A. Opinions of Others that Converge in the same Conclusion

1. Exposition of the Opinion

8. An answer given here is that yes, [the whole decalogue does belong to the natural law - Aquinas, Richard of Middleton].

9. The manner posited is as follows: the law of nature is a law that derives from the primary known principles in matters doable. Such principles are practical first principles, known from the terms, and are themselves the first seeds of truth. To the truth of them the intellect is, from the terms, naturally inclined, and to assent to their command the will is naturally inclined. Everything in the decalogue follows from these principles, whether mediately or immediately. For all things there prescribed have a formal goodness by which they are in themselves ordered to the ultimate end, so that through them man might be turned toward that end. All things too that are prohibited there have a formal malice turning away from the ultimate end. Consequently, the things prescribed there are not good only because they are prescribed, but conversely, they are prescribed because they are good; and the things prohibited there are not bad only because they are prohibited, but they are prohibited because they are bad.

10. And then it would, as a consequence, seem necessary to say to the first argument [n.2] that God cannot simply dispense in such matters. For what is illicit of itself does not seem it could become licit by any will. For example: if killing, on the grounds that it is an act that concerns such and such a matter (as one’s neighbor), is a bad act, then, while the same grounds hold, it will always be a bad act. Thus no act of willing that goes against the idea of those terms [sc. killing, neighbor] can make the act good.

11. But then the authorities that seem to say that God did dispense in these matters [n.6] need special interpretation.

One way of interpreting them is as follows, that although a dispensation could be given for the act in the category of act, yet not for it insofar as it is, in being prohibited, against the intention of the lawgiver, and so there is no dispensation for it against the prohibition.

12. Another way would be to say that an act cannot be made ordered while it remains disordered; but an act is disordered to the extent it is against the prohibition. Therefore, God cannot give dispensation for it insofar as it is against the prohibition.

2. Rejection of the Opinion

13. But these interpretations [nn.9-12] (which seem perhaps to reduce to the same) do not seem to save the stated position.

For ‘to dispense’ is not the doing of what it is permitted to do against the precept while the precept still stands, but ‘to dispense’ is revoking the precept or declaring how it is to be understood: “for there is a double dispensation, namely revocation of the law and clarification of the law” [Bonaventure, Sent. IV d.38 a.2 q.3]. Therefore I ask whether, when all the circumstances in the act ‘to kill a man’ remain the same, and only the circumstance ‘prohibited or not prohibited’ is made to vary, could God bring it about that an act, which with its other circumstances remaining the same is sometimes prohibited and illicit, should otherwise be nonprohibited but licit?

If so then God could dispense simply, as he did when he changed the Old Law and gave the New Law (and this as to the ceremonial laws). He did not indeed make it the case that the ceremonial laws were not to be kept while the command to keep them remained, but he did make it the case that, though the act remained the same, one was not bound to keep the ceremonial laws as one was before. For it is thus that a legislator dispenses simply, namely when he revokes the precept of right that he has laid down, making it the case that, while the prohibited or prescribed act remains the same in itself, the idea of its being prohibited or illicit is removed from it, and it is made licit. Yet God cannot make it that this act, which with such and such circumstances was prohibited, should not be prohibited while all the circumstances prior to the prohibition remain. Therefore, God cannot make it that ‘to kill’ not be prohibited - the opposite of which appears plainly in the case of Abraham and many others.

14. Things true from the terms, whether they are necessary from the terms or follow from what is thus necessary, precede in their truth every act of will, or at least they hold their truth when every ‘to will’ is per impossibile or possibile removed. Therefore if the precepts of the decalogue, or the practical propositions that can be formed from them, had such necessity (namely if the following propositions were necessary, ‘one’s neighbor is not to be killed or hated’, ‘stealing is not to be done’, and the like), it would follow that, when every ‘to will’ is removed from the apprehending intellect, such propositions would be necessary; and so, when the divine intellect apprehends them, it would necessarily apprehend them as true of themselves. And then the divine will would necessarily agree with what it apprehended, or the will would not be right. And so the idea of practical science would have to be posited in God, which was denied in Ord. Prol. nn.330-331. It would also be necessary to posit that God’s will was simply necessarily determined as to willable things outside himself, the opposite of which was stated in Ord. I d.2 nn.79-81, where the fact was touched on that his will tends to things other than himself only contingently.

15. But if it be said that a created will must necessarily conform to the above propositions [n.14] in order to be right, yet the divine will does not have to will in conformity with these truths but that they are true because he wills in conformity with them - this responds to the above conclusion [the divine will wills things other than itself contingently, n.14] that reason proves the opposite. For the divine intellect apprehends the terms and can apprehend from them the truth of the proposition they form (which truth the proposition otherwise has from the terms) prior in nature to his will having any act about the terms. Therefore, in the second moment of nature, when the will does have some act about them, it must necessarily will in conformity with that command and cannot will the opposite [cf. Ord. Prol. nn.325, 328, I d.38 nn.7-10].