God and Natural Law Reflections on Genesis 22

5/28/2018 God and Natural Law Reflections on Genesis 22

1/27

GOD AND NATURAL LAW:REFLECTIONS ON GENESIS 22

MATTHEW LEVERING

If natural law prohibits killing the innocent, how can God, according tobiblical revelation, command Abraham to kill his son Isaac (Genesis 22)? Aswe would expect from thinkers whose natural law doctrine is not distancedfrom biblical revelation, the problem of the Aqedah or near-sacrifice of Isaacwas a staple of medieval discussion of natural law, and it surfaces in moderndiscussions as well. It may seem that Gods command to Abraham belies theclaim to an intelligible natural law rooted in Gods providential ordering of

all things to their due end. What kind of providential ordering could includethe command to kill an innocent child?1

Behind the interest in the Aqedah in discussions of moral theology andphilosophy lies the question of how one can claim that there exists a God-given natural law, a morally normative order, in the face of all the suffering,death, and disorder that one finds in the world. In response to this ques-tion, this essay proceeds in two steps. First, I explore Immanuel Kantswell-known response to the Aqedah and John Thiels recent effort toaccount theologically for innocent suffering. Second, seeking the roots of

Kants and Thiels accounts, I turn to the Aqedah as the point of divergencebetween Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas on the doctrine of natural law.For Scotus and Aquinas, the Aqedah raises questions about the content ofthe natural law and whether that content can be changed. I suggest that inthe divergence of Scotus and Aquinas one can see the beginnings of themodern split between anthropocentric and theocentric alternatives forarticulating natural law doctrine.2 At issue is the normative presence, orlack thereof, of Gods ordering wisdom (and not merely his power) inhuman relationships.

Matthew Levering, Ave Maria University, 5050 Ave Maria Blvd, Ave Maria, FL 34142, [email protected]

Modern Theology 24:2 April 2008ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

2008 The AuthorJournal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


2/27

I. God and the Slaying of the Innocent

Immanuel KantInThe Conflict of the Faculties, Immanuel Kant observes that in all likelihood

persons who think that they receive commands from God are deluded. As hesays in response to the myth of the sacrifice that Abraham was going tomake by butchering and burning his only son at Gods command:Abraham should have replied to this supposedly divine voice: That I oughtnot to kill my good son is quite certain. But that you, this apparition, areGodof that I am not certain, and never can be, not even if this voice ringsdown to me from visible heaven.3 Kant reasons that the moral law is certain,at least insofar as not killing ones innocent son is concerned, whereas divinecommands are profoundly uncertain. He states therefore that [i]n somecases man can be sure that the voice he hears is not Gods; for if the voicecommands him to do something contrary to the moral law, then no matterhow majestic the apparition may be, and no matter how it may seem tosurpass the whole of nature, he must consider it an illusion.4 Abrahamshould have followed this natural moral law and rejected the apparentlydivine voice.

As Kant suggests, furthermore, how one reads such passages as Genesis 22influences how one understands the justice or injustice of killing humanbeings on the grounds of religious disagreement. InReligion within the Limitsof Reason Alonehe gives the example of an inquisitor, who clings fast to theuniqueness of his statutory faith even to the point of [imposing] martyrdom,and who has to pass judgment upon a so-called heretic (otherwise a goodcitizen) charged with unbelief.5 Assuming the inquisitor decides in favor ofthe stake, can one say, Kant asks, that the inquisitor acted on the basis ofconscience? Kant argues that the answer is no, because conscience couldnever assure an inquisitor that capital punishment in such a case is just. Thereason is this: That it is wrong to deprive a man of his life because of hisreligious faith is certain, unless (to allow for the most remote possibility) aDivine Will, made known in extraordinary fashion, has ordered it otherwise.But that God has ever uttered this terrible injunction can be asserted only onthe basis of historical documents and is never apodictically certain.6 Neitheran exterior nor interior voice, nor the historical documents of Scripture, candemonstrate with sufficient power that one should act in a way which oneknows on other grounds, with certainty, to be unjust.

For Kant, the question of the justice of capital punishment for heresy is thussimilar to the question of the justice of Abraham killing his son: only theinvocation of the divine will could make such actions just, but one cannever know with certainty whether God has in fact made his will known inthis way. One can know with certainty that such actions are, humanly speak-ing, unjust. To go against this certainty on the basis of a faith that rests onhistorical grounds, which in Kants view cannot command firm assent,

152 Matthew Levering



3/27

would be a violation of conscience. Kant concludes, This is the case withrespect to all historical and visionary faith; that is, the possibilityever remainsthat an error may be discovered in it. Hence it is unconscientious to follow

such a faith with the possibility that perhaps what it commands or permitsmay be wrong, i.e., with the danger of disobedience to a human duty whichis certain in and of itself.7 In short, contrary to Gods praise of Abraham inGenesis 22 for withholding nothing from God but instead receiving every-thing as a gift, Abraham sinned in obeying Godor so Kant thinks.

John ThielWithout mentioning Abrahams near-sacrifice of his son, the contemporarytheologian John Thiel advances similar concernsbut now about whether a

God who wills the crucifixion of his beloved Son Jesus can indeed be a justand loving God.8 He takes Anselm as a typical representative of the positionthat God does indeed providentially will the death of Jesus, the supremelyinnocent man. As Thiel notes, Since Anselm has argued ardently on behalfof the logical necessity of Jesus sacrifice, there is no way for him to avoid theconclusion that God willed the cross for Jesus. That God wills Jesus deathmay sound a dissonant chord in Christian sensibilities. Yet Anselm offers thisjudgment as a claim about Gods love for humanity, even in the guilty depthsof its fallenness.9 Is Gods will that Jesus must die, however, truly the

epitome of love? Would a just God approve the death of a supremely inno-cent man? Moreover, would this approval, this affirmation that an innocentman should die, in fact be the paradigmatic act of divine providence,10 inwhich the righteousness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is fully revealed?For Thiel, the answer is no.

Thiel argues that Anselms sacrificial logic allows believers to makesome sense of their own deaths and those of others, but at the cost ofmaintaining what is, for some at least, an extraordinarily troubling viewthat God wills death, including the deaths of innocent victims. Thiel chal-

lenges the sacrificial logic, furthermore, on the grounds that it places Jesus,who is perfectly innocent, on a different level from other human beings whoare to varying degrees disordered by original sin. As Thiel remarks, Jesusdeath is not retributive punishment, while the death of everyone elseis . . . Jesus death is the undeserved death of an innocent sufferer, while thedeath of everyone else is deserved and thoroughly guilty.11 Two problemsfollow: how can our deserved deaths be truly united with Jesus undeserveddeath, and how can one truly mourn the deaths of other innocent victimsgiven that their innocence is marked by a prior and more determinative guilt?

In other words, one might posit that a loving God wills the sacrificial deathof one innocent man (Jesus) on behalf of all other guilty human beings, butsuch a viewpoint assures, in Thiels view, a twofold outcome: Jesus dyinglacks real solidarity with other human deaths, and God wills that the rest ofus be deservedly killed (undergo death) as well. Thiel argues that this

God and Natural Law 153



4/27

outcome distorts our understanding both of God and of the tragedy of death.In both the providential and the sacrificial accounts of death, Gods willgives an improper imprimatur to death (even of the most innocent person).

We cannot even mourn properly the deaths that we see and experiencebecause they allegedly belong to Gods will. This distortion contrasts withour real experience of the tragic deaths of innocent victims, whether fromcancer, violence, or other causes. Our hope that these victims find reward inGods providential plan is thwarted by the denial, in the sacrificial logic, thatany of the victims (other than Jesus) are in a fundamental sense innocent.

We do not want, says Thiel, to put God on the side of death. As he observes,we have seen that the popularity of the providential explanation stems fromthe desire to confirm, through Gods actions, the very innocent suffering that

the legal explanation denies . . . [T]his indirect recognition of innocent suf-fering comes at the extraordinarily high price of Gods arranging the particu-lar circumstances of suffering and death that individuals find so grief-ladenand tumultuous in their lives.12 Thiels goal is therefore to account forsuffering and death in a way that reclaims a full concept of innocent humansuffering and that denies that God approves or wills any death. Just as Kantholds that it is wrong to kill an innocent human being (e.g., Isaac) even if onethink that one has received a divine command to carry out such acts, in asimilar fashion Thiel suggests that it would be wrong for God to will the

death of an innocent human being (Jesus) and indeed wrong to imagine thatGod wills, in his providential plan, the deaths of even sinful human beings.As we experientially recognize, many of these deaths are tragic instances ofhuman life being cut off, through no fault of its own, by oppressive forces.The good and wise God is not to blame. Pace sacrificial and providentialaccounts, for Thiel God does not in any sense ever will the tragedy of humandeath.

Evaluation

Kant deals with Genesis 22 by arguing simply that human beings who thinkthey must obey a divine command that clearly goes against right reason areprofoundly deluded. Thiels case, by contrast, involves elucidating the com-plexities of divine providence and of the order of justice between the rationalcreature and the Creator. Granting the differences in their argument, Kantand Thiel are united by their concern to deem irrational and unintelligible thedeath of the innocent, whether Isaac, Jesus, or others. Kant addresses theissue by repudiating Genesis 22 as an example of religious irrationality on thepart of Abraham. Thiel argues that accounts of Christs Cross that imply

divine approval or that suggest that God wills to change the human conditionthrough the death of an innocent human being are similarly manifestations ofreligious irrationality.

While I have responded more broadly to anti-sacrificial and anti-providential arguments elsewhere,13 in what follows I want to explore




5/27

specifically how similar concerns influenced late-medieval and moderndevelopments in natural law doctrine. Duns Scotuss profound disagreementwith Thomas Aquinas on the character of natural law hinges upon these very

issues of Gods justice and the death of the innocent. Scotus, as we will see,attempts to resolve the difficulty by displacing human-to-human relation-ships from the natural law. Human-to-human relationships are for Scotusgoverned solely by divine positive law, which can be changed by God at anytime, whereas human-to-God relationships comprise the unchanging naturallaw.

By separating out human-to-human relationships as a realm ungovernedby an ordering inscribed in creationand thus by denying an intrinsicallyordered human nature with requirements for fulfillment other than obe-

dience to GodScotus intends to grant God absolute and arbitrary powerover the ordering of human-to-human relationships. Looked at another way,however, Scotuss position opens the door to a thoroughly anthropocentrichuman-to-human morality. Although Scotus means to intensify the theocen-tric frame, his positing of a realm of human-to-human relationships thatdoes not intrinsically reflect the ordering pattern of divine ecstasis meansthat God could command, as the moral norm for human-to-human relation-ships, self-cleaving rather than self-giving. The human-to-human nolonger fully participates in the human-to-God.14 Thus the path is open to the

kinds of anthropocentric solutions that Kant and Thiel proposeor so I willsuggest.

II. Aquinas and Scotus on the Natural Law: Can the Natural Law Be Changed?

Thomas AquinasCan the natural law be changed? Aquinas answers in the affirmativeif whatis meant by changed is to receive additions. As he points out, while onecannot hold that whatever is contained in the Law and the Gospel belongs

to the natural law, one can affirm that whatever belongs to the natural lawis fully contained in the Law and the Gospel.15 God does not intend thenatural law to stand on its own; a higher participation in the eternal law (i.e.in Gods plan for ordering human action, in his providence, to its fulfillment)is possible through divine law. Divine law, comprising the Mosaic law andthe Gospel of Christ, contains many things that are above nature.16 It wouldnot do to imagine the natural law as a closed-off system of relatively autono-mous morality, since the natural law belongs within the revealed divine law,and has its ultimate intelligibility and value in that context. Emphatically,

then, Aquinas affirms that the natural law can be, and is, changed in thesense of having other precepts (above the capacity of merely natural powers)added to it.

Yet, the natural law, while changed by being integrated into a gratuitousand supernatural human teleology, is internally unchanged. In its deepest




6/27

sense, the natural law cannot be changed, even by God. This is so, saysAquinas, because the natural law is the rational creatures participation in theeternal law, Gods wise ordering of creation to its ultimate end. This partici-

pation is intensified, not revised, by the gift of a supernatural end. The naturalcapacities are expanded and enhanced so as to participate in Trinitariancommunion, not cut off and redirected in a different direction. In affirmingthis unchangeability of the natural law, Aquinas appeals to the Churchsmoral practice as codified in the canon law of his day: It is said in theDecretals (Dist. v):The natural law dates from the creation of the rational creature.It does not vary according to time, but remains unchangeable.17

Opposed to canon law, however, appears to be the authority of divinerevelation in Scripture. Like any reader of the Old Testament, Aquinas is

well aware of this rather alarming problem: Further, the slaying of theinnocent, adultery, and theft are against the natural law. But we find thesethings changed by God: as when God commanded Abraham to slay hisinnocent son (Gen. xxii. 2); and when he ordered the Jews to borrow andpurloin the vessels of the Egyptians (Exod. xii. 35); and when He com-manded Osee [Hosea] to take to himselfa wife of fornications(Osee i. 2).18 Itwould seem that, if the natural law is a pattern of just human action, Godhimself teaches particular human beings to violate the natural law, to act inan unjust manner. Someone who teaches others to commit injustices would

himself be unjust. Aquinas, however, knows that God cannot be unjustand thus the dilemma which we have already seen in Kant and, in a dif-ferent way, in Thiel.19

In an effort to resolve this dilemma, Aquinas distinguishes human reasonas ordered to universal truths (speculative reason) from human reason asordered to operation or activity (practical reason). While not cut off fromspeculative reason, law falls into the latter category. For reason in its specu-lative mode, the principles and conclusions are the same for all people,although the conclusions are not known by all. Similarly, reason in its prac-

tical mode relies upon unchangeable first principles that are known by all.But reason in its practical mode leads to diverse conclusions from thesegeneral principles, since right reason as regards action differs dependingupon the situation. Aquinas observes, for instance, that from the principles ofthe natural law one should conclude to the precept that goods entrusted toanother should be restored to their owner, but in fact this conclusion (unlikeconclusions of the speculative reason) does not hold in all cases: it mayhappen in a particular case that it would be injurious, and therefore unrea-sonable, to restore goods held in trust; for instance if they are claimed for the

purpose of fighting against ones country.20 The general principles of thenatural law are thus unchangeably the same for all people, but the conclu-sions that follow from these principles admit exceptions in certain circum-stances, in order to enable the person to attain the ends recognized in thegeneral principles.




7/27

This distinction between general principles and conclusions assistsAquinas in affirming the natural law as regards difficult biblical cases such asthe Aqedah, once the distinction is understood within a fully theocentric

framework. In the natural law, God is the lawgiver. As Aquinas says, prop-erly speaking, none imposes a law on his own actions.21 Human beings aresubject to the law of God, Gods wise plan for the right ordering of humanaction to humankinds ultimate end. In promulgating the law to humanbeings, God imprints on man a directive principle of human actions.22 Thisimprint of the eternal law, inscribed in the metaphysical constitution ofhuman beings, is present in two ways in accord with the body-soul unity ofthe human person:

There are two ways in which a thing is subject to the eternal law. . . . : first,by partaking of the eternal law by way of knowledge; secondly, by way ofaction and passion, i.e., by partaking of the eternal law by way of aninward motive principle: and in this second way, irrational creatures aresubject to the eternal law. . . . But since the rational nature, together withthat which it has in common with all creatures, has something proper toitself inasmuch as it is rational, consequently it is subject to the eternallaw in both ways; because while each rational creature has some knowl-edge of the eternal law, as stated above [I-II, q. 93, a. 2], it also has anatural inclination to that which is in harmony with the eternal law; forwe are naturally adapted to be the recipients of virtue(Ethic. ii. 1). Both ways,however, are imperfect, and to a certain extent destroyed, in the wicked.23

The key point here is that natural law does not place human beings in therole of giving the law to themselves.24 Aquinas points out earlier, Humanreason is not, of itself, the rule of things: but the principles impressed on it bynature, are general rules and measures of all things relating to humanconduct, whereof the natural reason is the rule and measure, although it isnot the measure of things that are from nature.25 Right reason governs

human action, but does so as first receiving the principles impressed on[human reason] by nature which contain the general rules and measures ofall things relating to human conduct. The true lawgiver is God, and the waythat the human being participates in the law (as opposed to participating inthe lawgiving, which is the task of human positive law) is the natural law.

Of course, human rational participation is a sharing in Gods eternal law,and so a sharing in Gods providence, that enables human reason to governhuman action and thus to be provident both for itself and for others. 26 Yetthis human practical reason or providence does not constitutethe principles

of the natural law: the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what isgood and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing elsethan an imprint on us of the Divine light.27 This imprint of Gods reasoninclines us naturally, in our very rationality, toward what is good for ourfulfillment as human beings. Our rational perception of a hierarchical order-




8/27

ing of goods that our metaphysical constitution (body-soul) inclines us topursue is the working out of the divine imprint.28 A law, as Aquinas says, isnothing else than a dictate of reason in the ruler by whom his subjects are

governed.29

As regards the natural law, the ruler is God.30

If God is the ruler, what about human suffering and death?31 Aquinasgrants that God, as the wise ruler of human beings, may exact just punish-ment upon human beings who merit such punishment at such a time thatGod deems fitting for human ordering to the ultimate end. Since the punish-ment of human sin is suffering and deatha punishment intrinsic to thecrime, because sin pridefully turns away from the source of lifeGod canpunish sinners by no longer sustaining in being their earthly lives; indeed allsinners undergo this punishment at some time or another in Gods provi-

dential plan. Aquinas explains, All men alike, both guilty and innocent, diethe death of nature: which death of nature is inflicted by the power of God onaccount of original sin, according to 1 Kings ii. 6: The Lord killeth and makethalive.32 Just as the natural law can at times require killing in order to fulfilljustice (e.g., in defense of a community under attack), so also God, in hiswisdom and goodness, can directly require killing. God is not thereby exact-ing an unjust penalty. Similarly, God, as the creator and governor of theuniverse, is the true owner of all things. He can re-allocate things withoutthere being an injustice: one cannot steal from oneself.

Along these lines, Aquinas engages Genesis 22, Exodus 12, and otherdifficult biblical texts. Because God knows the good end toward which he ismoving human creatures, he can justly command the killing of Abrahamschild born under the penalty of sinalthough by no means does God in factwill Abraham to go through with this sacrifice. Likewise God can justlycommand the Hebrews in Exodus 12 to take and keep what belongs ulti-mately not to the Egyptians, but to God. So, too, God has ordained the unionof man and woman in marriage, by which the human species endures andflourishes. These ends of the human species, in the plan of God, may by

Gods command be achieved outside of the marital bond without the com-mission of a sin. In other words, marriage, life, and material possessions allbelong to Gods ordering of human creatures to their proper flourishing. Godcan accomplish his wise ordering directly without overturning the naturallaw. The general principles of the natural lawprinciples defined by thegoods pertaining to Gods ordering of human creatures to union withGoddo not change. But in some particular cases of rare occurrence,33 Godmay, at the level of secondary precepts flowing from the first principles,command that human persons enact directly the good ordering that God

wills, in ways that human persons could not justly act on their own behalf.For Aquinas, therefore, what is at stake in these biblical passages is the

status of the natural law as a participation in the eternal law. The natural lawdoes not have an integrity that stands on its own. Rather the natural law ishuman rational participation in Gods eternal law or wise ordering of all




9/27

things to their fulfillment. As such, natural law does not exhaust the ways inwhich God can communicate the eternal law. Aquinas affirms that Godcannot change the natural law, which regards the goods that befit human

happiness and toward which human beings are thus, in a hierarchicallyordered fashion, inclined.34 To change Gods wise orderingas opposed tointensifying itwould be to destroy human nature. Thus God does not, andcould not, dispense Abraham from the natural laws prohibition of murder:As the Apostle says (2 Tim ii. 13), God continueth faithful, He cannot denyHimself. But He would deny Himself if He were to do away with the veryorder of His own justice, since He is justice itself. Wherefore God cannotdispense a man so that it be lawful for him not to direct himself to God, or notto be subject to His justice, even in those matters in which men are directed

to one another.35

Yet, as the eternal lawgiver, God can order Abrahamsaction so that it would not be murder. Without violating the internal require-ments of natural law, God can directly ordain the action to the end of theeternal law.

It is crucial to see that this direct ordering of human action is not anarbitrary instance of divine power, but rather pertains to the same movementto which natural law belongs: the eternal law, Gods wise ordering of createdthings to their fulfillment in Gods goodness. What would be theft for ahuman being on his or her own authority, is not theft when ordained by God:

God directly ordains this particular distribution of material possessionstoward the ultimate end of human union with God. What would be murderfor a man or a woman on his or her own authority is not murder whenordained by God: God directly ordains this particular punishment of deathlikewise toward the ultimate end. What would be unjust sexual intercoursefor a man or a woman on his or her own authority, as outside licit marriagebonds, is not when commanded by God: God ordains this particular union ofman and woman toward the ultimate end.36 Gods ordination in these excep-tional cases does not arbitrarily dispense particular human beings from the

justice that the natural law requires. Rather Gods ordination directly accom-plishes in these cases the end of the natural law, namely the wise and justordering of all created goods.

This account of reality is, of course, radically theocentric. From eternity,God moves all created things, in accord with their natures, to the sharing inGods goodness that God knows and wills for them.37 God cannot dispensefrom or change the goods that fulfill human nature, and so the first principlesof the natural law are unchangeable. However in rare cases God can changethe secondary principles or conclusions that indicate the ways of rightly

attaining the goods, without thereby denying the general truth of the sec-ondary principles. God can do this because, as the giver of all the goods, Godcan distribute them justly and wisely in a manner that transcends, even whilebeing analogous to, the limited jurisdiction of human lawgivers.38 In hiswisdom and goodness, God has authority over the distribution of human




10/27

goods: this follows from the doctrine of the eternal law. Against anthropo-centric conceptions, natural law participates in, rather than displaces or rivals,Gods authoritative ordering.39

Duns ScotusIn seeking to work out a doctrine of natural law, Scotus begins by questioningAbraham. Although he finds a certain senselessness to Abrahams near-sacrifice of Isaac, he celebrates this apparent senselessness as divine sense.Scotus summarizes the problem as he sees it: My question then is this.Granted that all the circumstances are the same in regard to this act of killinga man except the circumstances of its being prohibited in one case and notprohibited in another, could God cause that act which is circumstantially the

same, but performed by different individuals, to be prohibited and illicit inone case and not prohibited but licit in the other?40 In Scotuss view, this isexactly what God has done in Abrahams case.

For Abraham in the case of the near-sacrifice of Isaac, God makes licit thekilling of the innocent. The apparent senselessness arises from the fact thatthe same God also commands, in the Decalogue, You shall not kill (Exodus20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17). This apparent senselessness is compounded byScotuss refusal to appeal to distinctions between murder and justifiedkilling, e.g. in self-defense. He notes that the typical manner of explain[ing]

away those texts where God seems to have given a dispensation . . . is to claimthat though a dispensation could be granted to an act that falls under ageneric description, it could never be given insofar as it is prohibited accord-ing to the intention of the commandment, and hence would not be against theprohibition.41 In Scotuss view, the problem with explaining away difficultcases based upon dispensations in certain circumstances is that they cannotaccount for cases such as Abrahams, which involve Gods command to killthe innocent. For Scotus, the case of the Aqedah is no mere isolated incident,but one among many other instances in which God commands, as licit, acts

of killing that elsewhere, in the same circumstances, God prohibits as illicit.42

Aquinas, we recall, also rejects the view that God dispenses from theDecalogue. He argues instead that all human life belongs to God anddeserves the punishment of death; God can carry out this punishmentthrough human instruments without causing them to violate the unchange-able commandment You shall not kill, which proscribes unjust killing.By contrast, rather than beginning with Gods action and accounting forAbrahams action instrumentally, Scotus begins with Abrahams actionhisacceptance of Gods command to kill his child Isaac. Scotus does not place

Isaac into the context of the relational ordering of creature to Creator, inwhich ordering Isaacs life is from God and under the penalty of sin.43 Rather,Scotus asks how Abraham, if God unchangeably commands to all personsYou shall not kill, could justly will to kill his child. Abraham, Scotussuggests, could not justly do it even if commanded by Godunless God also




11/27

dispensed Abraham from the commandment You shall not kill. But, asboth Scotus and Aquinas hold, no dispensation could be possible if thecommandment belongs to the unchangeable natural law.

Scotus therefore reasons that You shall not kill does not belong to theunchangeable natural law. The unchangeable natural law, he observes, com-mands that which has a formal goodness whereby it [what is commanded]is essentially ordered to mans ultimate end, so that through it a man isdirected towards his end and prohibits that which has a formal evil whichturns one from ones ultimate end.44 The first two precepts of the Decalogue,You shall not have other gods before me and You shall not take the nameof the Lord, your God, in vain, belong on this account to the unchangeablenatural law. These precepts order human beings directly toward their end,

God. To disobey these precepts would be, under any terms, to cut oneself offfrom God. As regards the status of the third precept of the Decalogue,Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy, Scotus is somewhat in doubt,because he wonders whether being ordered to God as ones end requiresworshipping God at this particular time, rather than at another time.

The other seven commandments of the Decalogue, Scotus argues, do notpossess strict necessity as regards attaining God as ones ultimate end.Having affirmed the first two commandments of the Decalogue (those aboutGod) as necessarily following from the first practical principles known from

their terms45

and thereby as unchangeable natural law, Scotus points out thatthe last seven commandments (known as the precepts of the secondtable46) can be dispensed with without necessarily causing the person to failto attain the ultimate end. Although Scotus does not say so, one assumes thatonly God can issue such a dispensation, because these seven commandmentsare exceedingly in harmony with that [natural] law47 expressed by the firsttwo commandments. This harmony is such that, speaking broadly, one canconceive of the entire Decalogue as belonging to the natural law. By means ofthis broad sense, Scotus is able to avoid disagreeing with the canon law that,

as Aquinas observed, held that the moral precepts of the Decalogue belong tothe unchangeable natural law.

Speaking in a strict sense, however, Scotus holds that the last seven com-mandments of the Decalogue contain no goodness such as is necessarilyprescribed for attaining the goodness of the ultimate end, nor in what isforbidden is there such malice as would turn one away necessarily from thelast end.48 To take the example of You shall not kill (Scotus himselfemploys other examples), even the killing of the innocent does not necessar-ily constitute such a malicious deed that it cuts one off from God. One can

only be cut off from God by directly turning away from ones obligations toGod. The commands that have to do with other human beings cannot there-fore be of the same import as the commands regarding God. As Scotus saysabout the last seven commandments, even if the good found in thesemaxims were not commanded, the last end [of humans as union with God]




12/27

could still be loved and attained, whereas if the evil proscribed by them werenot forbidden, it would still be consistent with the acquisition of the ultimateend.49

These are strong words, no matter with what qualifications one takesthem.50 Could God really make murder not intrinsically and as such animpediment to ones ability to attain to eternal life in union with God?Scotuss argument is premised on the fact that the killing of the innocent hasas its object human beings, whereas in contrast the first two commandmentsof the Decalogue regard God immediately as object.51 As an objection to hisposition, he cites two biblical passages: Romans 13:9, The commandments,You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, Youshall not covet, and any other commandment, are summed up in this sen-

tence, You shall love your neighbor as yourself ; and Matthew 22:3740,And he [Jesus] said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all yourheart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great andfirst commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor asyourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the proph-ets.52 It would seem, Scotus remarks, that these words of the Apostle Pauland of Jesus Christ himself inseparably unite love of God (the first table ofthe commandments of the Decalogue) and love of neighbor (the secondtable).

Were this the case, then Scotuss view that the last seven commandments ofthe Decalogue are not strictly unchangeable natural law, but rather are dis-pensable precepts that nonetheless possess a significant harmony with thecommandments of the unchangeable natural law (i.e. the first two command-ments pertaining to God), would be untenable. If love of God cannot beseparated from love of neighbor, then the Decalogues commandments abouthow to treat other human beings would belong just as strictly to the naturallaw as would the Decalogues commandments about God. The ultimate end(God) would in a strict sense necessarily be lost not only by disobeying the

commandments that pertain directly to God, but also by disobeying thecommandments that pertain to how to treat human beings.

To this challenge to his position, Scotus offers three replies. First, he pro-poses that while the prohibition against hating God pertains strictly to thenatural law, the command to love God (Matthew 22:37) does not. This is sobecause [j]ust when one is required to love God is not clear,53 as Scotus hadalso argued in regard to the commandment about the sabbath. In otherwords, hating God clearly cuts one off from the ultimate end, but activelyloving God need not always be done in order to attain human fulfillment in

the ultimate end. On this view, actively loving God is not commanded by thenatural law. Actively loving ones neighbor, then, would not belong strictly tothe natural law either.

Second, Scotus points out that God may be permitting the damnation ofones neighbor. We would not want to love the neighbor any more than




13/27

God loves the neighbor. As Scotus puts it, it is not necessary that I will thisgood for another, if God does not want to be the good of such, as when hedestines one and not the other, wishing to be the good of the former but

not of the latter.54

In other words, the commandment that we love ourneighbor in particular ways could not belong strictly to the natural law ifGod himself, in willing the ultimate end, does not will to include the neigh-bor in the community of Gods beloved. Loving God does not mean thatwe have to love someone whom God, by withholding grace, does notlove.55

These two points possess a certain logical rigor but may not be particularlytheologically attractive. It should be pointed out, then, that Scotuss goal isnot to demonstrate either of the above two points. Rather he wishes to

demonstrate that the Decalogues commandments about love of neighbor donot strictly pertain to the natural law, because ultimately the natural lawconsists simply in what brings us to attain our end in God. The natural law isultimately about God, and God can and does, when he wishes (e.g.,Abraham), release human beings from the performance of the other com-mandments of the Decalogue. Scotuss position thus has two aims: to retainthe absolute primacy and priority of God, and to account for the divinecontradictions to the last seven commandments of the Decalogue that Scotusfinds in Scripture. Given the primacy of God, for Scotus active love of God

need only occur when God wills that it should, and this will can vary; andsimilarly active love of neighbor need only occur when God himself willslove for the neighbor, which (given the predestination of some) varies fromneighbor to neighbor. The only invariable element that thus pertains to thenatural law is that we must not hate God, and must not hate his order ofpredestination.

Scotus gives a third reply. He argues that one could want my neighbor tolove God as I ought to love him (which would be a kind of necessaryconclusion from the practical principles) and still . . . not will him this or that

good pertaining to the second table, since the latter is not a necessary truth.56

In other words, even were it strictly necessary to love ones neighbor asoneself in order to attain the ultimate end, that necessity would not mean thatthe last seven commandments of the Decalogue were strictly necessary in theway that the commandments pertaining to God (at least the first two) are.One need not will as regards ones neighbor that he not be killedone mighteven will that he be killedin order to will that ones neighbor should loveGod properly. On this argument, corporeal life or conjugal fidelity, and soon are not the crucial thing.57 Even should one wish to deny ones neighbor

one of these earthly aspects, these earthly aspects are not necessary. The onlynecessary thing is union with God.

This reply makes particularly clear Scotuss focus upon the primacy andpriority of God, who alone is necessary for human fulfillment and whothereby alone is the subject of commandments that strictly belong to the




14/27

natural law. Once this is established, Scotus is perfectly willing to grant thatone could say to the quotations from Paul and Christ that God has nowexplained a higher love of neighbor that transcends that which is included in,

or follows from, the principles of the law of nature.58

God can certainlycommand that we do more than what is strictly necessary, in order to showour love for him. On the basis of natural law, Scotus holds, love of neighborcan only extend to loving the neighbor as God loves him and willing for himwhat God wills for him (perhaps not much). But if God so commands, asseems for Scotus to be the case in the New Testament, then the love ofneighbor can be extended to include willing him these other goods, or atleast not wishing him the opposite evils, such as not wanting him to bedeprived unjustly of corporeal life, or conjugal fidelity, or temporal goods,

and the like.59

So long as these goods are not at the same level as God interms of the natural law, Scotus gladly includes them: the Lawgiverintended the love of neighbor to be observed according to the precepts of thesecond table.60

The precepts regarding human-to-human relationships, in short, are notnatural law, but they are the will of the Lawgiver. This will can change; theLawgiver can will to ignore the precepts in particular cases. Scotus comparesGods power over these precepts to that of human legislators in relation topositive law: This is also the way any legislator dispenses unconditionally

when he revokes a precept of positive law made by himself. He does notallow the prohibited act or precept to remain as before, but removes theprohibition or makes what was formerly illicit now licit.61 These precepts, inshort, while in general harmony with the natural law precepts regardingGod, can be, when God decrees, simply removed. There is nothing intrinsic tothe relationship of human beings with God that requireshuman beings not tokill innocent human beings. If God so chooses, killing innocent humanbeings can be an act that fully accords with worshipping and honoring God(that is, in accord with the proper precepts of the natural law). Scotus is not

saying that God wills such dispensations frequently. But because of theradical difference posited by Scotus between the precepts that have to dowith God, and those that have to do with other human beings, he concludesthat no act toward another human being is absolutely bound up in onesrelationship with God.

On this basis he interprets as follows the case of the Aqedah and the othercases cited by Aquinas:

To kill, to steal, to commit adultery, are against the precepts of the

decalogue, as is clear from Exodus [20:13]: You shall not kill. Yet Godseems to have dispensed from these. This is clear in regard to homicidefrom Genesis 22, regarding Abraham and the son he was about to sacri-fice; or for theft from Exodus 11:[2] and [12:35] where he ordered the sonsof Israel to despoil the Egyptians, which despoilment is taking what




15/27

belongs to another without the owners consent, which is the definitionof theft. As for the third, there is Hosea 1: Make children offornications.62

For Scotus, Genesis 22 involves the planning, at the command of God, of amurder. Murder, while generally illicit, is not in his view strictly illicit. Godcan make murder licit, because ultimately ones relationship to God does notdepend upon how one treats other people, so long as one remains obedientto God. It is worth noting again that Scotus by no means denies that murderis generally illicit, generally disharmonious with the natural law preceptsregarding God. They are disharmonious because God wills them so. In thisfashion Scotus interprets Romans 7:7, where Paul states that if it had not

been for the law, I should not have known sin. I should not have known whatit is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet. Scotus observes onthis passage that corrupt minds, ignorant of God and his law, require bothGods existence and ethical norms to be revealed. For this reason God revealsto Israel (and thus to Paul) that such sins of lust are prohibited by the secondtable.63

Although the prohibitions are not for Scotus absolute, since he hasunhinged them from the commandments regarding God, nonetheless theyare absolute when God wills them, which is almost always. Scotuss concern

is to elevate and prioritize God, not to unleash antinomianism in humanaffairs. In this regard, he adds a ringing affirmation that in every state [fromthe state of innocence to the state of glory] all the commandments have beenobserved and should be observed.64 He also takes pains to minimize thenumber of divine dispensations from the second table. The despoiling of theEgyptians, for instance, need not be theft. What was taken could be consid-ered as the rightful wages of the enslaved children of Israel, and moreover, asAquinas likewise argues, Since God was the higher owner, he could havetransferred the ownership of these things, even if the lower owners were

unwilling.65

As we have seen, too, Scotus grants in a broad sense that thecommandments of the second table belong to the natural law, althoughstrictly speaking they do not. In general, people should act as though thesecommandments do belong to the natural law, because they are Gods com-mandments and they are harmonious with worshipping and honoring God(that is, with the natural law strictly speaking). Few dispensations from thecommandments regarding other human beings can be found. Yet because ofthe transcendence of God, worshipping and honoring him are not on thesame level as actions pertaining to human beings. God can will that a par-

ticular act of murder be morally good, but God cannot will that not worship-ping or not honoring him be morally good.66

In Scotuss view, as noted above, the Gospel adds something to what isowed in love of neighbor. Beyond loving our neighbor as God loves him(perhaps not much), the Gospel adds willing him these other goods, or at




16/27

least not wishing him the opposite evils, such as not wanting him to bedeprived unjustly of corporeal life, or conjugal fidelity, or temporal goods,and the like.67 Scotus is thereby able to affirm, with certain limitations, Jesus

statement regarding love of God and love of neighbor fulfilling all the lawand the prophets (Matthew 22:40). As Scotus puts it, the whole lawso faras the second table and the prophets are concerneddepends on this com-mandment: Love your neighbor as yourself, again understanding this not assomething that follows of necessity from the first practical principles of thelaw of nature, but as the Lawgiver intended the love of neighbor to beobserved according to the precepts of the second table.68

Thus the key is the will of the Lawgiver, God. Scotus recognizes that Godwills, in general, that the commandments of the Decalogue regarding ones

neighbor be observed. He also recognizes that in the Gospel God wills thatones neighbor be loved, not only so much as God loves him, but even as oneloves oneself. These commands of God are immensely important for Scotus.His insistence on the radical distinction between the first table and thesecond table intends to ensure, however, that the commandments of thesecond table receive obedience as Gods commandments, rather than as some-thing within human nature that compels God or that is strictly linked withworshipping and honoring God.69

III. Concluding Reflections

Taking seriously the biblical claim that the just punishment of original sin isdeath (e.g., Genesis 3:19; Romans 5, 6:23, 8:2; 1 Corinthians 15; 2 Corinthians1; Hebrews 2), Aquinas observes, All men alike, both guilty and innocent,die the death of nature: which death of nature is inflicted by the power of Godon account of original sin, according to 1 Kings ii. 6: The Lord killeth and makethalive.70 As we have seen, for Aquinas, since all things are participated andreceived from God, there is no autonomous possession by creatures of any-

thing. Rather, God primarily possesses all things and can justly redistributeall things. Moreover, God can do so by acting through human causes.Aquinas therefore argues that the Aqedah cannot be read as if God werecommanding Abraham to commit murder. Gods command signals that evenIsaac, the child of the promise, the long-awaited heir to the great covenant, isutterly in Gods hands; the promise and the covenant do not become autono-mous possessions of human beings. This, then, is no murderous command,and Abraham is implicated in no murderous intent. Without turning from thenatural law, Abraham obeys the source of the natural law, who commands the

due punishment of deathwithout intending to exact it. God is the primaryagent in Genesis 22.

Scotus, too, reads God as the agent in Genesis 22. Yet Scotus holds that Goddoes indeed command a homicide, and that Abrahams actions can only beconstrued as murderous. Murder does not always, on this view, separate a




17/27

human being from the God whom he or she worships and reveres. On thecontrary, sometimes God wills the murder of human beings, the killing of theinnocent.71 For Scotus, the commandment You shall not kill is not intrinsi-

cally bound to the commandments regarding God, and so the injunctionagainst murder does not strictly speaking belong to the natural law. Thenatural law includes only those principles and conclusions of practical reasonthat are necessarily true,72 and only those principles and conclusions whichpertain directly to worshiping and revering God are necessarily true, becauseGod can and does dispense with precepts that order human beings to eachother. Scotus thereby secures the radical difference between God and thecreated order.

Scotus and Aquinas agree in their accounts of natural law that the

main agent is God. They differ as to whether Abraham and God areimplicated in homicidal actions, and they differ as to whether homicide isstrictly and unchangeably against the natural law. At the heart of their diver-gence is that Aquinas views Abraham differently than does Scotus. ForAquinas, Gods agency lies at the heart of human moral action, and so Godsordering of Isaacs death toward the just end of punishment suffices to makeAbrahams action, as commanded by God with this ordering in mind, notmurderous. Scotus, on the other hand, does not try to justify Abrahamsactions vis--vis Isaac from within a framework of eternal law. Rather, he

argues that there is no ordering of human actions vis--vis other humanbeings (no law) that intrinsically pertains to human ordering to the ultimateend. For Scotus, when God wills murderous action on the part of an agent,such action does not divert the agent from the agents ultimate end, unionwith God.

What Scotus has done, in short, is effectively to disjoin Gods law (asopposed to Gods will) from human action vis--vis other human beings.Gods law, as expressed in natural law, now pertains solely to human actionvis--vis God. Once conceived as independent of Gods lawan autonomy

strictly limited in Scotus by Gods will which human beings are requiredfreely to obeyhuman action vis--vis other human beings takes on twoelements that continue to inform modern theology. First, Gods intrinsicconnection with human moral action is weakened. It becomes difficult toconceive of Abraham as anything but an autonomous agent whose actions,on their own terms, are simply homicidal. Second, the intrinsic meaningful-ness of human action vis--vis other human beings is called into question.

To return to where we began, I would suggest that one can see the workingout of these two problems in later thinkers such as Kant and Thiel. Where

Scotus gives the second table autonomy from Gods law, though not fromGods will, Kant conceives natural law solely as an autonomous humanconstruction by practical reason. No other mode can be credible: for KantGods supposed communication of law by other modes can be asserted onlyon the basis of historical documents and is never apodictically certain. After




18/27

all, the revelation has reached the inquisitor only through men and has beeninterpreted by men, and even did it appear to have come to him from Godhimself (like the command delivered to Abraham to slaughter his own son

like a sheep) it is at least possible that in this instance a mistake has pre-vailed.73 Kants approach gives to human practical reason the governing rolepossessed in Aquinass account by Gods eternal law. Correspondingly, Kantcannot conceive that the killing of Isaac, had it happened, could be anythingother than homicide, because he lacks Aquinass understanding of Godsauthority over the goods of the created order, including the good of covenan-tal life.

If Kant displays the first problem Scotuss position raises, namely theautonomy from Gods law of human actions vis--vis other human beings,

Thiel particularly exhibits the second problem. For Thiel, the world of humanaction, marked by suffering and death, has lost its order and intelligibility.God can give meaning to this world only extrinsically, by means of aneschatological promise indicating his will to restore all things at the end oftime by means of the general resurrection. On this view natural law takes onan eschatological hue, since Gods ordering is entirely bound to his will toresurrect human beings at the end of time. The present life is not marked bya divine order other than the divine promise or will in Jesus Christ to bringabout order eschatologically.74 Kants Enlightenment confidence in human

practical reasons ability to discern a moral ordering disappears in Thiel, forwhom both human and divine ordering have been defeated by the chaos ofsuffering and death. A doctrine of natural law could hardly be possible insuch a framework, since there is no efficacious lawgiver (God or man). Thuswhereas Kant decries the near-sacrifice of Isaac as utterly and unavoidablysenseless, Thiel decries all death as utterly senseless. As with Kants practicalpostulate, though in an explicitly Christian mode, Thiel hinges everythingupon the world to come.

Kant and Thiel, then, represent two modes of anthropocentric thought

regarding the ordering of human action in this worldKant profoundlyconfident, Thiel not. By contrast, Aquinas and Scotus offer two modes oftheocentric natural law thought. But Scotus is theocentric only to a point, atwhich he stops in order to preserve Gods absolute freedom and transcen-dence. By claiming that human actions vis--vis other human beings do notparticipate in the ordering-to-God expressed by human actions vis--vis God,Scotus refuses to allow the theocentric ordering to go all the way down; theordering, as regards human-to-human actions, remains extrinsic. Human-to-God ecstasis, on this view, is not mirrored by human-to-human ecstasis.75

Scotuss limited form of theocentric natural law generates a strong sense of anautonomous human realm (however answerable to the divine will), in whichhuman-to-human actions have no intrinsic ordering, and human nature(outside the will) is not intrinsically teleologically ordered to God.76 Lackingan intrinsic ecstatic ordering, human relationships come to be seen as




19/27

fundamentally based upon power. Thus separated from its theocentric com-mitments, the doctrine of natural law becomes, in modernity, at best a prag-matic tool for the diverse social and individual constructions of human

well-being, rather than a divine instruction in the pattern of gifting andreceptivity.

NOTES

1 For further theological reflection on the Aqedah, drawing upon numerous Jewish andChristian sources, see Matthew Levering,Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Chris-tian Eucharist(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), chapter 1.

2 Aquinass and Scotuss discussions belong within an extensive medieval engagement withthe problem. Within this context, Aquinas and Scotus importantly agree that the notion of

dispensations from the unchangeable natural law will not work. For medieval back-ground see Odon Lottin,Le droit naturel chez saint Thomas dAquin et ses prdcesseurs, secondedition, (Bruges: Beyart, 1931).

3 Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (New York: Abaris, 1979), p. 115, cited anddiscussed in R. W. L. Moberly, The Bible, Theology, and Faith: A Study of Abraham and Jesus(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 129.

4 Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, p. 115. For an effort to respond to Kants account, seeThomas L. Pangle, Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2003), p. 164 f. Pangles argument, quite similar to that of Duns Scotus,which we will discuss further on in this essay, is that the Bible upholds a radical theocen-trism. The apparent arbitrariness allows for the transcendence of Gods Goodness overagainst created divine laws regarding human-to-human relationships. Yet, the arbitrariness

is a limited one, for as Pangle says if God had actually allowed the sacrifice [of Isaac], thenthe God of the Bible, His covenants, His word, His justice, His very holiness and perfection,would have utterly altered in their meaning (p. 167).

5 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene andHoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 174. See also, regarding Kierkegaardsinterpretation of Abrahams faith, Pangle, Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham, pp.172181.

6 Kant,Religion with the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 175.7 Ibid.8 I discuss this question in detail inSacrifice and Community, chapter 2, and in Christ the

Priest: An Exploration ofSth III, q. 22, The Thomist, 71 (2007) pp. 379417. For furtherdiscussion, advancing well beyond Thiel, see Emmanuel Perrier, O.P., Lenjeu chris-tologique de la satisfaction (I) and Lenjeu christologique de la satisfaction (II), RevueThomiste, 103 (2003), pp. 105136 and 203247; Rik Van Nieuwenhove, St Anselm and StThomas Aquinas on Satisfaction: or how Catholic and Protestant understandings of theCross differ, Angelicum, 80 (2003), pp. 159176; Romanus Cessario, O.P., Aquinas onChristian Salvation, in Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Daniel Keating, and John Yocum(eds),Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction (New York, NY: T. & T. Clark, 2004), pp.117138; David Bentley Hart, A Gift Exceeding Every Debt: An Eastern Orthodox Appre-ciation of Anselms Cur Deus Homo,Pro Ecclesia, 7/3 (Summer, 1998), pp. 333349; idem,The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), pp. 360372.

9 John E. Thiel, God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering: A Theological Reflection (New York, NY:Crossroad, 2002), p. 155. Thiel provides a misleading account of Augustines position thatGod does not do evil, though God does cause just suffering; all human persons do evil andso cause evil suffering; there is no innocent suffering (p. 7). While Augustine recognizesthat all owe the penalty of death, he distinguishes between kinds of suffering and death, orelse he could not differentiate between, e.g., John the Baptists innocent death (Matt. 14:10)and Herods guilty death (Acts 12:23). As regards sacrificial logic, Augustine, Anselm, andother patristic and medieval theologians distinguish between oppressors and victims as




20/27

well as between charitable sacrifice and violent victimization. In affirming that God permitsbut does not directly will evils, Aquinas quotes Augustine (Qq. 83.3): No wise man is thecause of another man becoming worse. Now God surpasses all men in wisdom. Much lesstherefore is God the cause of man becoming worse: and when He is said to be the cause of

a thing, He is said to will it (quoted inSumma theologiaeI, q. 19, a. 9, sed contra). See alsosuch texts as St. John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, Book IV, chap. 19, in St. John ofDamascus: Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr. (Washington, DC: Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 1958), pp. 383385.

10 Thiel,God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering, p. 155.11 Ibid., p. 156.12 Ibid.13 See mySacrifice and Community, especially chapter 2, andScripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas

and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology(Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), chapter 3, which respondsin particular to Jon D. Levensons Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama ofDivine Omnipotence(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

14 I have discussed Scotuss break with the doctrines of participation and final causality in my

Participation and Exegesis: Response to Catherine Pickstock, Modern Theology, 21/4(October, 2005), pp. 587601. Lacking participation and final causality, his account ofhuman nature leads him toward the modern view of nature and inclination as con-strictive rather than liberative. The human will then takes center stage. As Hans Mhleobserves, for Scotus, The distinctive character of freedom is seen in the fact that the willis not aimed at naturally impressed ends that are themselves to be understood as finalcauses, as Aristotelian-Thomistic naturalism would have it; instead, the will can determineitself to action in complete independence from any final cause as coprinciple (Mhle,Scotuss Theory of Natural Law, in Thomas Williams (ed), The Cambridge Companion toDuns Scotus[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], pp. 312331, at p. 324). Mhlegoes on to sum up Scotuss position as a denaturalized conception of the will (p. 325)with crucial consequences for Scotuss doctrine of natural law. For further discussion see

Hannes Mhle, Ethik als scientia practica nach Johannes Duns Scotus: Eine philosophischeGrundlegung(Mnster: Aschendorff, 1995), especially pp. 338389; Thomas M. Osborne, Jr.,Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2005), especially chapter 5; Olivier Boulnois, Si Dieu nexistait pas,faudrait-il linventer? Situation mtaphysique de lthique scotiste, Philosophie, 61 (1999),pp. 5074; Emmanuel Perrier, O.P., Duns Scotus Facing Reality: Between Absolute Con-tingency and Unquestionable Consistency, Modern Theology, 21/4 (October, 2005), pp.619643.

15 I-II, q. 94, a. 4, ad 1.16 Ibid.Cf. Ulrich Khns effort, from a Lutheran perspective, to understand law in Aquinas:

Khn, Via Caritatis: Theologie des Gesetzes bei Thomas von Aquin (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck andRuprecht, 1965). Praising Khns book as the finest study of Thomass theology of law,

Fergus Kerr neatly summarizes Khns viewpoint: Khn traces the history of the idea ofnatural law through Thomass work. In the Commentary on theSentencesand on Matthew,he shows, law is treated in the light of the virtue of Christ. In the Summa contra Gentilesandin the Compendium Theologiae law is treated in the light of God as creator. In the SummaTheologiae, by contrast, law is discussed neither in Christology nor in de Deo creatore, but inthe context of the theology of the moral agent as imago Dei returning to God; law is theexterior principle that moves the human being to do well, ultimately to attain beatitude inthe communion of saints. Law is oriented to beatitude. Natural law is a kind of reflection ofthe eternal lawrequiring to be taken up into the Mosaic Law, oriented then towards thepromise of salvation; and then to be taken into the New Law, in which the believer isinstructed by the teaching of Christ interiorized by the Spirit received in the sacraments, theinward grace that allows us to keep the Law and thus attain the righteousness (Fergus Kerr,

After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism[Oxford: Blackwell, 2002], chap. 6, Natural Law: Incom-mensurable Readings, p. 112). For Khn, Kerr points out, Aquinass theology of law is notas rationalistic as Luther supposed it to be, but neither is it explicitly Christologicalenough because it lacks Luthers recognition that righteousness never becomes intrinsic tous.

17 I-II, q. 94, a. 5,sed contra.




21/27

18 I-II, q. 94, a. 5, obj. 2; cf. I-II, q. 100, a. 8. For further discussion ofAquinass treatment of theseand other instances from the Old Testament, see Romanus Cessario, O.P., Introduction to

Moral Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), pp. 9597;John Boler, Aquinas on Exceptions in Natural Law, in Scott MacDonald and Eleonore

Stump (eds), Aquinass Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 161204; Patrick Lee, Permanence of the Ten Com-mandments: St. Thomas and His Modern Commentators, Theological Studies, 42/3(September, 1981), pp. 422443; Peter A. Kwasniewski, William of Ockham and theMetaphysical Roots of Natural Law,The Aquinas Review, 11 (2004), pp. 184, at pp. 2935;

Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics (GrandRapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), pp. 14856. In her brief treatmentof Aquinas on these exceptional cases, Porter quotes I-II, q. 100, a. 8, ad 3 in support of herview that Aquinas emphasizes human interpretive authority: Here we see Aquinas explic-itly stating what had been implicit in the treatment of this question at least as far back as Johnthe Teutons gloss on the Decretum. While the precepts of the natural law may be supremeand overriding in their authority, nonetheless they must be interpreted in order to be

applied. In other words, in difficult cases what is in question is not the binding force of aparticular precept, but its applicability to this or that specific instance. That applicability, inturn, must be determined in the light of ones best insights into the purposes of the naturallaw (p. 155). In the passage quoted, however, Aquinas makes clear that human jurisdictionis quite limited. Once one places the focus on God, as Aquinas does, then one has theresources needed for approaching the interpretation and applicability of natural lawprecepts.

19 See I, q. 21, a. 1.20 I-II, q. 94, a. 4.21 I-II, q. 93, a. 5.22 I-II, q. 93, a. 5, ad 1.23 I-II, q. 93, a. 6. Here Aquinas draws together Ciceronian and Aristotelian insights. Cf. the

discussion in Harry V. Jaffa, Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary byThomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952),which finds, mistakenly I think, Aquinass natural law doctrine to be incompatible withAristotles natural right.

24 As Russell Hittinger puts it, in Augustine and Aquinas there is a clear distinction betweenthe mindsdiscoveringor discerning a norm and the being or causeof the norm. The humanmind can go on to make new rules because it is first ruled. This, in essence, is the doctrineof participation as applied to natural law. Natural law designates for [Josef] Fuchs, however,the human power to make moral judgments, not any moral norm regulating that poweratleast no norm extrinsic to the operations of the mind (Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscov-ering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003], p. 24).Hittinger cites FuchssMoral Demands and Personal Obligations, trans. Brian McNeil (Wash-

ington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1993). See also Stephen L. Brock, The LegalCharacter of Natural Law According to St. Thomas Aquinas, Ph.D. Dissertation, University ofToronto, 1988; Russell Hittinger, Yves R. Simon on Law, Nature, and Practical Reason, inAnthony O. Simon (ed),Acquaintance with the Absolute: The Philosophy of Yves R. Simon(NewYork, NY: Fordham University Press, 1998), pp. 101127; Steven A. Long, The TeleologicalGrammar of the Moral Act (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), chap. 1.

25 I-II, q. 91, a. 3, ad 2.26 I-II, q. 91, a. 2.27 Ibid.28 See I-II, q. 94, a. 2. Speculative reason and practical reason are thus both involved, but in

different ways.29 I-II, q. 92, a. 1. For Aquinass biblical rendering of the content of this definition, see Jean

Tonneau, O.P., The Teaching of the Thomist Tract on Law, The Thomist, 34 (1970), pp. 1383;see also Tonneaus notes and appendices to his translation of Thomas Aquinas, Summathologique: La loi ancienne, 2 vols. (Paris: Descle, 1971).

30 For further discussion, see Matthew Levering,Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleo-logical Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Regarding human positive law,Aquinas explains: As Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i. 5), that which is not just seems to be no law




22/27

at all: wherefore the force of a law depends on the extent of its justice. Now in human affairsa thing is said to be just, from being right, according to the rule of reason. But the first ruleof reason is the law of nature, as is clear from what has been stated above (Q. 91, A. 2 ad2).Consequently every human law has just so much of the nature of law, as it is derived from

the law of nature. But if in any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a lawbut a perversion of law. But it must be noted that something may be derived from the naturallaw in two ways: first, as a conclusion from premises, secondly, by way of determination ofcertain generalities. The first way is like to that by which, in sciences, demonstrated conclu-sions are drawn from the principles: while the second mode is likened to that whereby, inthe arts, general forms are particularized as to details: thus the craftsman needs to determinethe general form of a house to some particular shape. Some things are therefore derivedfrom the general principles of the natural law, by way of conclusions; e.g., thatone must notkill may be derived as a conclusion from the principle that one should do harm to no man: whilesome are derived therefrom by way of determination;e.g., the law of nature has it that theevil-doer should be punished; but that he be punished in this or that way, is a determinationof the law of nature (I-II, q. 95, a. 2).

31 Obviously I cannot answer this profoundly difficult question here. Seeking to expose acentral mistake of many theodicies, David Bentley Hart observes that when any meaning-ful difference between will and permission has been excluded, and when the transcendentcausality of the creator God has been confused with the immanent web of causation thatconstitutes the world of our experiences, it becomes impossible to imagine that what Godwills might not be immediately convertible with what occurs in time; and thus both theauthority of Scripture and the justice of God must fall before the inexorable logic of absolutedivine sovereignty. At its most unfortunate, this exaggerated adoration of Gods sheeromnipotence can yield conclusions as foolish as Calvins assertion, in Book III of theInstitutes, that God predestined the fall of man so as to show forth his greatness in both thesalvation and the damnation of those he has eternally preordained to their several fates(Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.

Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005], p. 90).32 I-II, q. 94, a. 5, ad 2.33 Ibid.See also I-II, q. 100, a. 8, ad 3.34 On the hierarchical ordering of goods in the fulfillment of human nature, see, e.g., Benedict

Ashley, O.P., What Is the End of the Human Person? The Vision of God and IntegralHuman Fulfilment, in Luke Gormally (ed), Moral Truth and Moral Tradition: Essays in

Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe (Dublin: Blackrock, 1994), pp. 6896; RussellHittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of NotreDame Press, 1987). See also Craig A. Boyd, Participation Metaphysics, the Imago Dei, andthe Natural Law in Aquinas Ethics, New Blackfriars, 88/1015 (May, 2007), pp. 274287.

35 I, q. 100, a. 8, ad 2.36 As Aquinas puts it, Consequently when the children of Israel, by Gods command, took

away the spoils of the Egyptians, this was not theft; since it was due to them by the sentenceof God. Likewise when Abraham consented to slay his son, he did not consent to murder,because his son was due to be slain by the command of God, Who is Lord of life and death:for He it is who inflicts the punishment of death on all men, both godly and ungodly, onaccount of the sin of our first parent, and if a man be the executor of that sentence by Divineauthority, he will be no murderer any more than God would be. Again Osee, by taking untohimself a wife of fornications, or an adulterous woman, was not guilty either of adultery orof fornication: because he took unto himself one who was his by command of God, Who isthe Author of the institution of marriage (I, q. 100, a. 8, ad 3).

37 Cf. for further discussion I, qq. 19, 22, and 103.38 In this regard Aquinas remarks that the precepts of the Decalogue, as to the essence of

justice which they contain, are unchangeable [immutabilia sunt]: but as to any determination

by application to individual actionsfor instance that this or that be murder, theft, oradultery, or notin this point they admit of change; sometimes by Divine authority alone,namely, in such matters as are exclusively of Divine institution, as marriage and the like;sometimes also by human authority, namely in such matters as are subject to human

jurisdiction: for in this respect men stand in the place of God: and yet not in all respects (I,q. 100, a. 8, ad 3). As an example of such human jurisdiction, Aquinas observes that when




23/27

a mans property is taken from him, if it be due that he should lose it, this is not theft orrobbery as forbidden by the decalogue (ibid.). For further discussion of human law see I-II,qq. 9597. In I-II, q. 95, a. 2, developing Augustines teaching, Aquinas observes that ahuman law that deviates from the law of nature . . . is no longer a law but a perversion of

law. Thus every true human law derives from the natural law, but as Aquinas points out thisderivation occurs in two ways, either as a conclusion from principles or as a determinationof the natural law, for example particular modes of punishing evildoers. The latter have noother force than that of human law. The ceremonial and judicial precepts of the Mosaic laware divinely ordained determinations of the natural law.

39 As David Williams has shown, Francisco Surez, S.J.s account of the unchangeability ofnatural law, in Surezs De legibus ac Deo legislatore, follows Aquinass (Williams, TheImmutability of Natural Law according to Suarez,The Thomist, 62 [1998], pp. 97115, at p.111). In this essay Williams argues, too, that Surezs account of natural law is not sodifferent from Aquinass as the new natural law theorists have supposed. Thomas Hibbsoffers a nuanced critique of Surezs natural law doctrine, emphasizing that The Suareziandisjunction of the obligatory and the good is not operative in Thomass writings. On the

contrary, the intrinsic link between the two permeates his discussion of law. . . . Contrary toSuarez, who envisions God as moving creatures by means of explicit commands, Thomassees God as moving creatures through the avenue of creation by inscribing within themnatural tendencies and desires toward certain ends (see Thomas Hibbs, Virtues Splendor[New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2001], pp. 6571, at pp. 69 and 71).

40 Duns Scotus, On the Will and Morality, selected and translated by Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M., ed.William A. Frank (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), pp. 200201, from Scotus,OrdinatioIII, suppl., dist. 37. For discussion see Hannes Mhle, ScotussTheory of Natural Law, p. 315. The important step, Mhle shows, is Scotuss limitation ofthe natural law in the strict sense to those commandments that either are per se notum exterministhat is, can be seen to be true simply in virtue of the concepts used in formulatingthemor follow necessarily from such self-evident practical principles. If one understands

dispensation in the way discussed here, it is obvious that there can be no dispensation fromsuch commandments. For that which can be seen as self-evident needs no elaboration andcannot be thought to be invalid (ibid.).

41 Scotus, On the Will and Morality, p. 200. William of Ockham by contrast, relies upon thepoint that God is the lord of life and death, and thus can dispense. He states that withregard to commandments of the natural law (as opposed to purely positive command-ments), no case should be excepted for any necessity or utility whatever, unless Godspecially excepted some case (as, notwithstanding the commandment of a purely naturallaw about not knowingly killing the innocent, God made a special exception in command-ing Abraham to sacrifice his son) (Ockham, III Dialogus, tract. 1, Book 2, ch. 24, in Williamof Ockham, A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings , ed. Arthur Stephen McGradeand John Kilcullen, trans. John Kilcullen [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995],

p. 189). In the same place Ockham observes, Because Abraham received the commandabout sacrificing his son, he was obliged to prepare himself to kill his innocent son; and yethe was obliged to take care not to kill other innocents, because it was commanded to himsimply to sacrifice his son, and not others, and he could therefore not have drawn anyother meaning from the words of the commandment except that which they firstexpressed (pp. 188189).

42 Scotus,On the Will and Morality, p. 201. Thomas L. Pangle, in his Political Philosophy and theGod of Abraham, argues that the context of justice already belongs to Genesis 22 in light ofGenesis 19. On the other hand, Pangle argues that Genesis 20, where Abraham deceivesAbimelech, suggests that there is no absolute biblical prohibition on lying or even onadultery, at least none that Abraham discerns (p. 163). In a Scotist and Kantian fashion,Pangle also puzzles over the relationship between self-fulfillment and self-sacrifice: Is not

aspiring to or seeking the godlike transfiguration of ones own soul, in and through thestern but invigorating exercise of justice and (merely apparent) sacrificial devotion, equiva-lent to the pursuit of the greatest of all conceivable goods for the very core of ones own

being? Is not the deserved extrinsic rewardthereforemerely supplementary, and a matter ofsecondary concern? (p. 162). The key for Pangle is that, contra Hebrews 11:19, [e]very hopewas abandoned, and for the sake not of nothing but of God (p. 169), although the aban-




24/27

donment of temporal hope did not entail abandoning faith in Gods justice. Pangles readingis guided largely by Martin Luthers exegesis of the passage.

43 As Mhle points out, Nowhere in his work does Scotus trace the content of the natural lawback to the eternal law; in fact, the doctrine of eternal law has no importance in his system.

Neither the context in which a commandment is operative, nor the intention with which itis laid down, is relevant to its validity, if it is to count as belonging to the natural law in thestrict sense (Mhle, Scotuss Theory of Natural Law, p. 315). The displacement of theeternal law makes ready the anthropocentric shift. Oddly, Allen B. Wolter, O.F.M. envisionsthe eternal law as an impersonal and inflexible reality rather than as the living Gods wiseand loving providential plan. Celebrating Scotuss rejection of the eternal law, Wolter states,The law of nature, in his [Scotuss] system, loses something of its impersonal and inflexiblecharacter. Its personal dimensions cannot be ignored. Where other scholastics, followingAugustine who in turn was influenced by the Stoics, link it with the lex aeterna, Scotuseliminates this last vestige of impersonalism. To legislate or command is a function of will,not of nature as such, even if it be the most perfect of natures (Wolter, The PhilosophicalTheology of John Duns Scotus [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990], pp. 160161).

Wolter goes on to say, Many of Scotus colleagues, following Augustine, made use of anidea borrowed from the Stoics. They considered the entire Decalogue as a reflection of someimpersonal Eternal Law that was written into nature, and saw it as binding on God byreason of what he is and the sort of created nature he decided to make. . . . [T]he valuesprotected by the second table cannot have the same absolute value as those preserved by thefirst table. They are not as independent of, or antecedent to, what God wills, in the way thevalues safeguarded by the precepts of the first table are (pp. 200201). As David VanDrunenhas noted, John Calvin speaks of Gods eternal command but not of Gods eternal law,and leaves out the neo-Platonic participatory framework that marks Aquinass account ofnatural law: see VanDrunen, Medieval Natural Law and the Reformation: A Comparison ofAquinas and Calvin, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80/1 (Winter, 2006), pp.7798, at p. 91.

44 Scotus,On the Will and Morality, p. 200. For discussion see also Thomas Osborne, Love of Selfand Love of God, pp. 188189; Mhle, Scotuss Theory of Natural Law, pp. 316317.45 Scotus,On the Will and Morality, p. 202.46 Ibid., p. 203.47 Ibid.48 Ibid., p. 202.49 Ibid.50 Mhle observes that understanding Scotuss position requires grasping the role played by

consonantia. The commandments of the Second Table belong to the natural law in awider sense. The criterion in virtue of which they belong is not their conceptual necessity

but their broad agreement (consonantia) with natural law in the strict sense. . . . As Scotusmakes clear in another context, this conception ofconsonantiaallows for two interpretations.

One the one hand, there are commandments that accord with general commandments butwhose opposites would also be compatible with those same general commandments; on theother hand, there are those whose opposites are not compatible with the overarchinggeneral principles. Only the latter belong to the natural law in the wider sense; the former

belong only to positive law (Mhle, Scotuss Theory of Natural Law, pp. 316317). Andyet, it remains the case that Scotus holds as regards the Second Table that if the evilproscribed by them were not forbidden, it would still be consistent with the acquisition ofthe ultimate end. In Genesis 22, God replaces his command not to murder with thecommand to murder. The intrinsic teleological bond between love of neighbor and love ofGod has been broken.

51 Scotus,On the Will and Morality, p. 202.52 Seeibid., p. 204. Scotus does not quote the whole of Matthew 22:3740, but refers instead to

Matthew 22:40 as the major [of the argument].53 Ibid., p. 205.54 Ibid.55 Mhle points to the significance for Scotus of the distinction betweenpotentia ordinataand

potentia absoluta: The entire realm is in principle subject to change; it is open to an act ofGods absolute power. Divine omnipotence can dispense from every commandment that in




25/27

part constitutes a given order. The only limit is the limit of Gods absolute power itself; therecan be no dispensation from commandments whose validity is outside the domain of Godsabsolute power. And the only constraint on Gods absolute power is the requirement offreedom from contradiction. . . . On Scotuss reading, the dispensation involved in the sac-

rifice of Isaac comes about when God, by his absolute power, sets aside his original order-ing, which contains a general prohibition of murder, and replaces it with an ordering inwhich that prohibition is no longer in force. The command to kill Isaac and the generalprohibition of murder cannot coexist in a single ordering (Mhle, Scotuss Theory ofNatural Law, p. 318).

56 Scotus,On the Will and Morality, p. 206.57 Ibid.58 Ibid., p. 206.59 Ibid.60 Ibid.61 Ibid., p. 201. As Mhle says, for Scotus, Gods action is irreducibly free, and so creation is

radically contingent; consequently, any commandment that does not have God himself as its

object has force only in virtue of an act of divine will (Mhle, Scotuss Theory of NaturalLaw, p. 320). Mhle insists, however, that Scotus upholds the rationality of each particularordering on its own terms, so that the orderings are not sheer voluntarism. For furtherdiscussion of Scotuss position in this regard, see, e.g., Jerome B. Schneewind, The Inventionof Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1998), pp. 2225. Quoting Wolters translation of Scotus, Schneewind summarizes Scotussdistinction between Gods absolute and ordained power: When God acts according tolaws he has instituted, he uses his ordered power. But he can use his absolute power to doanything that is not self-contradictory or act in any way that does not include a contradiction(and there are many such ways he could act) (Wolter, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality,p. 257). So Gods absolute power would enable him to lay down other laws for the secondtable than he did; but, as long as he confines himself to his ordered power, he will not do so.

Duns Scotus agrees that there are laws of nature that are fundamental to human morality.Moreover he thinks God wills them for the benefit of a community that is to live under them(p. 253). Most so-called laws, however, are on his view included under that name only bycourtesy. Only those concerning the worship of God command something because it isgood; the others make something good because they command it (p. 24). As Schneewindgoes on to point out, William of Ockham (c. 12851349) took this view to a radicalconclusion. God, he suggests, could even command that he not be loved. If he commanded

Documents

God and Natural Law Reflections on Genesis 22