The Natural Law. Heinrich A. Rommen

the letter of the law be observed, the intention of the lawgiver is frustrated. Now the intention of every lawgiver is directed first and chiefly to the common good; secondly, to the order of justice and virtue, whereby the common good is preserved and attained. If, therefore, there be any precepts which contain the very preservation of the common good, or the very order of justice and virtue, such precepts contain the intention of the lawgiver, and therefore are indispensable. …

      “Now the precepts of the Decalogue contain the very intention of the lawgiver, who is God. For the precepts of the first table, which direct us to God, contain the very order to the common and final good, which is God; while the precepts of the second table contain the order of justice to be observed among men, namely, that nothing undue be done to anyone, and that each one be given his due; for it is in this sense that we are to take the precepts of the Decalogue. Consequently the precepts of the Decalogue admit of no dispensation whatever.”²²

      But what of the Old Testament passages that appear to involve divine dispensations from the natural law? In reply, St. Thomas notes the sovereign dominion of God over men and over concrete human actions and institutions: “The precepts of the Decalogue, as to the notion of justice which they contain, are unchangeable; but as to any determination by application to individual actions—for instance, that this or that be murder, theft, or adultery, or not—in 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, though not in all respects.”²³

      With Duns Scotus (d. cir. 1308), and with the principle of the primacy of the will over the intellect so much emphasized by him, there began inside moral philosophy a train of thought which in later centuries would recur in secularized form in the domain of legal philosophy. The principle that law is will would be referred in legal positivism, as well as in the theory of will in jurisprudence, to the earthly lawmaker (self-obligation).

      For Duns Scotus morality depends on the will of God. A thing is good not because it corresponds to the nature of God or, analogically, to the nature of man, but because God so wills. Hence the lex naturalis could be other than it is even materially or as to content, because it has no intrinsic connection with God’s essence, which is self-conscious in His intellect. For Scotus, therefore, the laws of the second table of the Decalogue were no longer unalterable. The crux of theology, namely, the problem of the apparent dispensations from the natural law mentioned in the Old Testament and thus seemingly granted by God (the command to sacrifice Isaac, Raphael’s apparent lie, Osee’s alleged adultery, the polygamy of the patriarchs, and so on), was now readily solved.²⁴ Yet St. Thomas, too, had been able to solve such cases. Now, however, an evolution set in which, in the doctrine of William of Occam (d. cir. 1349) on the natural moral law, would lead to pure moral positivism, indeed to nihilism.

      The will is the nobler faculty; the intellect is but the ministering torch-bearer of the will, which is the master. Between God’s essence and that of man there exists, apart from the fact of creation, no inherent connection, no analogy of being. Hence, too, there exists no unchangeable moral order grounded in the nature of things, in the ordered universe of being and value. As all being is founded on the mere absolute will of God without participation in His essence, so all oughtness or obligation rests solely on the same absolute will. Oughtness is without foundation in reality, just as the universals are merely vocal utterances (flatus vocis) and not mental images of the necessary being of the ideas in God. In this way Occam arrived at a heightened supernaturalism, but only to deprive almost completely the natural order of its value.

      For Occam the natural moral law is positive law, divine will. An action is not good because of its suitableness to the essential nature of man, wherein God’s archetypal idea of man is represented according to being and oughtness, but because God so wills. God’s will could also have willed and decreed the precise opposite, which would then possess the same binding force as that which is now valid—which, indeed, has validity only as long as God’s absolute will so determines. Law is will, pure will without any foundation in reality, without foundation in the essential nature of things. Thus, too, sin no longer contains any intrinsic element of immorality, or what is unjust, any inner element of injustice; it is an external offense against the will of God.

      As a result, Occam, who sees only individual phenomena, not universals, the concepts of essences, can likewise admit no teleological orientation toward God is inherent in all creation and especially in man; or at least he cannot grant that it can be known. The unity of being, truth, and goodness does not exist for him. Moral goodness consists in mere external agreement with God’s absolute will, which, subject only to His arbitrary decree, can always change. To such an extent were God’s omnipotence and free will extolled that much subtle speculation was devoted to the question of whether God can, through His absolute power, will hatred of Himself; a question which Occam and many of his disciples answered in the affirmative. Man sins, therefore, because and only so far as a positive law, by which he is bound, stands over him. God, on the other hand, cannot sin because no law stands above Him, not because it is repugnant to His holiness. Hence there exists no unchangeable lex naturalis, no natural law that inwardly governs the positive law. Positive law and natural law, which indeed is also positive law, stand likewise in no inner relation to each other. The identity of this thought structure with The Prince of Machiavelli, with the Leviathan of Hobbes, and with the theory of will of modern positivism (the will of the absolute sovereign is law, because no higher norm stands above him) is here quite obvious.²⁵

      The dispute over whether the intellect of the will is the nobler faculty had, in the moral positivism of Occam’s school, split the scholastic doctrine of natural law to its very core. The scholastic revival of the age of the Protestant Revolt, however, successfully understood the speculative rehabilitation of the lex naturalis and ius naturale on an ontological basis, just as it also went back to St. Thomas in its theology.

      The philosophy of law received special and thoroughgoing treatment at the hands of the Late Scholastics. The outstanding figures in this field were, to mention but a few of the many important scholars, the Spaniards Vittoria (d. 1546), Suarez (1548–1617) and Vasquez (d. 1604), and the Italian St. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621).

      The reasons for this more intensive preoccupation with the problems of the natural moral law and philosophy of law were many. To begin with the doctrinal ones, Occamism had wrought havoc in theology as well as in metaphysics and ethics. Reason had been rendered barren. The so-called Reformers had drawn the ultimate conclusions from Occamism with respect to theology. Contemptuous of reason, they had arrived at a pregnant voluntarism in theology as well as at the doctrine of natura deleta, of nature as destroyed by original sin. Thereby the traditional natural law became speculatively impossible.²⁶ The spirit of the Renaissance, too, had made use of Occam’s separation of faith and knowledge to emancipate secular thought or worldly wisdom, and to place it in opposition to sacred learning. Pomponazzi (1462–1530), after the manner of the Averroists, had spoken of a twofold truth: what is true in philosophy may be false in theology, and vice versa. Law as such was separated in a positivist fashion from the eternal law when the natural moral law had been made into a positive act of God’s absolute will. Machiavelli (1469–1527) had secularized this view and had drawn the consequences for politics. The absolute power of God in Occam’s doctrine became at the hands of Thomas Hobbes the absolute sovereignty of the king.

      But there were also practical reasons. Not only in idea, but also in actual fact the orbis christianus had ceased to be “the world.” The Spanish and Portuguese discoveries had brought to light the East Indies and America, and the gentes dwelling there. This event raised new and great problems for the ius gentium. The first and extremely important treatise on international law, the work of Francis de Vittoria, bears the title, De bello et de Indis. Besides, the enormous expansion of trade in the early period of modern capitalism raised new moral problems for the Late Scholastics, as did also the process of political transformation from feudal society to a world of states ruled by absolute sovereigns. Thus it came about that nearly every scholar of the time composed treatises entitled De legibus and De iure et iustitia.

      The task of the Late Scholastics was,