Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 2: The Question of All Questions

"IN THESE PAGES IS A MESSAGE FROM LOUVAIN." This is how Professor Peter Coffey begins the closing of his Preface to Cardinal Mercier's A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy.

In these pages is . . . a little of the truth that is indestructible. For the time a great seat of learning lies desolate [as a result of World War I]. For the time: its voice will be heard again: rescissa vegetius resurget.*

Being cut down, Vegetius will make it rise again!*

Mercier's Manual handles ethics in Volume II of that work. His treatment of ethics is divided into two parts: general ethics and special ethics. His treatment of general ethics advances a theory of good and evil, and is divided into four chapters, one on the natural end of man, one on free will, one on the moral order, and the final one on conscience. Mercier's discussion of special ethics advances a theory of right and duty, and is divided into three chapters: one dealing with the rights of individuals, another dealing with the family, and the last dealing with the rights of the state.

It is not difficult to grasp the concept that man has a natural end. Everything that we see around us appears to have some aim, however complex or simple; nothing we see that is living really moves about aimlessly. They all seem to display what Aristotle and the Scholastics would call a final cause: id cuius gratia aliquid fit vel est, that on account of which a thing is done or is. It is precisely the inclination to this end that is a thing's nature:

The inherent inclination of a being toward its one end is called its natural tendency or, in one word, its nature. In its primary meaning, nature denotes the substance of a being in so far as it has within it a primary and internal principle of activity. . . . Nature, then, impresses upon the activity of a being a special direction, or tendency, towards a determinate end; this end is also called the good of this being.(212[4])**

Dogs pretty much incline towards being dogs. Cats pretty much incline towards being cats. Stones pretty much incline towards being stones. Stars pretty much act like stars. Even humans, who have a free choice in the matter compared to other beings and so have an added complexity unshared by other parts of creation, incline pretty much toward being humans. That inclination is nature.

Some things ought to be observed. Nature is something that inheres in us; that is, it is an intrinsic, inherent, vitally centrally part of us. To suggest that we not follow our nature whatever the apparent grounds, whether freedom or anything else however noble sounding, is to suggest that we become untrue to the deepest part of what we are. It is a recipe for inauthenticity, for disaster, and ultimately, it goes against our deepest inclinations and yearnings. It is a lie to the truth that is in us. It denies our primary principle of activity. It denies our internal principle of activity.

Nature is not imposed upon us ad extra as if it were some positive, accidental law, something artificially imposed, something extra. Rather nature is something within us; deeply intimate with us; nature is within us: ad intra. It is no less deep in us, and in fact, more deep in us, than it is in brute animals and the rest of creation, because it is in us to some extent passively, but to some extent through self-direction. This inclination is not "violent," that is, it is not an extrinsic or external impulse wrought on us. The inclination is intrinsic or internal to us, in other words, natural to us. The inclination we have is exercised through the power of "self-direction," unlike the inclination in animals or in plants, which is "passively directed." [213(5)] Our natural inclination may therefore be called voluntarily or spontaneously natural, where that of creatures that are not self-directed would be called natural simpliciter.

Man has freedom, therefore, to self-direct, and this gives him the freedom to act in such a manner as to order his will in accordance with his inner tendencies, or to act against them. But the exercise of this freedom is not inconsequential. That freedom, and that choice that goes along with self-direction, has serious consequences attached to it. It is absolutely consequential.

Man alone directs his actions in the full sense of the word, since he alone can freely order his will. He knows the end which is assigned him, he can freely direct himself towards it by suitable means, or, freely but culpably, turn himself from it.

[213(5)] What is this except for saying that we are responsible for our choices, and that there are deserts or punishments associated with them?

Since this inclination, this nature, bespeaks our end, and the end is our good (bonus est quod omnia appetunt, "good is that which all things seek"), and the good is the source of all self-perfection (bonus est perfectivum, "good is perfective"), to violate our nature is to go against our good and our perfection. We therefore injure ourselves, and make ourselves imperfect should we go against nature. It is a form of moral self-mutilation, self-loathing, self-abuse. Indeed, this may be said to be one of the natural punishments attached to going against nature. [244(52)]

Mercier distinguishes two basic kinds of end: proximate or immediate ends, and a last or supreme end.


Proximate or immediate ends are beneath the last or supreme end, and they are distinguished from the last or supreme end in that the latter has no ulterior end, that is, it has no end beyond it that may be referenced, or to which it points. When one gets to the last or supreme end, one is at the road's end, so to speak. A further distinction can be made based upon the end as it exists subjectively in the actor or agent (what the agent considers his end; his intention) and the end as it may exist in reality, objectively, "in the ontological order of natural ends and means." [213(6)]

What is good? In answer to this Mercier divides goods into a three-fold categorization.


The good that the will views as being good in itself, and not good for another reason, is called an absolute good.

If a good, however, tends to yet another object, that is, it is not viewed as a good in itself, but as a good that leads to another good, an ulterior good (whether mediate or ultimate), then that good is considered a relative good, a useful good or bonum utile.

The kind of good that is involved, whether absolute or relative, makes a difference for the will. For an absolute good is, from the will's perspective, its end; whereas a relative good is, from the will's perspective, a means.

In addition to being sought by reason, goods are also sought because of the delight or pleasure, intellectual or physical, they provide the agent who is conscious. So the will may pursue both the good and the pleasure which will accompany that good's attainment. The good, in itself and apart from the pleasure that its attainment may give the agent, is called the objective good. The pleasurable aspect that its possession creates in the agent is the agreeable or delectable good, the bonum delectabile.

There can be competition among goods, and there are times that a good is sought in a disordered manner. Regardless of whether goods are sought as means or ends, or as a means of the delight that is found in them, an object that is pursed by the will which is inclined "under the guidance of right reason," is called the bonum honestum, a moral or just or authentic good, an "honest-to-goodness" good.

Cardinal Mercier then approaches a question which has raised the ire of those who reject an Aristotelian, Thomistic, Scholastic, or Natural Law moral philosophy. That question is whether there is only one end, one fundamental tendency in man, and if so, whether it can be identified.

Is there a summum bonum, a greatest good, a good of all goods? Is there a finis ultimus, an ultimate end, and end of all ends?

We are at the edge of a watershed question: On the one hands stands the perennial philosophy. On the other hand, the moderns, guided by Hobbes and all his darkened minions.

Here is Hobbes' answer to the question:

To which end we are to consider, that the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus [utmost ayme,] nor Summum Bonum [greatest Good,] as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers.

The question of whether there is an utmost aim, a finis ultimus, or whether there is a greatest good, a summum bonum, is, in fact, the question of whether we intend to live in the shadows and imaginations of relativity or live in objective truth. It is the question of whether there is right and wrong objectively. It is, at root, the question of whether God exists or whether the soul is immortal. It is simply asked in another way.

Kant believed (and here I believe him right), that the possibility of a summum bonum is suggestive of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and that God's existence and the immortality of the soul are necessary conditions for there to be the possibility of a summum bonum.

The summum bonum, then, practically is only possible on the supposition of the immortality of the soul.

Now a being that is capable of acting on the conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be presupposed as a condition of the summum bonum is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author, that is God.

Critique of Practical Reason, II.ii.4, 5 (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, trans.)

Whether there is a summum bonum, a finis ultimus, is one of the most important questions in moral philosophy. It is a moral great divide.

On which side do we fall?


_______________________________

*I'm having difficulty with this phrase. Vegetius, though uncapitalized, appears a proper name, and seems to be a reference to Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, a Roman author of the 5th century A.D. who is famous for writing a military manual, De re militari (also known as Epitoma rei militaris), but also has a manual on veterinary medicine attributed to him, Digesta artis mulomedicinae. I assume, therefore, that it means that even though an animal is on its deathbed, Vegetius (the author of the book on veterinary medicine) can bring the animal back to health. Therefore, when Christianity is close to death, Mercier's Manual (like Vegetius's in the context of veterinary medicine) will serve to make Christianity rise again.

**Bracketed references are to page, with section number in parentheses.

There is No Morality in Mathematics and Machines

ARISTOTLE FAMOUSLY DISTINGUISHED BETWEEN WHAT IS JUST by nature and what is just by convention or human law. Aristotle does this most notably in his Nicomachean Ethics (1134b), where he distinguishes between τὸ δίκαιον φυσικόν (to dikaion physikon) and τὸ δίκαιον νομικόν (to dikaion nomikon), natural justice and legal or conventional justice. With this Aristotelian distinction, we are introduced to the notion of "nature," physis, and what it all might mean in the context of natural justice and natural law. For Aristotle, the notion of justice broadly extends itself across both moral and non-moral spheres: it is a sense of fittingness or adjustment to a norm, both in what we today would call the physical order and in the moral order. Simon, 42. The Aristotelian and Thomistic notion of nature also encompasses both moral and non-moral spheres. It is a mistake to rend the Aristotelian "nature" into two separate worlds or orders: moral and physical. Though these may be distinguishable, they are not entirely separate in Aristotle's or for that matter St. Thomas Aquinas's mind. Separating these two worlds was, in large part, the error of Descartes and the result was the dualism he introduced between mind, the place where morals govern, and matter, the place where physical laws govern. And that dualism between mind and matter, soul and body, has only been intensified by the idealism of Kant because the latter stressed the noumenal over the phenomenal world, even suggesting we are incapable of knowing the phenomenal world. Aristotle's notion of nature is encompassing:

Nature, in the physics of Aristotle, signifies entity, essence, whatness, quiddity with a constitutional relation to action, operation, movement, growth, development. A nature is a way of being which does not possess its state of accomplishment instantly but which is designed to reach it through a progression.

Simon, 42-43 (citing Phys. 192b and Met. 1014b).

There are no natures in mathematics or geometry. "[I]n the modern as well as the ancient conception, a mathematical entity is not a nature." Simon, 43. Entirely absent from mathematical concepts is the notion of growth: The mathematical concept, whatever it is called, "does not grow; it is what it is by definition, by construction, instantly." Without growth, without development, without potentiality striving to actuality, imperfection or inchoateness striving toward perfection or completion, there is no nature in the Aristotelian sense. Where there is no nature in the Aristotelian sense, there is no morality, for morality, at a minimum, requires a becoming, even if that becoming is governed our reason and our freely-willed choices. This becoming is not a becoming without sense, toward an arbitrary or subjective goal, but a becoming toward a perfection that is one's own by virtue of his nature, his essence. Plant a mathematical point in soil, and it will not yield a line. Water a line all you want, and you will never get a triangle. But plant an acorn in soil and water it, and you will likely get an oak tree. Fertilize a human ovum and you will have a man. The acorn, like man, like everything in between, has a nature; the line or the point does not. This is even true for God who has a nature, although his nature, being immaterial, does not develop, as his being is his own existence, and he has no potentiality requiring any development, but is all act, all perfection. But even with regard to God, his nature is beyond mathematics. ∞ ≠ אהיה אשר אהיה.


In Yves Simon's view, three qualities distinguish the Aristotelian notion of created nature: plurality or diversity, teleology, and a certain relation between beginning and end. Simon, 45.

Plurality. Created nature is not one, but many. This is the notion of plurality. The nature of Aristotle rejects the Parmenidian notion that variety and plurality in the world are illusions, and that all things are, in reality, one. We are all not one big organism; the cosmos is made up of a plurality of organisms, each with its own particular nature. Aristotle would reject the Cartesian notion that there are, in reality, but two natures: one of extension, being physical, mechanistic, unconscious, governed by mathematical laws, and one (which is not really in any sense a nature in a traditional sense) without extension, being intellectual, conscious, governed by moral, or at least intellectual, laws. To deny the plurality of natures leads to absurdity as Aristotle pointed out in his Physics: it leads to the conclusion that there is no real difference between the good and the not good. In fact, the view that "all things are one," is really the same as saying that "they are nothing." Simon, 46 (quoting Phys. 185b19).

Teleology. "Wherever there is nature," in the Aristotelian sense, "there is direction toward a state of accomplishment," there is a teleology. Simon, 47. There is what Aristotle calls a final cause. Mathematical concepts are denuded of any nature. They have no final cause. What is the purpose of a circle? What is the circle's reason for existence? What does a circle do to obtain fulfillment? This is where the Cartesian world, which displaced the Aristotelian world, has had such significant effect on the natural law and on moral thinking. It represents the great philosophical vowel shift, the epistemological turn, virtually an intellectual and moral fall. "I do not accept in my physics [i.e., understanding of an already separated nature] any principles that are not accepted in mathematics." Simon, 48 (quoting Descartes, Meditations VI, Principles).

It is no coincidence that Descartes was unable to come up with anything other than a provisional ethic.

Nature, from Descartes forward, was to be largely considered something of extension, matter operating with Cartesian space and its three dimensions--x, y, z--governed by mathematical laws. And where mathematics takes precedence, there is no real Aristotelian nature, and it follows there is no final cause or end, and without an end, there is no manner of saying whether one is conforming to it or not conforming to it. In short, Cartesian nature is amoral.

The reason why teleological notions are held suspicious by the scientific mind are numerous. One of the most profound is . . . there are no natures and no final causes in mathematics. . . . It goes without saying that there cannot be such a thing as natural law in a thoroughly mechanistic universe.

Simon, 49-50.

Since morality cannot be found in the modern notion of mechanistic nature, it has to be found in the mind. And so morality becomes a matter of ideals, of values, of will or of pure and disembodied reason, and not of natural law. All of a sudden, morality is not really part of who we are, that is our nature, but is imposed upon us by some extrinsic, perhaps even arbitrary, command or some distilled reason. Descartes made the material stuff of which we are made subject to mathematical law. Kant, as we have seen, later made our mind subject to an ethic as unwavering as a mathematical law. Between Descartes and Kant, both our bodies and our souls have been entrapped in mathematical cages. Descartes first trapped our body. Kant then trapped our souls. It is time for rebellion. The natural law will once again set us free.

What a world is this that Descartes wrought! Philosophically speaking, there is no difference in the brain of Descartes between an oak tree and a corn plant; indeed, there is no difference between either of these two, and the physical body of man. All is extension governed by ineluctable, amoral mathematical laws.

For Descartes, to say that the oak tree and the oak plant are natures different from each other is philosophically nonsensical. Such language is adequate in the art of farming and in the art of forestry but not in philosophy. An oak tree is an arrangement of extension, and a corn plant is another arrangement also of extension. And one-half of man--though not the better one--belongs to space just as certainly as a corn plant or an oak tree.

Simon, 49. In Descartes' view, consciousness and extension are parallel worlds, with different laws. We are dealing with two alternative realities. Man is therefore split into two. For Descartes, a theology or philosophy of the body is nonsense. Since the body is but extension, only mathematics or geometry is necessary for an understanding of the body, and this whether the body we are dealing with is corn, an oak tree, a dog, or a human body.

Now, what happens when you divide man into two, one part governed by the mathematical laws that govern machines, and another part, the mind, independent of the former? One falls from philosophical realism to a form of idealism, and ideals and not law begin to govern the life of the mind. So moral law turns ever-so-subtly into moral value. "When mechanism is associated with idealism, as it is in Descartes and most modern philosophers--again, whether outspokenly or not--we have values instead of natural laws." Simon, 50. Values are products of mind trapped in body, not products of a unified man of body and soul.

[W]hen we hear today of moral values, esthetic values, social values, political values, spiritual values, etc., we know where these come from. They come from the mind, they come from outside the things, they are not embodied in entities, in nature.

Simon, 51.

Beginning, Middle, End. "The opposition of beginning and end is relevant in all consideration of nature," Yves Simon states. Simon, 51. What does this mean? It means that when we are dealing with nature we are dealing with something that develops, that has a beginning, a terminus a quo, and an end, a terminus ad quem, and a continuum of development in between the two points. Thus nature may refer to the beginning, in opposition to the end. Or it may refer to the end, in opposition to the beginning. Or it may mean the process between beginning and end, ab ovo usque ad mala, from the egg of the to the apples, from the apéritif to the digestif. Thus the natural law may be considerably affected by this opposition of beginning and end.

In the case of a creature as complex as man, who develops not only individually but also within society, the natural law is operative in a primitive society with primitive social institutions, and is also present in the civilized society with developed conventions and institutions, the latter of which have their basis in this developmental aspect of man's nature. That is to say, the natural law recognizes that, in man, the state of primitive, incipient nature will be supplemented by man's arts and crafts, his sciences and technique, his traditions and his customs, his institutions and beliefs. Thus, at least in man, the "the condition that nature is striving toward is not brought about by nature alone but requires such causes as understanding, crafts, sciences, and above all good will and wisdom." In some sense, there is opposition between nature and convention. In another sense, nature expects to be supplemented by convention, since it is part of man's nature to make for himself conventions. Does this create a certain ambiguity in the use of "nature" in the context of man? Sure it does.

All the dynamism of nature would be missed if our language did not remind us of the relation between the initial and the terminal, the rudimentary and the accomplished, the natural in the sense of that which is just given by nature antecedently to knowledge, craft, and wisdom, and the natural as that which implies the works of intelligence, experience, good will, wisdom, society.

Simon, 53. The primitive of Rousseau is not any more "natural," than the periwigged gentleman of 17th century France. It is expected that man will develop, and developed man is no less in his "natural" state than undeveloped man. Nature anticipates and encompasses this development. What is native, most primitive, most savage is not necessarily any more natural than that which is developed, more complex, or most refined. Man in his alleged "state of nature" should not be pitted against man in his "state of civilization," because it is part of man's nature to live in a civilized state.

Tertullian on the Natural Law: The Soul as My Witness, "Neither God nor Nature Lie!"

QUINTUS SEPTIMIUM FLORENS TERTULLIANUS, mercifully shortened as Tertullian (ca. 160-ca. 220 A.D.), is perhaps the first of the Latin Christian sources on the natural moral law. Though Catholic for part of his life, in 201 or 202 A.D. Tertullian unfortunately lapsed into a form of Montanism, or Cataphrygianism, a charismatic, enthusiastic, chiliastic, and rigoristic sect founded by Montanus, who claimed to be the incarnation of the Holy Spirit., or, perhaps more properly, the "paraclete" or helper that Christ had told his apostles to anticipate and which would lead them unto all truth It was ecstatic and charismatics movements such as the Montanists that forced the Church to look at the issue of public revelations seriously, eventually deciding that public revelation ceased at the death of the last apostle, foreclosing the ideal of a continuing revelation. In his History of Christianity, Phillip Schaff calls the Montanist heresy "an earnest and well-meaning, but gloomy and fanatical hyper-Christianity, which, like all hyper-spiritualism, is apt to end in the flesh."

Tertullian was the son of a Roman centurion, a "centurio proconsularis" or a Roman aide-de-camp, perhaps stationed in Africa. Tertullian was likely born in Carthage, studied law, but later was ordained a priest after his conversion to Christianity in 197-98 A.D. Tertullian's output was vast, and, though much of it has been lost, there are thirty-one works that are extant. Though the works cover many areas and genres--there are apologetic, polemical, dogmatic, and moral works--some of them expressly refer to the natural moral law. In this posting we will review the mention of the natural moral law in a variety of Tertullian's works. We will begin this series by looking at Tertullian's notion of natural law in his De testimonio animae (On the Testimony of the Soul). In this short work written after his Apology, and intended to be a defense of Christianity against the Pagans, Tertullian addresses the nature of the human soul, and the witness it gives to the existence of a God which created the world and the soul, and which in nature affords the soul the content of his plan. He seeks to find common ground betwen the Christians and the Pagan in the area of a natural theology and a natural moral law. It is the burden of Tertullian's argument to show, as he put in in the remarkable words of his Apology, that the soul is naturally Christian, anima naturaliter Christiana. The truths that natural theology and the natural moral law convey to the soul without revelation find their perfect fulfillment, their satisfaction, their home in the Christian revelation, in Christ's law and in his Church.

Mosaic of Tertullian

In the opening chapter of his De testimonio animae, Tertullian reflects that the Pagan writings give witness to the Christian God. Thus we may see in poets, philosophers, and in the writings of sages, mention of one God, the creator of heaven and earth. And yet error has crept into these sources, as they endow the gods with human passion, and place them in the most compromising situations. The pagan writings are therefore ambivalent, and may be construed in both a Christian sense as well as a non-Christian sense. Tertullian accordingly posits that his audience go beyond the Pagan writings, and look at the soul unencumbered by these. In the manner of a lawyer, he calls as his first witness, the human soul:

Now I invoke a new witness better known than any literature, more compelling than any theory, more widely circulated than any publication, greater than the fullness of man – which is to say the very sum of man [id est totum quod est hominis]. O soul, step forth into our midst [Consiste in medio, anima] whether you are divine and eternal as many philosophers attest. All the more would you not lie! Or whether you are not divine, since you are material as only Epicurus suggests. All the more you ought not to lie. Whether you are received from heaven or conceived from the earth; whether you are assembled from numbers or atoms; whether you originate with the body; whether you are introduced into the body after birth. However you originate, you make of mankind a rational animal, supremely receptive to awareness and knowledge.

De test. anim., I. (Q. Howe, trans.) Tertullian thus calls the soul as his first witness--it matters not presently whether the soul is considered material, or whether the soul is considered spiritual. The philosophy or theology of the soul matters not, as its true testimony is unaffected the philosophical theories or theological truths in which it is draped. The soul Tertullian invokes is not to come dressed with Pagan or even Christian inheritances, with the biases and prejudices it has gained through inculturation or belief. It is to appear bereft of such clothing, a naked witness of its fundamental nature. It is to come without prejudice against the Christian.

I do not summon you as one formed by schooling, instructed by libraries, nurtured by Platonic and Stoic academies that you may trumpet your wisdom. I invoked you in your simple [simplicem], unfinished [rudem], untutored [impolitam], unformed [idioticam] nature -- such as you are for those who have only you alone. Such as you are at the crossroads, on the street, in the workshop. I need you in your innocence since no one trusts even the smallest measure of your experience. I demand of you those primal sparks you confer on man, those insights that you have learned from your own depths or from your creator, whoever he may be [ex quocumque acutore tuo sentire didicisti]. As far as I know, you are not inherently Christian [No es, quod sciam, Christiana]. The soul can become Christian, but it is not born Christian. [Fieri enim, non nasci solet Christiana.] But Christians are now demanding evidence from you to be presented to your adversaries from without so that those may blush before you who have hated and mocked us for the very beliefs which they now discover you have always known.

De test. anim., I. (Q. Howe, trans.) After calling the soul as his witness, Tertullian engages it, as if he were accusing it or addressing it in open court. The soul is engaged in second person. The first area of question involves natural theology, and Tertullian seeks to prove that the soul is naturally aware of God's existence, that it is created, and that it seeks to worship him. The soul seeks to worship the Christian God, the one True God, even while unfortunately worshiping in Pagan forms:

Hence, O soul, it is accorded to you to proclaim from your own awareness, at home and abroad, no one mocking, no one objecting, "God sees all." "I trust in God." "God will make it good." "God will judge between us." How does this come to you, O soul, if you are not Christian?

When bound in the ribbon of Ceres, when clad in the scarlet pallium of Saturn, when robed in the linen gown of Isis, when in the very temples of the gods, O soul, you often call upon God as your judge. You stand at the feet of Asclepius, you adorn the brazen image of Juno, you decorate the helmet of Minerva with dark omens. And yet while doing this, you do not invoke the god you are addressing. In your own forum you summon a judge from beyond. In your temples you experience an alien divinity. O testimony of truth which conjures up a Christian witness in the midst of these pagan demons!

De test. anim., II. (Q. Howe, trans.) The soul is also aware of evil, even of a personal expression of that evil, that is, Satan. De test. anim., III.

In his fourth chapter, Tertullian seeks to show that the soul is immortal, that it anticipates judgment, and that this implies the preservation of personality, and even preservation of the body:

We are affirming that you survive beyond the final reckoning and that you can expect a day of judgment when you are eternally consigned to torment or delight according to your merits [adfirmamus te manere post uitae dispunctionem et expectare diem iudicii proque meritis aut cruciatui destinari aut refrigerio, utroque sempiterno]. In order to undergo this, you must recover your original essence by reviving the substance and memory of the person you once were. Without the awareness of sentient flesh, you can perceive neither good nor evil; there is no basis for judgment without the living presence of the one who actually earned the inflicted punishment. This Christian concept of the soul is more high-minded than Pythagorean, for it does not relocate you into animal bodies. It is more bountiful than Platonism, for it restores to you the gift of the body. It is more majestic than Epicureanism, for it delivers us from death. And yet solely because of the Christian name, this belief is rejected as a delusion or a misconception – or as some say, an act of arrogant presumption.

De test. anim., IV. (Q. Howe, trans.) In Chapter 5 of his short work, what may be called the kernel or climax of Tertullian's argument, we find Tertullian going beyond all convention, beyond all revelation, pagan, Jewish, or Christian.

These testimonies of the soul are as true as they are straightforward, [simplicia] as straightforward as they are widespread [vulgaria] as widespread as they are universal [communia] as universal as they are natural [naturalia], and as natural as they are divine [divina]. I do not believe anyone would find it frivolous or laughable, if he reflects on the majesty of nature [naturae maiestatem], which is regarded as the wellspring of the soul [ex qua censetur acutoritas animae]. As much as you attribute to the teacher, so much you will concede to the pupil. The teacher is nature and the pupil is the soul [Magistra natura, anima discipula] Whatever the teacher has conveyed or the pupil has learned has been communicated by God, who is the teacher of nature [a deo traditum est, magistro scilicet ipsius magistrae]. Whatever the soul can surmise about its original teacher, this power resides in you that you may reflect upon that which is in you. Be aware of that which has given you awareness. Recognize her who is the seer of your forebodings, who is the prophet of your inklings, who is the oracle of your outcomes. Is it any wonder if, having been bestowed by God, she holds powers vision. Is it any wonder if she knows God, by whom she was bestowed?

Even when the soul is deceived by the adversary, she recalls her creator, his goodness, his decree, her own fall, and the fall of the adversary. Is it any wonder if, having been bestowed by God, she pronounces those things which God gave his creatures to know? But whoever does not think that these explanations of the soul are the promptings of nature and the silent expressions of our inborn and native awareness, he will attribute them to the vice of citing opinions from the published literature in circulation among the masses.

Certainly the soul predates writing, and speech predates the book, and thought predates the pen, and man himself predates the philosopher and the poet. Is it to believed that before literature and its spread, man lived in silence on such subjects? Did no one ever speak of God and his goodness? Did no one speak of death and the afterlife? Speech, I believe, was impoverished, in fact nonexistent, if it once lacked those elements without which it cannot exist today. And now, of course, speech is richer, fuller, and wiser than ever before. If those things which today are so accessible, so immediate, so near at hand, so springing from the lips – if they did not exist before writing emerged, before, as I believe, Mercury [the reputed author of writing] was born – then indeed speech was a beggar. How was it possible, I ask, that literature could know and launch into spoken usage what no mind had previously conceived, no tongue had uttered, no ear had heard?

But since the divine scriptures belonging to us or to the Jews – onto whose olive branch we had been grafted – are much older or at least somewhat older than pagan literature, then credence must be given to our literature rather than to yours. Our literature is more forceful for instructing the soul than yours, having come into being earlier rather than later. Even if we grant that the soul was educated by your literature, tradition derives from its primal origin. Whatever you have taken or assimilated from our letters is still ours. This being the case, it does not make a great deal of difference whether the awareness of the soul was shaped by God [a deo formata] or by writings about God [an litteras dei]. Why, O humankind [homo], why do you insist that these notions about the soul emerged from opinions about your writings [de humanis sententiis litterarum tuarum], only to ripen then into common usage?

De test. anim., V. (Q. Howe, trans.) Tertullian then closes his argument to the Pagan jury to whom he writes his treatise on the soul. The witness of the soul is to be believed as a testimony of the divine. Revelation is but "the faithful sister of the truth," that has its source in God, the creature of the soul and its nature. Indeed, "neither God nor Nature lie," neque deus neque natura mentitur.

Go ahead and believe in your literary sources; even more believe in our divine sources. But as for the insight of the soul, believe in Nature [sed de animae ipsius arbitrio perinde crede naturae]. Select whichever of these you believe to be the faithful sister of the truth [fidelius sororeme veritatis]. If you have doubts as to your own sources, be assured that neither God nor Nature lie [neque deus neque natura mentitur]. In order that you may believe in both Nature and in God, believe in the soul [Ut et naturae et deo credas, crede animae]. So it shall come to pass that you will believe in yourself [Ita fiet ut et tibe credas]. It is the soul you value as having made you as great as you are.

You belong to her entirely; she is everything to you. Without her you can neither live nor die. For her sake you neglect even God. When you fear to become a Christian, come onto her. Why does the soul invoke the name of God when she is worshiping another? When she enlists spirits for cursing, why does she addressed them as demons? Why does she invoke the heavens and curse the earth? Why does she serve the Lord in one place and summon his vengeance in another place? How does she judge the dead? What words does she take from the Christians, whom she wishes neither to see nor to hear? Why does she either communicate these expressions to us or keep them from us? Why has she either taught us or learned from us?

Be suspicious of such a convergence of words amidst such a divergence of the message. You are deluded if you attribute this to the Latin language alone or to the Greek language, which is closely related, for you are thus denying the universality of nature. The soul has descended from heaven, not just on the Latins and the Greeks. One humanity comprises all races, although the name varies. There is a single soul, but language is various. There is a single spirit, but speech is various. Every race has its own discourse, but the content of this discourse is universal. God is everywhere and the goodness of God is everywhere. [Omnium gentium unus homo, varium nomen est, una anima, varia vox, unus spiritus, varius sonus, propria cuique genti loquella, sed loquellae material communis. Deus ubique et bonitas dei ubique.] The demons are everywhere and the curse of the demons is everywhere. The summons of God’s judgment is everywhere [iudicii divini invocatio ubique]. The awareness of death is everywhere [mors ubique et conscientia mortis ubique] and the testimony of the soul is everywhere [testimonium ubique]. By its own right every soul proclaims those things we Christians are not even allowed to murmur [in public forum?] [Omnis anima suo iure proclamat quae nobis nec mutire conceditur]. Rightly then, every soul is both defendant and witness – as much a defendant against the charge of error as a witness to the truth. And she will stand before the court of God on the day of judgment with nothing to say. You were preaching God, but you were not seeking him. You shuddered before the demons and still you worshipped them. You would invoke the judgment of God and yet you denied it. You believed in eternal punishment and yet you took no steps to avoid it. You were aware of the Christian name and yet you have persecuted it [Christianum nomen sapiebas, et Christianum nomen persquebaris].

De test. anim., VI. (Q. Howe, trans.)

16th Century Woodcut Depiction of Tertullian

Augustine: Natura Gratiaque aut Gratia Naturaque

The Catholic St. Augustine

THE DOCTOR OF GRACE, SAINT AUGUSTINE, SOUNDLY REJECTS Karl Barth's view of the total depravity or corruption of man's nature, the unreliability or irrelevancy of the natural law, and the doctrine of sola gratia. In this blog posting, St. Augustine's balanced viewpoint as found in his book Nature and Grace (written in response to Pelagius's book Nature) is presented as a balanced theory of the interplay between Grace and Nature, Grace and Law.

It should be kept in mind that Augustine's Nature and Grace was a polemic against Pelagius's book Nature (which essentially denied the need for supernatural Grace). (Barth's opposition to the natural law doctrine is that it detracts from the doctrine of Grace, and essentially leads to Pelagianism, and so it is interesting to compare Barth's response to St. Augustine's response.)

In his Retractions, St. Augustine discusses how Pelagius defended human nature "in opposition to the grace of God" (hominis naturam contra Dei gratiam), and how he sought in his response "not [to] defend grace in opposition to nature," but rather sought to show grace as nature's complement, a "grace by which nature is set free and ruled" (gratiam non contra naturam sed per quam natura liberatur et regitur) (I/23, p. 204, quoting Retractions II, 68(42)). Barth's mistake was to oppose grace to nature when confronting adversaries--real or imagined--that he felt opposed nature to grace. In contrast to Barth's either/or approach, St. Augustine chose a more balanced both/and response to nature's threat against grace, a via media that linked the two together.

St. Augustine views man's nature as vitiated, but not entirely destroyed, since Adam's fall. Man's nature is like that of a "man whom robbers left half-dead on the road" (semivivum latrones in via reliquerunt). "Injured and seriously wounded," gravibus saucius confossusque vulneribus, man's nature "cannot rise up to the peak of righteousness," non ita potest ad iustitiae culmen ascendere, as it was "able to come down from there," sicut potuit inde descendere, and even if at the inn, that is, even if Christian, "he is still undergoing treatment," etiam si iam in stabulo est adhuc curatur. Thus, for Augustine, all men are injured, and in urgent need of a divine Samaritan's and Physician's aid, to transfer them from the roadside, provide them medication, and assure them confinement in an inn while they heal. (I/23, No. 50(43), p. 250) Man's need for Christ the Divine Physician is essential, and the Cross of Christ is not rendered vain by a doctrine that salvation is obtained through natural means.

Man's wounded nature thus cries for a divine physician, and yet withal it does not decry its fundamental dignity:

The God who is his creator is also his savior. Hence, we should not praise the creator so that we are forced to say, indeed so that we are found guilty of saying, that the savior is unnecessary. We should, then, honor human nature with the praises it deserves, and we should refer those praises to the glory of the creator. But we should be grateful that he created us in such a way that we are not ungrateful that he heals us. We should attribute our defects which he heals, not to God's work, but to the human will and his just punishment. As we admit that it was within our power that they not occur, so we should admit that it lies in his mercy rather than in [our] own power that they be healed.

Ipse est autem Creator eius qui Salvator eius. Non ergo debemus sic laudare Creatorem, ut cogamur, immo vere convincamur dicere superfluum Salvatorem. Naturam itaque hominis dignis laudibus honoremus easque laudes ad Creatoris gloriam referamus; sed quia nos creavit, ita simus grati, ut non simus, quia sanat, ingrati. Vitia sane nostra, quae sanat, non divino operi, sed humanae voluntati iustaeque illius vindictae tribuamus; sed ut in nostra potestate fuisse ne acciderent confitemur, ita ut sanentur in illius magis esse misericordia quam in nostra potestate fateamur.

(I/23, No. 39(34), p. 244)

In his response to Pelagius, though he stresses mankind's need for Grace, Augustine insists on the value of Nature in a manner at odds with Barth. Augustine thus navigates between the Charybdis of Pelagius's sola natura, and the Scylla of Barth's sola gratia, preserving the role of the law of Grace and the law of Nature. Augustine's doctrine may therefore be summarized as natura gratiaque aut gratia naturaque. Augustine insists that the life of a Christian is nature and grace, grace and nature. Either way, nature was part of the equation. While St. Augustine insists on the necessity of grace in the matter of salvation and sanctification, he equally insists that man's nature, though severely injured by the Fall, retains sufficient amounts of its original image so as to be a natural source of God's law, that is, his reasoned, even naturally revealed will. For St. Augustine, the Christian life requires a cooperation between the Spirit and Grace, and the natural moral law.

In navigating between the shoals of grace and nature, St. Augustine is the better guide. If we follow Barth we shall founder and, in denying the Natural Law, ultimately deny the Gospel.

The Calvinist Karl Barth

(English translation is taken from Volume I/23 of The Works of Saint Augustine (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997). Citations are to paragraphs and page numbers. The Latin text is taken from the excellent web page dedicated to the works of St. Augustine, http://www.augustinus.it/latino/)