the truth, now more than ever. Because you know it if anybody does and, like Proteus[5], you cannot be released until you tell me, because unless you knew clearly about the pious and impious there is no way you would ever have tried to pursue your aging father for murder on behalf of a hired laborer, but instead you would have been afraid before the gods, and ashamed before men, to run the risk of conducting this matter improperly. But as it is, I am sure that you think that you have clear knowledge of the pious and the impious. So tell me, great Euthyphro, and do not conceal what you think it is.
Euth: Well, some other time, then, Socrates, because I'm in a hurry to get somewhere and it's time for me to go.
Sigh.
Once we abandon a theological explanation of concepts of good and bad, we must return to the search for a philosophical one. This is not to say that God would not be a VERY good source of moral truth, and if we could get His expert advice as to whether this or that practice was moral or not, that would settle the issue I suppose. But if we do not have access to His judgement, or if His spokespersons disagree with one another, it gives us another way to go (i.e. try to see what God sees which makes things right and wrong). All this is to say that, if the Divine Command Theory is not true, Philosophical Ethics might be possible after all and that we might, like God Himself, come to recognize what is good and bad, albeit imperfectly.
I have a friend, Andy, who is a physician. In fact, he is a very good physician. He is such a good physician in fact that I might say of Andy, “Whatever Andy recommends is healthy.” Now, does Andy recommending something MAKE it healthy, or does he recommend something because it is healthy?
I suspect you would agree that Andy recommending something does not/ cannot make it healthy. (Otherwise, I would ask him to make Fettuccini Alfredo healthy.) The truth is that Andy recommends things because they ARE healthy. He looks at the world and uses his superior knowledge to determine what is and what is not healthy and therefore what he will and will not recommend.
Now, if I have a question about whether something is healthy or not, I could call him up and ask him. However, if he is not available, I might be able to look at the world, try to see what he sees, and figure it out myself. But that will require getting a clearer understanding of just what is it that makes healthy things healthy. (And likewise, what is it that makes just acts just.)
All this is to say that, if the Divine Command Theory is not true, Philosophical Ethics might be possible after all and that we might, like God Himself, come to recognize what is good and bad, albeit imperfectly. (Was this what the serpent was talking about? Who knows?)
This is a first treatment of this issue and as such, somewhat superficial. Were this a course where the entire semester was devoted to morality’s connection to God, we would see that there is a good deal more to say on this subject. For instance, defenders of Classical Theism (many in the Augustinian family) have suggested that Socrates’ very question presupposes an impossible division between Goodness and God’s nature.[6] Very briefly, following from the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions, this view of theism holds that there is an inter-convertibility between “being,” “truth,” “goodness,” and “beauty.” To the extent anything exists (has being) to that same degree it is true, good and beautiful. It is only to the extent that something doesn't have being (as Augustine would say, suffers from a privation) is it false, evil, and impaired. God, as the MOST real, has the highest degree of being, truth, goodness, and beauty[7], not unlike Plato's Form of the Good, and thus is the ultimate source. On this view, God is not “a being”; He IS Being/Truth/Goodness and Beauty.
If you are interested in pursuing this topic further, you may wish to start by looking at the Stanford Encyclopedia.
http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=Divine+Command+Theory
The question, for our purposes here, is to ask, for Aquinas “What role, if any at all, does God have when it comes to morality?” For Aquinas, God’s commands are there to help us to come to see what, as a matter of fact, is right and wrong rather than determine what is right and wrong. That is, Aquinas opts for the first option in the Euthyphro dilemma (sort of) as stated above. But then this raises the obvious question: if it is not God’s commands that make something right and wrong, then what does? Does not God just fall out of the picture entirely? Is morality completely independent of God, and if so, does morality constitute a limit on God, thus threatening His aseity.
This is where his Natural Law Theory comes in.
Setting the Table and Getting Clear on Terms:
Aquinas’s Natural Law Theory contains four different
types of law
1. Eternal Law
2. Natural Law
3. Human Law
4. Divine Law.
Eternal Law
The way to understand these four laws and how they relate to one another is via the Eternal Law, so we’d better start there…
By “Eternal Law’” Aquinas means God’s rational purpose and plan for all things. And because the Eternal Law is part of God’s mind, then it has always existed and will always exist. The Eternal Law is not simply something that God decided at some point to write. It is necessary and universal as it is part of God’s nature.
Aquinas thinks that everything has a purpose and follows a plan. Like Aristotle, he is a teleologist. If something fulfils its purpose/plan then it is following the Eternal Law. And The thing is said to be good to the extent that it does what it's supposed to do, that is, fulfills its purpose. (i.e. The Functional Account of Good)
Natural Law
The Natural Law is comprised of those precepts of the Eternal Law that govern the behavior of beings possessing reason and free will. Natural Law is that portion of the Eternal Law which free beings can voluntarily embrace or reject. It does not generate an external set of rules that are written down for us to consult, but rather it generates general rules that any rational agent can come to recognize as morally binding simply in virtue of being rational (consistent with our ends and natures). These he refers to as “Primary Precepts.” For example, for Aquinas it is not as if we need to check whether we should pursue good and avoid evil, as it is just part of how we already think about things. Aquinas gives some more examples of primary precepts:
· Protect and preserve human life.
· Reproduce and educate one’s offspring.
· Know and worship God.
· Live in a society.
These precepts are primary because they are true for all people in all instances and flow from Natural Law and the natures of things (e.g. human nature).
Notice, by contrast, that we cannot choose to obey or reject the law of gravity for instance. This is a “natural law” in our contemporary sense, but not in Aquinas’s. He is restricting himself to talking about the domain of precepts which guide human behavior, but are not (mechanistically) compelled.
Human Law
Aquinas also introduces what he calls the Human Law which gives rise to what he calls “Secondary Precepts”. These might include such things as do not drive above 70mph on a highway, do not kidnap people, always wear a helmet when riding a bike, do not hack into someone’s bank account.
Secondary precepts are not generated by our reason, but rather they are imposed by governments, groups, clubs, societies etc. Nevertheless, these secondary precepts are practical means by which societies achieve the primary precepts set out by Natural Law. Thus valid secondary precepts then must be consistent with Natural Law, for it is for the realization of Natural Law that they exist at all.
It is not always morally acceptable to follow secondary precepts. It is only morally acceptable if they are consistent with the Natural Law. If they are, then we ought to follow them, if they are not, then a question arises as to whether they are even rightly regarded as a law or not.
Unlike primary precepts, Aquinas is not committed to there being only one set of secondary precepts for all people in all situations. It is consistent with Aquinas’s thinking to have a law to drive on the right in the US and on the left in the UK as there is no practical reason to think that there is one correct side of the road on which to drive.
To discover primary precepts Aquinas thinks that what we ought to do is talk and interact with people and subject their ideas and our own to rational scrutiny. But to discover our secondary precepts (which should accord with Natural Law) we need to be part of a society. These will arise from the practical constraints of living in a society and in a particular environment. Aquinas would tell us that “live peaceably within a society” is itself a primary precept. But this may require more specific rules such as “drive on the right side of the road or do not exceed 70 miles per hour on the highway.
So far we might think that there is no need for God. If we can learn these primary precepts by rational reflection and secondary precepts from living in society, then God simply drops out of the story.
Recap:
Eternal Law (God’s rational plans/purpose for all things)
Natural Laws (Our partaking in the Eternal Law which we, as free beings, may accept or reject.)
Human Law (Laws which humans make, ideally to capture the truths of the Natural Laws, which form secondary precepts.)
Finally, Aquinas introduces Divine Law.
Divine Law
The Divine Law, is that portion of God’s Eternal Law which is given to us through revelation. It can be thought of as the Divine equivalent of the Human Law (those discovered through rational reflection and created by people). Divine laws are those that God has, in His grace, seen fit to give us and are those “mysteries”, those rules given by God which we find in scripture; for example, the ten commandments.
But why introduce the Divine Law at all?
Perhaps, if we were perfectly rational, dispassionate and objective, we would not have need of revealed Divine Law. However, we are not perfectly rational, dispassionate and objective.[8] Our own personal inclinations and biases affect what we perceive to be “reasonable” and what we perceive to be “unreasonable.” But, if I have a “dog in that fight,” so to speak, then I might think that this act of theft is rational and thus sanctioned by Natural Law. In such cases, it is useful, Aquinas thinks, to have, coming directly from God Himself, unequivocally clear directions such as the commandment that says “Thou shalt not steal.”
Further, not everyone is cut out to do philosophy or reason to the conclusions of Natural Law, nor always to create Human Law in perfect compliance with Natural Law. Revealed Divine Law is a short cut. Aquinas suggests it saves us the trouble of needing to “reinvent the wheel.” But notice, the deliverances of Divine Law are eminently rational. These commands are not the mere capricious commands of an irrational God which can only be accepted by faith alone.
Law, of its various sorts, has a role to play in humans’ full realization of their nature by free acts. Recall of course that Aquinas is committed to an Aristotelian metaphysical worldview. Thus Aquinas maintains that human beings have fixed human natures and that they are directed towards the realization of that nature and realize their full human flourishing when they actualize their inherent natural capacities. Further, certain kinds of actions and certain kinds of character habits contribute to the fulfillment of this innate nature and others are counterproductive. Thus, for Aquinas, no less than for Aristotle, it is in our own best interest to develop the virtues which contribute to full human flourishing and to avoid the vices. These are actions and virtues we are “free” to embrace or reject. And it is here that Natural Law plays a crucial role.
What role? To ask this question is to seek to grasp Thomas’s natural law teaching in the context of his overall metaphysical cosmology.
Thomas Aquinas is generally regarded as the West’s pre-eminent theorist of the natural law, critically inheriting the main traditions of natural law or quasi–natural law thinking in the ancient world (including the Platonic, and particularly Aristotelian and Stoic traditions) and bringing elements from these traditions into systematic relation in the framework of a metaphysics of creation and divine providence. His theory sets the terms of debate for subsequent natural law theorizing.
The fundamentals of Aquinas’s natural law doctrine are contained in the so-called Treatise on Law in the Summa Theologiae, comprising Questions 90 to 108 in the first part of the second part of the three-part Summa.
Thomists have rightly expressed reservations about the procedure of surgically extracting the teaching in those Questions (or often the more strictly philosophical Questions 90 to 97) and representing it as Thomas’s natural law thinking tout court. Indeed, there is less possibility of distorting Thomas’s theory if one is careful to read the Treatise on Law in the context of the conceptual architecture of the Summa Theologiae as a whole.[9]
The Summa is Thomas’s mature theological synthesis, aimed at providing beginners in theology with a systematic, overall account of both the divine nature, as knowable by faith-enlightened reason, and the divine plan and work of creating and redeeming the cosmos and ordaining it to a final transfiguration in glory at the end of history. Thomas’s method in composing the work, as he states in the work’s Prologue, is to treat of the whole of revealed theology (sacra doctrina) as briefly and clearly as possible, but according to a strict order whereby the very contours of the subject matter of the science dictate the architectonic plan and the sequential treatment of questions within the work.
The first Question of the Summa so treats the nature and scope of theology itself, and once this is established, the work considers the very existence and nature of God: God first in His own inner and Trinitarian life, and then in His external activity of giving being to creatures and ordaining them towards their own perfection or full realization for the manifestation or communication of His own glory.
But again, recall Aquinas’ fourth way to prove the existence of God. Observation reveals a universe that does not behave chaotically, but rather teleologically, where individual natural kinds are directed towards the realization, as perfectly as possible, their own inherent natures. Ultimately, these natures were given to them by God of course, but one need not know that to know and observe that they have inherent natures nonetheless, natures towards which they are directed. They reach full perfection and ultimate fulfillment when they realize all of the latent inherent capacities. Again, this is the Aristotelian potentiality/actuality metaphysics at work.
To be clear, the Summa and theology itself are all about God. The divine nature is the subject matter of the science, and the very first principles or premises that serve as inferential starting points in the systematic inquiry of theology are those items that God has revealed to us concerning His nature and His plan and purpose in creating the cosmos. God Himself and subsequently all creation are studied in the light of these starting points or first principles. In the order of the Summa, the first part of the work treats the divine nature in itself and then the free creative production of creatures by God (angels, humans, and all other animate and inanimate beings).
The second part treats the grace-aided attainment of a cognitive-affective union with God by human activity (which union represents the fullest realization of human nature, as we shall see), and the third part treats Christ and his Church and sacraments, the necessary means for man’s union with God.
Law, of its various sorts, has a role to play in humans’ full realization of their nature by free acts (acts over which they have a certain degree of control and dominion). What role? To ask this question is to seek to grasp Thomas’s natural law teaching in the context of his overall metaphysical cosmology. According to Thomas, human nature, a psychosomatic unity, is perfected or fully realized by harmonious and habitual excellence in the exercise of its intrinsic capacities and powers (e.g. cognitive, creative, affective, productive). Highest among these capacities—the capacity with the most potential to enrich and enlarge human nature and so to realize it most completely—is the human intellect, with its power to come to some understanding of the nature of whatever exists.
Following Aristotle, Thomas teaches that through intellect, the human soul is potentially all things[10]: it ranges over the entire universe of what is, and by acts of understanding and inferring, it in a certain way brings the entire universe into the soul. Put another way, in conjunction with the will, the intellect expands the soul to become all that is by a cognitive and affective, but not a physical, union. Again, with Aristotle, Thomas maintains that the highest object of this highest human power, (and so the appropriate, but often hidden or misperceived ultimate and crowning end of all human excellence-in-activity and striving) is cognitive-affective union with the first uncaused cause of the totality of things: Deus (in Aquinas’s Latin) or God.
For Thomas, in contradistinction to Aristotle, but closer to the teaching of Plato, this first uncaused cause is not merely the best, most self-sufficient, most fully realized being in the cosmos, but also the artisan-creator and ruler of the cosmos. This first, self-existent, and infinite being loves the world into existence, according to the model of His own eternal creative ideas, and orders the totality of individual things, notes as it were in a symphony, to one integrated end or purpose: a cosmic common good.
Created beings without intellect or will (whether animate or inanimate) are willed into being and directed toward their own perfection in the context of the perfection of the whole, which perfection they each approach automatically or spontaneously and without understanding or resistance.[11] Creatures endowed with intellect and free will (angels and humans), however, only fully realize their own potentialities consciously by uncoerced intelligible decision, and so are able to ratify or to frustrate God’s creative purpose. It is here that we see the role in the divine plan and in human life for law, as human beings characteristically understand the term: law, Thomas will have it, is an extrinsic source or principle of human perfection or full human development. God, he states, “instructs us by means of His Law.”
Thomas argues outright, in the very first article of the first question of the Treatise on Law, that law (lex) essentially can be seen as an ordinance of reason directing activity toward some end, goal, or purpose, and the highest end or purpose we have as humans is our ultimate fulfillment, the full realization of our nature, or “happiness[12]” as is commonly said in English. Hence, all law is meant to sub-serve human happiness.
But law has by common acknowledgment and usage a social function as well: it directs the activity of some collectivity to a common goal, and it does this authoritatively. So the true purpose of law is to sub-serve the happiness of all in the community. We are, as Aristotle saw, social creatures and thus our unique happiness is dependent upon living within a good society and “the good society” is dependent on being populated with good individuals. Thus, my happiness/fulfillment is dependent upon the happiness/fulfillment of the community, and the community’s happiness is dependent upon mine.
But law does not merely recommend or suggest, it binds
and commands according to Aquinas. Our
human lawmakers, in our familiar experience, are thus recognized authority
figures within a social community who address themselves to the reason of the
members of that community, commanding them to shape their actions in certain
specified ways. Because law has this
essentially directive function, in order for an ordinance of reason from a
recognized authoritative source to have the status of law, it must also be
promulgated, or made public, so that it can perform its coordinating and
directing work. Hence we have Thomas’s
famous definition of (civil) law in the Treatise: it is “an ordinance of reason for the
common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.”[13]
“Lex injusta non est lex” (a unjust law is not law) wrote Aquinas.
In its most extreme manifestation, this idea states that an unjust law (unjust in the context of Natural Law) does not qualify as a law and hence does not exist. If the government were to establish a law that mandated the murder of disabled babies, then such a measure would not have any legal weight at all. Note the claim is not merely that such legislation would offer a “law” that is highly unethical. Rather, the claim is that, despite the fact that it was “lawfully enacted,” the statute would provide no law at all, simply because the substance of the statute was so at variance with Natural Law. This is a very important distinction to make.
For Aquinas, a law may be unjust, in any of several ways.
First, it is unjust in respect of the end when it is not beneficial to the common good, but rather to the interests of the law-giver. Second it is unjust in respect of authority when it exceeds the legitimate powers of the person purporting to make it. Third, it is unjust in respect of form when it imposes burdens unequally in the community. Any such unjust law would be invalid, said Aquinas, and disobedience might then be not merely permissible, but (if the law offended against Natural Law) obligatory. In practice, however, he recommended obedience, even to unjust laws, for fear of the greater evil of instability.[14]
God, the ultimate cause of all being, activity, and development in everything that is, is nothing if not caring for the community of creation, and as universal creator, He has authority to the highest degree with respect to His intelligent creatures. Is He not the lawmaker-lawgiver par excellence? He is, Thomas thinks, since God satisfies the condition for this appellation perfectly. Elaborating on an earlier theological tradition, but making a straightforwardly metaphysical point, Thomas maintains that we have a law of God’s making that is co-eternal with His own nature. This is the Eternal Law (lex aeterna) through which the divine intellect creatively designs and directs all creatures to a common end (the common end of the universe), promulgating in time this eternal ordinance of His reason by the very act of creating beings and endowing them with spontaneous natural inclinations to move toward their own perfection in the context of the universe and its overall and unified perfection.
Created beings without intellect will observe the eternal law, the eternal directives in the creative mind of God, spontaneously or automatically and perfectly to whatever degree their own imperfections allow. In the case of human beings, this eternal law directs them spontaneously toward their full and complete good by ordaining their essential nature to acts of understanding and desire for the goods constitutive of human perfection or fulfillment.
But human beings have each their own intellect and will, so their spontaneous inclination and subsequent movement toward that full and complete good is brought about (or not, since it can be resisted or rejected) by conscious ratification and cooperation, that is, knowingly and willingly. Thus, in the human world, we have the Eternal Law as received and understood from the inside, as it were, and observed only conditionally: when humans correctly understand, desire, and act for the goods of human nature (food, drink, clothing, shelter, creative activity, knowledge, friendship, etc.) they are freely enacting observance to the Eternal Law. They are not making a law for themselves, but are discovering it and appropriating it for themselves.
They are discovering and potentially ratifying in action the divine design-plan for their nature, to which non-rational creatures witness in whatever they do and undergo, although they are neither cognizant of this plan as law, nor capable of knowingly instantiating or resisting it.
This for Thomas finally is the natural law (lex naturalis): a sharing from within (or participation) of the Eternal Law, but not, Thomas insists, something otherwise different from that first and highest law in the mind of God: “the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law.” This participation is available to all humans independently of any reception on their part of divine supernatural revelation. The natural law is observed whenever humans both engage in correct practical reasoning about what is good and best for them overall in any given situation and when they act in accord with that rational determination.[15]
The natural law, according to Aquinas, has certain basic and self-evident precepts or dictates, dictates knowable to any human with a properly functioning intellect and a modicum of experience of the world. Paraphrasing Thomas, first and fundamental, is the precept that, “anything good [i.e. that which perfects human nature] is to be pursued [is the appropriate object of human activity], and the opposite of this good, evil, is to be avoided in all human acts.” Other basic precepts, but with specific content, would include those such as: “bodily health is a good to be pursued and bodily harm avoided,” or “knowledge is a good to be pursued and ignorance and falsehood avoided,” or “friendship is a good to be pursued and those things opposed to it avoided.”
In each case, human reason grasps that some object is perfective of human nature and so directs that nature toward it by an at least tacit precept or action-guide, while directing it away from that good’s contrary. The basic precepts of the natural law command human nature to seek obvious human goods; when the status of some presumptive object of human action as a good is less evident, investigation is required to determine its status. Not all, however, are equally fit for this task of discernment about what is good for human nature in general and good for this particular human being as such.
This natural law instantiating practical reasoning about what is best for humans by nature (and therefore about what is ordained by God) spontaneously and appropriately results, as Thomas observes, in the construction of man-made laws. Although God’s design-plan for the whole of humanity (for all human acts throughout cosmic history, that is, and for their orchestration toward the common good of the cosmos) is perfectly complete and specified in all detail in the divine mind, that portion of the Eternal Law which concerns humankind in its nature and in its divinely foreknown history is not fully graspable by the human intellect. Because of this inherent limitation of the human mind, humans must make their own laws to supplement that portion of the Eternal Law that they do spontaneously and readily grasp (which portion includes the rudimentary parts of the natural law), to direct themselves in community to their fulfillment. They do this correctly either by deriving specific norms from the most basic and general principles or precepts of the natural law, or when they give specific shape to one of these basic and discovered dictates or principles appropriate for a particular time and place.
The former derivation of human laws from the natural law Thomas refers to as “the law of nations” (ius gentium); the latter he refers to as civil law (lex civilis): both forms of law are, inasmuch as they are legitimately derived from the dictates of the natural law, normative. That is, they comprise rational requirements for right human action on Aquinas’s view. Any human law, though, that directly contravenes a dictate of the natural law ipso facto fails as a law and has the status of an irrational command instead. Nevertheless, Aquinas cautions us that such commands ought only be observed for prudential reasons, such as to avoid some greater harm that might arise in the social order from the failure to observe what is really only a pseudo-law.
[1] Summa Theologiae, Part 1, Question 1, Article 8
[2] Romans 2:15
[3] What is
it that all and only pious acts have in common by virtue of the position of
which they are pious acts?
[4] An "impasse," "puzzlement,” of "difficulty in passage."
[5] Proteus was a prophetic old sea-god and the herdsman of Poseidon's seals. Menelaus, a hero of the Trojan War, encountered Proteus during his return voyage to Greece, and upon capturing him compelled the god to prophesy the future.
[6] Consider: Does the
valley have its shape because of the shape of the mountain, or does the
mountain have its shape because of the shape of the valley? The very question presumes that the shape of
the mountain and the shape of the valley are not only distinct and separatable
from one another, but also that one could act as a causal influence on the
other. In truth, neither is the case.
[7] This is a bad way of stating this perhaps, since from their vantage point God is not one “being” who can be compared and contrasted with other, admittedly lesser, beings, but rather God IS being.
[8] One thinks of Hamilton here: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” In a similar way. Were we angelic philosophers perhaps we would have no need for Divine Law.
[9] Note a similar danger exists for those who surgically extract his cosmological arguments from the broader context of his metaphysics and epistemology.
[10] Aquinas he's motivated to say this because, since our minds can potentially know anything (or nearly anything), our minds can potentially be like anything. Remember that, like Aristotle, Aquinas thinks in coming to know a thing our minds become like that thing. Some understood him to be advocating a kind of pantheism, but of course I don't believe this is true, though the confusion is somewhat understandable.
[11] These animate and inanimate creatures are drawn towards their own perfection by a kind of desire. This is not necessarily a cognitive state desire, but an inner directedness. I point this out because Aquinas is not suggesting that God compels these creatures towards their natural ends by an “outside source”. Rather, it is they who are drawn (lured) towards their natural ends interiorly. This is not a mechanistic view of causality, but a teleological view of causality. And unlike mechanistic causality, teleological systems allow for an “open-ended” way the being might pursue its end. The cat may be trying to catch the mouse, but there is some degree of freedom as to how the cat will pursue the mouse.
[12] Not to put too fine a point on that, but while the word is translated as happiness it is not the same thing as the notion of “happy feeling” or “euphoria.” Aquinas is working with the Aristotelian notion of “happiness” which is flourishing and full development. However, unlike Aristotle who was content to talk about natural human capacities and their fulfillment, Aquinas adds to this what he takes to be an indispensable corrective that we also have supernatural capacities which must be fulfilled by developing the theological virtues, in addition to the cardinal virtues given to us by Aristotle.
[13] This is what leads Nature Law theorists, like Aquinas, to proclaim that “An unjust law is no law at all.” (lex iniusta non est lex) This slogan is an expression in support of natural law, acknowledging that authority is not legitimate unless it is good and right, grounded an reason and directed as human happiness, both collective and individual.
[14] One thinks of the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence were they advised us to tolerate injustices so long as they remain tolerable. “… Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.”
[15] Note then Aquinas is clearly claiming that Philosophical Ethics is possible since ethics is grounded in humans nature and human reason and (must of these) these are accessible to humans independent of revelation.