For some time now, it had been expected that Benedict XVI would be coming out with a formal declaration about natural law as the basis of all the non-negotiable principles about life that the Catholic Church upholds. In fact, shortly after he became Pope, he had asked individuals and groups around the world to discuss natural law and frame their recommendations for such a document... A layman's book about natural law has been getting much attention from Catholic reviewers, including Fr. James Schall, but I would like to precede his review by the following essay by Fr. Schall himself in October 2007 on Benedict XVI and natural law:
I.
On October 5, 2007, in the Hall of the Popes in the Vatican, Benedict XVI addressed a brief lecture to the members of the International Theological Commission.
He began by remarking on the recent document of that commission relating to the question of the salvation of un-baptized infants, of which by any calculation, including the aborted ones, there are many.
I will not go into that question here though the Pope did give the principles on which any solution must be based: 1) "The universal saving will of God, 2) the universality of the one mediation of Christ, 3) the primacy of divine grace, and 4) the sacramental nature of the Church" (L'Osservatore Romano, October 17, 2007).
This solution recalls the document
Dominus Jesus that Pope Ratzinger authored while he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Modern theology is full of those who would save everyone but without the mediation of Christ, grace, or sacraments. Such theories, however well intentioned, are not Christian in origin.
Concern for the un-baptized is related to attention paid to "the lowliest and the poorest," something that Christ taught us. One might add that, in this case, what we are primarily concerned about is the eternal status or salvation of an un-baptized infant, now dead for whatever reason.
This approach is the reason the poor and the lowly are given special consideration. Christianity teaches that none of these people is, because of his existential condition, to be excluded from the highest destiny offered to man in his original creation. Indeed, his condition may in fact give him an inside track to it.
II.
The Pope then proceeded to the question of natural law, a topic that he has touched on a number of times of late. It is also one that is found in his vast writings in various places. He has, as a matter of fact, proposed that academic institutions formally look into this topic of natural law.
There is, I think, more than meets the eye here. One thing is clear, namely, that we have a Pope who specifically requests certain universities to take up a topic or sponsor investigation into a particular topic, almost as if they are reluctant to face the issue it presents without some prodding.
We have here, to the academic mind, the almost terrifying realization that a Pope might just know more about its own fields than it does. But, of course, this Pope, as the previous one, is quite at home at any university worthy of its name, including Catholic ones.
Universitas means precisely that revelation as it addresses itself to reason has, on that ground, a legitimate place within its ambience.
The Pope here says that he wants the Theological Commission to consider "the theme of natural moral law."
Though this address is short, it does contain several very interesting comments. As the Congregation on Doctrine and Faith chartered the study groups that the Pope wanted organized in universities, they are to find "constructive pointers and convergences for an effective deepening of the doctrine of natural moral law."
The Pope intends to meet any objections to it head on, on strictly intellectual grounds. We will see why he wants this study to be done.
But we can say from his Regensburg Lecture that
the very basis of the Pope's orientation to all religions and cultures, including to our own in its liberal and relativist phase, is through the natural law and hence through reason.
This approach by no means implies that the Pope is thereby neglecting Revelation. Rather it means that he searches for a basis on which Revelation can properly be presented in an intellectually intelligible manner.
This Pope knows what he is about. It is not simply Islam, nor is it simply the adherents to radical relativism in the West.
There is, Benedict says, a "foundation of a universal ethic that is part of the great patrimony of human knowledge." Josef Pieper's discussion of tradition is about this same issue.
Already this very awareness, the Pope says, following Aquinas, "constitutes the rational creature's participation in the eternal law of God."
The rational creature can only "participate" in the eternal law of God if that law is itself founded in Logos, in Word. If it is grounded merely in will, even if it is God's will, as various theologies and philosophies are tempted to maintain, there can be no real "participation" in the eternal law by the human being.
Why? Essentially, because there is nothing to participate in if what is grounded in and known only by will can, at any time, be the opposite of what it is at first thought to be. Our intellects are, in fact, intellects, not divine ones, not angelic ones, but still intellects.
It is not any surprise whatsoever, as we saw in
Fides et Ratio, that the Church makes no bones about defending reason, philosophy as such. But it also fosters and encourages reason. It recognizes it for what it is.
Reason is not the only thing, but if we get reason wrong, and you can be pretty sure that you will get most other things wrong.
III.
Next the Pope makes a very blunt, yet delicate point. The natural law does not belong to Catholics. It is not our private property. It is not an "exclusive or mainly denominational thing."
That being said, the Catholic tradition has been interested in and developing this tradition both from the impulses of Revelation directed to reason and from the fostering of reason itself.
Catholicism makes absolutely no apologies for being intellectual and interested in intellect. It is unabashedly an intellectual religion. It only apologizes when it is wrong and this wrongness can be established in reason itself. Reason and revelation are not considered to be enemies to one another. Both ultimately have the same source, when spelled out.
Next the p\Pope recalls that the
Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up "the central doctrine of the natural law." This position does not mean that the Catechism concocts the natural law, but that it knows what it is.
The Catechism holds that, in natural law, "the other is one's equal." The main precepts of the natural law are in the Decalogue. Now everyone knows that the Decalogue is Revelation, not reason. Yet the Decalogue is also a statement of what the natural law contains. It is both Revelation and reason but under different formalities. What each teaches is the same on the basic questions.
The Pope next reminds us that the "natural law" does not refer to the "nature of irrational beings." There is a "natural law" of rabbits as well as lions, but they do not, as human beings do, proceed to their end as if they intellectually grasped its point.
The "ethical content of the Christian faith," the Pope continues in words reflecting of his
Deus Caritas Est, is not an imposition from outside of man.
Norms of right living are "inherent in human nature itself." This law is called "natural" not because it relates to irrational creation but because "reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature."
The Pope then turns to the public order, but he uses the same approach. Suddenly it becomes clear what the Pope is, as it were, "up to."
"With this doctrine (of the natural law," we can enter into a "dialogue...with all people of good will and more generally with the civil and social order." This is a key citation. This Pope is not going to allow any culture, including our own, to rest and not face up to its own reasonableness or lack of it.
Yet, it is precisely here where the Pope uses the phrase that entitles this essay. "Precisely because of the influence of cultural and ideological factors, today's civil and secular society is found to be in a state of bewilderment and confusion."
Why? Because it has "lost the original evidence of the roots of the human being and his ethical behavior." That is to say, this evidence was originally available to all men of whatever culture.
The "natural moral law conflicts with other concepts that are in direct denial of it. All this has far-reaching, serious consequences on the civil and social order."
That is to say, a mistake in understanding the natural is not just another quaint cultural difference.
Recta ratio - correct reasoning - is serious business no matter what culture we happen to be in. Cultural relativism must itself face the question of a natural law directed to its suppositions.
IV.
Positivism today, the theory that only the positive or man-made law defines our actions, dominates our view of law in the minds of philosophers and politicians. It is often the basis of a law itself.
This relativism takes us directly to political philosophy. We find a theory of "democracy" claiming that freedom is only guaranteed by relativism. "But if this were so, the majority of a moment would become the ultimate source of law."
And that is precisely what is claimed by many modern democratic theories:
Nothing can go against the will of the majority, which is itself whatever it decides. It can change from day to day. Its "truth" is that there is no truth.
"History very clearly shows that most people can err," the Pope observes. "True rationality is not guaranteed by the consensus of a large number but solely by the transparency of human reason to creative Reason and by listening together to the Source of our rationality."
This "transparency" again means that our intellects are themselves designed to recognize that a source of reason, something we possess, has an origin in something like itself, something more reasonable, something grounded in what is.
"When the fundamental requirement of human dignity, of human life, of the family institution, of a fair social order, in other words, of basic human rights, are at stake, no law devised by human beings can subvert the law that the Creator has engraved on the human heart without the indispensable foundation of society itself being dramatically affected."
This is a version of Augustine's dictum that an unjust law is no law. But the Pope here is more concerned with the disorders that do visibly exist in human society when we relativize any law or order of good.
"Natural law becomes the true guarantee offered to each one in order that he may live in freedom, have his dignity respected and be protected from all ideological manipulation and every kind of arbitrary use or abuse by the stronger."
Here Benedict brings the issue down to our personal stake in the natural law. We must have something that can guarantee our ability to evaluate and judge what laws and customs are in place. If they are merely what the law says, we are locked into them.
The natural law, as such, frees us from arbitrary rule, even of ourselves over ourselves.
V.
By referring indirectly to a famous question of Aquinas, the Pope states: "No one can ignore this appeal.
If, by tragically blotting out the collective conscience, skepticism and ethical relativism were to succeed in deleting the fundamental principles of the natural moral law, the foundations of the democratic order itself would be radically damaged."
Aquinas asked if we could blot out from our hearts the basic principles and decencies of the natural law. Not, he thought, of the basic principle of "do good and avoid evil," but we could obscure almost everything else.
Thus, it is possible to have laws and customs that impede our ability to see what is good and what is evil For many, such a thing as abortion is nothing less than a deliberate blotting out of what is at issue, the choice to kill a real, already growing, human person.
This relativism, devised to justify the deviations of the natural law, is a "crisis of civilization" even before it is a Christian crisis. This is a careful distinction.
The crisis of civilization exists primarily because the natural, not revelational, law, is rejected. All people, Christians and those of good will, need to create the "necessary conditions for the inalienable value of the natural moral law in culture and in civil and political society to be fully understood."
That is, it is possible in natural law theory itself, following Aristotle, to propose that disordered habits and false ideas that justify them can be reversed. We are not determined to a disordered culture, though we are habituated to it and it is difficult to change directions.
Thus, individuals and societies depend on this moral law. This progress away from disordered habits can only be measured against "right reason, which is a participation in the eternal Reason of God."
Again, the eternal reason of God is not presented as a peculiarly Christian thing. It has philosophical roots to which what is new in Christian revelation addresses itself. But in itself, it must be understood as a project of human reason.
The "bewilderment" of our culture about its own order is itself an issue of reason. But we should be aware that, through this reason began primarily in Greek philosophy, as the Pope held in the Regensburg Lecture, however much we are grateful for it, it is not as such "Greek." It is reason and addresses itself to all cultures.
There is an agenda here in Benedict's return to natural law. It is nothing less than the relation of reason to any and all cultures, beginning with our own.
Now, today's essay from Fr. Schall:
April 26, 2011
"The reason it is so difficult to argue with an atheist — as I know, having been one — is that he is not being honest with himself."
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know. (Revised and Expanded Edition; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 66.
"If Sophists are to run the courts and the civil service, they need plenty of help. From somewhere there must come a stream of people, who think as they do, to fill vacancies as they open up. Universities fill this need. Ordinary people who have not spent time on college campuses find it difficult to believe just how thoroughly they subvert the mind and how little they train it."
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know. 181.
I.
Among those scholars who write so well on natural law — Rommen, Lewis, Finnis, George, Matlary, Hittinger, Veatch, Kries, Simon, Grisez, Maritain, Kreeft, McInerny, Fortin, Syse, Dennehy, Koterski, Bradley, Glendon, Smith, Rice, Sokolowski — J. Budziszewski, at the University of Texas, holds a special place. In addition to a first-rate mind, he is probably the best rhetorician of them all. He leaves no argument before he has taken it step by step to its logical conclusion.
Budziszewski does not allow those who refuse to see the truth of an issue to have the satisfaction of thinking that the problem is with the truth and not with their own minds and souls.
The only protection against the Budziszewski logic is to refuse to listen, to refuse to engage in argument, mindful of those fierce men in the Acts of the Apostles who, at the stoning of Stephen, held their hands over their ears lest they hear the truth they refused to listen to (Acts 7).
In argument, Budziszewski combines the tenacity of a Georgia Bulldog with the weight of a Texas Longhorn. It is thus not surprising that he is a professor of philosophy and politics at the University of Texas.
Budziszewski's first book on natural law —
Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (InterVarsity Press, 1997) — was published while he was a Protestant. It is a remarkable book that I have used in class. It is an especially useful book that approaches natural law with the full armor of Scripture behind it.
[It must be noted that Benedict XVI often makes reference to the universal truth 'written in the heart' of men by God the creator.]
Obviously, as mentioned in the introductory citation above, before Budziszewski was a Protestant, he was an atheist. So he has been around the bend with considerable experience, which happily shows in this book,
What We Can't Not Know. He became a Catholic a number of years ago, much to the relief of his admirers.
The notion that someone with the noble name Budziszewski was a Protestant or an atheist, with all due respect to both, just did not sound right, especially since everything he said seemed so Catholic. But that is another story.
A book that should be given as a Christmas gift to your favorite lawyer or law student is Budziszewski's short, to the point,
Natural Law for Lawyers. His recent study from ISI Books,
The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction, begins with the profound sentence from Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being," a passage with an obvious debt to Plato.
And, of course, it is the theme of this book. All things, both of order and disorder, begin and end in the wills and souls of men and —even more obviously in this book — women.
We are used to hearing that the natural law is old hat, that no one agrees with it any more, that we have a "new" morality. This is pretty much the case. But that is precisely the point where Budziszewski begins the argument.
Is it really possible to deny the natural law? What happens when we do seek to justify our "reasons" for rejecting it? What happens is that someone like Budziszewski will come along to examine just what we use for arguments against the natural law.
In every case, it turns out that the denial of any element in classical natural law depends on the natural law for its validity. When we sort out the meaning of the argument that is purportedly against the natural law, we find that we are necessitated to claim some basis in truth that justifies our position that opposes the natural law.
When we dance around this issue, we find ourselves implicitly affirming one natural law principle against another. Once we straighten out this confusion or deliberate blindness, we can see that classical natural law position was in fact the correct one and the more human one.
The present book has eleven chapters and four appendices, and is divided into four sections: 1) "The Lost World," 2) "Explaining the Lost World," 3) "How the Lost World Was Lost," and 4) "Recovering the Lost World."
The "lost world" obviously refers to Budziszewski's provocative title, 'What we can't not know'. Clearly, there are things that we do not know, or do not know yet, or have forgotten. Likewise, there are divine things that we only know if they are revealed to us.
But once they are revealed, much of our ingenuity is spent on avoiding the implications that what God intended for us to know is either important or required of us. We find that this revelation and thinking about it makes us more philosophical, not less.
Budziszewski does not confuse reason and Revelation. His first three appendices are devoted to brief but accurate statements about how the Decalogue, and the Noahide Commandments, as well as Isaiah, several of the Psalms, and Paul are related to the natural law.
Basically, the natural law and revelation on these basic points say the same thing. This agreement suggests to us that they are both from the same source. Indeed, this fact of the same content suggests that revelation was directed to the human mind itself as it thinks what it means do "do good and avoid evil."
II.
The "lost world" means basically the issue of first principles of the theoretical and practical intellects. It means that the principle of contradiction cannot in fact be denied without affirming it. Try it. It means that doing evil has an intelligible content which can be spelled out in a logical sequence, what Aquinas called the
les fomitis. The natural law is not just arbitrary, nor is it indifferent to human life.
The modern notion that we postulate our own definition of what is good and what is evil is a disorder that in fact goes back to Genesis and the Fall. It claims that we make what is good and what is evil by our own wills and power.
To make this latter claim means logically that we propose ourselves as gods. Then we try to create a better human world only to see our efforts deviate more and more from what it is to be human. Benedict XVI's encyclical ]C]Spe Salvi also spelled out this decline.
This world of reason was once understood but it is "lost" because of developments in modern philosophy and politics that presumably have replaced these classic principles with "new" ones. But, as Budziszewski shows, what ended up being lost was our understanding of ourselves and our proper place in the order of things.
Reality — what is — is filled with coherence. Nothing is more ordered than the human being's own structure, something Leon Kass showed quite clearly in
The Hungry Soul. Budziszewski again goes over the evidence for design in the universe and in ourselves, evidence that has not gone away with modern science. Just the opposite, in fact. Budziszewski's observations correspond with those of Robert Spitzer in his
New Cosmological Proofs for the Existence of God.
The book is filled with pertinent illustrations of the points that Budziszewski wants to make, from his own conversation with students, from his controversies with other scholars, and from what is available in the public order, where human disorder is more and more being legalized and enforced.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this book is not so much the "what we can't not know," something that C. S. Lewis had also made clear. Rather, it is the "furies," as Budziszewski calls them, the "what happens to us" individually and as a society when we reject what cannot be denied. Our souls are never left in peace.
In a sense, this book is a treatise on evil. Budziszewski cites Chesterton's observation that good may stay at a certain even level, but evil never does. It goes downhill, often rapidly, one step at a time.
Having made our peace with forty million abortions, we will make our peace with forty million infanticides. As we begin to see already, there is no way to welcome the one without the other. If a fetus is not enough like an adult to be a "person," then neither is a babe in arms. If an unborn child is an 'intruder' in the mother's womb, then a toddler is an intruder in her home. If an embryo is an "aggressor" against her liberty, then an infant is an aggressor against her heart.
Adoption is good, but adoption will not solve the problem. If a pregnant mother can say, "I would never give up my baby" — yet kill him — then the mother or the father of a born child can do the same (230-31)
All of these reasonings and deeds have happened. It is not like these things might happen. The same consequences happen when we try to justify euthanasia, homosexuality, or fetal experimentation.
Behind this logic is the fact that God will not be mocked. Budziszewski is very sober here. We are allowed in our freedom to reject elements of the natural law, but not without impunity or remorse or judgment. Budziszewski is quite clear. We will descend further and further and more quickly if we do not "go back," if we do not return to what was lost.
And the first step has to be the simple fact of acknowledging what we are doing. We need to call things by their proper names. We must not call abortion "choice" but killing. We must not, in other words, deny the design in our nature, a design that in fact guides to what we want if we could have it. We must not lie to ourselves. This is what the "lost world" of sensible understanding of human life meant.
This welcome book is, as I called it, "a guide for those who are unwilling to know themselves." Budziszewski does those promoting the most heinous disorders in human history the honor of taking their arguments seriously.
He knows that he deals also with principalities and powers, not just flesh and blood. Yet, it seems to be the irony of human history that the principal sufferers from intellectual and moral disorders are the innocent, born and unborn.
From this angle, it is apparently obvious why Christ had to become man to redeem us from our own refusal to know ourselves. But He too can be rejected because He tells us what we are. This is why there is judgment, as both Plato and the Creed tell us.
This was the teaching of John Paul II, that Christ fully reveals man to himself. And part of that revelation is not just that we can reject what we are, but that in our rejection we can carry many, many along with us.
There is room for repentance and hope, but not apart, as Budziszewski says, repentance and acknowledgement of how, in our actions and laws, we reject God's design for what we are and ought to be.
What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
by J. Budziszewski
In this new revised edition of his groundbreaking work, Professor J. Budziszewski questions the modern assumption that moral truths are unknowable. With clear and logical arguments he rehabilitates the natural law tradition and restores confidence in a moral code based upon human nature.
What We Can't Not Know explains the rational foundation of what we all really know to be right and wrong and shows how that foundation has been kicked out from under western society.
Having gone through stages of atheism and nihilism in his own search for truth, Budziszewski understands the philosophical and personal roots of moral relativism. With wisdom born of both experience and rigorous intellectual inquiry, he offers a firm foothold to those who are attempting either to understand or to defend the reasonableness of traditional morality.
While natural law bridges the chasms that can be caused by religious and philosophical differences, Budziszewski believes that natural law theory has entered a new phase, in which theology will again have pride of place. While religious belief might appear to hamper the search for common ground, Budziszewski demonstrates that it is not an obstacle, but a pathway to apprehending universal norms of behavior.
"In What We Can't Not Know, J. Budziszewski shows that even the most sophisticated skeptics unwittingly reveal their moral knowledge in attempts to justify killing, lying, stealing, committing adultery, and other sins. In the very process of attacking Judaeo-Christian moral principles, they confirm them."
- Robert P. George, Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
J. Budziszewski, who holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books, including The Revenge of Conscience, How to Stay Christian in College, and The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/04/2011 16:02]