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.

We Should Forget History

In response to a question based on an article he wrote – noting that nations are built on stories (as they are) – Yuval Noah Harari replies (in part):

As a historian I feel sometimes ashamed or responsible, I don’t know what, about what the knowledge of history is doing to people.  …As a historian, I feel ashamed, that this is what my profession, in some way, is doing.

I think people should be liberated from the past…

In other words, we should forget about history.  The full exchange begins here.  This excerpt is from a discussion with Harari “hosted by TED global curator Bruno Giussani” on the topic of the war in Ukraine.

Now, what on earth am I doing, listening to this?  Well, where can I better find the source of the manufactured reality that we are supposed to believe, the one which people are supposed to spout at cocktail parties – the type of parties to which none of us are invited (let’s call it “cock-‘splainin’”)?  TED plus a speaker at the World Economic Forum.  Tell me, does it get any better (worse) than this – to really understand what the wanna-be in-crowd is supposed to believe?

Harari has demonstrated this “we-should-forget-history” idea by example.  In all of his cock-‘splainin’ about the war in Ukraine, he forget any history of NATO moving East, of NATO making the commitment of incorporating Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance, of Putin’s statement’s regarding this, of the western-fomented color-revolutions, of the cookie monsters visiting the mostly peaceful massacres, of Ukraine bombing its own citizens in the eastern part of the country, of the amassing of Ukrainian troops on the borders of the Donbas, of the president of Ukraine stating clearly he would develop nuclear weapons…oh, I could go on, but you get it.

Frankly, if a historian isn’t going to discuss history, why is he consulted as an expert?

Further, in his cock-‘splainin’, he spent not a word discussing any of the statements made by Putin or Lavrov.  It was all Putin-is-a-madman kind of stuff.  What is a historian who wants to forget history to do with his time?  I know. How about becoming an armchair psychiatrist?  He proceeds to explain that Putin is just…I don’t know, mad…crazy….

There was a lot of focus on Germany – Germany has to step up, lead Europe (now that Brexit and all that).  Of course, the crux of the matter is Germany – everything necessary has been done and must be done to keep Germany and Russia as antagonists.  To understand why, read Halford Mackinder – and keep in mind he gave this lecture in 1904, and, in my opinion, it explains every major war fought since that time.  It isn’t about oil, it isn’t about Zionism, it isn’t about communism, it isn’t about fascism, it isn’t about spreading liberal democracy.  Mackinder explains what it is.

And then, an amazing exchange.  Was the war the result of a failure of diplomacy?  Could a different approach have avoided the war?  To the first part, the answer is yes – clearly war is a failure of diplomacy (which is correct in this case, and I think all cases). 

To the second question Harari replies:

Is it a failure in the sense that a different diplomatic approach, some kind of other proposition would have stopped the war?  I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like it.

This, of course, must be the answer if you just absolutely know that Putin is mad, crazy, insane.  Keep in mind – this is what people believe, or what they are told they should believe.  It is cock-‘splainin’.

Looking at events of the last few weeks [this video was published on March 2], it doesn’t seem that Putin was really interested in a diplomatic solution.  It seems that he was really interested in the war.

Of course, since the historian tells us to forget history, we need not look back more than a few weeks.  We need not consider the many proposals and statements made by Putin, Lavrov, and others (how about John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen, for example?).  We need to forget the Minsk Agreements, to which Ukraine was a party.

When the Angelic Doctor Was More Eastern than Western

 When Aquinas was translated into Greek and introduced in the East, he was beloved.

-          bionic mosquito

There’s one for you – starting off a post by quoting myself!  Well, in response to this line, a friend emailed me an article: Byzantine Thomism and the True Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue: “Breathing with Both Lungs”.  Coincidentally, it was published one day before my referenced post

This article offers some history regarding the Eastern love of Aquinas, and also introduces an institute working to expand this dialogue.

Many Catholics are unaware of the rich tradition of ‘Byzantine Thomism’ that budded in the two centuries prior to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and was critical to the successful, though short-lived, Union of Florence, healing the schism between East and West, in 1439.

Byzantine Thomism was characterized by a fruitful cross-pollination of St Thomas’ thought with the Greek Fathers….

I am guessing many Orthodox are also unaware of this – perhaps like keeping the crazy uncle hidden upstairs when guests come over.  As for Protestants, as I have written before, Luther was critical of Thomas and his Scholasticism without really having read or understood much of his work.

After the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, “mendicant orders and the friars would…play a predominant role in the religious life of Latin Christians in the East.”  The author of this piece recognizes the sacking as “a great crime,” nevertheless he sees in it that through it “God may be affecting the good of reconciliation of East and West….” 

We have such examples in the Bible, so I really don’t want to dive into this point any further.  I only raise it for the history – how Aquinas was introduced in the East.  The first Dominicans came to Constantinople in 1232.  Even after the Byzantine recapture of Constantinople, the Catholic community in the city flourished.  It was through this community – specifically the Dominicans – that Aquinas came to be known.

The man responsible for the translation of both the Summa contra gentiles and the Summa theologica from Latin into Greek was the noble-born Byzantine scholar Demetrios Kydones in the 1350s, who remarked that St Thomas knew Plato and Aristotle better than the Greeks themselves.

Demetrios would become Imperial Prime Minister under three emperors.  He was a strong advocate for re-union with the Latin Church. Of course, this movement for reunion was also propelled by political considerations for the defense of Christendom against the Ottoman Muslims.

The Byzantines were also particularly impressed by the apologetic skills of Aquinas, which they put in the service of their own disputes with Mohammedanism.

Aquinas would reach a standing in the East that he would not achieve in the West until the late nineteenth century. 

Conclusion

Paradoxically, St Thomas Aquinas’ high reputation in Byzantium coincided with a low point in his reputation in Latin Christendom, partly because of the tragic rivalry between the different religious orders.

I am reminded of a lecture given by Fr. Michael Butler, an Orthodox priest, who better understood, and better advocated for, Thomistic natural law than most Catholic priests.  I reviewed his lecture here.

Epilogue

The Dialogos Institute is a theological institute founded in 2015 to help remedy this disaster by recovering the patristic heritage of the Church in the spirit of faithful Latin and Byzantine Thomism.

This Institute is mentioned several times in the article.  From the Institute’s website:

The Dialogos Institute is particularly devoted to the reintegration of the Byzantine and Latin traditions in theology, liturgy and spirituality. This is a delicate task in which it is important to preserve the distinction between the two traditions while allowing today’s faithful to drink deep from both streams in their purity.

The Dialogos Institute is a Romano-Byzantine theological institute devoted to the study of the patristic heritage in the spirit of Latin and Byzantine Thomism.

Returning to the sources of the faith through the Socratic method of disputation, the members of the Dialogos Institute seek to contribute to the renewal of Catholic Theology and Philosophy and an authentically Christian social order through fidelity to the united witness of the holy Fathers.

Sounds like worthwhile work to me.

We All Have One Enemy…

 …and that's President Snow!

Katniss Everdeen

I bet if I asked for comments on where and why “the other” Christian tradition or denomination has erred in doctrine or theology, I would receive a thousand comments (I am NOT asking).  I am sure I could come up with a few dozen of my own, regarding just about every tradition or denomination (no, I am not going to do that either).

The more I have come to understand the whats and whys of the doctrinal disagreements, the more I have come to conclude that many of these (certainly not all) are just looking at different angles of the same picture, or emphasizing different aspects of the concept.  We have four Gospels for a reason, each with slightly different (or very different) points of emphasis, etc., and we have not denounced three of the four Gospel writers as heretics.

Further, on some of the more difficult items (the Trinity, a precise description of the nature of Christ, etc.), well, who are we fooling?

If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.

-          Evelyn Underhill

I recall someone once telling me that maybe the items that are not made clear in Scripture are things that perhaps we are not meant to understand.  We have enough trouble with the things that are made clear in Scripture….

Then, I have come to learn that there are Eastern Rite Churches under the pope, and there are Western Rite Orthodox Churches.  Go figure. 

Add to this the reality that in this world – certainly in the West – we are all Protestants; we each make a call about the church we attend, the form of worship that best suits us, etc.  We aren’t in pre-Reformation Europe, or in the Byzantine Empire, or in the post-conversion Russian Empire.

And then we have the first recorded sermon in the book of Acts, chapter 2, delivered by St. Peter.  Do you know what is in it?  The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Do you know what’s not in it?  Pretty much everything that has divided Christians since.  Yet very few have had the success of Peter: 3,000 were added to their number that day.

In Acts chapter 13, the Apostle Paul had a similar message and he also didn’t get into any of the issues that divide Christians today.  This message was so well received that on the next Sabbath almost the whole city of Antioch “gathered to hear the word of the Lord.”  And this was before there was a written “word of the Lord!”

So…I came across a wonderful discussion between Austin Suggs and Fr. Patrick Cardine, a Western Rite Orthodox priest.  The relevant part begins here, in a section entitled Learning to Despise the West.  Fr. Patrick has written that he learned to despise the West at the same time he was learning to love the faith of the Orthodox Church.  This wasn’t happenstance.  He was taught to scorn by the same ones teaching him to love.  Yeah, a bit shocking when it is put that way, I know.

Where does this come from?  Fr. Patrick replies:

It’s not an abstract theory that is causing it; it’s a very concrete thing.  The apologetic materials that have been produced are laced with an anti-Western sentiment.

Nature, According to our Purpose

Based on my comment to a recent Paul VanderKlay video. 

This “meaning crisis” conversation will eventually come to a natural law ethic, or it will never resolve.

I have been making this point for quite some time now.  I am thinking that I really have to develop the why and how of it.  It seems so clear to me, but I don’t know that I have figured out how to explain it succinctly…if it can be.  I will settle for figuring out how to explain it over a series of posts.  Consider this one the start of that endeavor.  I take that back.  I have been “starting” for several years now.  Now it is time to get down to spelling it out.

In many ways, Jordan Peterson got this conversation rolling – certainly on the popular level.  How many people have said “I like the ‘clean up your room’ Jordan Peterson and the ‘take on responsibility’ Jordan Peterson and the ‘what kind of man would a woman want to marry’ Jordan Peterson.  But I don’t like the ‘Bill C-16 [compelled preferred pronoun speech]’ Jordan Peterson or the ‘political’ Jordan Peterson.”

As if any of this can be separated.  First of all, since everything is now political…well, how can you separate gender pronouns from anything else Peterson says?  Next, and far more important: Peterson has been pointing to the meaning crisis, especially evident in Western men, but evident throughout Western society. 

Peterson didn’t introduce the phrase “meaning crisis” (I think John Vervaeke might have), but he certainly captured and described it.  If gender confusion can’t be understood in the context of the meaning crisis, then there is no such thing as a meaning crisis.

I have, in the past, compelled Paul VanderKlay to address natural law, dedicating a complete video to an email I sent to him.  Since then (and even before then), on and off, I have made comments regarding the necessity of this ethic if any sanity is to return to the West and to the individuals residing in it.

Recently he has started commenting more along these lines – albeit (at least to me), somewhat confusingly.  For example, in his adult Sunday school class, he has begun teaching on Romans 1.  Now, go and read Romans 1, beginning with verse 18.  Tell me, can you read this passage without a) coming face to face with the idea of natural law, and b) finding a direct application to a topic that is tearing the Western Church (of most denominations) apart?

So I wrote the following comment:

Really tough to avoid natural law - both at a high level (it is known by all men) and for specific applications (like that thing you are not allowed to preach on in Canada) - when one is reading Romans 1....

Read the passage in Romans if it isn’t clear to you what I am talking about.  And read this if you aren’t familiar with the Canadian law.  In any case, PVK replied:

Is same sex attraction "natural"?" I think "natural law" without a very careful definition falls apart.

Which confused me to no end.  My reply:

Your reply confuses me, as the Apostle Paul says precisely the opposite. 

Natural law can only make sense in the context of understand the purpose of the thing:

As to this specific application of natural law, beside the words of Paul (and other places in Scripture), once one accepts that man is made for a purpose and that each part of man (and woman) is also made for a purpose, the careful definition is clear.  What is the purpose of the thing?  In this case, anatomy and physiology make clear the purpose.

Either I didn’t understand PVK’s reply, or he really doesn’t understand anything about natural law or the source for the ethic.  I just hope I never have to get more graphic or detailed….

I continue:

Or, we can be like Sam Harris - there is no purpose in anything.  There either is purpose in the world and all that is in it, or there isn't.  I don't think we are free to pick and choose - some things have purpose and others don't.  Talk about a random and chaotic world.  But, then again, this is what modernity is trying to do. 

And post-modernity has completed the task – stripping purpose from everything.

Hence, the meaning crisis.  Hence, why this discussion must, if it is to bear any fruit, sooner or later find its way to a natural law ethic.

Which is still all background to my most recent comment at his site, and background for this post.  In my most recent comment, I am responding to and building on something PVK said, where he described the ancient view of “natural.”  He said something like: “from the Greek, it means nature as in plant growth.”  Which should make things abundantly clear…but I worked to spell it out:

An acorn grows into an oak – this is natural, according to its purpose.  The meaning of “natural” means this if it to mean anything.