Just to take a
break from our short series on solidarism (and because nobody is going to be
reading blogs today, anyway), we’re posting our response to a question we got
last week on a rather “esoteric” subject: the basis of the natural law.
Now, right up
front we have to ask your indulgence . . . both of you who are reading
this. The question was asked in a
“Catholic” forum on the internet, and the answer is phrased in the language of
the “Catholic paradigm.”
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| Aquinas: Truth is a unity. |
That does not,
however, mean that the answer is true only for (some) Catholics or even just
theists of whatever sort. That would
violate the first principles of reason, which is that the intellect is a
“unity.” If something is true, it is
true for everyone.
And what does that mean? The “unity of the intellect” just means that
nothing discerned or based on reason can be unreasonable, that is,
contradictory. This gives us the two
ways of stating the first principle of reason, the “principle of (non)
contradiction,” and the “principle of identity.”
The principle of
contradiction is, Nothing can both “be” and “not be” at the same time under the
same conditions. The principle of
identity is, That which is true is as true, and is true in the same way, as
everything else that is true.
Now for the
question:
I keep running across this
in your writing and meaning to ask you about it: "it starts with a shift
in the understanding of the natural law from the Intellect (reason) to the Will
(faith)". I don't get what you are talking about here. Faith is a virtue
of the intellect, is it not? Faith is a kind of sight; the will is blind. ???
Absolutely.
The key, however, is that the natural
law is (as the name implies) natural. It relates to the natural virtues of
prudence, temperance, fortitude, and (above all) justice.
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| God builds the capacity for natural virtue into each human being. |
God
builds the capacity to acquire and develop the natural virtues in to human
nature, and that capacity is an essential part of human nature. This capacity is “analogously complete” (the
same . . . sort of) in all human beings.
This capacity is what makes human beings ipso facto natural persons with the full spectrum of natural rights
of life, liberty (freedom of association and contract), and private property.
The
capacity for faith, hope, and (above all) charity, however, is not built into essential
human nature. Faith, hope, and charity
are supernatural virtues; they are above nature, as is (obviously) the capacity
to acquire and develop them. Where God
builds the capacity for the natural
virtues into human nature itself, He infuses the capacity for the supernatural virtues into each human
being as a free gift.
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| John Paul I: "Charity is the soul of justice." |
Where
the inherent capacity to acquire and develop the natural virtues gives each
human being the natural capacity to become more fully human, the infused capacity
to acquire and develop the supernatural virtues gives each human being the
analogously complete capacity to become the adopted children of God. This is by adding to, not abolishing or
bypassing nature. As John Paul I pointed
out (we like to quote him because everybody forgets about him, even though he
was himself quoting somebody else), charity is the soul of justice. Thus, supernatural
charity does not replace or nullify natural
justice.
This
is why the Catholic Church teaches that reason is the foundation of faith. This is also why the First Vatican Council
infallibly declared the primacy of reason (the Intellect) in Canon 2.1, which
anathematized anyone who denies that knowledge of God's existence and of the
natural law can be known by the force and light of human reason alone.
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| McInerny: Fideism a great danger |
The
primacy of reason is also the first thing in the Oath Against Modernism, and
was repeated in the beginning of the encyclical Humani Generis in 1950 as the primary danger to Catholic doctrine
in the world today. The late Dr. Ralph
McInerny of Notre Dame (the author of the Father Dowling mysteries) considered
“fideism” — relying on faith alone — (a form of modernism, considered the
synthesis of all heresies) the single greatest danger to religion today.
That
is why faith is a virtue of the Intellect. It necessarily is based on (but goes far
beyond) reason. Faith fulfills and
completes reason, just as charity fulfills and completes justice. Faith does not deny or reject reason, any
more than charity denies or rejects justice.
We
might say that, just as charity is the soul of justice, faith is the soul of
reason. Yes, faith applies to that which
is not “manifestly true” (i.e., that
cannot be proved empirically or logically), but at the same time faith cannot
contradict that which is manifestly
true (“self-evident”).
This
will be on the test.
#30#