I've been wondering, in questions 91 and 95 of his Treatise on Law, does Thomas Aquinas give us a possible treatment of cultural and religious pluralism?
To set the stage I'll tell you about a bit of what goes on in the early questions of the treatise. Aquinas lays out the Eternal Law (God's reason), the Natural Law (the natural ordering of things on earth and presumably in the cosmos, which is where our own reason comes from, though our own reason is imperfect and requires the righting of God) and Divine Law (where God rights our wrongs, which comes essentially in the form of scripture). So, we obtain information on how to conduct ourselves through either the rough approximations provided in our reason by Natural Law, an expression of Eternal Law or by direct corrective command provided by Divine Law, also an expression of Eternal Law. (Question 90 - 91)
Now on to the meaty bits. In Question 91, Fifth Article, Aquinas addresses the assertion that there is only one divine law. He answers that over time, Divine Law, for the purposes of Eternal Law, may need to be made many. He points to the Apostle in Galatians 3:24-25 as having compared "the condition of the Old [Testament] to that of a child subject to a tutor, and the condition of the New [Testament] to an adult no longer subject to a tutor. Later in his reply to the first objection of the article he draws the comparison of the master of a household giving different directives to different members of the domain.
It seems clear that Aquinas is saying that Divine Law is being given according to the need of the people receiving it and that there is then, necessarily, more than one such law. Is only the Christian scripture divine or are other faiths' holy/spiritual texts also divine? If so, what are the ramifications for Aquinas's argument?
To add to this, in Question 95, Second Article, Aquinas looks at whether or not every human law is derived from Natural Law (the source of human reason).
In his treatment of human law he says that we can derive things from Natural Law in two ways. The first he provides is that we can draw conclusions directly from first principles (as in theoretical sciences) and the second, more useful, is that we can look at those same first principles, but derive specifications based on them, as though a craftsman looking to the general forms in order to attain specific results.
From this, he goes further to suggest in his reply to objection 3 that "general principles of the natural law cannot be applied to all peoples in the same way because of the great variety of human affairs. And so there are different positive laws for different people."
This final quote seems radical indeed. Is Aquinas sincerely suggesting that the plurality of human experience rightly influences the generation of human law, derived from Natural Law, based on Eternal Law? If so, the only difference in connection to the Eternal Law left to reconcile between the people of the Church and the people of another continent would be that of imparted Divine Law and is even that addressed in the earlier mentioned question?
Recent Comments