NATURAL LAW

THOMAS AQUINAS

- Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church

- A Dominican friar who was the preeminent intellectual figure of the scholastic period of the
Middle Ages, contributing to the doctrine of the faith more than any other figure of his time.
- His Summa Theologiae, Aquinas’ magnum opus is a voluminous work that comprehensively
discusses many significant points in Christian theology.
- He was canonized in 1323.

The Context of the Christian Story

- The fundamental truth maintained and elaborated by Aquinas in all his works is the promise
right at the center of the Christian faith: that we are created by God in order to return to Him.
- There are three parts of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.
o First part, Aquinas speaks of Gos, and although we acknowledge that our limited human
intellect cannot fully grasp Him, we nevertheless are able to say something concerning
His goodness, His might, and His creative power.
o Second part, Aquinas discusses that we are created by God. This is characterized by our
pursuit of happiness. Our striving for happiness, while important, will not in itself bring
us to this blessed state. In other words, salvation is only possible through the presence
of God’s grace and that grace has become perfectly incarnate in the person of Jesus.
o Third part, Aquinas focuses on Jesus as our Saviour.
- We focus on the second part of Aquinas’ work. The Natural Law is beyond the Divine Command
Theory which states that to be ethical, we must follow the commands as given to us through
Church doctrines or by following certain passages lifted randomly from sacred Scriptures. We
should hope to find that there is much greater complexity, but also coherence, to the ethics of
Aquinas.

The Context of Aquinas’ Ethics

- Before we dig deeper into Aquinas’ ethics, we must first explore his discussion of other matters,
such as how, in pursuit of happiness, we direct our actions toward specific ends.
- Emotions – the passions – and the actions – related to certain dispositions (often referred to as
habits) – could contribute to having a good life.
- The Christian life, therefore, is about developing the capacities given to us by God into a
disposition of virtue inclined toward the good.
- We have a conscience, according to Aquinas, that directs our moral thinking. This is not about
some simple intuition or gut feeling but about a sense of right and wrong in us that we are
obliged to obey. This sense of right and wrong must be informed, guided, and ultimately
grounded in an objective basis for morality.
- Through our conscience, we are to develop and maintain a life of virtue.
- There is a need for a clearer basis of ethics, a ground that will more concretely inform and direct
our sense of what is right and wrong. For Aquinas, this would be natural law.
 - The divine command theory urges a person toward unthinking obedience to religious precepts.
In natural law, the reason is required. With this, the sense of right and wrong would be grounded
in something stable: human nature itself.

THE GREEK HERITAGE

Neoplatonic Good

- God is the creator. This does not imply that he only creates but it also means that He cares for,
and thus governs, the activity of the universe and every creature.
- This idea comes from Plato; the notion of a supreme and absolutely transcendent good.
- For Plato, the good is real and not something that one can pretend to make up for or ignore. The
good is prior to all being and is even the cause of all being.
- In the hands of the Neoplatonists, Plato’s idea of the good becomes identified with the One and
the Beautiful.
- Through Neoplatonists like Plotinus, the Platonic idea of the good would continue well into the
Christian Middle Ages, inspiring later thinkers and allowing it to be thought anew in a more
personal way as a creative and loving God.

Aristotelian Being and Becoming

- Any being can be said to have four causes.

o Material cause – the corporeal.
o Formal cause – the form or the shape that makes a being a particular kind.
o Efficient cause – the something that caused.
o Final cause – the end or the goal.
- Change is possible. There is a process of becoming. The principle of potency and act is
introduced by him. A being may carry within itself certain potentials, but these require being
actualized.
- Understanding beings, how they are and how they become or what they could be, is the
significant Aristotelean contribution to Aquinas’ natural law.

Synthesis

- The idea of a transcendent good prior to all being resurfaces in Aquinas in the form of the good
and loving God, who is Himself the fullness of being and of goodness as Aquinas puts it, God is
that which essentially is and is essentially good.
- God is the first efficient cause and the final cause.
- Creation is the activity of the outpouring or overflowing of God’s goodness. Since each being in
this way participates in God’s goodness, each being is in some sense good.
- For Aquinas, only God in the fullness of His being and goodness is perfect; all other beings are
participating in this goodness, and are good to that extent, but are imperfect since they are
limited in their participation.
- God did not create us to simply be imperfect and to stay that way as He leaves us alone. Instead,
God, in His infinite wisdom, directs how we are to arrive at our perfection. The notion of the
divine providence refers to how beings are properly ordered and even guided toward their
 proper end; this end, which is for them to reach their highest good, is to return to the divine
goodness itself.
- God created every being. Each being is created as a determinate substance, as a particular
combination of form and matter. The particular form determines the materiality which makes a
being a certain kind of being; the unique way that we have been created can be called our
nature.
- This nature is both good and imperfect – it has yet to be perfected. This perfection means
fulfilling our nature or what God intends us to be. We accomplish this by actualizing the
potencies that are already present in our nature.
- With our capacity to reason, our way of reaching God is by knowing and loving him.

THE ESSENCE AND VARIETIES OF LAW

Essence

- As rational beings, we have free will. Through our capacity for reason, we can judge between
possibilities and choose to direct our actions in one way or the other.
- Our actions are directed toward attaining ends or goods that we desire. However, just because
we think that a certain end is good and is therefore desirable does not necessarily mean it is
indeed good.
- In thinking about what is really good, it is also quite possible that we end up thinking exclusively
of our own good. Since we belong to a community, we have to consider what is good for the
community as well as our own good. This is called the common good.
- The determination of the proper measure of our acts for the common good can be referred to as
law.
- The law must regard properly the relationship to universal happiness. Law is concerned with the
common good. Making law belongs either to the whole people or to a public person who has
cared for the common good or is tasked with the concern for the good of the community or of
the whole people.
- Promulgation is also the necessity for rules or laws to be communicated to the people involved
in order to enforce them and to better ensure compliance.
- “The definition of law may be gathered; and it is nothing else than an ordinance of reason for
the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.”

Varieties

- We have noted earlier how God, by His wisdom, is the Creator of all beings. Through this, we
acknowledge that God is not only the efficient cause but also the final cause – that we could
return to Him.
- “He governs all the acts and movements that are to be found in each single creature, so the type
of Divine Wisdom, as moving all things to their due end, bears the character of law.”
o The divine wisdom that directs each being toward its proper end can be called the
eternal law.
- Eternal law refers to what God wills for creation, how each participant in it is intended to return
to Him.
 - All things partake in the eternal law, meaning, all beings are already created by God in a certain
way intended to return to Him. We must recognize that first, we are part of the eternal law, and
second, we participate in it in a special way.
- Therefore, irrational creatures are participating in the eternal law, although we could hardly say
that they are in any way “conscious” of this law. For Aquinas, we could not speak of them as
obeying the law, except by way of similitude. These creatures are moved by divine providence.
o Similitude is following the instincts of their nature.
- Human being’s participation is different. We, as rational, participate more fully and perfectly in
the law given the capacity for reason.
- “Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper
act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature called the natural
law.”
- Therefore, by looking at our human nature, at the natural inclinations given to us by God, we can
determine the rule and measure that should be directing our acts.
- Kinds of law by Aquinas:
o Human law – refers to all instances wherein human beings construct and enforce laws in
their communities.
 It goes against what nature inclines us toward, it is not properly speaking a law
—in the ideal sense of directing us to the common good—but instead is unjust
and can be called a matter of violence.
o Divine law – refers specifically to the instances where we have precepts or instructions
that come from divine revelation. This is not similar to eternal law.
- “So then no one can know the eternal law, as it is in itself, except the blessed who see God in His
Essence. But every rational creature knows it in its reflection, greater or less… Now all men know
the truth to a certain extent, at least as to the common principles of the natural law…”
o Anyone, coming from any religious tradition, just by looking at the nature that she
shares with her fellow human beings, would be able to determine what is ethical. The
complication one may have over an overtly religious presentation is dispelled when we
recognize the universal scope that Aquinas envisions.

Natural Law

In Common with Other Beings

- Our presence in the rest of creation does not only mean that we interact with creatures that are
not human but that there is also in our nature something that shares in the nature of others.
- Aquinas thus identifies first that there is in our nature, common with all other beings, a desire to
preserve one’s own being. We can say thus say that it would be a violation of the natural law,
and therefore unethical to take the life of another.
- Acts that promote the continuation of life are to be lauded as ethical because they are in line
with natural law.

In Common with Other Animals

- There is in our nature that is common with other animals. This is the desire that has to do with
sexual intercourse and the care of one’s offspring.
 - In the case of abortion, from the stance of Natural Law Theory, the act of preventing the
emergence of new life would be considered unethical.
- Also, it is good to take care of the young, to prioritize their welfare – shelter, education, and
food. However, it is bad to abuse them, to force them into hard labor, or to deprive them of basic
needs of otherwise abuse them in a physical or emotional way.
- Using contraception is also unethical for it inhibit procreation.

Uniquely Human

- We have a natural inclination to know the truth about God and to live in society. Acts of
deception or fraud would be unacceptable.
- Aquinas’ general guideposts: the epistemic concern, which is that we know we pursue the truth,
and the social concern, which that we live in relation to others.
o First, we had been presented with these three inclinations as bases for moral valuation.
However, reason is not only another inclination that we have in par with the others.
Instead, reason is the defining part of human nature. Aquinas tells us that there is a
priority among the powers of our soul, with the intellectual directing and commanding
our sensitive and nutritive capacities.
 What this amount to is the need to recognize that while our other inclinations
are good, as they are in our nature, what it means to be human is, precisely to
exercise our reason in our consideration of how the whole self should be
comported toward the good.
o Second, recognizing how being rational is what is proper to man, the apparent
vagueness of the third inclination that Aquinas mentions is counter-balanced by the
recognition that he is not interested in providing precepts that one would simply,
unthinkingly, follow.
 To say that the human being is rational is to recognize that we should take up
the burden of thinking carefully about how a particular act may or may not be a
violation of our nature.
 It is to take the trouble to think carefully about how our acts would either
contribute to or detract from, the common good.