Natural Law, One Thousand Years Before Aquinas: Part Three

Continuing with an examination of QUOTATIONS FROM THE FATHERS ON “NATURAL LAW” & “LAW OF NATURE, as compiled by Fr. Michael Butler, an archpriest in the Orthodox Church in America.  Part One can be found here; Part Two, here.  This will be the final installment.

Missing the Mark, As Determined by Our Nature

Dealing with an intemperate husband…

St Justin the Philosopher and Martyr (d. c. 165), Second Apology 2: "For [the wife], considering it wicked to live any longer as a wife with a husband who sought in every way means of indulging in pleasure contrary to the law of nature, and in violation of what is right, wished to be divorced from him."

The violation is based on our nature, not a written code.

St John Chrysostom (d. 407), Homilies on Romans, Homily 12 (on Rom 7.12): Therefore if these things are said about the natural law, we are found to be without the natural law. And if this be true, we are more senseless than the creatures which are without reason.

There is a profound point here: man, unlike the other creatures, has reason.  Yet it is this same reason that can lead man to “reason” his way to violations of the natural law – something not possible for other creatures. 

Genesis 2: 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The knowledge of good and evil without the knowledge of God.  This is modern man’s understanding of reason, giving us all sorts of “justifications” for violating the natural law.  This, as we see all around us, has led us to death, as we have truly become something other than human.

Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), Stromateis 2.13: Passions, then, are a perturbation of the soul contrary to nature, in disobedience to reason.

It is reason conformed by God to natural law.  In this we find liberty.  Reason without God leaves us slaves to our passions.

The Difference of Natural Laws vs. Commandments

St John Chrysostom (d. 407), Homilies on Romans, Homily 12 (on Rom 7.12): …it does not appear that he has anywhere called the law of nature a commandment.

St John Chrysostom (d. 407), Homilies concerning the Statues, 12.9: When he speaks to us of another commandment, not known to us by the dictate of conscience, he not only prohibits but also adds the reason.

God has given commandments outside of the natural law.  But for these, he explains Himself.

For what purpose then, I ask, did he add a reason respecting the Sabbath but did no such thing in regard to murder?

Regarding the Sabbath, the reason given was for rest, as God did on the seventh day.  But for murder?

How was it then when he said, “You shall not kill,” that he did not add, “because murder is a wicked thing?” The reason was that conscience had already taught this beforehand. He speaks thus, as if to those who know and understand the point.

God had no need to give a reason.  We already knew this, as it was in our nature to know it.  No commandment or explanation was necessary.

A Written Law Contrary to Our Nature is Not to be Observed

Origen (d. 254), Against Celsus 5.37: As there are, then, generally two laws presented to us, the one being the law of nature, of which God would be the legislator, and the other being the written law of cities, it is a proper thing, when the written law is not opposed to that of God, for the citizens not to abandon it under pretext of foreign customs…

An important concept is introduced, one which I believe is later expanded upon by Aquinas.  The natural law is universal; the application, in some instances and within bounds, can be determined by local custom.  If a local application does not violate the overarching natural law, it is still good written law.

…but when the law of nature, that is, the law of God, commands what is opposed to the written law, observe whether reason will not tell us to bid a long farewell to the written code, and to the desire of its legislators, and to give ourselves up to the legislator God, and to choose a life agreeable to His word, although in doing so it may be necessary to encounter dangers, and countless labors, and even death and dishonor.

Remaining true to the natural law – the law of nature given to us by God – will sometimes come with cost, even to death.

Epilogue

Just some other interesting tidbits….

Where Was Clarisse?

Clarisse: One more question.

Montag: Another one?

Clarisse: Just a little tiny one.

Montag: What is it?

Clarisse: Do you ever read the books you burn?

Montag: Why should I?

-          Fahrenheit 451

If only such a question was asked of a particular monk in Wittenberg about five-hundred years earlier….

--------------------------------------------

Had the two men been able to find a volume of Aquinas, they would have burnt that as well.

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland

December 1520.  Martin Luther had been given sixty days to recant.  He chose to use the time burning books, along with a colleague from the university, the theologian Johann Agricola.

I have covered this story often, the story of Luther and the Church and the Reformation which turned into a revolution.  In this post I will stick to bits and pieces that are new to me or that just strike my fancy.  For example, regarding the latter: Holland opens the chapter with this book burning, and I thought of the movie (no, I didn’t read the book…).

Further, to my Catholic friends: I know how you feel about Luther and the tearing apart of the Catholic Church that followed.  Yes, it was a blow to Western society and to the Church.  But, and to my Protestant friends: it was an inevitable blow.  There really were corruptions in plain sight – and Luther’s criticism regarding the practice of indulgences was perhaps the one most upsetting to and dangerous for the Church hierarchy.  To my Orthodox friends…I know, you are sitting, watching, with a gallon size tub of popcorn on your lap.

To all of you – just take it as history, as one of the most important events in Western history since the time of Christ.

In more than one place I have read that Luther really didn’t know much about Aquinas’ work.  If he could not find a volume to burn, it would seem he would not have had one handy to have read. 

He saw the then-current scholasticism that followed Aquinas, but this was something quite different.  In any case, whether Luther might have appreciated Aquinas had he read and understood him is now secondary.  He didn’t, and he hadn’t.

Luther did have a copy of the papal decree that condemned his teachings: “Because you have confounded the truth of God, today the Lord confounds you.  Into the fire with you.”  Canons, papal decrees, and anything associated with Aquinas’ philosophy had to go.  Luther, who scorned the idea of thinking of himself as a lawyer, took for granted how much of the then-modern law owed to the work of those legal scholars whose books he so eagerly burned.

It really sounds no different than today, where enemies of Christianity take for granted that they are only able to speak freely against those in power due to Christianity, and only because they have access to Christian terms and concepts.  Had someone not a Roman citizen spoken so brazenly to a citizen in pre-Christian times, it would have been off with his head, no questions asked.

Luther had his students build a float, loaded with parodies of papal decrees.  After driving it around town to raucous cheers, he burnt the lot.  A man dressed as the pope tossed his tiara into the fire.  Luther was not a man given to understatement…or humility.  But then, perhaps it took this kind of man to stand up to the significant issues then practiced by and defended by the Church.

Natural Law, One Thousand Years Before Aquinas: Part Two

Continuing with an examination of QUOTATIONS FROM THE FATHERS ON “NATURAL LAW” & “LAW OF NATURE, as compiled by Fr. Michael Butler, an archpriest in the Orthodox Church in America.  Part One can be found here.

In Our Nature

Tertullian (d. 225), The Chaplet 6.1: If you demand a divine law, you have that common one prevailing all over the world, written on the tablets of nature, to which also St. Paul is accustomed to appeal.  …Again, in saying in his letter to the Romans that the Gentiles do by nature what the law prescribes, he hints at the existence of natural law and a nature founded on law.

One cannot read the first chapters of Romans without coming to understand that there is a natural law, known to or knowable by all men.

Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235), Against Beron and Helix, Fragment 1: …His divine will remaining unalterable by which He has made and moves all things, sustained as they severally are by their own natural laws.

If non-human animals, without the gift of reading tablets, are sustained by such laws, why not humans?  After all, all things are sustained by their own natural laws. 

Novatian (d. 258), De Trinitate 8: For, under the yoke of the natural law given to all things, some things are restrained, as if withheld by reins; others, as if stimulated, are urged on with relaxed reins.

The natural law is given to all things.  This would, of course, include humans.

Methodius of Olympus (d. ca. 311), A Synopsis of Some Apostolic Words from Methodius of Olympus (from St Photius of Constantionople, Bibliotheca, codex 234): For there are two kinds of thoughts in us; the one which arises from the lust which lies in the body, which, as I said, came from the craft of the Evil Spirit; the other from the law, which is in accordance with the commandment, which we had implanted in us as a natural law, stirring up our thoughts to good, when we delight in the law of God according to our mind, for this is the inner man…

The natural law, implanted in us, stirs us to the good.  We need not a written law to know this good.

St Ambrose of Milan (d. 397), Explanation of the Twelve Psalms 36.69: The law of God is in the heart of the righteous. Which law? It is not the written law but the natural law, because “the law was not laid down for the righteous but for the unrighteous.”

St John Chrysostom (d. 407), Homilies on Romans, Homily 6 (on Rom 2.25): For there is a natural law and there is a written law. “For when the Gentiles,” he says, “which have not the Law.” What Law, say? The written one. “Do by nature the things of the Law.” Of what Law? Of that by works. “These having not the Law.” What Law? The written one. “Are a law unto themselves.” How so? By using the natural law.

The written law of God (the Decalogue) is nothing but a codification of the natural law that is known to all men as determined by God in His creation.

St John Chrysostom (d. 407), Homilies on Romans, Homily 12 (on Rom 7.12): Now neither Adam, nor anybody else, can be shown ever to have lived without the law of nature. For as soon as God formed him, He put into him that law of nature, making it to dwell by him as a security to the whole kind.

This law of nature is inherent to our creation.  Man was never man without this law.

A Slap at NAP

My good friend, Walter Block, has taken a crack at the slap.  You know what I am talking about, and the details by now seem clear enough to make some general comments – at least comments based on what seem to be the by now accepted details.

A comedian publicly makes a less-than-polite joke at the expense of another man’s wife.  The other man decides to slap the comedian.  The reaction from the mainstream and culturally-right-side-of-history-woke world is predictable: the husband took away agency from his wife.  Don’t hit to solve problems (well, unless you are peacefully rioting and looting).  Slappy husband is a bad husband.

Walter’s response is, on the one hand, not surprising as it is consistent with his view that the non-aggression principle (NAP) is the standard by which all actions should be judged.  Therefore, to physically slap someone for a verbal insult is not justified.

On the other hand (yes, it takes two slaps to address the one slap), Walter suggests a proper role for the state attorney general to press charges even though the victim has said he will not press charges – effectively forgiving the slapping husband.  This seems quite contrary to the NAP.  Still, I would say Walter remains, on the whole, 99.44% pure NAP – for better or worse!

But all of this is secondary to my thoughts.  Long ago, when I was working through the pros and cons and the ramifications of a world in which the non-aggression principle would be considered the standard by which all actions are judged, I in fact introduced the idea of a husband slapping another man who insulted his wife – that there were positive aspects of such an action toward a more peaceful and civil society.

Now, Walter would say – and it is a reasonable point – “If no repercussions are visited on [the slapping husband], the implication taken away by them will likely be that such behavior is justified, acceptable; is, even, to be applauded.”  He would say it, because he said it.  Fair enough.  Next thing you know, the world would be slap-happy at the merest hint of insult.

But there is another side.  By slapping the offending comedian, perhaps the husband sent a message to all of the insensitive humorists and jokesters and boors that such behavior is destructive toward civil society (as it most certainly is).  That perhaps what comes out of one’s mouth is more destructive of civil society than the slap which corrects such boorish and degrading behavior.  Perhaps the next wanna-be wife-of-another-man insulter will think twice before making jokes at the wife’s expense.

Walter asks, regarding the implications of the slap going unpunished: “Is that really the direction in which people of good will would wish our country to move?”  In other words, do we as a society want to leave it assumed that such slappiness is OK?  His answer is no.

But then, do we want to send the message that open, public insults are OK?  Bringing Twitter from the virtual world into the real world?  Sure, there are other, non-violent means of sending such a message.  But sometimes a slap is worth a thousand words.

Natural Law, One Thousand Years Before Aquinas: Part One

This is part one of what will be three posts, all on the same topic and same source material.  Due to length, I have divided into these three parts.

A couple of months ago, I wrote regarding a lecture given by Fr. Michael Butler, an archpriest in the Orthodox Church in America.  His topic was natural law in the history of the Orthodox Church.  It is a topic most Orthodox Christians (frankly, Christians from all traditions – even Catholic) seem to want to run away from.  Yet here was an Orthodox priest, talking it head on.

I wrote to him, asking his for some of the materials he used in the lecture, as well as any other materials he could share on the topic.  He graciously replied, and this post is the first of several that will make use of this material.

The document is entitled QUOTATIONS FROM THE FATHERS ON “NATURAL LAW” & “LAW OF NATURE.  It is sixteen pages long, with countless dozens of quotes.  I will pull out some of the most specific references to natural law, and add some thoughts of my own.

To begin, and to be considered throughout this post – and in all my writing on the topic of natural law – natural law is an ethical standard, not to be considered a standard of law as the term is understood today.  Violations of natural law are ethical violations, some of which might be deserving of formal physical punishment (where the violation is against person or property; in other words, a violation of another’s natural rights), and others of which are to be considered ethical shortfalls, missing the mark…or sin, if you prefer. 

Such natural law violations, while not violations of another’s natural rights, do tear at the social fabric.  At minimum, this degrades society; eventually, it destroys any possibility for liberty.

From Fr. Michael’s introduction to the document:

The Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin, mention “natural law” or the “law of nature” in their writings. More often they speak of what is “according to nature” or “contrary to nature.” Below are some various quotations from the Fathers using all of these terms.

Fr. Michael presented the list chronologically.  I won’t do so, as I will want to connect like themes from the different authors.  The list of Fathers quoted is a who’s who of the early Church, and I will cite many of these.  Not all of these are sainted, yet this does not preclude the reality that they each have contributed to the understanding of the Church.

Why the Flood?

Genesis 6: 5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

This was well before the law was given to Moses.  On what basis did God determine that man was evil?

St Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202), Against Heresies 4.16.2-5: Moreover, all the rest of the multitude of those righteous men who lived before Abraham, and of those patriarchs who preceded Moses, were justified independently of the things above mentioned, and without the law of Moses. As also Moses himself says to the people in Deuteronomy: “The LORD thy God formed a covenant in Horeb. The Lord formed not this covenant with your fathers, but for you.”

Then on what basis were they justified…or others condemned?  Continuing with St Irenaeus:

Why, then, did the Lord not form the covenant for the fathers? Because “the law was not established for righteous men.” But the righteous fathers had the meaning of the Decalogue written in their hearts and souls, that is, they loved the God who made them, and did no injury to their neighbour.

The “meaning of the Decalogue” is the natural law.  They had this “written in their hearts and souls.”

Dominion

I found Doug Wilson via the treatment of him by Paul VanderKlay.  The PVK treatment is here; Wilson’s video being treated is here.  I will comment mostly on Wilson’s points, but a few of PVK’s as well.  Wilson’s entire video is fourteen minutes, so if you want to skip my comments, it is a short watch.

Who is Doug Wilson?

Douglas James Wilson (born 1953) is a conservative Reformed and evangelical theologian, pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, faculty member at New Saint Andrews College, and author and speaker.

What does he say about himself?

Theology that Bites Back

I want to advance a Chestertonian Calvinism on education, sex and culture, theology, politics, book reviews, postmodernism, expository studies, along with other random tidbits that come into my head. In theology I am an evangelical, postmill, Calvinist, Reformed, and Presbyterian, pretty much in that order.

Not someone the mainstream would embrace.  Also, not someone that many Christians would embrace.

To the video.  Wilson begins: “One of the things I learned from the late Gary North was the three-fold division regarding the different kinds of religion.”  These are: Power religion, Escape religion, and Dominion religion.  Reading how Wilson describes himself, one can also see this as pretty-much applicable to Gary North.

Before diving into the Evangelical applications of these, he applies these three subsets to the prevailing “religion” of our broader society.  It is power, and he labels these “power monkeys.”

The dominant religion of our day is power religion: they are after control, nothing but control, and no remainder.  They want to control everything.

This aligns perfectly with Jonathan Pageau’s view of leaving nothing on the fringe, of a totalizing system of control.  It is the desire of Tim Cook, as presented in his speech at the ADL.  It is contrary to what is written in Scripture regarding the fringe.

Leviticus 19: 9 “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. 10 And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

Leave some room on the edge; there should always be a space for the outsider.

Returning to Wilson:

No lovers of liberty here.  No sons of liberty will be welcome in the suffocating world they are creating.

Again, sounding like Pageau.  Modern society wants total inclusion, an all-encompassing system.  And if you don’t completely agree and approve, you will be the one who is excluded.

Returning to Wilson, today’s society has abandoned the belief in a pre-destining God.  Now, I will set aside the “pre-destining” part (as the point remains without debating doctrine); we can agree that they have abandoned a belief in God, the God as understood from the Bible.

When a sovereign God goes, these are the kind of johnnies who immediately see a job opening.  They want to replace the sovereignty of God with the sovereignty of man, and by “man” they mean some men, and by “some men” they mean them.

This is the current climate.  And this current climate calls for “a different sort of climate change.”  (Wilson really has a way with words.)  “But not all Evangelicals think so.”  He then describes these three kinds of Evangelicals, again along the lines presented by North.

Eastern Symphony Becomes Subservience

Peter the Great (r. 1682 – 1725) was the emperor of Russia and came to the French capital to negotiate an alliance against the Ottoman Turks, the conquerors of Constantinople.

The Age of Utopia: Christendom from the Renaissance to the Russian Revolution, by John Strickland

The first Orthodox ruler to visit the West since Byzantine Emperor John VIII attended the Council of Florence…under quite similar circumstances.

Where the Byzantine Emperor John failed to bring the West to the East, Peter would succeed.  Of course, the West had been moving East for some time before this, with the Union of Brest in 1596 having brought Eastern Churches under the pope – Uniate, or Byzantine-Catholic Churches.

Their services continued according to the Byzantine rite, their priests remained married, and the original form of the Nicene Creed was confessed without the controversial filioque.

Sounds a bit quirky, I know.  But it gets even quirkier.  Patriarch Cyril I (d. 1638) of Constantinople didn’t like this Uniate arrangement, spending years advocating against it.  As patriarch, he found Jesuits to be quite active in the Ottoman capital.  Nothing really quirky so far…until he decided to make the enemy of his enemy his friend:

He established contacts with the Protestants in England and Geneva, even sending his most gifted clergy to study Calvinist institutes there.

What came of this?  While the authenticity of the work is challenged, it appears that in 1629 he issued a “notorious Confession” that strongly endorsed Calvinist principles, including the doctrine of faith alone and predestination.  In 1672, an Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem unequivocally condemned this work.

Yet, the turmoil continued in the Slavic regions.  Many of the nobles would follow their bishops, converting to Roman Catholicism in either the Latin or Uniate form.  Further, Jesuits were building schools; with this, the Orthodox couldn’t compete.

Until Peter Mogila (d. 1646).  He hoped to save the Orthodox Church by embracing the Western model of Scholasticism (a “tragic flaw,” according to Strickland), building an Orthodox Kievan Academy for this purpose.

Until this time, Orthodoxy had relied mostly on the church fathers and not on grammar or logic to express itself.  Mogila changed this.

Strickland describes this as a distortion of the understanding of the faith.  Further compounding the situation in the East, Russians were becoming isolated from international Orthodoxy due to the collapse of Byzantium.  What would result was an effort to build a strong nationalism, with a strong absolutist monarch to defend against the Mongols.

Now, what follows sounds an awful like the caricature of Putin being painted in the West – some points closer to truth than others, perhaps, but a caricature nonetheless.  And the story regards Peter the Great.

Raised in the German quarter of Moscow, he would develop a fascination with the West.  Everything around him seemed backwards compared to what he heard of other lands.  He would form a strong antireligious temperament, directing his passions to absolutist statecraft.