Query:

I am trying to develop a more rigorous understanding of natural law and ontology of morals and political philosophy.  If you wouldn’t mind answering -- Does the natural law tradition justify a belief in limited government?  Does it justify the basic Golden Rule?  How does reason demonstrate the existence of a Creator?  How does it demonstrate the reality of inexorable ethical commands?  Is there a particular natural law philosopher who approached these issues from a deistic standpoint?  Finally, how do natural law philosophers ground the cardinal virtues in nature?

Reply:

That’s are a lot of questions, but perhaps I can answer them briefly.  I offer more detailed discussion in other things I’ve written.

Does the natural law tradition justify a belief in limited government?

The classical natural law tradition leaves most questions about the design of government to prudence.  However, even short of prudence we can still say something.  As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, an unjust law is really not a law at all, but rather an act of violence.  By itself, this doesn’t tell you how to limit government, but it certainly makes it wise to have some limits and safeguards -- to take some constitutional precautions so that the government doesn’t degenerate into tyranny – for no government has authority to deviate from the natural law or to violate natural rights.  Natural rights are those things which are due to us as a matter of justice, just because of the nature that we share with each other.

Now the same form of government isn’t necessarily best everywhere; for example, St. Augustine suggests that if the citizens are so corrupt that they sell their votes, they should lose the right to select their own officials.  In general, though, St. Thomas argues that the best form is “mixed” -- partly monarchy, insofar as one person is at the head; partly aristocracy, insofar as wise persons are selected to share some of the burden of rule; and partly democracy, insofar as these wise persons are chosen both by the people and from the people.  (He thinks there is biblical justification for this conclusion too.)  Our own original form of government might be considered a complicated mixed form, because of the relation among president, senate, and house of representatives, chosen ultimately by vote of the people.  I add the word “ultimately” as a reminder that in most cases the citizens are involved only indirectly.  For instance, the citizens choose electors, who choose the president, who nominates judges, who are confirmed by the senate, whose members are chosen by the citizens.

Does natural law justify the basic Golden Rule?

The Golden Rule is a fundamental axiom of reason which is binding for all rational creatures.  Behind it is the idea that law is a “rule and measure” of acts.  Now things of the same kind should be measured in the same way; we don’t use a yardstick to measure temperature, or a thermometer to measure distance.  Since all things of the same kind should have the same measure, all creatures of the same rational nature – and that’s all of us -- should also have the same measure.  I can’t have one moral rule for me and a different one for you.  The Golden Rule follows.

Notice, though, that the Golden Rule doesn’t generate the whole of morality by itself.  To properly do unto others as I would have them do unto me, I also have to know both what’s good for them and what’s good for me.  Also, in order to understand ethics we have to consider not only the rules we need to follow, but also the virtues we need to possess.  The classical natural law tradition tries to take account of all of these things too.

How does reason demonstrate the existence of a Creator?

There are lots of excellent arguments for the existence of the Creator.  Probably the most well-known is the argument to a first cause:  Every contingent being (everything that might not have been) requires a cause or explanation of its existence, a reason why it is.  But if that cause is also a contingent being, then it needs a cause too, and so does that cause, and so does that cause, and so on.  Now an infinite regress of causes or explanations or reasons why – A is caused by B, which is caused by C, which is caused by D, on to infinity – makes no sense, and wouldn’t explain anything.  Therefore there must be a first cause, and the first cause must be not contingent but necessary.  In other words, rather than being something which didn’t have to exist, it must be something which can’t not exist.  We call this first cause God.

The many different arguments for God’s reality, for example the arguments from beauty, from morality, from order, from desire, and from the governance of the universe, take various other observations as their point of departure.  The most accessible introduction to the subject is contained in the chapter “Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God,” in Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Kreeft and Tacelli are philosophers at Boston College).  I explain the so called “Five Ways” in Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on the One God.

How does reason demonstrate the reality of inexorable ethical commands?

At the bottom of all reasoning about what to do are certain fundamental principles which are per se nota, “known in themselves.”  For example, we can’t not know that we should do good and pursue it, with the good, for us, being what creatures of our kind naturally desire –that which we are designed to desire, that which fulfills us.  A second example is that we can’t not know that it is wrong to do another person gratuitous harm.  You mentioned a third one -- the Golden Rule – and we can’t not know that either.  Moral basics like these can’t be “demonstrated” or proven, but they don’t have to be, because they are what we use to prove everything else.  In that way, they stand in relation to the more detailed moral rules of everyday life in the same way that geometrical axioms stand to geometrical theorems.  We don’t necessarily know that we know them, but they are latent in the structure of our intellects.

There is a difference, of course, for in geometry, we begin with the axioms, but in moral reasoning, we usually work back to the axioms when our conclusions are challenged.  Imagine what it would be like if we had to begin at the beginning whenever we had a practical decision to make.  “Should I cross the street now?  Let’s see.  First, good is to be done …”  Perhaps in a few weeks you might arrive at a conclusion, but by that time the traffic would have changed, and you’d have to start all over.

Is there a particular natural law philosopher who approached these issues from a deistic standpoint?

Do you mean deistic or theistic?  A theist is someone who believes in one God.  A deist is someone who believes in one God but also denies divine revelation.  The mainstream of the classical natural law tradition has been theistic, and most of the work has been done by Christians who accept both natural law and divine revelation.  The greatest such thinker, in my view, is Thomas Aquinas.  However, some revisionist natural law thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, have been deists.  For a discussion of what divine revelation adds to the natural law, see this article.

How do natural law philosophers ground the cardinal virtues in nature?

A virtue is a disposition of character, a “habit of the heart,” which assists us by guiding choice, so that we can live the way rational creatures of our kind need to live in order to attain our natural end.  The virtue of prudence, or practical wisdom, assists us by putting the moral intellect itself in order.  The virtue of courage assists us by putting our emotions under that ordering influence.  The virtue of temperance assists us by putting our appetites under it, and the virtue of justice assists by putting our actions toward others under it.  These four virtues are called “cardinal” or “principal,” not because they are the only ones, but because subordinate virtues depend on them.  We work them up in ourselves by doing the known right thing over and over, until it becomes second nature.  Each one is at the head of a whole collection of other virtues, such as patience.

Because “man is ordained to an end of eternal happiness which is inproportionate to man's natural faculty,” Christian natural law thinkers also believe in a second set of virtues, called not cardinal but “spiritual” or “theological.”  The most important of these are faith, hope, and charity.  Faith means assenting to what God has divulged -- believing it, trusting it, being glad of it.  Hope means orienting all our actions toward the goal of eternal life which He has set before us.  Charity means loving our neighbors the way God loves them -- not merely recognizing God’s image in them, but delighting in it.

The spiritual virtues differ from the cardinal virtues in several ways which are germane to your question.  One is that we couldn’t have found out about them just by natural reason; we need revelation.  Another is that they aren’t grounded in what we can do by our own natural powers, but in grace.  In other words, we can’t work them up in ourselves just by moral effort, for we need the inpouring help of the Holy Spirit.

Yet His grace isn’t alien to our nature, for in at least three ways it builds upon it.  The first is that we naturally desire it – this is implicit in our longing for complete fulfillment.  The second is that we are naturally able to receive it – provided that God grants it to us.  The third is that in order to receive the gift, our nature must cooperate with it.  Think of the matter this way:  If God throws me a rope, I still need to hang on.

Just as a host of subordinate everyday virtues depend on the four cardinal virtues, so a host of subordinate spiritual virtues depend on the three spiritual virtues.  If you call the cardinal virtues the Big Four, you can call the principal spiritual virtues the Big Three.

I hope these quick answers give you a little boost!  Happy studies!

I once became acquainted with a lady who was strongly attracted to the beauty of the Church, but refused the grace of Christ.  Her previous job had been teaching at a Catholic university, where she had conversed with theological friends and come to love Dante’s Comedy.  Apparently with some encouragement from them, she had conceived the aspiration to be considered a “virtuous pagan,” like those whom the great poet depicted in the fourth canto of his Inferno.  This gave her hope.

It was a strange hope, for Dante’s virtuous pagans admit “we are all lost, and suffer only this:  Hopeless, we live forever in desire.”  So although they suffered no punishment beyond separation from God, nevertheless they suffered separation from God; though Dante put them only in a sort of annex of hell, it was still hell.

Besides, what the Church has actually taught is that perhaps the so-called virtuous pagans can be reconciled with God through Christ, but only if they accept whatever grace has actually been offered to them -- even if it falls short of the explicit knowledge of Him.  My friend’s first difficulty was not accepting it, for she knew she had been offered His grace.  Her second difficulty was presumption.  She was a charming person, and I was not privy to whatever faults she may have had.  But she was a little too confident that she was, in fact, virtuous – and a little too sure that her ignorance was invincible.

One thinks of the psalmist, who prayed in heartbroken humility, “Who can discern his errors?  Clear thou me from hidden faults.”  The latter sentence implores God to save him from the deceits by which he hides his transgressions from himself.  Without it, the former could be taken in a self-excusing way:  “How can I be blamed for what I don’t know for sure?”

Coming to himself in the Dark Wood, Dante writes,

How I had entered, I can’t bring to mind

I was so full of sleep just at that point

When I first left the way of truth behind.

How common is this state of mind:  To loiter at the gates of Paradise, and yet for any of a hundred reasons – whether sloth, scrupulosity, or the sheer pleasure of drifting in doubt -- decline to enter in.  Eventually it becomes a fixed habit.  I spent a great deal of my young life at it, and I could so easily have spent forever.

And ever.

Imagine knowing, for always and always, that by one small step you could have passed through those gates -- but you didn’t.

_____________

(Quoting from the Esolen translation.)

Men value the private world, but their thoughts tend to focus more on the public world.  Women value the public world, but their thoughts tend to focus more on the private world.  I’m thinking about that today because, by happenstance, I came across an online review of a science fiction adventure novel written in the ‘sixties.  In my teens I read that stuff obsessively.  It’s genre fiction, like crime, mystery, fantasy, horror, romance, and Westerns.

Curiously, the reviewer had no objection to the obsession with “super” humans which overshadowed the sci fi of that period, surviving and thriving in today’s transhumanist movement.  What he did complain about -- and we find this often in online reviews -- was that although the lead character was “larger than life,” the women in the novel were “competent for the most part but basically non-existent."

I guess he preferred the sort of story in which Jane is just like Tarzan, but with cleavage.  This a bit like protesting that the women in Jane Austen’s novels were three-dimensional and endearing, but that the men were just stage props.

Let us be honest:  Adventure novels are about achieving things against obstacles in a world which is much more absorbing to most men than to most women.  Domestic novels are about building life – yes, there too against obstacles -- in a world which is much more absorbing to most women than to most men.  And that’s okay.

This is one of the articles I’ve promised to recover, originally published in an Evangelical Protestant magazine for students called Boundless, to which I was a monthly contributor before being received into the Catholic Church.  You may notice a few distinctively Catholic notes.

Pain:  A Fable

One day it pleased the triune God to test the heavenly beings.  “Having created the heavens and peopled it with yourselves,” He said, “I will now create a world, peopling it with the children of men.  If its fashioning were up to you, how would this mighty work be done?” All His realms fell into silence as the spirits considered His question.  With the swiftness of the spheres they took counsel, each with the next, all through their ninefold ranks: Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, and Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, and then back up again. 

One of the multitude, bright as a falling star, stood forth to give the spirits' answer.  “The question is beyond us, Mighty One.  Yet because it pleases You to ask us, we would advise after this fashion.  Do not make the children of men in Your image, because Your holiness must not be demeaned by imitation.  Do not give them freedom, because they might use it for ill.  If you do give them power to sin, then do not let their deeds have consequences, because they might hurt themselves.  So fashion the world that bullets do not pierce, wounds do not bleed, hatred wants the best, betrayal has no barb, and promises can be shattered and yet fulfilled.  Make your creation invulnerable to their sins, that its goodness may be preserved. 

“But if you will not do these things, Eternal One, then above all hold yourself aloof from them.  Yea, should they bring suffering upon themselves, let them bear it alone, for you are God.”  

God replied to the heavenly beings, “You have answered according to the measure of your wisdom; now hear what I will do.  I will make men in my image, that My Name may be glorified among them.  I will give them freedom, for if they have no power to rebel, then neither will they have power to love.  Know then that they will be my children, not my pets.  I will give them abundant power to hurt themselves, for if their deeds have no consequences, then neither will they have meaning.  I will make them the lords of my creation, every inch of it vulnerable to them, because they themselves are my chief work and the apple of my eye.  Know then that if they fall, all nature will groan like a woman in travail. 

“Above all, I will not hold myself aloof from them.  Though I go to make a world in which pain and sorrow are possible because of them, I will take the worst of it upon myself.  Already I foresee their sin; already I am slain.  Yea, I will make myself one of them, I will sweat drops of blood, I will die that they may live.”  

Hearing God, the angelic beings were amazed, and longed to look into these things.  But some of them were scandalized, and there was war in heaven.

***  *  ***

It is scandalous, isn't it?  There is that in us which would side with the rebellious angels.  We don't want a God who suffers; we don't want a God of such terrifying good.  God lifts us to such a height that we are capable of ruining ourselves, and we say “Thanks, but no thanks.”   He bears the penalty of our sins, and we say “How dare you call it sin?” He comes to share our burdens, and we say “Couldn't you just make us comfortable?” He offers the privilege of sharing His sufferings so that we may share His glory, and we say “You call that a privilege?” Yes, and when He promises that one day He will wipe every tear from our eyes, we say “We would rather not cry in the first place.”

We want a God whose goodness is of some other kind than His holiness.  And so when John Donne writes “Truly ...  affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it,” we gape as though Donne were a madman — and to the eyes of the world, I suppose he was. 

But Donne was right.  In this fallen world, the door of love is named Sacrifice and the door of wisdom Pain.  Looking back over the decades, I see that I have learned almost nothing from my good times, almost all from my bad ones.  God's mercy I learned only after deserting Him; His wisdom only after discovering that I was a fool; His calling only after I had burned out my ambitions.  I learned to honor my father only when his body was old and sick, his mind and memory crumbling, and I had to be father to him.  When one of my children was in rebellion and I was close to despair, I accused God, in prayer, like this: “Lord, we're told that you can sympathize with our weaknesses because when you became man, you shared in everything but our sin.  But it isn't true.  There is something you haven't shared.  In your earthly life, you were never a father.”  

Without sound, but in words, He replied:  “Am I not?”

My body shook with the shock of memory and comprehension, and I was ashamed.  “I and the Father are one.”   “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”   “When you pray, say 'Father ...'“ How could I have forgotten these Scriptures?  Obviously, because I had never understood them.  There was some level in me which even the story of the Prodigal had never touched.  God is the Model for all fathers, not a copy, but the Original from which all earthly fatherhood is drawn.  He knew all about a father's suffering, for He knew the suffering of His Son for us. 

There are blackboard solutions to the problem of suffering, lots of them, perfectly good as far as they go, but they only scratch the surface.  When Job asked the reason for his pain, God did not recite logical formulae.  What He did was pay a visit; His answer was Himself.  The visit could not have been an easy one, for he came to Job in the whirlwind.  But Job was satisfied.

When we see Him face to face, so shall we be satisfied.  Blessed is the name of the Lord.

None rejoice in Easter-tide less than those who have not grieved in Lent.  This is what is seen in the world at large.  To them, one season is the same as another, and they take no account of any.  Feast-day and fast-day, holy tide and other tide, are one and the same to them.  Hence they do not realize the next world at all.  To them the Gospels are but like another history; a course of events which took place eighteen hundred years since.  They do not make our Savior's life and death present to them: they do not transport themselves back to the time of His sojourn on earth.  They do not act over again, and celebrate His history, in their own observance; and the consequence is, that they feel no interest in it.  They have neither faith nor love towards it; it has no hold on them.  They do not form their estimate of things upon it; they do not hold it as a sort of practical principle in their heart.

This is the case not only with the world at large, but too often with men who have the Name of Christ in their mouths.  They think they believe in Him, yet when trial comes, or in the daily conduct of life, they are unable to act upon the principles which they profess: and why? because they have thought to dispense with the religious Ordinances, the course of Service, and the round of Sacred Seasons of the Church, and have considered it a simpler and more spiritual religion, not to act religiously except when called to it by extraordinary trial or temptation; because they have thought that, since it is the Christian's duty to rejoice evermore, they would rejoice better if they never sorrowed and never travailed with righteousness.

On the contrary, let us be sure that, as previous humiliation sobers our joy, it alone secures it to us.  Our Saviour says, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall he comforted;" and what is true hereafter, is true here.  Unless we have mourned, in the weeks that are gone, we shall not rejoice in the season now commencing.  It is often said, and truly, that providential affliction brings a man nearer to God.  What is the observance of Holy Seasons but such a means of grace?

-- St. John Henry Newman