Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

THE TEACHING OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ON KNOWING THE EXISTENCE OF THE TRUE GOD FROM HIS NATURAL MANIFESTATIONS.

The doctrine of the rational knowledge of God belongs also to theology.

« Although the theology of faith presupposes the natural knowledge of the existence of God, just as the supernatural order of elevation generally presupposes the natural order to be elevated, it nevertheless belongs to theology to judge the value of human reason for that very natural knowledge of God, and of the mode of attaining this knowledge. »

I. From what we have said in the Prolegomenon concerning the material and formal object of theology, it is established that God is the principal, or indeed the sole and adequate, object of this sacred discipline, insofar as he has revealed himself through supernatural manifestations to human reason¹, illumined by the light of faith. This illumination does not create or produce reason itself, its natural power and the light of reason, but presupposes them and raises them to a higher order; whence also the supernatural manifestations by which he reveals himself to elevated reason presuppose natural manifestations, through which God presents himself to be known by the natural light of reason. The demonstration and explanation, therefore, of the existence and attributes of God, insofar as they are understood by reason from natural manifestations, belongs to philosophy; in the theology of faith, however, that more distinct natural knowledge is taken up in order to acquire a clearer understanding of those things concerning God that have been revealed by supernatural manifestations: and so theology makes use of what is known of God from the philosophical disciplines, not as principles proper to its own doctrine, but as aids « for the greater manifestation of those things that are handed down in this science, » as St Thomas says, 1. q.1. a. 5. ad 2. Yet because, where the existence of God is concerned, the theology of faith and philosophy, supernatural and natural manifestation, the light of faith and the light of reason, agree in material object although they differ in formal object, hence it is that many theologians too, following the holy Fathers, set up more extended demonstrations from the principles of natural reason concerning the existence of God, which is indeed the foundation of the whole theological science², « as from proper principles, not strictly, but ministerially, » as Cajetan says, ad 1. q. 2. a. 3. The holy Fathers, above all in their apologies against the Gentiles, are accustomed to regard this philosophical treatment as a kind of pedagogy leading to faith and to Christian knowledge; and theologians likewise declare it to be a preamble to theology itself³. Lest we disturb the order of the disciplines that have been assigned to the various schools of this Academy, imitating the example⁴ of the weighty theologians, we shall leave the philosophical demonstration of the existence of God in its own proper seat, which it has in the metaphysics of sacred theology, προπαιδείας.

II. The arguments by which the existence of God is demonstrated in philosophy can be viewed in two ways: a) directly, insofar as reason, by its own power and innate light, knows from the existence of contingent beings, from their perfections connected with imperfection, from the nature of the rational creature and of all others whose existence is understood immediately, and therefore also from the essential dependence of the whole universe, its order and disposition toward an end, and from the absolute and ineluctable binding force of the moral law, that there cannot but exist a necessary being as the creative cause of effects, most wise, most perfect, just and holy provider and legislator, the principle and end of all things. This whole argumentation rests on the evident intrinsic connection of truths known by the light of reason, and therefore belongs to philosophy. The rational arguments can also be viewed as reflexively, when the question is asked what their value is: whether human reason in general has innate powers to know the existing God with certainty, or specifically whether human reason, by its natural light, can attain from the knowledge of creatures to the knowledge of the existence of God the creator, the true God, I mean, personal and altogether distinct and different from this universe. This reflexive consideration has its proper seat both in philosophy and in theology,⁵ but in a way corresponding to the different formal reason of each science. In philosophy indeed, through the direct demonstration itself, the reflexive question is also solved, since reason, knowing the object evidently, understands also reflexively that its knowledge is true. For true science does not exist « unless one knows that one knows; for science must be a perfect intellectual light, which manifests itself » (Suarez Metaphys. disp. I. sect. 4.)⁶. Yet the reflexive knowledge of the truth can be perfected and made more distinct by the analysis of the arguments.

But for theology, under its formal reason, there will undoubtedly belong the judgment on the value of rational demonstration, and on the power of human reason to know God, who exists, from creatures by the light innate to it, if in the revealed word of God, which is the proper objective principle of knowing for theology, this power of reason is explicitly affirmed or denied; or certainly if the principles are contained in revelation from which what is to be affirmed or denied may be legitimately deduced. And yet, both in the written word of God and in the universal and constant interpretation of the same revealed word handed down by the Catholic Doctors of the Church, there are many things which show that God, the author of the rational light, has taught us, even by supernatural revelation, about the innate power and about the mode, by this natural power, of knowing him, whose knowledge is the ultimate, necessary and natural end of reason. For although it were true, as some more recent theologians have remarked, that in the Scriptures and in supernatural revelation generally the existence of the true God is not so much proved by arguments as its most full persuasion is already presupposed, this very presupposition would show above all that a knowledge and persuasion of the existing God is something, and is presupposed as antecedent to and independent of supernatural revelation. Moreover, that same revelation, especially where it rebukes ignorance or the denial of the true God, both indicates theoretically the mode by which men, with nature as their guide, could and should have come to know God; and practically and in exercise, Scripture itself in more than one place presents rational demonstrations of the existence of God, drawn from the fact of the existence of this universe, as legitimate and most sufficient; which the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, cultivating more diligently the sense of the Scriptures and the Catholic understanding derived from it, afterwards vindicated in full disputations. What has now been said somewhat confusedly will be made clearer in what follows; yet it is enough to conclude that there undoubtedly are at hand theological principles, from which a judgment can be made, if not on each of the philosophical arguments, certainly on the value of rational demonstration in general, and on the powers of human reason, innate to it, for knowing from creatures the existence of God the creator. It belongs therefore to theology, considered under its formal reason, though not to it alone, to examine and to test (ἐπιχρίσις) rational knowledge and its mode, when it is asked whether there is, and what is, a legitimate demonstration of the existence of God.

The Scriptures declare that God's manifestation through the works of creation is adapted to human reason.

« Supernatural revelation, recorded in the sacred Scriptures, clearly teaches that in this visible universe, according to its order, physical and historical, there is contained a natural manifestation of God, adapted to the innate light of human reason, so that for men who already use reason there is both the ability and, if other aids are lacking, the duty of knowing from it the true God, personal, distinct from this universe, to be honored with supreme worship by the rational creature. »

Among the testimonies of Scripture, of which not a few can be adduced to prove the thesis, those principal and solemn passages Rom. I. 18. sqq.; Sap. XIII.1–9; will almost alone suffice for us;

Rom. I.

« For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the impiety and injustice of men who hold down the truth of God in injustice. 18. (Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds and of four-footed beasts and of serpents, and did not approve οὐκ ἐδοκίμασαν to have God in knowledge) 23. 28. For that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested to them. 19. For his invisible things are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood through the things that are made (τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασι νοούμενα καθοράται), his eternal power also and divinity; so that they are inexcusable. For when they had known God, they did not glorify him as God, nor gave thanks; but became vain in their thoughts (ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν = μάταιοι φύσει), and their foolish heart was darkened. 20. 21.

Sap. XIII.

« Vain indeed are all men (μάταιοι μὲν γὰρ πάντες ἄνθρωποι φύσει), in whom there is no knowledge of God; and from the good things that are seen they were not able to understand him who is (τὸν ὄντα), nor by attending to his works did they recognize who was the artificer; but they thought the fire... or the sun and the moon, the rulers of the world, to be gods. 1. 2. If they were delighted by their beauty and thought them gods, let them know how much more beautiful than these is their lord, for he, the generator of beauty (τοῦ καλλους γενεσιαρχης), constituted all these things. Or if they were amazed at their power and works (δυναμιν καὶ ἐνέργειαν), let them understand from those things that he who made these is stronger than they. 3. 4.

For from the greatness of beauty and of creatures, the creator of these can be seen knowably (ἐκ γὰρ μεγέθους καλλονῆς κτισμάτων ἀναλόγως ὁ γενεσιουργὸς αὐτῶν θεωρεῖται). 5.

Again, nor should they be pardoned. For if they were able to know so much that they could judge the world (στοχάσασθαι τὸν αἰῶνα, to investigate the visible world), how did they not more easily find its lord? » 8. 9. as is read at Act. XIV. 16. 17; XVII. 26. 28. First we shall consider the manifestation and knowledge of God from creatures, as it is described in general in the passages cited; then we shall look at the twofold order, physical and historical, shown in the creatures that manifest him in the same place.

I. As to the knowability of God from creatures already known, this is the explicit doctrine of the Scriptures in the testimonies cited:

1° God is the object of natural knowledge for the human mind. For God is said, in his attributes, by which he is distinguished from this universe as its supreme author and Lord, from his work, to be knowable to men and easily knowable, without need of an inquiry inaccessible to a subtler and human talent, and knowable by the same natural faculty by which men judge of the properties of visible nature. Therefore God is an object of knowledge, and in human reason there are powers proportioned to attaining this knowledge. « What is known of God (τὸ γνωστὸν cognoscibile) is manifest in them. » This knowledge of God is continually explained by those things that are called « his invisible things, » namely invisible in themselves, which nevertheless are intelligible through something else; for « they are clearly seen, being understood. » Moreover, these are the attributes which are seen by the intellect and reason, by which God is understood to be the supreme divinity, « his eternal power and divinity » Rom. I. 19. 20. The sentence of the book of Wisdom is parallel to this doctrine of the Apostle. « Vain indeed are all men, in whom there is no knowledge of God; » or as it is in the Greek text: « vain by nature are all men, who have ignorance of God: » « and (who) could not understand him who is » (τὸν ὄντα): « for the creator can be seen knowably » (ἀναλόγως ὁ γενεσιουργὸς ἐθεωρεῖται): « if they were able to know so much that they could judge the world, how did they not more easily (gr. citius ταχιον) find its lord? » Sap. XIII. 1. 5. 9.

2°. Distinctly, in the same passages of Scripture, the mode of God's manifestation and of the rational knowledge that corresponds to it is described. The object cannot be known in act unless it manifests itself to the human mind, since this manifestation is nothing other than knowability in the second act with respect to the knower. But an object can become manifest either immediately through itself, or mediately through another object already known, which may be called the objective medium of knowledge.¹. Now indeed the Scriptures teach most clearly that God manifests himself to human reason; but he manifests himself through creatures in such a way that, from the known perfections of the visible universe, limited by imperfection, one arrives at the knowledge of God; not indeed that God is seen in creatures in himself and in his own substance, but that from the known effect, and from the perfection of the effect, reason understands the existence and, in some measure, the perfection of God the supreme cause. « What is known of God, says Paul, is manifest in them, » what is objectively knowable is also subjectively known; « for God manifested to them, » and made himself knowable in the second act. Then he adds the reason and mode of this knowability and manifestation: « for his invisible things from the creation of the world, through the things that are made, are clearly seen, being understood. »

With a wonderful design the Apostle joins subject and predicate, which, if taken simply, could be thought contradictory: the invisible things are visible, indeed even seen and perceived (τὰ ἀόρατα καθοράται); one or the other therefore needs explanation as to the sense in which it is to be taken. That the same verb ὁρᾶν should be taken equivocally, so that the subject speaks of sensible and the predicate of intellectual vision, is not probable. Just as the visibility of God cannot be other than intellectual, so the predicate of invisibility in the Scriptures must be taken not only for bodily eyes but for the eyes of the mind (e. g. 1. Tim. I. 17; Io. I. 18; VI. 46. etc.), unless the context should show otherwise. For that former invisibility, with respect to the senses, is too obvious in itself; nor would it be opposed in this sense, as happens in Scripture, invisibility for the present life to visibility for the future (cf. 1. Cor. XIII. 12.); for in this sense God is not now invisible and visible in the other life, but invisible absolutely in every state. So also in the place we are discussing, « the invisible things of God » are not only invisible to bodily eyes, but also invisible to the human intellect; yet they are said to be seen by human reason, so that the denial of immediate visibility is opposed to the affirmation of mediate visibility. For the Apostle adds an explanation of the mode in which God is seen, namely that he is not intelligible to human weakness from himself and his own substance, but is understood through the effects and works that have been understood² and his eternal power and divinity. Hence all men who hold down the truth of God in injustice are inexcusable, and the wrath of God is justly revealed and manifested from heaven against them, Rom. I. 18–20.

The disputation of the book of Wisdom differs from that of Paul in this, that there it is taught not only in general that a conclusion can and should be drawn from the existence of this universe to the existence of God, but also the principal elements of the argument are set forth. The proposition to be proved is this: « vain by nature ( they abuse their natural faculty ) are all men, who have ignorance of God. » The proof is taken from this, that the properties of this universe, immediately known, are such that human reason can and ought to conclude from it the existence of God and his eminent perfections. The terms from which reason proceeds are « the good things that are seen, » « the works to which they attend, » « their beauty and power » τὰ ὁρώμενα ἀγαθά, τὰ ἔργα, τούτων ἡ κάλλονη, ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἐνέργεια. The term to which reason arrives through analysis, unless it perverts its own nature, is joined as follows: to the good things that are seen corresponds to understand him who is (τὸν ὄντα); to attention to the works corresponds to recognize the artificer; to delight in their beauty or appearance corresponds knowledge, how much more beautiful than these is their lord; to admiration of their power and efficacy corresponds understanding drawn from them, that he who made these is stronger than they. The sacred writer concludes with a general proposition by which the logical connection between this visible universe and God the creator is declared: « for from the greatness of beauty and of creatures the creator of these can be seen knowably (ἀναλόγως) » (θεωρεῖται)³. From these things, lastly, he infers, similarly to Paul, that men who, captivated by the magnificence of the works of God, thought them to be gods, are inexcusable; because by the same faculty of reason by which they made this world the object and, as it were, the target of their inquiry, they could more easily find the lord of the universe from the consideration of the universe: « again, nor should these be pardoned; for if they were able to know so much that they could judge the world (στοχάσασθαι τὸν αἰῶνα), how did they not more easily find its lord » (πῶς ταχὺ οὐχ εὗρον)?

II. Scripture above all sets forth in this universe a twofold order, from the consideration of which human reason may know the existing God: physical and historical.

1°. That the whole physical order is a clear manifestation of God to the rational soul is sufficiently evident from what was said above. It is worth noting, however, the different way in which the Scriptures set forth the twofold logical element, both of which, if it is lawful to speak so, is necessary for the ascent of the mind from creatures to God. They presuppose, as a foundation, the evident imperfection of the creature, by which it is understood formally as a creature, and as a being from another. In this the sacred writer of the book of Wisdom declares the perversion of natural reason, in that men did not understand that « the good things that are seen » are μὴ ὄντα, so as to understand from them τὸν ὄντα; they did not understand the works formally as works, nor their deficient beauty and power, so as to gather from them the primal, exemplary and creative beauty and power (ὁ γὰρ τῶν καλλῶν γενεσιάρχης ἔκτισεν αὐτά). So also Paul teaches that « the creature of the world » is to be understood formally as a creature, that is, as that which has been made, and that in this formal understanding of the creature there is the logical principle from which human reason concludes and ascends to the invisible things of God: « his invisible things from the creature of the world (as from the term from which) through the things that are made (τοῖς ποιήμασι, i.e. under the formal reason of the thing effected), are clearly seen, being understood »⁴.

Another element is the perfection of creatures, by which, the more fully it is understood, the more clearly the perfections of the cause are known. « The heavens (by their magnificence) declare the glory of God, and the work of his hands (by their imperfection, by their lack of absolute perfection) the firmament proclaims »⁵ Ps. XVIII. (XIX.) 2.

Moreover, that a somewhat confused understanding of the existence of God may be drawn from creatures, there is not even need of a distinct, subtle and philosophical inquiry into the perfections of creatures; a common and obvious consideration suffices, as the Scriptures teach us, Sap. XIII. Yet concerning the distinction between the first confused and spontaneous knowledge of God and the more refined knowledge that follows, which is indicated in the Scriptures themselves, we shall speak presently.

In the Scriptures we hold that, when it is asked of the first cause of this universe whether it is, there is set before human reason the imperfection and limitation of creatures to be considered; but when it is asked about the existing cause, what it is, we see set forth the beauty, order and magnificence of creatures. The two considerations, joined together, constitute the whole demonstration of the existence of God: « for from the greatness of beauty and of creatures (formally as creatures) the creator of these can be seen knowably » l. c. v. 5.

2°. St Paul declares history, both at Lystra, Act. XIV. 16. 17, and at Athens, Act. XVII. 26. 28., as a testimony of God to all nations, from which they could and should have known him. The Apostle distinguishes a) the secondary causes of the physical order, whose actions and effects are directed by God the provider toward the preservation and benefit of men, under which aspect the historical argument is closely connected with the cosmological one; b) he distinguishes the history of peoples, which by divine providence is so directed, and to this end, that the nations, in the sum of the whole history, may know the divine providence besides the human element. « God indeed in past generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways; yet he did not leave himself not without witness (ἀμαρτύρων). » This testimony God is said to have given to all nations, « doing good from heaven, giving rains… filling our hearts with food and joy. » Likewise God 'determined the appointed seasons (through physical causes)⁶ and the bounds of their habitation » (through providence in the history of peoples); cf. Deut. XXXII. 8; Eccles. XVII. 15. This twofold providence he arranged for « the human race over the whole face of the earth, » « that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for him and find him » (εἰ ἄρα γε ψηλαφήσειαν αὐτὸν καὶ εὕροιεν). Lastly, c) the Apostle distinguishes the continual benefits of God and his providence in the direction of individual men: « he is not far from each one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our being. » By these very words, and by this description of providence, Paul confirms and declares that these are the relations of human nature to God, and that dependence on God by which, in men who have attained the use of reason, first a dim and confused notion of the supreme divinity arises, as it were spontaneously and necessarily; so that then, this preconception being presupposed, they seek God and a more explicit knowledge of God, through which they can grope for him and find him from the consideration of benefits both common and particular.

That first spontaneously arising and obscure knowledge, which the Fathers not without reason call « implanted in nature », in a sense to be explained by us below, and from which, as from a spontaneous preconception, there arises the impulse of the rational soul to seek more diligently the author of the world and of itself and to refine the idea, the holy Apostle indicates very clearly and distinguishes from the more refined knowledge. For he teaches that the divine works are ordained to this end, and that from these very works there follows by itself an impulse for men to seek God; in this impulse there is already necessarily contained some confused and primordial knowledge of God: « God made from one every race of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, appointing the appointed seasons and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek God. » In this search man can and must cultivate the primitive concept; but he can also, by his own fault, apply this same primitive idea of God to objects that are not God, and so pervert it. Therefore it does not necessarily follow, from the fact that a man seeks God in whatever way, that he will grope for him and find him: « if perhaps they may grope for him and find him » Act. XVII. 27. The very same distinction between the first spontaneous but confused knowledge of God arising from the consideration of creatures, and the more distinct knowledge of the true God, is set forth in Sap. XIII. 6. sq. « And these perhaps err, seeking God and wishing to find him. For while they are conversant with his works, they inquire; and they are persuaded that the things that are seen are good. Again, nor should these be pardoned; for if they were able to know so much that they could judge the world, how did they not more easily find its Lord? »

Hence it is clear how the idea of some existing divinity is common to all nations and, as it were, indestructible, while the perversion of the sincere notion of God extends so widely. It is also clear why the Fathers Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian and Arnobius appealed, for the existence of God, to the testimony of « the simple soul, from the street, not educated in schools, but such as nature has formed; » for « many things are suggested by nature, as it were from the common sense with which God has deigned to endow the soul. Philosophy, having laid hold of this, has puffed it up (by abuse) to the glory of its own art » Tertull. de anima c. 2.

III. The faculty, and if other aids are lacking the duty, of understanding the existence and perfections of God from creatures is such that men, taught by this natural manifestation and natural testimony, who do not worship God are « inexcusable » ἀναπολόγητοι Rom. I. 20; so that for them, even if they seek God, if however they do not grope for him and find him, « pardon should not be granted » and they are οὐδὲ συγγνωστοί; they are « unhappy, and their hope is among the dead; » they are « all vain by nature » Sap. XIII. 1. 8. 10. Moreover, that this God is to be known in the natural manifestations « from the creature of the world, from those things that have been made, » that he is the same true and living God who has also revealed himself by supernatural manifestations, is most clearly evident from all the passages; for indeed in the Scripture passages cited there is no reprehension of anything other than ignorance of the true God.

The rational knowledge of the law of nature asserted by the Apostle for the gentiles includes and demonstrates the rational knowledge of God as supreme lawgiver.

« The Apostle Paul clearly teaches that the moral law, absolutely binding, is knowable and known by the gentiles through the powers of reason, without a positive revelation of that same law; and this rational knowledge presupposes and includes in exactly the same way the rational knowability and knowledge of God, without the positive revelation handed down and received concerning the existence of God; although some at least confused knowledge of God is prior in order to the more distinct knowledge of moral obligation. »

The crux of the matter turns on this: that from the teaching of the Apostle, and therefore from the revealed word of God, it is shown that the knowledge of moral obligation, or of the binding law of nature, is possible from the powers of reason, without this knowledge presupposing a positive revelation from which it is drawn or on which it rests. Given this, it follows, or rather is included in this very point, that some knowledge of the existence of God can also be purely rational and not founded on positive revelation; for the knowledge of moral obligation, essentially including some notion of God, cannot come from the powers of reason apart from revelation, unless the notion of God in the same way stands as a foundation essentially included in the very knowledge of moral obligation. Another question, more philosophical than theological, concerns the logical connection between the two kinds of knowledge: whether the knowledge of the law is prior in order, from which one arrives at the notion of God; or whether, on the contrary, the power of reason to know God is concluded only from the revealed power of reason to know the law, because the one cannot be without the other. There are therefore three parts of the thesis.

I. That the rational knowledge of moral principles, which can be, and has been, among the gentiles without a positive revelation of the moral law, Paul teaches at Rom. II. 14–16. The context of the whole passage, vv. 9–16, reads thus. The aim of the Apostle, as elsewhere throughout the whole epistle, and especially in this passage, is to overthrow that Jewish error and pride by which they boasted that it suffices for righteousness to be of the Jewish race and to belong to the Mosaic economy. Cf. Iustin. dialog. cum Tryphone n. 44. 102. 105. As to race, then, the Apostle says, God has no regard for it; but both Jews and Greeks are judged according to their works, whether good or evil, vv. 9–11. If the Jews glory in the privilege of the law and of the Mosaic economy, this will not free them from destruction; nor do they have any reason to lift themselves up proudly above the gentiles, to whom the law has not been revealed. For just as those who sinned without the law will perish, not indeed on account of the transgression of an unknown law, but on account of sins committed against the law, known not from revelation but from elsewhere; so those who belong to the law are not therefore already saved, but on the contrary will be judged according to the revealed law: « for the hearers of the law are not just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified » vv. 12. 13.¹

Paul illustrates this whole doctrine by comparing Jews with gentiles. The difference, he says, is not that those have received the law and are by that very fact sons of righteousness, while these are absolutely without law and as it were a priori destined for ruin; and he proves that this is not so from the fact that the gentiles too have a natural law, according to which they will be judged, vv. 14–16. In this section is contained what we have to prove.

« For when the gentiles, who have not the law, by nature do the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves; who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness with them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing or even defending, in the day when God will judge the secrets of men according to my gospel through Jesus Christ »².

The law which the gentiles are said not to have is here not the Mosaic ceremonial law; for the gentiles do not by nature do the things of that law, nor do they have them written in their hearts in any sense; but this whole matter evidently pertains to the moral law, as is explicitly declared also in what follows, vv. 18–22, where it is a question of the law forbidding theft, adultery and idolatry. But this law cannot be understood simply and as to the thing itself, insofar as the gentiles are said not to have it; on the contrary, the Apostle explicitly teaches that as to the thing itself this law is written in the hearts of the gentiles. Paul therefore distinguishes the form of the law manifested to the Jews through positive revelation, according to which the gentiles do not have the law, and the thing itself of the law (τα του νομου, το ἐργον του νομου), which the gentiles also have, but through another manifestation. The law positively revealed is called ὁ νομος, but even apart from revelation there become known τα του νομου, το ἐργον του νομου. Therefore the opposition in Paul is not between the law and its denial, but between one mode of manifestation and another: for the Jews it is positive revelation, while for the gentiles positive revelation is denied, and the opposed mode of manifestation is declared to be manifestation through rational nature itself; that is, that apart from positive revelation of the law they understand by the light of reason the moral good and evil, and the obligation to do the one and avoid the other: « by nature (φυσει, rational nature teaching) they do the things of the law; » not having the law, they are a law to themselves; » « they show the work of the law written in their hearts. »

Now I think no one will bring to mind the objection which an anonymous Belgian writer has raised against this doctrine.³. He said that the revelation which Paul denies to the gentiles regarding the law is nothing other than the Mosaic revelation; therefore for the gentiles there is presupposed, or can be presupposed, another positive revelation, namely that made to the first parents and propagated by tradition to all nations, from which they are taught and without which they could not know the moral law. There would therefore be in the Apostle an opposition not between positive revelation for the Jews and its denial for the gentiles, but between one revelation in the Mosaic form and another, primitive, one.

But let us not, I beg, insert our philosophical findings into the text of Paul; rather let it be asked only what the Apostle teaches. Now indeed he not only denies that the gentiles have a revelation of the law; he also distinctly teaches whence they know the moral law, or at least could know it. For to the law which they do not have as revealed (add if you like, revealed through Moses), the Apostle opposes nature: where he clearly assigns to the gentiles, in place of the revelation by which the law was promulgated to the Jews, another principle of knowledge; for in place of the positive revelation of the law (if you like, Mosaic) there is for them nature, and not another revelation in place of the revelation. Paul declares this even more clearly; for when they do by nature the things of the law, « such men, not having the law, are a law to themselves. » As in the first clause nature is substituted for the revelation of the law, so in this second, which is an explanation of the first, the place of the revelation of the law is taken by the rational men themselves. How then can another positive revelation of the law be understood, when the Apostle, in opposition to revelation, even if Mosaic, declares nature to be the promulgator of the law, so that the gentiles themselves are a law to themselves?

The Apostle further explains how they are a law to themselves. Nature, and men themselves as beings of rational nature, are not a law-giving principle, as the Kantian philosophy feigns; rather they are a law to themselves, inasmuch as their rational nature makes the law manifest to them and, as it were, promulgates it. Indeed this promulgation of the law consists in nothing other than the knowledge of obligation through the natural light of reason. The Apostle signifies this in those words: « they are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law⁴ written in their hearts. » Since he has explicitly opposed to the promulgation of the law through revelation nature and men themselves of rational nature, it is easily understood that this writing of the law in the hearts (the intellects) is not that writing by which the law itself, and revealed doctrine through the more abundant inward grace of the New Testament, is said to be written in hearts (Jer. XXXI. 33; Heb. VIII. 10; X. 16); it is rather a writing whose proximate principle is rational nature itself⁵ in opposition to the writing on tablets and to positive revelation.

Further, those who do not have the law show that the law is written in their hearts, or this knowledge of the law, by the fact that their rational thoughts (λογισμοι) accuse evils, and defend and approve goods. That these accusing and defending thoughts did not arise from any revelation of the law, whether Mosaic or other, is clear from the fact that Paul adduces this testimony of conscience to declare the writing of the law in the hearts of the Gentiles. Four clauses are connected to declare the same thing: without a revealed law they naturally do the things of the law; whence it follows that, in place of a revealed law, they are a law to themselves; this is declared by another clause, that they have the law written in their intellects; finally this is made manifest by the testimony of their own conscience, while by rational thoughts within themselves they approve goods and condemn evils.

There are therefore two series of statements. In one of them the revelation of the moral law is affirmed, where we do not deny that the Apostle has before his eyes specifically the Mosaic revelation: « whoever have sinned in the law ... hearers of the law ... you rest in the law ... instructed (κατηχουμενος) by the law ... having the form (μορφωσιν, a clear expression) of knowledge and of truth in the law. » In the other, opposed series, not only is this special Mosaic revelation denied for the Gentiles; but the principle of knowledge is declared in such a way that every positive revelation of the law is excluded from this knowledge of the Gentiles: « the Gentiles who do not have the law naturally do the things of the law ... not having the law, they are a law to themselves ... they show the work of the law written in their hearts ... their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing or even defending. »

Let it therefore remain wholly settled and fixed that the Apostle teaches not that the faculty of human reason is able to receive and understand the moral law as set forth by positive revelation; but that the power of reason, by its own light, without the proposal of positive revelation, is able to understand moral good and evil, and therefore the moral principles and the absolute obligation of the natural law. Whence Tertullian rightly says (De corona militis, ch. 6) that the law is both natural law and legal nature, that is, that rational nature itself, by its own power, is the teacher of the law. Now whoever by the light of reason understands the obligation to avoid moral evil and to do good, by that very fact understands that this obligation holds for every rational creature, and that it is an absolute obligation, always and everywhere, binding under every hypothesis. Indeed it is understood that no circumstances can be conceived in which the strictest obligation of a rational creature to avoid moral evil would not remain; yet it is not thereby denied that there can be acts which in some circumstances are evil and in other circumstances are not evil, for although materially they are the same, in the moral order they are different according to the diversity of circumstances. Much less, by the rational knowledge of absolute obligation binding under every hypothesis, is signified (as that anonymous writer has indeed wittily interpreted these words of ours and reproached us for them) the breadth of rational knowledge, readily obtainable without revelation in the second act, which extends to the whole moral law and to all the circumstances determining under which moral acts are good or bad.

This knowledge of the law, formally as of the law that absolutely binds, is already included, as I have said, in the very knowledge of moral good and evil. Moreover the Apostle expressly teaches a rational knowledge of the absolutely binding law itself, such that conscience holds some acts to be good, and absolutely condemns others as evil, with approval and condemnation to hold good in the very « day when God shall judge the secrets of men through Jesus Christ »⁶.

II. Now in the knowledge of the morally binding law there is also included at least some confused knowledge of God as the supreme principle and end. For neither can the ultimate reason of this absolute obligation, which man naturally knows, be understood to be the very dignity of human nature, as the Kantians and, from Kantian principles, the Hermesians have wished; since man, through knowledge of his absolute obligation, does not understand his dignity as something that would command, but rather his dependence on some superior, to whom he is bound to be subject and to obey in order to keep right order. And because he understands moral obligation as absolute, to which every rational creature is subject, by that very fact he understands this superior, in whose eminence over all creatures the obligation is founded, at least obscurely and confusedly, as the supreme Lord, to whom absolute obedience is owed. Indeed Paul himself (Rom. I. v. 32) declares that the Gentiles, by the same light of reason by which the invisible things of God are seen as understood from the physical order, have also known the moral order formally as the law of God binding absolutely. For from this their sin is shown: since « when they knew the law of God, that they who do such things are worthy of death, they not only do them, but also consent to those who do them »⁷.

Without doubt, therefore, the Apostle teaches a rational knowledge of the moral order such that there is contained in it at the same time at least a confused knowledge of the existing God, the supreme lawgiver and ultimate end. Now if the knowledge of obligation can be, and in fact is, to some degree, simply through the light of reason without positive revelation, as we have shown the Apostle teaches; the same light of reason, understanding the obligation of the law, necessarily embraces also God as existing, without whom that absolute obligation itself could not be understood. If, however, it were said that the knowledge of God derived from revelation is presupposed as a foundation, so that reason may understand moral obligation; then this knowledge of the law would not be possible without revelation, but would wholly rest of necessity on revelation, against what Paul most plainly teaches. Therefore, from the very fact that it is established from the doctrine of the Apostle that the obligation of the natural law can be understood simply by the light of reason, without revelation being presupposed, it is also established, and included in this same doctrine, that in the same way, by the light of reason, one can arrive at the knowledge of God as the supreme principle of obligation and as lawgiver.

III. The question concerning the logical connection between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the absolutely binding law is another: whether not only the latter follows from the former, but also, in the reverse order, one can arrive from the latter at the former. For our purpose the solution of this question would not be necessary here, since it is quite sufficient for our purpose that, in the knowledge of the law through the light of reason, as the Apostle declares, there is also included the knowledge of God through the same light of reason without revelation, by whatever means reason can first arrive at this knowledge of God. If nevertheless it should please us to answer the question: first of all, from what has been said it is evident that the knowledge of absolute obligation cannot be presupposed as a foundation from which one arrives at the first knowledge of God, since this knowledge is the foundation of that one; and therefore in the reverse order that first knowledge cannot be attained from the other. Whence also St Paul seems rather to have deduced the natural knowledge of the law and of the moral order from the naturally known existence of God, than to have wished to demonstrate the latter from the former. Yet it does not follow from this that there is no ascent from the knowledge of the moral order and of the law to the knowledge of God. For that middle term, or argument, from the moral order can be proposed in two ways: (1°) in conjunction with other demonstrations of the existence of God; (2°) by itself and absolutely. In the first way, reason can ascend analytically from other manifestations to the knowledge of the existence of God; and, from this known, distinctly understand the absolute obligation of the moral law. From this distinct knowledge there can moreover be made, as it were, a return to confirm and more clearly understand the very existence and perfection of God. In this process no one will say that another circle occurs, except the ascent from creatures to the knowledge of God, and the descent from God to know creatures more perfectly, and from these, at last more perfectly known, the return to God to be more fully understood. Now such a return, which is sufficiently inferred from the Apostle, ought to be judged all the more legitimate and opportune, because clear knowledge of moral obligation does not necessarily presuppose clear and distinct knowledge of the existence of God, although it cannot subsist without some knowledge of Him, at least confused.

If, on the other hand, the argument is considered by itself and separated from the others, it cannot indeed be presupposed that a perfect knowledge of obligation is had without knowledge of God, so that one could first arrive at the latter from the former, as we have already said. But the perfect knowledge of absolute obligation is one thing; another is some knowledge of the moral order taken more broadly. For from the very consideration of rational nature ordered to the true and the good, and from the consideration of human society, the necessity and existence of the moral order are easily understood: the existence of the ultimate end in the enjoyment of the true and the good, the necessity and existence of rights and duties, since these are essential relations of rational nature, which without them would involve a contradiction. But these essential relations, whose necessity and existence are understood, would lack an ultimate foundation, unless there existed the supreme good, a holy and just lawgiver and supreme judge. Therefore, just as from the understood physical order human reason can know God as existing, so from the perceived essential relations of the moral order it can rise to knowing God as the exemplary and efficient cause of the order. Here, indeed, the order of things is objective in itself; yet in practice, and by the very fact, such notions of the moral order—as I shall say elsewhere of the metaphysical notions of true, good, necessary—I judge to be the foundation not of the first knowledge of existence, but of a more refined knowledge of the perfection and attributes of God. Fuller discussion of these matters belongs to philosophy. Cf. Hieronym. in Gal. I. T. VII. p. 391; Chrysost. ad scandalizatos c. 8. T. III. p. 482 ; Constitut. Apost. l. VIII. c. 12.

The interpretation of Rom. II concerning unbelievers and the rational knowledge of the natural law is vindicated.

« The consensus on the interpretation of the text Rom. II. 14. 15. is such that none of the holy Fathers and ancient theologians, not even those cited for the opposing opinion from the commentaries of Estius, has taught that the passage of the Apostle is to be understood not of the unbelieving Gentiles but of the faithful alone among the Gentiles; or has denied that the knowledge of the natural law described there is acquired by the light of reason, without the aid of revelation proposing the law itself. Nor do the arguments, which Estius sought to persuade us of from the context, carry greater weight: that the words of the Apostle are to be understood « of the faithful alone, whether they preceded the coming of Christ or followed it. » »

To define the state of the question, a threefold question must be distinguished. For it can be asked: (1°) whether the Gentiles not having the law, in this passage of Paul, are to be understood as the faithful alone among the Gentiles, in opposition to the Jews (as Jews and Greeks, circumcision and uncircumcision, etc., are frequently opposed); and not rather that they can be understood either as unbelievers alone, or indistinctly as both unbelievers and those faithful who, under the natural law, had been imbued with sufficient faith in God and in the Redeemer to come.

The second question is whether the Gentiles are said to do the things of the law naturally, by natural powers, or through the help of supernatural grace; and so whether the discussion concerns supernatural acts. Baius, and afterwards the Jansenists, who, denying the distinction between natural and supernatural virtues, affirmed that all acts of unbelievers are sins, therefore also taught that this text of the Apostle could not be understood except of the faithful alone and of acts of the faithful proceeding from grace; the other interpretation, of unbelieving Gentiles and of acts naturally honourable, they called Pelagian. Estius, a Catholic theologian, retained the explanation of his master Baius insofar as he affirmed and asserted that the passage of the Apostle is indeed to be understood « of the faithful alone, whether they preceded the coming of Christ or followed it, » and this because Paul speaks solely of the supernatural and meritorious observance of the law. Estius sought to confirm this his opinion by the authority of the Fathers and theologians, especially Augustine, then Prosper, Fulgentius, Ambrosiaster, Hugh, Lombard, Hervaeus, St Thomas, the Carthusian; and of the Greeks also, such as Origen, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Oecumenius. Then from the context of the passage itself he says that this commentary is « very probable and almost certain. » Estius did not, however, follow Baius in condemning the other interpretation, of unbelieving Gentiles and of acts ethically honourable by nature; for he confesses that « this exposition has nothing contrary to sound doctrine. » But certainly, if we trust Estius, the opinion seems rather weak on the authority of the Doctors: « some, among whom Cajetan, defend it, » he says.

The third question is whether the moral law is said by the Apostle to be made manifest to the Gentiles by the light of reason, without positive and extrinsic revelation of the law; or whether the opinion can be reconciled with the words of the Apostle which denies to human reason the power of knowing supersensible things, and in particular the moral order and moral obligation, otherwise than through faith from positive revelation of the law. In this sense no one, not even Estius himself, doubted until these more recent times that these powers are present in reason, and are shown by the testimony of the Apostle to be present, to know the natural law without its positive revelation¹. For Estius interprets the words of Paul « they are a law to themselves » to this sense: « they are for themselves in place of the law, while of their own accord and by their own judgment, without the external aid and impulse of a law commanding, they do good. » If, however, it should seem that there is a conflict between the opinion asserted by Estius, that in this passage the name of Gentiles designates the faithful alone, and yet that by the name of the law written in the hearts is to be understood the natural law known by the light of reason without revelation of that same law, we can leave to Estius the burden of answering; for we say that it is false that by the name of Gentiles the faithful alone are to be understood. But Estius does not answer this objection of contradiction, which he proposes as peculiar to the Pelagians, by denying, as more recent writers do, knowledge of the law without its proposal through revelation; rather he admits and reconciles both assertions. For all the faithful have, in addition to the natural law implanted in all, the law of Christ; and therefore these words of the Apostle, the Gentiles who do not have the law, cannot be understood of the faithful: « this argument, he says, may seem to have some weight as far as Christian Gentiles are concerned; but nothing pertains to those Gentiles who preceded the coming of Christ and yet believed that He would come. » That is, that they knew from revelation, at least implicitly, the Redeemer who was to come², it does not hinder that by the light of reason, without the revelation of the law, they could understand the natural law: that one should not steal, should not commit adultery, etc., which are examples set down by the Apostle himself.

Since, therefore, the first of the proposed questions, whether under the name of the Gentiles who do not have the law the faithful alone are to be understood in the text of Paul, or whether, if not the faithful alone, at least directly and principally the unbelievers are signified, is connected with two other, quite different, questions: the first, whether the Apostle's discourse concerns natural acts, ethically good, performed without the aid of grace; and so the false 25th proposition of Baius is demonstrated from the Apostle: « all the works of unbelievers are sins, and the virtues of philosophers are vices. » (Cf. propositions of Baius 27, 28, 29, 30, 37, 61, 62; of Quesnel 39, 40, 41; of the Pistoians n. 24, in the Bull Auctorem Fidei.) The other connected question is whether the manifestation of the natural law of which we speak is said by the Apostle to be through the light of reason, without positive extrinsic revelation of the law itself; and thus from the words of Paul is demonstrated some power of human reason to know the things of the law, without their needing to be made known by revelation. The anonymous Belgian writer mentioned above, who undertook to attack our doctrine, confusing these two questions, affirmed that all the Fathers and theologians cited by Estius interpret the words of Paul of the faithful alone, and contradict our interpretation of the Pauline text, by which we contend that the discourse of the Apostle is, if not solely, at least directly and principally, about unbelievers and about the rational knowledge of the natural law; for this opinion, he said, has as its only defenders « some, and among them Cajetan. »

Setting aside the question, which belongs to another place, of inward grace and how it is necessary for the observance of the natural law and for ethically good acts, we shall do two things. First, with regard to the interpretation of the Pauline text concerning unbelieving Gentiles and the rational knowledge of the law, we shall examine the doctrine of the Fathers and theologians, especially those to whom the opposing side appeals. We affirm, moreover, that among all of them there is none who has said that the words of Paul are to be understood of the faithful alone, nor any who has denied that they are to be understood of rational knowledge of the law without its proposal through revelation. Second, we shall then judge the value of the arguments which the adversaries draw from the context to confirm their opinion.

Although the matter is clear in itself, to guard against false interpretations we premise three things. Our discussion is now about the revelation of the law itself, not about a revelation which some have begun to assert to be necessary to men for acquiring the use of reason, unless perhaps they were to say that this is itself the revelation of the moral law. Next, in denying the necessity of this very revelation for the possibility of rational and natural knowledge, we understand the exclusion of not moral but physical necessity, which arises simply from the lack of powers of reason. Lastly, we treat universally of the rational knowledge of moral obligation, without now distinctly determining either its extent or its perfection. ( On these matters compare the Appendix to the Treatise on Tradition).

I. First, the proposition of Baius (22nd among the Baian propositions) was condemned by the Holy See, in which the innovator, against the Catholic theologians, said: « They agree with Pelagius, who understand the testimony of the Apostle, Rom. II, the Gentiles who do not have the law naturally do the things of the law, as referring to Gentiles who lack the grace of faith. » On this condemnation consult Ripalda (« Against the articles of Baius », T. III. of the work Operis de Ente supernaturali). Meanwhile two things follow from this censure: namely, that theologians were accustomed, in the dogmatic controversy, to understand the passage of the Apostle of unbelievers; and that the Apostolic See wished this interpretation to be kept safe and covered. Hence it is a prejudice that those « some interpreters, » as the adversaries call them, are many and weighty Doctors. Indeed, at the same time as Estius knew « only some, and among them Cajetan », who held that the Gentiles not having the law in Paul are to be understood as unbelievers, Stapleton (On original sin, book II, ch. 14, Opp. T. II. p. 66), successor of Baius in the Louvain chair and his most learned adversary, affirmed that this opinion is « the common opinion of all the other Doctors (except Augustine), especially of the Greeks, which Augustine himself does not disapprove. »

Since it would be long to copy out the opinions of all, I shall cite the passages that can be read, and take a few from them. Origen, On Romans, book II, nn. 7. 8. 9: « The Greek, that is the Gentile, if, when he does not have the law, he is a law to himself, showing the work of the law in his heart, and unmoved by natural reason, as we see some among the Gentiles either keep justice or preserve chastity.... Though he seem alien to eternal life, because he does not believe in Christ.... yet it seems that he cannot altogether lose the glory and honour and peace of good works....³ The natural law is common to all men. » Origen understands by this the law which « the Gentiles can perceive naturally. » Chrysostom, Homily XII, n. 3, to the people of Antioch: « What is the natural law? God formed conscience in us, and brought it about that we have the knowledge of good and of their opposites, drawn spontaneously from ourselves (αὐτοδίδακτον ἐποίησε τὴν γνῶσιν τῶν καλῶν κ. λ.). For we have no need to learn that fornication is evil and continence good, but from the beginning (ἀπ' ἀρχῆς) we know this. » The holy Doctor goes on: therefore God, when by positive revelation he prohibited what the natural law forbids, simply said thou shalt not kill, and did not add that this is evil; « for, he says, conscience, coming before, taught us this beforehand. » He confirms this from the words of Paul: when the Gentiles wish to excuse themselves, because they had no lawgiver, neither Moses, nor the prophets, nor the Apostle, nor the Evangelist, « Paul shows that they had the law which they had learned from themselves (αὐτοδίδακτον νόμον): for when the Gentiles who do not have the law naturally do the things of the law, they are a law to themselves. » In the same way, in Homily V on Romans, he interprets the same words of Paul: « Conscience and rational thought (λογισμός) suffice as law; by these, again, the Apostle shows that God made man sufficient (αὐταρκη) for choosing the truth and fleeing vice... He is condemned not by a positive law, which he does not know, but by natural reasonings alone. » Theodoret, Oecumenius and Theophylact follow Chrysostom in their own way. Theophylact comments on Romans II. 12–15: « The Greeks sinned without law, that is, without the instruction which is from the law.... they do the things of the law naturally, that is, persuaded by reasonings which are from nature (τοῖς ἐκ φύσεως λογισμοῖς)... not writing the letter but the works (what the law commands) engraved on their hearts, and having conscience and natural thoughts in place of law, as witness to what is good and honourable. » Cyril of Alexandria (against Julian, book III, T. VI. p. 108) repels the objection of the apostate Julian, that the God of the Christians once had no providence towards the Gentiles, with this same testimony of Paul: « For he also showed himself to be God of the Gentiles, through implanted laws (δια των εμφυτων νομων) most fully.... If he were God and Creator of the Jews only, and not of the Gentiles also, how would those who do not have the law be a law to themselves, arriving there by implanted guidances (εμφυτοις παιδαγωγιαις)? For nature by its own power (αὐτομάτως)⁴ is rich in the knowledge of every good (of natural good, indeed, and considered by the physical power of nature itself), this too having been obtained by the nods of the Creator. » We add St Basil, Homily IX on the Hexaemeron, nn. 3. 4, who, although he does not there explain this Apostolic text, nevertheless states most clearly the very matter now chiefly in question. For among a few lines he repeats four times that, as it is in our power to shun physical evil, so also to know moral good and evil, to approve the one and disapprove the other, is ready to us « from nature itself, not from teaching and instruction given by men; from the law of nature, which we need not learn; without discipline and doctrine (οὐκ ἐκ διδασκαλίας ἀνθρωπῶν, ἀλλ' ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς φύσεως. αὐτοδιδάκτῳ τῆς φύσεως νόμῳ. ἀδίδακτος ἐκκλησία τοῦ κακοῦ): just as no discipline teaches us to hate sickness, but of our own accord we turn away from what causes discomfort.

The Latins are in complete agreement with the Greeks. Tertullian adv. Marcion. l. V. c. 13. proves from Rom. II. that it is the same God who created nature, the God of the Old Testament who gave the law, and the God of the New Testament, whose is the gospel: « if God will judge the secrets of men, both of those who have sinned under the law and of those who are without law, because these also do not know the law, and by nature do the things of the law; certainly that God will judge, whose are both the law and nature itself, which is a likeness of law for those ignorant of the law. » The same author, de coron. milit. c. 6: « You have that common law of God in the public of the world, in the natural tablets, to which even the Apostle is wont to appeal... so that, when he says to the Romans that the nations by nature do the things of the law, he suggests both a natural law and a legal nature. » See⁵ and Hilary in Ps. 118. litt. 15. n. 11; Ambrose ep. 73. ad Iren. and l. de fuga saec. c. 3. n. 15, where from the text of the Apostle he declares the natural law to be « that which is not perceived by any reading, but is expressed in each person from a certain flowing fount of nature and drawn in by human minds; » and « first, he says, nature itself is the teacher of good work. » Gaudentius of Brescia (Serm. VIII. in Exod. p. 298. ed. Brix. 1738.), apart from the law of commandment « which God is known to have commanded before Moses by words alone, » and the law of the letter first given through Moses, distinguishes the law of nature from this same text of Paul. « The natural law is that, he says, by which the nations, not having the law of the letter, naturally do the things of the law, because the nature of the rational soul, so that it perceives its creator, so that it does not harm its neighbour, so that it does not do what it does not want to suffer, understands by a certain natural law; whence every man is inexcusable who either denies his author or does evil, which he does not fail to know through the law of nature to be evil.» St Jerome ad Algas. ep. 121. q. 8. T. I. p. 866; in Ez. XXIX. T. V. p. 353; in Matth. T. VII. p. 178. clearly understands in the place of Paul not only the faithful but all nations, and among these all men who have come to the use of reason. « This law, which is written in the heart, embraces all nations, and there is no man who does not know this law. » Only infancy is excepted, he says, and it must be understood in the way that Paul says in Rom. VII: « I indeed lived once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived. » There is no need to speak of Sedulius and Primasius on this passage. The former almost copies the commentary of Origen; the latter, he says, holds the nations to be inexcusable although they are without the (positive) law, « because every man in conscience blushes at sin and rejoices at a good deed. »

Among recent theologians and interpreters who teach that the Apostle is to be understood either solely, or at least also, of unbelievers and of the law made manifest by the light of reason without external revelation, I shall name some out of innumerable others, whom I have compared more carefully: besides Cajetan, whom alone Estius and the anonymous author cite, the Thomists Dominic Soto, De iustitia et iure, book I, q. 4, and his commentary on Romans, in h. l.; Catharinus in h. l.; Cardinal Gotti, De statu purae naturae, q. 11, dub. 2, §. 1, n. 5; De lege naturali, q. 3, dub. 1, §. 1, n. 2; the Scotists Andreas Vega, opusc. De iustificatione, ad finem; Claude Frassen, Scot. Academ. T. IV, De gratia, Tract. II, q. 3, p. 498; Bernardus a Piconio in h. l.; the Sorbonnists Duvallius, De legibus, q. 3, a. 1 and 4; Gamachaeus, in 1-2, q. 94; De lege naturali, c. 1 and 3; Grandin, De gratia, q. 1, c. 2, a. 1, sect. 1 and 2; Tournely, De gratia, q. 4, a. 1, concl. 1, part 2; Calmetus in h. l.; and then others: Toledo in h. l.; Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, book V, c. 9; Suarez, who disputes this at length, De gratia, book I, c. 8, n. 20 ff.; Ripalda, in his very ample demonstration against the articles of Baius, T. III, De ente supernaturali, especially disp. XX, sect. 3; Cornelius a Lapide, Benedict Pererius, Tirinus in h. l.; the versions of Scripture with annotations, published with the approval of the Holy See: the Polish of Wujek, the Italian of Archbishop Martini, the German of Allioli; and the many Catholic interpreters of our own age, Kistemaker, Klee, Reithmaier, Adalbert Maier, Bisping, etc., in h. l.

I shall transcribe the words of Dominic Soto, theologian of Trent, because they are both excellent and contain certain theological principles necessary for rightly understanding the opinions of the Fathers. On Romans II. 14 he speaks thus: Paul treats of the Gentiles, « since they kept the law, which they bore carved in their minds by natural judgement alone, no less diligently than the Jews kept that which they had received expressed on tablets. He says, therefore, that when the Gentiles, who do not have the law —namely by hearing it from God, for which reason they were held lawless by the Jews—, naturally do the things of the law, you are not to understand by this the works of the law, whether judicial or ceremonial, which God had revealed peculiarly to that people above nature... but understand the precepts of the decalogue and the other moral precepts, with which nature itself has instituted and also obliged the whole human race. They, he says, who do these things naturally, are themselves a law to themselves, that is, they bear within themselves the law impressed; which law he had said long before (ch. I of this epistle) was revealed to them also by God through the things which have been made, so that the Jews might not be proud, that there should be no other law divinely revealed apart from their own; although he has also set forth these moral precepts more clearly to the Jews through the written law than to the Gentiles through the light of nature. But this assertion of Paul raises a difficulty, since it seems to favour the Pelagians, who teach that man can naturally fulfil the commands of the law. We can wipe away this difficulty by saying that Paul here asserts only this: that man can naturally fulfil the law as regards the substance of works which are morally good; but not as regards the intention of the one commanding, that they be meritorious before God. For this does not exceed their powers, as we have disputed in book I, De nat. et grat., where we also explained how the first parents, in integral nature, could naturally fulfil all the precepts as regards the substance of the work; but we, in fallen nature, not all but some, although both they and we can do none of them meritoriously without grace. And therefore he does not say here that the Gentiles naturally do all things, but certain things which are of the law. I indeed judge this exposition to be so far from reprehensible that, when understood, I consider it necessary. » Soto then brings forward a double interpretation of Augustine, of which we shall speak a little later, and a double interpretation of St Thomas likewise derived from Augustine: of these, one says that the Apostle's discourse is about the execution of the law, but that nature is understood as restored by grace; the other affirms that the comparison is only between the natural knowledge of the Gentiles and the knowledge of the Jews from revelation. « Namely, that the light of nature had given the same to the Gentiles of old that the law gave to the Jews, that is, for judging between right and wrong, although in the written law the precepts were more explicit than in the law of nature. » Finally Soto concludes that the exposition is to be preferred in which not only knowledge is compared with knowledge, but at the same time the execution of the law is treated: « yet in this sense, that they were able to do naturally the things of the law, that is, to do the precepts as regards the substance of the works; and therefore he did not say, they naturally fulfil the law; but, they naturally do the things of the law: which, if they had done, or were doing, God then came to their aid by special help, illuminating their minds with a higher light (the grace of faith), by which they could be received into friendship with God. »

This is in substance the same opinion as that of all the other theologians whom I have named: they teach, without controversy, that the Gentiles in Paul are to be understood either solely, or at least directly and principally, as unbelievers; that the knowledge of the law, in opposition to positive revelation, is knowledge through the light of reason; and that the execution of the things of the law is either the observance of certain moral precepts through natural powers, or observance through the help of grace, which goes before faith and prepares for it. For it is not right to affirm that unbelievers, before the grace of faith, lack all the helps of grace for doing those things which are of the natural law; nay, without Semipelagian error it cannot be denied that under the help of supernatural grace those acts are performed which are a direct and positive preparation for receiving faith.⁶.

It remains that we examine the doctrine of Augustine and of certain other Doctors whom Estius cites, as though they had taught without controversy that the Gentiles who do not have the law are, in the text of the Apostle, the faithful alone; from which the anonymous author, in his usual way, then concludes that, according to the opinion of Augustine and the rest, the Apostle ascribes to the Gentiles no other knowledge of the natural law than that which comes from a presupposed revelation.

Augustine treats of this testimony of Paul, Rom. II. 14. 15, in two places against the Pelagians: On the spirit and the letter, ch. 26 ff., nn. 43–49; Against Julian, book IV, ch. 3, nn. 23–25. In both passages, under two different hypotheses, he says the words of Paul are to be understood in different ways. If it is granted to the Pelagians that Paul speaks of the observance of the law unto salvation and meritorious of eternal life, then the Gentiles can be none but the faithful, who do the things of the law, nature being reformed by grace. But if, he goes on, « they are not yet to be counted among those whom the grace of Christ justifies, but rather among those of the impious who do not yet truly worship the true God, yet whose certain deeds we rightly and deservedly praise, » then even so the dignity and necessity of His grace for every saving work will be established; because those works, although honest, nevertheless differ wholly from the supernatural works done through grace, are not on the way to salvation, and certainly are not meritorious of eternal life. Augustine readily concedes, moreover, that unbelievers in this way can both know and do some things of the law; and, no less than the other Fathers, he locates the principle of knowledge solely in rational nature. « However slight the works of the law naturally implanted, they would not be found in those who have not received the law, except from the remnants of the image of God, » and « they have the work of the law written in their hearts, that is, it is not wholly effaced, what was impressed there through the image of God when they were created. » That this image of God is the soul insofar as it is rational is established elsewhere, and Augustine declares it plainly in the same place: « the image of God... which impiety had not wholly abolished; for there remained surely that which the soul of man cannot be unless rational. »

Prosper (against the Collator, ch. 10, nn. 28–30, ed. Maur. in Appendix, T. X. Aug.) repeats the doctrine of his master Augustine in almost the same words. St Fulgentius, On the Incarnation and grace, ch. 25, nn. 48–54, indeed uses the former hypothesis of Augustine to refute the Pelagians: namely, that if the Gentiles keep the law so as to be justified, they cannot be unbelievers. But at the same time he teaches expressly, ib. nn. 50. 52. 54, that without the grace of faith the knowledge of the true God and of the moral law, and some observance of it, can exist; and this natural law, he says, God inscribed on hearts « by founding nature », that is, through the light of reason itself, since the soul of man cannot be other than rational. Of Ambrosiaster there is no need to say much; for his commentary, woven from various opinions, interprets the words of Paul now of unbelievers, « to whom it will profit nothing before God to abstain from contrary things unless they have received faith in God, » and of whom he says: « nature itself by its own judgment acknowledges its creator, not through law but through the reason of nature; for the work sees the workman in itself: » at the same time he applies the words of the Apostle also to Christian faithful.⁷.

A few more theologians cited by the opponents must still be mentioned. As to the question whether the Gentiles who naturally do the things of the law are to be understood as faithful or as unbelievers, Lombard and St Thomas, in their commentary on this passage, propose both hypotheses of St Augustine. But as to the matter itself, with which we are chiefly concerned, namely the power of human reason to know the natural law, they leave no doubt at all. In the commentary itself, on the words of Paul they naturally do the things of the law, St Thomas explains: « namely, as regards the moral precepts, which are of the dictate of natural reason, in which is the image of God. » Moreover, the teaching of the Angelic Doctor is very well known, by which he supposes that the faculty of reason can attain some knowledge of the moral law, not only without the revelation of the natural law itself, which is our present concern, but even in an abnormal state outside human society. « If someone, he says, brought up in the woods or among brute animals, were to follow the guidance of natural reason in the pursuit of good and the avoidance of evil, it must most certainly be held that God would reveal to him, either by inward inspiration, the things necessary to be believed, or would direct to him some preacher of faith » De verit. q. 14, a. 11, ad 1; 3. dist. 25. q. 2. a. 1. sol. 1. ad 2.

The opinion of Hugh of St Cher is altogether the same⁸, as is that of Hervaeus (among the works of Anselm) and of Denis the Carthusian, to whom the adversaries also appealed. On that saying of Paul, they will perish without law, Hugh asks why the Gentiles, since they do not have the law, are not excused for transgressing the law? The answer comes down to this: the Gentiles, although they are destitute of revelation, nevertheless have the light of reason by which they can know the natural law. Hugh presses the same opinion further, namely that one who had been perpetually exiled from human society is not excused either: « because he had natural reason, and if he had done according to it what lay in him, the Lord would have bestowed grace »⁹. Hervaeus¹⁰ among many other things says that the natural law according to Paul is that which « natural reason has written in the heart of the Gentiles; » and the Carthusian: « they are a law to themselves, that is, their own reason is for them in place of law. »

From the testimonies adduced, I think it is clear that the holy Fathers, both Latin and Greek, and the most weighty theologians, with great agreement, have constantly interpreted the testimony of the Apostle in such a way that: (1°) the Gentiles who do not have the law are understood as unbelievers, universally destitute of revelation; or, if they are at the same time comprehended as imbued with faith in the future Redeemer, then certainly directly and in the first intention, if it is lawful so to speak, are understood those to whom the law was made manifest not by positive revelation but by the light of reason alone. (2°) It is clear that among all those cited by Estius there is none who taught, with a definite opinion, that under the name of Gentiles in Romans II. 14. 15. only the faithful are to be understood, and that unbelievers, too, cannot be understood. (3°) Among all those cited by Estius there is none who denied that from the testimony of the Apostle it can be demonstrated that human reason has the power of knowing the natural law without revelation; most of them, indeed, most plainly acknowledged and vindicated this opinion as one proposed by the Apostle.

Let judgment now be passed on the assertion of the anonymous Doctor, that only some few, together with Cajetan, have understood the Gentiles of the cited place of the Apostle to be unbelievers; and then on his accusation against our doctrine: « Among those few there is no one who expressly teaches that Gentiles, alien to the faith of Christ, can by themselves alone understand the obligation by which, absolutely and under every hypothesis¹¹, every rational creature, always and everywhere, of whatever kind, is bound; moreover, among those few I do not believe that even one will be found who in express words wholly excludes external instruction; these things the distinguished author has added of his own. » Thus that distinguished Doctor, in the work cited, p. 46.

On external instruction in general, insofar as it pertains to the connatural unfolding of human reason, we have treated in another place (Append. Tract. de Trad.); nor does that question belong here, although we have seen St Thomas and Hugh assume, even for the abnormal state of one lacking all connatural instruction, a sufficient use of reason for some knowledge of moral good and evil. External instruction, without which, we say, on the testimony of the Apostle, no rational knowledge of the law and of moral obligation is attained, is the divine revelation of the law itself and the instruction concerning this revelation of the law. With this again premised, the opinions of the Fathers and theologians in the places cited above are to be compared with the assertion of the anonymous writer. He says: no one expressly teaches that Gentiles, alien to the faith of Christ, can by themselves alone understand the obligation of the moral law; not even one expressly excludes external instruction. The Fathers and theologians speak otherwise: «The knowledge of the law which we learn from ourselves (αὐτοδίδακτος γνώσις); the law which we have no need to learn; which conscience, anticipating positive revelation, teaches (προλαβὸν συνειδὸς); conscience and rational reflection take the place of the law; the Gentile is condemned not by the (positive) law, but by the reasonings of nature alone» (ἐκ τῶν τῆς φύσεως λογισμῶν μόνων) Chrysostom. «They come to knowledge of the law by the guidance implanted in them, by the proper power of nature» (αὐτοματῶς) Cyril. «Without the instruction which comes from the law; by the reasons which come from nature; natural thoughts take the place of the law» Theophylact. «The knowledge of moral good and evil is from nature itself, not from the teaching and instruction of men; from the law of nature, which there is no need to learn; apart from teaching» Basil. «A law which is perceived not by any reading, but is expressed in each man by the flowing spring of nature and is drawn in by human minds» Ambrose. « The guidance of natural reason in the desire for good and the flight from evil could follow even one reared in the woods, and so such a one is not excused » Hugh of St Cher and St Thomas. « Moral precepts are given, by which nature itself both instructed and also bound the whole human race; the law which the Gentiles bore written in the mind by the natural dictate alone; the law which is revealed by God through the things that have been made; God illumined the Gentiles in moral matters by the light of nature, and the Jews more clearly still through the written law; the light of nature gave the Gentiles the same thing the law gave the Jews, although with less clarity » Domingo de Soto. « The Gentiles naturally do the things that are of the law, that is, without any revealed and positive law » alius Conc. Trid. theologus Vega in Defens.Conc.Trid.l.XI.c.10. « Those (in Paul) are understood as men using natural reason alone, even though they do not have faith » Suarez l. c. n. 20; infideles, who destitute of external law have only the internal and natural law as their guide » Ripalda l. c. n. 33. etc.

What was put forward against our doctrine, or rather, as Stapleton and Suarez call it, and as it is plain from what has been said that it should be called, against the common interpretation of the Apostolic testimony, on the authority of an extrinsic source, I think has been sufficiently exposed. There remains a very brief examination of the things that are objected from the context of Paul itself; we can dispatch these in a few words, because the foundations by which the truth of our interpretation is demonstrated we have already laid down in the preceding thesis.

II. The arguments of Estius, which are said « to render it very probable and almost certain » that Paul, at Rom. II. 14. 15., speaks only of the faithful, come down to these. 1° Paul here commends the Gentiles for observance of the law; but this cannot be understood of unbelievers without producing a contradiction, for the Apostle often accuses unbelievers of their crimes, both in chapter I of this epistle and elsewhere. 2° The discourse here is about observance of the law such as is recalled in vv. 7. 10. 13. 26. 29; and that observance is full and meritorious of eternal life. 3° The Gentiles who do not have the law, and yet do the things of the law, must be understood in the same way as, in the verses cited, the Greek who works good, the uncircumcised who fulfils the law, and the Jew who is so in secret and circumcised in heart, whose praise is not from men but from God, are praised. 4° In the immediate context, just as accusing thoughts are referred to the guilt of eternal punishment, so defending thoughts on the day when God will judge are referred to the meritorious works of eternal life. But all these things belong only to the faithful. Therefore the Gentiles of vv. 14. 15. cannot be understood except as the faithful. The answer to these objections is ready, from the explanation of the context which we gave in the preceding thesis.

Ad 1ᵘᵐ: even if it were true that Paul here commends the Gentiles for observance of the law, no one will say that all, or the greater part of men among the Gentiles, or those who are supposed to be commended, are praised for the observance of the whole moral law; so, even with such a commendation admitted, the gravest crimes among the Gentiles, condemned by the Apostle in other places, are not thereby denied. But on examining the context not even this is true: the aim of Paul in these two verses, 14 and 15, is not to praise the Gentiles for observing the law; for his sole aim is to show that the Gentiles, because they do not have the revealed law, are not altogether lawless; but just as the Jews are to be judged according to the law, which they have manifested not only by the light of reason but also by the word of God, so he says that the Gentiles too have the law manifested by the light of reason, and are to be judged according to it. Now this manifestation of the law made to the Gentiles the Apostle shows by this argument: if at any time they do things which are commanded in the law, they do them understanding and perceiving their obligation; but since they cannot know this from revelation, inasmuch as it has not been made to them, but only from their rational nature (« for when the Gentiles who have no law do by nature (natura) the things of the law »), by that very observance of the law, however it occurs, they show formally, as of the law, the work of the law, while they do not have the law itself written on tablets, but have it written in their hearts, and they are a law to themselves by their rational nature; how this is to be understood we have explained above.

To the second and third: we deny that the opposition between those who have the law and the Gentiles who, not having the law, by nature do the things of the law, has the same sense as that other opposition, between Jews and Greeks, circumcision and uncircumcision. For this latter opposition, in the books of the New Testament, is drawn solely from difference of people and origin, not from difference of religion, so that even all Christians are divided into Jews and Greeks; that is, into those who are Jews by race and those who are descended from another people (see the distinguished P. Patrizi, in Evangel. l. I. c. 1. n. 68.). But that other opposition no longer regards only a difference of people; it is expressly placed in a difference of religion: some have the divine revelation of the law, while others have, for the manifestation of the law, only rational nature, and so they are a law to themselves. Hence also the fact that those Gentiles who do not have the law are sometimes, and in some (ὅταν ποιῇ), said « to do by nature the things of the law » differs greatly from the working of good, for which glory, honour and peace are promised to Jew and Greek, and from the keeping and fulfilment of the law, for which praise is given, not by men but by God, to the uncircumcised (that is, those not circumcised in the flesh) and to those circumcised in heart and in spirit: vv. 7. 10. 26. 27. 29. The same distinction holds between « Gentiles, if at any time they naturally do the things of the law », and those of whom v. 13 says: « the doers of the law will be justified », if justification (as seems more probable) is to be taken in the positive sense of supernatural justice, and not only negatively of naturally just acts, which therefore do not deserve punishment. For in this verse, where « the doers of the law who will be justified » are named, the discourse concerns not those who do not have the law but expressly the hearers of the law, and therefore those who have the law revealed. But the clause at vv. 14. 15., where the discourse is of the Gentiles who do not have the law, coheres with the words of v. 12: « whoever have sinned without law will perish without law »; for this very point, how they will perish without law, is declared in vv. 14–16, namely that although they are without revealed law, they are not simply without law.

From these things it is now plain also what the answer is to the fourth objection. For it is false that the Apostle presents thoughts defending men on the day of judgment in such a way as to show them worthy of eternal life. Accusing and defending thoughts are in the present life, while reason and conscience present some actions as evil and absolutely forbidden, others as good and commanded. When, therefore, a man acts against or in accordance with this dictate of conscience, the judgment of conscience (the prior judgment) will hold on the day of judgment, so that the righteous judge is about to condemn or approve those actions which conscience has beforehand condemned or approved as morally evil or good. It does not follow from this, however, that as he will judge the gravely evil worthy of eternal damnation, so he will judge the good, in whatever way, worthy of eternal life. « But if those who naturally do the things of the law are not yet to be counted among those whom the grace of Christ justifies, but rather among those of whom, even among impious men who do not truly worship the true God, certain deeds we read of, or know of, or hear of, which, according to the rule of justice, we not only cannot blame but rightly and deservedly praise... what will accusing thoughts profit them on the day when the Lord shall judge the secrets of hearts, except perhaps that they be punished more gently?... nor will it be idle in the judgment of God that one sinned more or less than another in that very damnable impiety » S. Aug. de spiritu et litt. n. 48. Cf. S. Hieronym. in Ezech. XXIX. T. V. p. 353; Origen. in Rom. l. II. n. 7.

Therefore, as much by the authority of the common interpretation in which the Fathers and theologians agree as by the examination of the context which we carried out in the preceding thesis, it remains certain that the Apostle sets forth the light of reason itself as the principle by which the obligation of the natural law is known, without any positive revelation of the law being presupposed, either as the sole manifestation of the natural law or as a condition without which reason could not arrive at its knowledge.

I confess that this whole thesis may seem a sort of παρεργον (a by-work). For it could have been drawn from the treatise on grace, that this rational knowledge of the law was declared certain by the Apostle; but we did not wish to allow the very foundation on which the ethical argument rests, proposed in the Scriptures for the rational power of knowing the existence of God — namely the rational knowledge of the law and of moral obligation — to be handed down by anyone of however obscure a name as « the opinion of some few only, » to which, it is said, the greater part of the Fathers and theologians, and the very context of the Apostle, are opposed.

The Scriptures, asserting a rational knowledge of the existence of God from the works of God, in no way presuppose as a necessary condition the tradition of positive doctrine concerning God, or faith.

« The Scriptures assert both the faculty of knowing, and the fact of knowing, that God exists through the light of reason from the works of God, in such a way that they in no way presuppose a positive revelation handed down by tradition as a condition without which human reason could not reach that knowledge; nor do they teach only the recognition of a truth believed through faith, as some more recent writers interpret, but a manifestation of God through creatures sufficient for rational knowledge is taught in those same Scriptures. »

No hermeneutical principle drawn from the texts and their context, and none derived from an understanding of Christian antiquity, underlies the interpretation of Scripture which we reject in this thesis; the whole of it is brought in by certain learned men, lest the philosophical system to which they have attached themselves suffer any harm. There is no room here to set out at length that system, which is manifold and varied in itself; the points which we have here to refute come back to this view: the truths of the moral and theological order, either all of them or at least those which they call fundamental, and among these, by name, the existence of God, can indeed be received and believed by human reason, because they were first revealed by positive revelation from God to man and afterwards propagated through instruction and tradition to the whole human race; but men deprived of this instruction and tradition would perpetually and necessarily be ignorant of those truths. For those learned men deny that human reason, by its own inborn power, can come to know those truths with certainty from other truths likewise known in advance by the innate light, and therefore they deny that the existence of God can be known from the previously known¹ existence of this universe. When, however, they fall upon the doctrine of Scripture proposed in the preceding theses II. III., they try to persuade themselves and others that in the Scriptures the knowledge of God is presupposed as received by tradition, and that the one thing taught there is that reason, already informed by faith, or at least, if not supernatural, certainly natural, can find in creatures the confirmation and recognition of the truth believed. Yet the testimonies set forth above do not in any way admit this interpretation.

1° It is proved by a negative argument, that in the present matter, and considering the manner in which rational knowledge of the existence of God is declared in the Scriptures, it is in fact an argument excluding the necessity of tradition supposed by the adversaries. In no place where there is discussion of the knowledge of God's existence from creatures is there any trace or any mention of a necessary positive revelation or tradition; but always there are posited, as the necessary and sufficient elements for acquiring that knowledge, on one side the rational nature, on the other the universe as the medium through which God manifests himself and from which he is known². And so, through the consideration by which reason is occupied with this visible universe, God's manifestation is said to be completed in second act: « what is known (or knowable) of God is manifest in them » (φανερὸν ἐστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς). Then the cause is stated by which it is made manifest: « for God manifested it to them » (ἐφανέρωσε); next the mode and elements of the manifestation are described: « for his invisible things are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made » (τοῖς ποιήμασι νοούμενα καθοράται). Visible things are the medium by whose understanding the invisible things of God come to be understood, and are beheld by the mind. Rom. I. Likewise, in the book of Wisdom a general principle is laid down: « the Creator can be seen by man » (ὁ γενεσιουργὸς αὐτῶν θεωρεῖται); the medium of knowledge is defined: « from the greatness and beauty of creatures » (ἐκ μεγέθους καὶ καλλονῆς κτισμάτων); the mode of knowledge is added: to be known by concluding from creatures to the Creator (ἀναλόγως θεωρεῖται). From this general principle men who do not know the Creator are rebuked, « who have not understood him who is³. » Whence could and should they have understood? « From the good things that are seen » (ἐκ τῶν ὁρωμένων ἀγαθῶν)⁴; « attending to the works » (τοῖς ἔργοις προσέχοντες). In Acts XIV. 16 Paul expressly recalls God's testimony about himself to all nations, but restricts it to the testimony of deeds, to the testimony through natural benefits: « he did not leave himself without witness, doing good from heaven, giving rains » etc.

But a) it is incredible that the inspired writers, in so careful a declaration of the manner of knowing God, should have enumerated all the other things which, on the hypothesis of the adversaries, cannot even have a place without that presupposed knowledge through tradition, and yet never have indicated this one thing, which on that hypothesis is given to all and is very easy and by itself alone sufficient, when they were speaking of men's guilt in not knowing the true God, if they had judged that traditional knowledge to be the foundation and the necessary condition for recognising God from creatures. b) It is incredible that the sacred writers, if they had been of the adversaries' opinion, should have referred the whole crime of the Gentiles, by which they were inexcusable, to neglect and abuse of recognition from creatures, with no mention made of neglect and abuse of knowledge from the revelation handed down. c) It is still more incredible that Paul, who in a way eagerly seeks out God's testimony and manifestation (φανέρωσιν) to all the Gentiles, compared with God's testimony to the chosen people, should have neglected the testimony properly so called, which the adversaries suppose to have been the foundation of the knowledge of God for all the Gentiles, and should have appealed solely to the metaphorical testimony of creatures.

Nor can it be said that the sacred writers, in declaring the manner in which the Gentiles could and should have known God from creatures, passed over in silence the revelation about God's existence received by the Gentiles through tradition as the necessary foundation of recognition from creatures, on the ground that the impossibility of knowledge from creatures without the presupposed traditional faith was self-evident and so obvious to all that that faith was presupposed as the foundation in every discourse that treats of rational knowledge from creatures. For how can this condition of human reason be imagined so well known that it could have been tacitly presupposed even in a careful description of rational knowledge, when it was unknown, until these very recent times, to all the Gentiles of whom the Scriptures speak and all the faithful to whom they speak; and when the adversaries themselves, to whom this hypothesis is quite necessary in order to reconcile their opinion with the Scriptures, are accustomed to accuse, as the chief error of Gentile philosophy, the belief that by the light of reason alone one could arrive from the knowledge of visible things to the knowledge of invisible things?

2°. Proved by an excluding argument, by which in the Scriptures it is taught, through opposition, that the true God, although he was not made known to the Gentiles by positive revelation, could and should have been known by them through the light of reason. Already in Rom. I. Paul tacitly sets over against one another, for the Gentiles and for the Jews, the means of knowing God: manifestation through creatures and immediate revelation. For since he has the purpose of showing that both Jews and Gentiles are guilty and inexcusable, in both cases he assumes as the foundation the knowledge of God, namely that, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God. The knowledge of God among the Jews did not need to be proved; the Apostle assumes it as perfectly well known, because God had manifested himself to them by positive revelation; but what needed proof was the knowledge, or the possibility, and therefore the duty, of knowing God among the Gentiles. He proves this possibility and this duty by the fact that a manifestation of God was made not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. The question is asked: what sort of manifestation is this? The Apostle answers: to the Jews he manifested himself by positive revelation, which is taken as known; to the Gentiles by the light of reason as the acting principle, through creatures as the immediate object of knowledge: « God manifested it to them; for his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made. » The adversaries answer the same question: God manifested himself to the Jews by the positive Mosaic revelation, and to the Gentiles by positive revelation made to Adam and derived to them by tradition, without which there is no manifestation of God in creatures to human reason. But let them allow us to keep the words of the Apostle, and not substitute for them other words, not from the Apostle, but taken from a preconceived philosophical system. Neither here nor elsewhere in Scripture, where the knowledge of God among the Jews and among the Gentiles is treated, is there any trace of an opposition between the Mosaic revelation and a primitive revelation; but what is treated is manifestation mediated through creatures, in opposition to immediate manifestation through revelation, however and by whatever herald that revelation was made. Where, therefore, to this positive revelation there is opposed another manifestation to the Gentiles, by which « the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, » the former is not included in the latter, but is excluded by force of the opposition itself.

The same opposition is expressly set down at Acts XIV. 16, compared with 14; and XVII. 26. 27., compared with 30: between the testimony of God, which he gave concerning himself among men in creatures, that they should seek God, and the positive revelation by which the same God, living, creator of heaven and earth, is proclaimed. In almost the same way is opposed the knowledge of the wisdom of God shining forth in this created universe through rational wisdom, and the knowledge of divine things through preaching, which demands faith before knowledge, and which therefore seems foolishness to the wise, who themselves have become fools; 1 Cor. I. 21: « For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe⁵. »

Finally, the opposition is explicit and most express in Rom. II., between the knowledge of the moral law through nature and through positive revelation, as has been abundantly demonstrated in the preceding theses. In the law, however, the first of all, and the foundation of the whole law, is that: « I am the Lord your God. » Nay, even considering the moral law in general, while the promulgation which, formally as inducing obligation, is declared to be by nature is set in opposition to revelation, by that very fact the manifestation of God is no less declared to be by nature, in the same opposition to revelation; because in the manifestation of moral obligation to human reason there is already implicitly contained the manifestation of God as lawgiver, in the way that was said above.

3°. Proof from the distinction between the first, confused knowledge of God, which arises of itself, as if natural to human reason, and the more distinct knowledge which can be acquired by more careful consideration. This distinction, which the Fathers declare more fully, as we shall see in what follows, is already indicated in the Scriptures, whose teaching we are now examining. But the term knowledge of God applies not only to the more cultivated knowledge, but also to that primitive, confused notion of God derived to human reason from the consideration of creatures. According to the doctrine of St Paul set forth at the Areopagus of the Athenians, Acts XVII. 26–28., first of all this universe, in its physical and historical course, has been arranged by God for the whole human race as a term, from which for all there arises the inquiry after God. This is intrinsic to the ordered course of this world; this is its proximate and, as it were, concrete end, so that human reason, attending to these works (being already in possession of itself), seeks God: « he made of one all the race of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times (the physical course) and the bounds of their habitation (the historical course), to seek God » (cf. above p. 41. sq.). This inquiry of the maker from the things made, as Tertullian puts it, already includes some confused and obscure notion of God, and is evidently the first arising knowledge of God, which presupposes no other antecedent. But this very knowledge is said by Paul to have arisen from the consideration of creatures in their ordered course. Therefore, according to the philosophy, if one may so speak, which is apostolic and revealed in the Scriptures, this universe has been ordered by God for the human race so as to awaken that first knowledge of God, though still obscure and confused, by which men are led to further inquiry, without any other knowledge of the existence of God from tradition being presupposed to this first knowledge as a sine qua non condition and as a necessary foundation.

That first obscure and confused idea and knowledge of God, arising from attention to creatures, is common to all who use reason; and so from its very universality it is understood to arise, as it were, spontaneously and without deliberation. But in further inquiry and refinement the deliberate application of reason is now required, which pertains to the second stage of the knowledge of God. Man can and is bound, by the right use of reason, which is the image of God, to cultivate that primitive knowledge of the true God, arising spontaneously from the very consideration of visible things; but in this deliberate inquiry he can also fail through his own fault. « If haply they might feel after him, or find him, although he be not far from each one of us; for in him we live, and move, and are; as some also of your own poets have said: for we are also his offspring » vv. 27. 28; cf. Sap. XIII. 6–9.⁶ Man can therefore, because it is obscure and confused, apply the primitive idea of God, arising spontaneously from creatures, to things which are not God: « the notion of the divine being is naturally present in all⁷, but sin is committed through ignorance of what is worshipped » Gregor. Nyss. de beatitud. or. V. T. I. p. 801; Tertull. contr. Marc. I, I. c. 11. This happens only through abuse of reason, while men, as St Jerome says (in Tit. I. 10.), « pervert the good seed of minds, which naturally has the knowledge of God, by empty persuasion, » and therefore are inexcusable Rom. I. 20⁸; Sap. XIII. 8. Yet even in this perversion the primitive and spontaneous idea of the true God remains indestructible. For, on the one hand, the soul was made the image of God by the natural light of reason itself, and first (not in time but in finality) for knowing the truth of God; on the other hand, this universe is the natural manifestation of the Creator to the rational soul; this is the cause why that idea and knowledge of God both arises as it were spontaneously and without deliberation, and cannot be exterminated from a soul that uses reason. In accordance with this, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian and Lactantius bear witness that the knowledge of the true God, first conceived, remains even in the very worshippers of idols. « The soul, though hemmed in by wicked institutions ... though made a handmaid of false gods, yet when it comes to itself, as from drunkenness, from sleep, or from some sickness, and recovers its health, names God by this name alone, because it is proper to the true God » Tertull. Apolog. c. 17. Cf. Origen. de Princip. l. IV. c. 36. Hence it is also understood how not only theoretical knowledge and practical denial of the true God, but also the primitive, undeliberated, confused notion and its deliberate false application, can exist together. « They hold the truth of God in injustice: because that which is known of God is manifest in them »⁹; « when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God... and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man; » « they did not like to have God in their knowledge » Rom. I. 18. 21. 28.

4°. Proof from the agreement of the Catholic understanding. Those who interpret the words of Scripture with which we have so far been dealing, and especially Rom. I. 19. sqq., in such a way that there is no faculty of human reason (sufficiently explained) to know God from the consideration of creatures, unless a positive revelation of the existence of God, first made to man and preserved through tradition among all the Gentiles, is presupposed: these are certainly opposed by the sense and consensus of Christian antiquity in understanding these testimonies of the Scriptures. The opposition remains almost the same, whether those more recent writers say that, from the innate character of human reason in its present state, no idea can be formed by it and no conception of supersensible things, and of God by name, can be grasped except from revelation and positive teaching about God and supersensible things; or whether, by some circumlocution, they assert that the idea and knowledge of God must be presupposed as already conceived, as a necessary element for the sufficient explanation of human reason, and that therefore reason, as not yet in possession of itself, cannot arrive at the knowledge of God unless this very knowledge of God is instilled into it through external revelation and instruction. For it is wholly certain that the Fathers and the Doctors of the Schools after them understood the words of St Paul in such a way as to assert for human reason the faculty of knowing God from the manifestation alone which shines forth in creatures, and not merely the faculty of receiving, from primitive revelation and tradition, the knowledge of the existing God « by way of faith », as the adversaries say; which faith is then presupposed as the necessary foundation and condition, without which there could be no knowledge and demonstration of the existence of God from creatures.

We shall set out the doctrine of the Fathers in what follows; meanwhile let it suffice to have consulted, among the Greek interpreters, the chief of them, Chrysostom, who declares that the manifestation of God, by which the Apostle says that what is knowable of God was manifest among the Gentiles, consists wholly of deeds and works, expressly excluding from it the tradition of positive teaching. The holy Doctor asks: « What is that which is said: because what is known of God is manifest in them? » Then he declares the sense of this apostolic teaching thus: « God from the beginning placed the knowledge of himself in men.... And how is it plain, O Paul, that God placed the knowledge in them? Because, he says, what is known of him is manifest in them. But this is an assertion, not a demonstration. Do you rather prove to me and show that the knowledge of God was manifest to them, and that they neglected it of their own accord. Whence then was it manifest? Did he send a voice to them? By no means; but he did what could draw them more than a voice: he set created things in the midst, so that the learned and the unlearned, the Scythian and the barbarian, by sight alone, perceiving the beauty of visible things, might rise up to God. Therefore he says: his invisible things from the creation of the world » etc. Chrysostom goes on to describe the greatness, beauty and order of creatures, and he says that this is « a voice crying more loudly than a trumpet, a preaching of the Creator, a great teaching set forth to the end that the Gentiles might know God » in Rom. hom. III. n. 2.¹⁰

One more of the Latin Fathers is to be set beside Chrysostom: St Augustine. « That God, he says, is a certain eternal life, unchangeable, understanding, wise, making others wise, some philosophers of this age also saw… For since they too saw, so far as it can be seen by man, the Creator through the creature, the Maker through the thing made, the Fashioner of the world through the world; the Apostle Paul is the witness, whom Christians certainly ought to believe…. But it might be said to him: whence, then, do those impious men hold the truth (that is, hold it, as St Augustine had explained a little earlier)? Did God speak to any of them? Did they receive a law, as the people of the Israelites did through Moses? Whence, then, do they hold the truth, even in their iniquity? Hear what follows, and he shows it. Because what is known of God, he says, is manifest in them; for God manifested it to them. Did he manifest it to those to whom he gave no law? Hear how he manifested it: for his invisible things are seen through the things that are made. Ask the world, the adornment of the heavens, etc. (he goes on with the enumeration of creatures)… ask all things, and see whether they do not, as it were with their own sense, answer you: God made us… What they found by curiosity (study), they lost by pride… Show, O Apostle, as you showed us whence they could arrive at the knowledge of God, because his invisible things through the things that are made are clearly seen, being understood; so now show how those who say they are wise have become fools…. You have found God and worship an idol… and what you found through the works of God, you lose through the works of man » Augast. sermo CXLI. n. 2. 3.

The Fathers therefore teach a) that it must be believed, on the testimony of the Apostle, that the Gentiles, at least the philosophers, « could arrive at the knowledge of God, » « God placed in them the knowledge of himself, » « they found the true God (by knowledge); » b) that they arrived at this knowledge not because the voice of God was present to them, not because God had spoken to any of them, not because they had received some positive law; but c) because « created things set in the midst are the voice, the preaching, the answer, the teaching of God, » so that from these they both could and ought to know the true God. Without ambiguity, therefore, the holy Fathers judged that the Apostle sets forth this visible universe to human reason as a manifestation of God, so that reason can, apart from and without the positive doctrine about God first revealed and preserved by tradition, and if other aids are lacking, is bound to know the true God from this natural manifestation alone.

5°. Declaration from the manner in which each of the two means of the manifestation of God stands: namely the tradition of the primitive revelation, and the abiding work of God the Creator, that is, the state and order of the created universe. The manifestation of God (that is, so that they might know God, for it is only of this manifestation that we now speak), made to the first men and to be propagated also to their posterity, was twofold: supernatural revelation through doctrine, and natural manifestation through creatures. Under the name of doctrine is here comprehended not only doctrine proposed from outside but also inner illumination, or knowledge infused either per se or per accidens, that is, supernatural either absolutely or as to the mode of communication; which doctrine, however, could not be propagated by the first men to their posterity except in some measure through external instruction. This means of the manifestation of God, revelation and doctrine about God and the divine attributes, to be propagated to posterity by instruction, was liable to corruption and perversion, not indeed in itself, but insofar as revealed doctrine, once handed down, could be effaced from men's minds, and in its place fictions and absurd doctrines about fabricated gods could be substituted. We know that this has indeed happened, and that throughout all nations there was propagated, by tradition and by public and private instruction, that theology which Varro calls fabulous and civil, distinct from physical or natural theology, which was cultivated by the wiser not from tradition but against the common tradition and popular instruction (cf. S. August. Civ.Dei. l. VI. et VII.).

The natural manifestation of God, insofar as it is considered objectively, is contained in the visible universe itself, and could neither be corrupted nor changed by man; therefore from the beginning it was present to human reason with the same sincerity. But human reason, whose use and abuse depend very much on the will, does not always stand in the same relation to it. As long as faith in the revealed doctrine about God handed down persists, and is preserved at least in some general notion, the revealed doctrine and the instruction drawn from revelation concerning God and the divine attributes both guard rational knowledge, which comes from the natural manifestations, against errors, and positively help and promote it;¹¹; whence it comes about that in this more fortunate condition, where manifestation and knowledge are joined from a twofold source, the powers and functions of reason considered by themselves and apart from the aid of revelation are not so easily distinguished. But in the other condition, where fictions about gods, who have nothing divine but only a false name, are substituted in place of the doctrine about God handed down by revelation, and this fictitious religion has been confirmed through long ages in public and private customs and institutions among all nations, that tradition of error received from ancestors and that instruction about most absurd gods and goddesses not only do not help reason but vehemently impede it in rightly estimating the natural manifestations of God.¹². Therefore, since in this corruption the obscure and confused idea and notion of the true divinity nonetheless persists, it must be ascribed not to the doctrine and instruction about those monstrous gods, but to the natural manifestation in creatures, which the light of reason apprehends as if of its own accord, as was declared a little before.

Thus the Fathers and the Christian Doctors teach that, not from the aid of the tradition of the Gentiles but against the hindrance of this tradition, through a natural and spontaneous apprehension of created things, there persists universally at least some confused idea and notion of the true God. « From the beginning of things, says Tertullian (cont. Marc. I. c. 10.), their Maker was discovered together with them, they having been brought forth for this very purpose, that God might be recognised… The greater multitude of the human race, not even possessing the name of Moses, nevertheless knows the God of Moses; even with so great a dominion of idolatry (the knowledge of the dominion of the true God) overshadowing, yet apart from that they call him God, as if by his own proper name, and God of gods….. God has testimonies in all this that we are and in which we are. » Lactantius speaks to the same effect (divin. instit. l. II. c. 8.). « Since to be wise, that is to seek the truth, is innate in all, those rob themselves of wisdom who, without any judgment, approve the discoveries of their ancestors and are led like cattle by others. » It is quite another thing that many of the Fathers are wont to say: that the Gentile philosophers, to cultivate the knowledge of God more perfectly, had the aiding doctrine of revelation, tasted from the sacred books; although the philosophers did not receive that doctrine « by way of faith », but by way of philosophy, insofar as they understood it by reason, and much less did they draw from it their first notion of God. Whatever you think about this, certainly in the cited places of Scripture, Rom. I., Sap. XIII., Act. XIV., XVII., the manifestation of God in creatures is regarded « while the dominion of idolatry overshadows »; and thus, with abstraction made, as it were, for reason considered in itself, its powers and the office of truly knowing God are asserted apart from the aid of revealed doctrine.