Single Question. Whether All the Commandments of the Decalogue Belong to the Law of Nature

1. About the thirty seventh distinction I aska whether all the commandments of the decalogue belong to the law of nature.

a.a [Interpolation] About the thirty seventh distinction, where the Master deals with the commandments, the question asked is whether...

2. That they do not:

It does not seem that God can give dispensation in things that belong to the law of nature. But he did give dispensation in some things that seem to be against the commandments of the decalogue.     Therefore etc     .

3. Proof of the major: things that belong to the law of nature are either practical principles known from their terms, or are conclusions necessarily following from such principles. In either way their truth is necessary. Therefore God cannot make them to be false. Therefore he cannot but make that good which they signify to be good, and that bad which they indicate is to be avoided. And so he cannot make the non-licit to be licit.

4. Proof of the minor: to kill, to steal, and to commit adultery are against the commandments of the decalogue, as is plain from Exodus 20.13-15, “Thou shalt not kill.” God seems to have given dispensation in these things. Genesis 22.1-2 is plain about murder, in the case of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son. Exodus 11.2-3 and 12.35-36 are plain about theft by the children of Israel, whom God commanded to despoil the Egyptians, and despoiling is “a taking of another’s goods against the will of the owner” [Justinian Inst. 4 ch.1 n.1], which is the definition of theft. As to adultery, there is Hosea 1.2, “Make yourself sons of fornication.”

5. Further, in Romans 7.7 the Apostle says, “I would not know concupiscence if the law did not say, ‘do not covet’.” But things known by the law of nature are known as things to be done or not done even had they not been written down, just as things naturally known in matters of speculation would be naturally known even if they were not revealed; etc.

6. The law of nature is obligatory in any state of mankind, for such nature makes it known that such and such is to be done or not done. But the decalogue was not obligatory in every state of mankind, as not in the state of innocence; for then no law had been given, and there seems to be no obligation until the law was given.

7. On the contrary:

At the beginning of Gratian’s Decrees I d.6 ch.3, “Natural law remains natural law, whatever is found in the Law or the Gospel.” And in 1 John 2.7, “Beloved, I write no new commandment to you but an old commandment, which you had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard.”

I. To the Question

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].

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

1. Double Way of Understanding how Certain Things Belong to the Law of Nature

16. I say, then, to the question that things can be said to belong to the law of nature in two ways:

In one way [cf. n.25] as practical principles known from the terms, or as conclusions necessarily following from them. And these things are said to belong to the law of nature strictly.

17. And the reasons against the first opinion [nn.13-14] prove that in such things there cannot be dispensation (and these are contained in Gratian Decrees p.1 d.5, where it is said that “natural right begins from the beginning of the rational creature, nor does it change in time but remains immutable”) - this point I concede.

18. This is not so when speaking as a whole of the all the commandments of the second table of the decalogue, because it is of the idea of what is prescribed or prohibited there that the commandments are not simply necessary practical principles nor simply necessary conclusions. For there is in what is prescribed there no goodness necessary for the goodness of the ultimate end. Nor in what is prohibited there is there any malice necessarily turning away from the ultimate end such that, were the good not prescribed, the ultimate end could not be attained and loved. And if the evil in question were not prohibited, the acquisition of the ultimate end would remain consistent with it.

19. But it is otherwise with the commandments of the first table of the decalogue, for these regard God immediately as object.

20. The two first, indeed, if they are understood merely as negative (namely the first, “thou shalt not have strange gods,” and the second, “thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” that is, you will not be irreverent to God) - these belong to the law of nature in the strict way of taking the law of nature, because it necessarily follows that ‘if God is, he alone must be loved’, and likewise it follows that ‘nothing else is to be worshipped as God, nor should irreverence be shown to God’. Consequently God cannot give dispensation in these commands, so that one might be able to do the opposite of this or that prohibition. For this conclusion see the two authorities [from Augustine] in Richard of Middleton Sent. III d.37 princ. 1 q.5].Augustine Against Faustus 22 ch.27, “Eternal law is divine reason or the will of God bidding one to keep the natural order and forbidding one to disturb it.” 83 Questions q.53 n.2, “From this ineffable and sublime administration of things, which is done through divine providence, a natural law is as it were written in the rational soul.” ⁹

21. The third commandment of the first table, which is about keeping the sabbath, is affirmative as to giving some worship to God at a determinate time. But as to the determination of this or that time, this does not strictly speaking belong to the law of nature. Likewise neither does the other and negative part there included (whereby servile acts are prohibited) strictly belong, as to determinate acts, to the law of nature, excluding them from the worship to be then given to God. For such acts are not prohibited save because they impede the worship prescribed or withdraw one from it.

22. But whether the commandment about keeping the sabbath belongs strictly to the law of nature as to giving God worship at a determinate time, this is doubtful. For if it does not so belong then God could absolutely dispense man from ever having a good movement toward him for the entire time of his life, and this does not appear probable. For without some good willing of the ultimate end one cannot have any simply good willing of things that are for the end. Thus one would never be bound to any good willing simply, because the reason by which it would not follow from the law of nature, strictly speaking, that worship should be given to God at this time now, would be equally a reason for it not to follow either for that time then, and equally a reason for it not to follow for any determinate time. Therefore, strictly speaking, it does not seem how one could conclude that anyone is bound to give worship to God at any particular time; and by equal reason how he is bound to do so at some indistinct time or other. For one is not bound to any act for some indeterminate time which one is not bound to for some time marked out by some occurrent circumstances.

23. But if the commandment about keeping the sabbath does belong strictly to the law of nature, so that the command ‘God is not to be hated’ necessarily follows, or so that, from some other fact, ‘therefore God is to be loved’ necessarily follows (and that he is to be sometimes loved thus by an elicited act directed to him), then the argument ‘from singulars to the universal’ does not hold, but is a figure of speech, as in other cases is the move ‘from many indeterminate causes to some determinate one’.

24. However, if this third commandment does not strictly belong to the law of nature, then one must, to this extent, judge about it as about the commandments of the second table of the decalogue.

25. In another way [n.16] things can be said to belong to the law of nature because they are very consonant with it, though they do not necessarily follow from the practical first principles known from their terms and known necessarily by any intellect.

26. And in this way it is certain that all the commandments, even of the second table, belong to the law of nature, because their rightness is strongly consonant with the practical first principles that are known necessarily.a

a.a [Interpolation] In this way must the decree of Gratian Decrees be understood, p.1 d.6 ch.3, where it is said that “the moral precepts belong to natural right, and therefore show that they admit of no mutability.” Note the gloss that says “the law permits no change as to moral matters but it does as to ceremonial [and sacramental] matters.”

27. This distinction [nn.16, 25] can be made clear by an example. For on the supposition of this principle of positive right ‘one should live peaceably in a community or polity’, it does not necessarily follow therefrom that everyone should have distinctness of property, or possessions distinct from those of another; for peace could abide in a community or in people living together even if everything were common to them. Nor even on the supposition of weakness in those who live together is that consequence necessary. And yet the fact that there are distinct possessions for weak people is very consonant with peaceful living together. For the weak care more about goods proper to themselves than about common goods, and wish that common goods be appropriated to them rather than that they be shared with the community and with the guardians of good community; and so there would be strife and contention among them [sc. without distinct possessions].

28. And perhaps thus it is in the case of all positive rights, that though there be some single principle that is the foundation for laying down all laws or rights, yet positive laws do not follow necessarily from that principle, but rather they make it clear or explain it as to certain particulars, and these explanations are very consonant with the universal first principle.

2. Summary of Theses Stated

29. So collecting things together, then: First it has been denied that all the commandments of the second table belong strictly to the law of nature [n.18]. Second it has been admitted that the first two commandments of the first table belong strictly to the law of nature [n.20]. Third a doubt was raised about the third commandment of the first table [nn.21-24]. And fourth it was admitted that all the commandments belong to the law of nature, speaking broadly [nn.25-26].

3. Objection to the First Thesis

30. Against the first of these theses [n.29] I argue that, according to the Apostle to the Romans 13.9, “Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”     Therefore in this precept ‘you shall love etc     .’ are necessarily included the commandments of the second table, for the Apostle seems to prove this expressly there and in the end he seems to conclude, “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” [Romans 12.9-13]. And this is proved on the authority of our Savior, which is a greater authority, in Matthew 22.37-40,

“On this depend all the law and the prophets.” But love of neighbor follows necessarily from this principle, ‘God is to be loved’.     Therefore etc     . So, from first to last, all the commandments of the second table follow from what is the first commandment of the first table. And if the commandments of the first table belong simply to the law of nature (because they are included in the first principle or the first commandment, which belongs simply to the law of nature), then it follows that the commandments of the second table will also strictly belong to the law of nature, even though they are conclusions of the same first principle.

31. The proof of the assumption is clear from what was said in d.28 nn.10-11, where it is proved in two ways that the perfect and ordered love of God cannot be zealous, properly speaking, because the love of the common good as a good to be appropriated to oneself alone is disordered. The love too of someone who does not want the beloved to be loved jointly by others is disordered and imperfect.     Therefore it follows that if God is to be loved perfectly and in ordered way, that he who loves God should want his neighbor to love God. But in wanting this for his neighbor he loves his neighbor, for only in this way is one’s neighbor loved from charity, as is said in the gloss [Lombard On Romans 13.7-10]. Therefore etc     .

4. Response to the Objection

32. To this objection one can reply in three ways.

In one way as follows: that the commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God etc.” does not simply belong to the law of nature as it is affirmative, but as it is negative, prohibiting the opposite. For ‘not to hate’ belongs simply to the law of nature, but whether one is ‘to love at some time’ was doubted above in the third article [n.23]. Now from the negative command it does not follow that one must want love of God for one’s neighbor; but it would follow from the affirmative command, about which it is not certain that it belongs, strictly speaking, to the law of nature [n.22].

33. One can reply in a second way that from the commandment ‘Thou shalt love the Lord they God’ it does not follow that I would want my neighbor to love God.

34. And when it is proved that zealous love cannot be ordered and perfect love [n.31], I reply: I ought not to want the common good to be the good of another and then not to be loved by that other. But there is no need for me to want that good to belong to another - namely because it is not pleasing to that good that it belong to another, in the way that God, in predestinating one and not another, wants to be the good of one predestined person and not of someone else.

35. And the same point makes plain the answer to the claim that ‘he who loves perfectly wants the beloved to be loved jointly by another’ [n.31]. It can be said that this is true of everyone whose love is pleasing to the beloved. But from the law of nature it is not certain about anyone that his love is accepted by God as beloved or as loving.

36. In a third way it can be replied that, although it belongs strictly to the law of nature that one’s neighbor should be loved, as was expounded before [n.31], that is, that ‘one must simply will for one’s neighbor that he love God, because this is to love one’s neighbor’ - yet from this it does not follow that the commandments of the second table belong to the law of nature. I mean these: that ‘one must not want to kill one’s neighbor, as concerns the good of his person’, and that ‘one must not want to commit adultery, as concerns the good of the person joined to him’, and that ‘one must not want to steal, as concerns the goods of fortune that he uses’, that ‘reverence is to be shown one’s parents in honors and in help and in support’, and so on about the other commandments of the second table. For it is possible for me to want my neighbor to love God and yet to refuse him, or not want for him, bodily life or the preservation of his wife’s fidelity and so on about the rest. And consequently it is possible for the following two things to cohere together: a) that it would be a certain necessary truth, drawn as a conclusion from practical principles, that ‘I should want my neighbor to love God in himself just as I ought to want myself to love God’; and yet b) this other would not be a necessary truth, ‘I should want for my neighbor this or that good of the sort expressed in a commandment of the second table’.

37. And then as to the authorities of Paul and of Christ [n.30], one could say that now God has in fact explained love of neighbor beyond what it includes as following from the principles of the law of nature. Thus, although as to what follows from the principles of the law of nature it only contain ‘to will to love one’s neighbor in himself’, yet as now explained it includes ‘one should will those goods [n.36] for one’s neighbor’, or at least ‘one should not will the opposite evils for one’s neighbor’ (as that one should not want him unjustly to have bodily life, fidelity of spouse, temporal goods and the like).

38. It is therefore true that he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law [n.30], in the way that the law has been explained as needing to be kept [nn.32-36], though not in the way in which love of neighbor follows from the first principles of the law of nature [n.36].

39. And similarly, the whole law (as to the second table) and the prophets depend on this commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’, when the understanding of that commandment is not however of it as it follows from the practical first principle of the law of nature, but as the legislator intends that that commandment among those belonging to the second table should be kept (as explained [n.37]).

II. To the Principal Arguments of Both Parts

40. To the principal arguments.

The first [n.2] is in my favor, because it proves that a precept of the second table does not belong to the law of nature strictly speaking.

41. To the second [n.5] I say that although ‘God exists’ could be deduced by natural reason from principles per se known, yet this fact was not known to that rude people, unexercised in intellectual matters, save from the law given to them. Hence the Apostle says in Hebrews 11.6, “He who comes to God must believe”, meaning, that is, if he have and is unable to have any other knowledge of God. And so, if some concupiscence could be proved to be against the law of nature, yet that this concupiscence was against the law of nature was not known to corrupt men. Therefore it was necessary to explain it through the law given to them. Or in another way, concupiscences are prohibited through the commandments of the second table, and about these it is admitted that they were not known per se [n.36].

42. To the next [n.6] I say that these commandments were kept and should be kept in every state of man. In the state of blessedness, to be sure, there will be supreme observance of the affirmative and negative commandments, save perhaps only of the commandment ‘honor your parents’ - not but that there will then be the will to honor them, but that there will be no necessity to devote attention to the act, at least as far as the honor extends to the support of necessities, for no one there will need assistance. In the state of innocence too everyone was bound to keep those commandments, which were interiorly prescribed in each one’s heart. Or perhaps they descended through some exterior teaching given by God from fathers to sons, though they were not then written in a book; nor was this necessary, because people were able to retain them easily in their memory, and the people of that time had a longer life and a better disposition in natural powers than the people of a later time, when the infirmity of the people required the law to given and written down.

43. As to what was touched on in the first argument, however, about the children of Israel despoiling the Egyptians [n.4], one can say that God did not there make dispensation against the law or the commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’, because they did not take what was simply another’s. First because God was the superior lord and could transfer lordship to them, even against the will of lesser lords (and in this way Christ did not sin in allowing the demons to enter the pigs, which at once threw themselves into the sea [Mark 5.12-13]; for he did not unjustly deprive the lord of his own pigs). Second because the children of Israel, in serving the Egyptians, deserved to receive so great spoils as their wages (though the Egyptians, being unjust, refused to pay them, yet they could be compelled to do so by a higher judge), and so, because they took what was theirs by license of a higher judge, they took it licitly and justly.

44. As to the argument for the opposite from Gratian [n.7], it must be understood of the law of nature speaking broadly, and this as concerns the commandments of the second table.