The inspiring intellectual legacy of St Thomas Aquinas
(and Richard Hooker on Natural Law)
The church calendar had us celebrate this week the Feast of St Thomas Aquinas. This invites reflection upon the extraordinary significance his thought and writings have had on the church and Christian theology over the centuries since his death in 1274. (Indeed, such is the stature of his thought that he has long been named a “Doctor of the Church” to which status St John Henry Newman, the former Anglican, has also just been raised incidentally by Pope Leo).
Aquinas integrated theology and philosophy in a new synthesis of extraordinary power through his integration of the then newly recovered Aristotelian philosophy with the deposit of revelation. In doing this, he demonstrated that it was in fact possible to do this without damaging the integrity of that heritage. This was an important lesson that confounded the early doubters who viewed his ideas at first with real suspicion.
His ultimate success reminds us that the timeless truths of our faith can be made more accessible through the interpretative frameworks of various philosophical systems –though vigilance is always required to ensure that this is done without diminution of the faith itself. This has been a recurring risk, well illustrated by certain contemporary experiments. At a time when novelty is seemingly valued by some for its own sake, we do well to remember the 48th Aphorism of Franz Kafka that:
“To believe in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. That would be no real act of belief” 1
Aquinas held that in all created things there exists a real metaphysical distinction between essence (what something is) and existence (that it is). Only in God is there identity of essence and existence—(ipsum esse subsistens, subsistent existence). This entails that every creature, must continuously depend upon God as the cause of its existence at each moment, never possessing that is to say “existential inertia” independent of divine causality.
Much turns upon this seemingly modest initial understanding: divine “simplicity”, his account of creation, and his entire theodicy, not to mention the famous five arguments for God’s existence, along with his understanding of why we, as creatures (composite of potentiality and actuality) differ so fundamentally from God, the pure actuality upon whom all being depends.
He further maintained that reason and revelation cannot contradict each other. Both derive from God, but express truth differently. Moreoever, while Augustine had emphasized reason’s limitations owing to the fall and the constant reality ever since of sin –with all the damage it entails to all aspects of our persons — Aquinas argued that our reason nonetheless possesses intrinsic validity as our highest natural faculty. Our capacity for reason is a gift of God that can lead us to genuine if limited knowledge of creation, and beyond that, by cumulative reasoning to basic truths about God and the divine attributes.
Nonetheless, there is an epistemic hierarchy in Aquinas: for while reason can demonstrate certain truths about God (existence, eternality, immateriality, omnipotence), such central doctrines as that of the Trinity are true mysteries that transcend our reason’s capacity to understand –even if we may have from revelation sufficient reason to hold such beliefs to be true.
These theological mysteries therefore become, as such, subjects for rational reflection and deeper comprehension. This is the work of theology whereby we can seek to penetrate beyond apparent contradictions, to an ever deeper appreciation in faith. This process can also allow us to defend our beliefs against objections, as we show that faith is not unreasonable and therefore need not be collapsed into the domain of fideistic anti-intellectualism.
As Christians we should therefore understand ourselves to be part of an intellectual tradition of faith that is fundamentally rational, even as we maintain the irreducible authority of revelation and the Holy Scriptures that convey the fulness of what we believe. The full content of that faith is always, in this life, going to be far more extensive than we can hope to demonstrate through reason alone.
It is only in the unimaginable splendour of the beatific vision in union with God — that will be ours in the life to come as followers of Christ– that the true profundity of the Christian faith and our salvation in Christ will be fully knowable to us.
Needless to say, given that his works ran to so many volumes, there are vast theological riches to be explored in the writings of Aquinas. Among them his approach the doctrine of natural law doctrine continues to be of importance in contemporary Western moral and legal debate.
He conceived natural law as humanity’s participation in God’s eternal law, accessible through reason and thus discoverable by all persons regardless of religious belief. The fundamental principle—that good must be done and evil avoided—constitutes an intelligibility condition for any action understood as morally rational (and moreover one that is open to interfaith perspectives). From this basic principle flow the cardinal virtues and even the precepts of the Decalogue, rendering them not arbitrary divine commands but expressions of rational human flourishing ordered toward the divine good
By grounding law in nature and reason rather than mere will (whether God’s or that of an earthly sovereign which could be understood as potentially arbitrary), Aquinas opened paths of philosophical resource and discussion that were understood to be grounded in rational nature while also engaging with religious and indeed specifically Christian perspectives.
Within Anglicanism an especially important figure in this domain ,who took the whole conversation in especially deep and significant directions, was Richard Hooker.
In A Learned Sermon on the Nature of Pride,. Hooker defines law in general as an exact rule wherby humane actions are measured. The rule to measure and judge them by is the law of god…. Under the name of law we must comprehend not only that which god hath written in tables and leaves but that which nature hath ingraven in the hartes of men. Els how should those heathen which never had bookes but heaven and earth to look upon be convicted of perversnes? But the Gentils which had not the law in books had saith the apostle the effect of the law written in their hartes. Rom. 2.
The passage quoted from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 2:15) is the crucial scriptural text cited by Hooker “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the means while accusing or else excusing one another”.
This passage has been central to virtually all discussion of natural law throughout history and as Hooker’s distinguished modern interpreter, Professor Torrance Kirby has argued, it is important to note the derivation of the natural law at work in Hooker’s thought, In this definition Hooker represents the idea of law as fundamentally threefold.
First, there is the law of God as simply given. “which God hath eternallie purposed himself in all his works to observe.” (Lawes I.3.1; 1:163.7.) This “eternal law,” as he calls it, is the “highest welspring and fountaine” out of which all other kinds of law proceed.( It is thus the “fountaine of wisdom,” Lawes 11.1.4 (1:147.24), and “the author fountain and cause of our justice”–A Learned Sermon on the Nature of Pride, FLE 5:341.3-9. This is “laid up in the bosom of God” altogether above human understanding and our safest eloquence concerning it is silence.( Lawes I.3.1 (1:63.15) and I.2.5 (1:62.10)
That is in short the apophatic side to things. But nonetheless there is what may be termed a kataphatic need to draw attention to the fact that the eternal law is held by Hooker to “read itself” to the world.
And here it should be explained there is in play an important distinction. “Kataphatic” is a term that refers to theology or spirituality that uses positive language and imagery to describe God and the divine –and thus focuses on what God is believed to be positively. By contrast “apophatic” theology, emphasizes what God is not, and often therefore implicitly involves silence and unknowing and a consequent degree of agnosticism about what falls within this domain.
Thus there is the paradox of keeping this invisible, unknowable law “alwayes before our eyes.” (Lawes I.16.2; 1:136.4-15) and the consequence that the eternal law, though unknowable in itself is nonetheless the highest source of all other kinds of law.
Accordingly, it is important to see that for Hooker it is made known to us under two primary aspects:
- on the one hand, it is revealed by God’s word written in the scriptures
and, on the other,
- it is manifest in creation and known by the law inscribed on human hearts by nature.
These two primary modes, or summa genera, whereby the one eternal law is made accessible to human understanding, are termed respectively by Hooker
- the divine law
and
- the law of nature (See Lawes I.1.3 (1:58.11-19), I.8.3 (1:84.9), and see I.8.passim for the identification of Natural Law with the law or light of reason. Cf. III.11.8 (1:253.15-20).
Accordingly and crucially, just as we see in Aquinas, Hooker is ultimately able to hold that despite the difficult fact that we are “neither able nor worthy to open and looke into” the book of the eternal law, the books of scripture and nature nonetheless do reveal its contents to us in a manner adapted to our finite capacity. (Lawes 1.2.5 (1:62.10), 1.2.2 (1:59.12-20), andV.56.5 (2:237.18-25).
Scripture speaks to the common source of these summa genera of law in God himself when we read “Doth not the Apostle term the law of nature even as the Evangelist doth the law of Scripture, Gods own righteous ordinance?” (See Rom. 1:32 and Luk. 1:6. and LawesVII.11.10 (3:211.12)
So can we see that the law of nature and scripture are the two primary derivative forms of law which together account for both, the “outward procession” of the entire created order from and then back to its final redemptive retur, by a “way mystical and supernaturall” to the original divine unity.
The eternal law is thus both the starting point (arche) and the goal (telos) of all order. Natural law and divine law represent thus for Hooker the two motions of cosmic procession and return. In this way they constitute a comprehensive division of the idea of law.
There is an abundant use of neoplatonic language here which in turn discloses the ontological logic of “procession,” as fundamental here –since this grounds the epistemology of our access (through reason engaging with Scripture and the world of our present experience) to the natural and ultimately divine law. (See Lawes 1.3.2 (1:65.4), 1.3.4 (1:67.29), and (1:68.6-8), 1.5.2 (1:73.5-8). At the latter he states: “Againe since there can bee no goodnesse desired which proceedeth not from God himselfe, as from the supreme cause of all things; and every effect doth after a sort conteine, at least wise resemble the cause from which it proceedeth: all things in the worlde are saide in some sort to seeke the highest, and to covet more or lesse the participation of God himselfe.”
The natural law is God’s means of preserving the order of the world once created and it is effectively the eternal law as kept by all creatures. (Had Adam continued in his unfallen state, the natural law would have sufficed to bring him to “the reward of blisse.”
In the divine law of scripture, God reveals his chosen means of restoring fallen creation to unity with himself. (Lawes 1.11.5,6 (1:115.25-119.23).
Accordingly, we can see that the revealed way of redemption is also an expression of the one eternal law, It is described by Hooker as prepared by God in himself before all worlds.( Lawes 1.11.6; 1:118.23 which is nonetheless to be understood in relation the fact that for Hooker, as for Aquinas, God exists outside time. This means that the entire course of history as we experience it is simultaneously present to God, which enables a maximal understanding of the nature and impact of the divine omniscience.
And in respect of our capacities to engage here, it is important, lastly for now, to remember that Hooker identifies the light of reason elsewhere with the divine Logos of the prologue to St. John’s Gospel. And there for Hooker the “word” of God in scripture is twinned with the “word” of rational human discourse in and through their common source, the eternal divine “Word.” (Lawes 111.9.3 (1:238.25) As Hooker puts it (in that last source):
“The light of naturall understanding wit and reason is from God, he it is which thereby doth illuminate every man entering into the world. If there proceede from us any thing afterwardes corrupt and naught, the mother thereof is our owne darknes, neither doth it proceede from any such cause whereof God is the author. He is the author of all that we thinke or doe by vertue of that light, which himselfe hath given” (John 1:5).
God the “light of light” is the author of both the light of reason and the revealed light of the scriptures. Thus can we understand that God, the author of nature, speaks through nature whose voice is his instrument. (Lawes 1.8.3 (1:84.4) and see also 1.3.4 (1:67.16-20, 68.18))
So too can we see that the theory of Natural Law that comes down to us from Aquinas and was further developed by the Anglican Richard Hooker, is both very grand in its cosmic divine foundation, on the one hand, yet also profound in its capacity to challenge us to engage with what is disclosed to us — by way of its articulation and manifestation in both holy Scripture and that further book that is world of our experience and God’s creation. of our experience and God’s creation.engage with what is disclosed to us by way of its articulation and manifestation in both holy Scripture and that further book that is world of our experience and God’s creation.
1. Die Zürauer Aphorismen, which he wrote in Zürau, West Bohemia, in 1917-18 later published by Max Brod in 1931 in The Great Wall of China. Brod originally entitled the book Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg (Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way. The Aphorisms together reflect the influence of both Schopenhauer and Kirkegaard).