A while back one of our readers made some comment to the
effect that what the world needs now is another Inquisition to whip people (and
things) into shape, and get some morality back in society. We assume our reader meant the actual
Inquisition, not one of the various myths that have grown up around the
institution. (Cf. Edward Peters, Inquisition. Berkeley, California:
University of California Press, 1989.)
First and foremost, of course, any sort of compulsion in
purely religious matters is . . . we’ll say bad. Second, mixing the functions of Church and
State, as medieval and modern governments (and all of them in between) tend to
do is . . . also bad, even if Church and State remain separate as stipulated
in, e.g., Magna Charta and the U.S.
Constitution. People just can’t seem to
keep their fingers out of the other person’s pie. Either the State takes over the Church, or
the Church takes over the State, both being very bad news.
For the purposes of this discussion, however, we’ll focus on
a different problem associated with the Inquisition. This doesn’t mean we’re ignoring the issues
of religious coercion or establishing religion as a government agency (or government
as a sacrament). It only means we’re
looking at a different issue.
Whatever its merits or lack thereof, the Inquisition only
addressed symptoms, not the underlying cause, of heresy and deviations from the
natural law. The cause, as Aquinas and
others have been pointing out for eight centuries or so, is bad ideas about
reality, specifically, of natural and supernatural law.
Aquinas dealt with this fundamental issue that has caused
massive problems down to the present day in religious society (the Church) and
civil society (the State), and is now infiltrating domestic society (the
Family). That is the confusion of
natural and supernatural law, and the consequent shift in the basis of the
natural law from reason to faith, or (as the Scholastics put it)
from the Intellect to the Will.
Basically, the natural law consists of the four natural or
temporal virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and, above all,
justice. The capacity for these virtues
is part of human nature, and cannot be separated from human nature without
taking away humanity itself. Nor can the
natural rights by means of which humanity acquires and develops the natural
virtues, life, liberty, and property, be separated from human nature, without
making humanity less than human.
The supernatural law, however, consists of the three
supernatural or theological virtues of faith, hope, and, above all, charity. The capacity for these virtues is not part of
human nature. Instead, the capacity for
faith, hope, and charity is infused into humanity as a free gift of God. Where the natural virtues are essential for
us to become more fully human, the supernatural virtues are essential for us to
become adopted children of God.
Obviously, confusing the natural and the supernatural
virtues can cause problems. We can know
the natural virtues by “the force and light of human reason alone,” as declared
in Vatican I (yes, there was a Vatican I, just as there was a John Paul I,
neither of them negligible). That is, we
can come to knowledge of God’s existence and of the natural law by applying
human reason through our intellect and examining empirical evidence. Knowledge is always manifestly true.
We only know the supernatural virtues, however, by faith; as
far as humanity as humanity is concerned, all things related to faith, hope,
and charity must be regarded as opinion.
We accept them by faith as certainly true, but they are not subject to
objective proof as are things related to prudence, temperance, fortitude, and
justice. Faith by definition applies to
that which is not manifestly true.
We cannot, therefore, include faith, hope, or charity under
the natural law, because it inserts opinion
into what must be subject to proof, that is, knowledge; it attempts to base things on a contradiction, which
violates the first principle of reason.
You cannot prove anything by faith, because proof demonstrates the
manifest truth of something, where faith accepts as true that which is not
manifestly true. You cannot logically
demonstrate the truth of that which is manifestly true by that which is not
manifestly true, any more than you can logically prove a negative.
