'

WILLIAM OF 0CK.HAM AND THE

METAPHYSICAL ROOTS OF NATURAL LAW

Peter A. Kwasniewski

Much valuable work on the philosophy of William of Ockham

(ca. 128 s-I 34 7) has been done in recent years, and many are
the scholars who insist that the Venerable Inceptor should not
be accused of subscribing to a purely voluntaristic account of
the content of moral law. Still, Ockham's voluntarism remains
a debatable issue for several reasons. First, it is not always clear
which principle in Ockham's complex system of ethics takes
primacy, since there are many vying for that honor. John Kil-
cullen proposes a set of three: right reason, love of God for his
own sake above all things, and obedience to divine command-
ments. 1 Of course, one of these principles would have to be
first, simply speaking, as there could not be many irreducibly
first principles. It could be the case, however, that on the ba-
sis of available writings it is difficult or impossible to identify
which one Ockham himself deems primary. But even if that
question can be settled, there seems to be some disagreement
among the experts as to what constitutes a voluntaristic theo-
logy or ethics. Usually voluntarism is understood to be as-
serting at least two things: on the one hand, that the content

Peter Kwasniewski, a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, earned

his doctorate in philosophy at the Catholic University of America. Since
1999, he has been Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the International
Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria.
1 "Natural Law and Will in Ockham," History qf Philosophy Yearbook,

vol. I of the Australasian Society for the History ofPhilosophy, ed. Knud
Haakonssen and Udo Thiel (Canberra, 1993); this article is posted on
Kilcullen's website and can be located by searching for its title.

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

of the moral law is determined solely by an omnipotent will Thomists of the twentieth. 4 This would make the latter men
(not, that is, in reference to any creature, nature, or idea); on imitators ofOckham's first outspoken opponent, the Thomist
the other hand, that the freedom of the intellectual creature John Lutterell, chancellor of Oxford University, who in I 324
consists in a power of total self-determination vis-a-vis good (the year after Saint Thomas's canonization) charged his com-
and evil. 2 So defined, the textual evidence for a certain type patriot with fifty-six heretical propositions. 5
of voluntarism in William of Ockham, and an extreme one It is not my intention here, nor is it in my competence, to
at that, is hard to overlook or explain away. To complicate offer solutions to any of the particular disputes that flourish in
matters, a number of authors, rallying to its defense and laud- Ockham-related secondary literature. 6 What interests me are
ing its bold advocates, are now asking if voluntarism really
deserves the scorn it has tended to receive. If these people 4 "Ockham and Nominalism: Toward a New Paradigm," Catholic So-
are right, there would be nothing to fear from Ockham's ver- da! Sdence Review 6 (zoo I), available on the internet. White presents use-
sion; on the contrary, we stand to gain from it. 3 Other stud- ful historical material but labors under a serious, though not uncommon,
misunderstanding of the Church's commendation of Saint Thomas.
ies deal sympathetically with Ockham's doctrine of know- 5 This action prevented Ockham from occupying a university chair at
ledge and of right reason, and reach the conclusion that his Oxford (hence his nickname, since an inceptoris one who has completed
exaltation of divine will and his philosophical razor cuts did the requirements but has not yet mounted the professorial chair) and
not necessitate the radical skepticism into which the nominal- brought him to the papal court in Avignon to defend himself In May of
ist movement eventually plunged. A recent article by John R. I 328, having taken sides with the Franciscan minister general Michael
of Caesna and the would-be Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria against Pope
White implies that the "received view" of Ockham as the sol-
John XXII, Ockham fled from Avignon, was excommunicated, was ex-
vent of scholasticism is a legend fabricated by neoscholastics pelled from the Franciscan Order, and embarked on a career as politi-
of the nineteenth century and sharpened by heresy-hunting cal philosopher and propagandist for the last twenty years of his life in
Munich, where he died unreconciled to the Church (c£ Gedeon Gal,
2 The question of voluntarism arises in nearly all discussions of Duns 0 FM, ''William of Ockham Died 'Impenitent' in April I 347 ,'' Frandscan
Scotus and William of Ockham. The recent lively debate between two Studies 42 [I982]: 90-95). As will become clear, I happen to think that
eminent scholars over the correct interpretation ofScotus's voluntarism Lutterell and his modern confederates have good reasons to grind their
(which is the progenitor ofOckham's) brings outthe major issues at stake: axes.
Thomas Williams, "The Unmitigated Scotus," inArchiv fiir Geschichte der 6 An indication of the breadth of scholarship devoted to Ockham,

Philosophie So (1998): r6z-8r, and Allan B. Wolter, OFM, "The Un- especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, may be gathered
shredded Scotus: A Response to Thomas Williams," American Catholic from three major studies and their bibliographies: Gordon Leff, William
Philosophical Quarterly 77 (2003): 3I5-56. of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse (Manchester: Manch-
3 See Marilyn McCord Adams, "The Structure of Ockham's Moral ester University Press, I975); Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ock-
Theory," Frandscan Studies 46 (I986): I-35; idem, "Ockham: Volun- ham (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, I987); Armand
tarist or Naturalist?," in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. John F. Wip- Maurer, The Philosophy of William of Ockham in the Light of Its Prindples
pel (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, I987), (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, I999). Several con-
2I9-47· A largely positive interpretation ofOckham's theoretical moves cise overviews of the Franciscan's life and writings can also be recom-
is also presented by Harry Klecker, SJ, in his short book William of Ock- mended, in spite of being a little outdated: Frederick Copleston, SJ, A
ham and the Divine Freedom, 2nd ed. (Milwaukee: Marquette University History of Philosophy, vol. 3: Ockham to Suarez (New York: Paulist Press,
Press, I 996), a reworking of several older articles. My notes will some- 1983), 43-I2I; idem, A History of Medieval Philosophy, rev. ed. (New
times refer to the book and sometimes to one of the original articles, York: Harper & Row, 1972), 230-56; Julius R. Weinberg, A Short His-
"Ockham and the Divine Freedom," Frandscan Studies 45 (I985): 245- tory ofMedieval Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I 964),
61. 235-65. Readers who wish to pursue the discussion into primary texts

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

the larger implications of ideas present expressly or seminally we admit, as most commentators do, that a natural law the-
in Ockham and in the powerful movement that took inspira- ory does not emerge in Ockham's writings until the political
tion from his works. 7 Many today are asking: How did the treatises, where, in any event, it appears only sporadically?
once-Christian West end up where it is today, in the midst The gap in earlier writings and the sparseness in later writ-
of a cultural crisis of unprecedented magnitude? A complete ings point to one explanation more than any other: Ockham
answer would have to take many elements into account, but knew what he was combating, and chose the weapon of si-
doubtless one crucial element is what happened to the meta- lence. As his theory of knowledge and his metaphysics had
physical foundations of ethics, that is, the origin and essence already emptied out the contents of natural law, there was no
of natural law. I propose that we may find Ockham a greater need to repeat his critique in the sphere of ethics. Ockham is
revolutionary in this regard than Hobbes or Nietzsche-not a man who strikes at the root, and ifhe objects to natural law
because their views are more pious or truthful, but because as Aquinas or Scotus presents it, it is because he objects to
their errors tend to be superficial, and so, at least for one who the metaphysical commitments these accounts presuppose.
is paying attention, evident. Ockham's are subtler, more fun- The three main parts of this article will engage three ques-
damental, and therefore more insidious, whatever his inten- tions: (I) On what foundation did the doctrine of natural
tions may have been. I will return to this perennial problem law traditionally stand, and how was its metaphysical frame-
of good intentions and poor philosophy in my concluding work, so confidently wrought by Thomas Aquinas, shaken
remarks. by the innovations of John Duns Scotus? (II) In what way,
It is a well-known fact that Ockham's strictly philosophi- if any, can "natural law" remain, once Ockham undermines
cal and theological writings, as opposed to his polemical and the foundations upon which, both for Aquinas and for Sco-
political works, contain no explicit treatment of natural law. tus, it had rested? (III) If natural law ends up shattered, what
This lacuna is all the more noteworthy when one recalls how perils can we expect to meet with in the Ockhamist universe?
much attention Ockham's predecessors devoted to the sub- This last question merges into the pre-history or gestation of
ject. 8 Are we then to think that a natural law doctrine lies hid- modernity, for many of Ockham's ideas, having been spread
den somewhere, disguised under a different title? Or should throughout Europe by the nominalists who taught at the uni-
versities, were like hardy seeds buried in wintry soil, ready
of the Venerable Inceptor will find copious citations in the secondary to sprout when the climate allowed. 9
literature to which I will be referring in these pages. For information on
the critical editions of Ockham's works, see note 74·
7 It has to be borne in mind that once Ockharn's notions and argu- 9 See the compelling, if slightly exagg~rated, portrait of Ockharnism

ments had spread throughout Europe, they were developed by a host of in Michael A. Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche (Chicago: University
thinkers with a variety of (at times conflicting) aims, leading in some of Chicago Press, 1995), 12-28 .. It has become fashionable to call into
cases to conclusions that Ockharn would have repudiated. However, question the labeling of Ockharn as a "nominalist," "conceptualist" be-
there is ample reason to speak of an Ockharnist "movement," if not of a ing the preferred alternative. But what's in a name? The positions asso-
"school" in the strict sense. On this movement, see Copleston, History ciated with medieval nominalism are frequently not only defended by
of Philosophy, 3:122-52; Weinberg, Short History, 266-89. Ockharn, but developed by him to their utmost extent; and one might
8 See Kevin McDonnell, "Does William of Ockham Have a Theory add that to an opponent of nominalism, a ''conceptualist'' system is hardly
ofNatural Law?," Frandscan Studies 34 (1974), 383-92. In defense of the less objectionable. Ockham's system generally gets the title "nominal-
minority position that Ockharn does have an articulate theory of natural ism" because he asserts: universale est pure .fictum. Universals are pure in-
law, see the Kilcullen article mentioned in note 1. ventions, the mind's moulding and shaping of reality, mere "names" or

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I. Exemplarism and the Natural Law 10 longs to the natural law; because man is an animal, whatever
promotes the good of the species, such as sexual union and
I. Thomas A1uinas on the Law of Human Nature the education of offspring, belongs to the natural law; be-
cause man is a rational animal, whatever is proper to rational
On the basis of the ratio boni, "good is that which all things animals, such as knowledge of the truth and living together
seek after" and by analogy with the first indemonstrable prin- peaceably, belongs to the natural law. Of the last sort is every-
ciple ofspeculative reason ("the same thing cannot be affirmed thing that pertains to man's rational inclinations, such as "to
and denied at the same time"), Thomas establishes the first shun ignorance" and "to avoid offending those among whom
indemonstrable principle of practical reason: "Good is to be one has to live." This elegant presentation oflaw starts with
done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." Thus, "what- the broadest category to which man pertains (substance), pro-
ever practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good or ceeds to a generic nature he shares with others in that cate-
evil belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something gory (animal), and culminates in the specific nature uniquely
to be done or avoided." 11 To three levels of natural inclina- his (rational animal). Any further determinations of natural
tion correspond the many particular precepts by which hu- law can be placed under one of these three headings. As an
man goods are secured. Because man is a substance, whatever example of a deduction from these primary precepts, Thomas
preserves his proper being and removes danger to his life be- mentions the obligation that "one must not kill," traceable to
"one should do harm to no man." 12 That one man should
"breaths of the voice" (nomina,Jlatus vods) that refer to collections of
not harm another is in turn an expression of the general pre-
sensible individuals. In reality there are only individual things, purely
and simply individual. The mind constructs relationships among them cept that man should live according to the good of his proper
based on elements that each happens to have. The concept "rational an- nature. Because man is social and political by nature, Thomas
imal" names not a thing, but a bunch of properties that happen to be can state that it is natural for a person "to avoid offending
assembled in an individual subject. Alternatively, Ockham's system is those among whom he has to live." Similarly, it is naturally
called "conceptualism" because it attempts to reduce most real or formal right that goods entrusted to someone should be restored to
distinctions to conceptual ones. For example, he argues that there are not
ten genera of categories of real or extra-mental being, viz., substance and
their owner upon request, unless some special circumstance,
the nine genera of accidents; there are but two, substance and quality. such as the intention to use a weapon for a crime, changes
The rest are ways of thinking or talking about substance and quality. See the aspect under which the action has to be evaluated. 13
the summary in James A. Weisheipl, OP, "The Interpretation of Aris- Defining natural law as the rational creature's "participa-
totle's Physics and the Science of Motion," in The Cambridge History rif tion in the Eternal Law," i.e., "a share of the eternal rea-
Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, and J. Pinborg
son, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 530-33. See also the
insightful essay by Calvin G. Normore, "The Tradition of Mediaeval end," 14 Saint Thomas, schooled by Saint Paul, maintains that
Nominalism," in Wippel, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, 2or-r7. this law in its most general determinations is naturally in-
10 This section is partly adapted from my article "Divine Art, Natural scribed on the human heart and is thus able to be known
Law, and Human Perfection," in The Catholic Faith 8. I (]an.-Feb. 2002): and explicitated by human reason. However, the weakness of
22-27.
11 Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 94, a. 2. Quotations from the Summa
are taken from the translation of the English Dominicans (New York: 12 STI-ll, q. 95, a. 2.
Benziger, 1948; repr. Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1981). Ref- 13 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4·
erence is made to the body of an article unless otherwise indicated. 14 ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2.

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
man's reason, above all when blinded by sin, called for a rev- man, of its own accord and at once, judges ought to be done
elation that would give greater force to the precepts govern- or not done, e.g., "Honor thy father and thy mother, and
ing human action by adding to them the sanction of divine thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal"; and these belong
authority, and also, at times, by clarifying their precise con- to the natural law absolutely. And there are certain things
tent. 15 In other words, the moral law is divinely promulgated which, after a more careful consideration, wise men deem
to commend it the more seriously to human attention and ef- obligatory. Such too belong to the law of nature, yet so that
fort because of the person of him who promulgates it. Ac- they need to be inculcated, the wiser teaching the less wise,
e.g., "Rise up before the hoary head and honor the aged
cordingly, in its moral precepts, not its judicial and ceremonial
man," and the like. And there are some things, to judge of
ones, this "divine law" inculcates the same precepts as those which human reason needs divine instruction, whereby we
to which man can attain by reflecting on the inclinations ofhis are taught about the things of God, e_.g., "Thou shalt not
nature and the rights and duties they imply, although a more make to thyself a graven image," "thou shalt not take the
detailed knowledge of these precepts will not be available to name of the Lord thy God in vain." 16
all.
Because of the many defects to which fallen human beings are
The moral precepts, distinct from the ceremonial and judi-
prone, divine law includes-repeats, if you like, with greater
cial precepts, are about things pertaining of their very na-
clarity and authority-moral precepts identical with those
ture to good morals .... It is therefore evident that since
the moral precepts are about matters which concern good discoverable by reason. If man in his present condition were
morals, and since good morals are those which accord with not so helpless, there would be no need for a revelation of
reason, and since also every judgment ofhuman reason must any law save such judicial and ceremonial prescriptions as the
be derived in some way from natural reason, it follows of Lord may choose to hand down. 17 Although precepts directly
necessity that all the moral precepts [of the Old Law] be- bearing on the respect due to God seem to be inaccessible to
long to the natural law-but not all in the same way. For
there are certain things which the natural reason of every
16 ST I-II, q. roo, a. r. Note that Thomas begins by setting off to

the side the ceremonial and judicial precepts. Not all laws promulgated
15 See STI-ll, q. 91, a. 4, where the reason for the giving of divine law by God are traceable to inherent demands of human nature; some are
is said to be "the uncertainty of human judgment"; q. 94, a. 4, where purely "positive." For Thomas, only the moral precepts have this deep
the failure to know natural law is attributed to natural obstacles and the connection to man's rational nature. It was not necessary that certain
perversion of reason "by passion or evil habit or an evil disposition of particular animals be sacrificed at certain times by certain people, or that
nature"; and q. 99, a. 2, where the divine law is presented as the remedy others be avoided as unclean, but it was fitting within a given context.
both for the insufficiency of reason and the obscurity of vision induced This is why it can become unfitting in another. Judicial and ceremonial
by sin. Scotus's position is similar if not identical: see Duns Scotus on the precepts, though in harmony with human nature, specify actions that need
Will and Morality, trans. Allan B. Wolter, OFM (Washington: Catho- be undertaken only by those to whom they have been promulgated. The
lic University of America Press, 1986), 58-59. On the question of the justice of such actions consists in God's having willed them to be just
extent to which man can forget or become blind to the precepts of the under certain circumstances and for certain reasons. They come into
natural law, see Gregory Doolan, "Culture, Ignorance, and Culpability," being at a certain time, and are revocable. See note 23.
The Thomist 63 (1999): 105-24. 17 See ST I-II, q. 99, aa. 2-5; q. 100, a. r.

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
reason working on its own, they are still traceable to human less man become good. Thus it is written in Lev. 19:2 (c£
nature as to their root cause, even if divine instruction must u:45): "You shall be holy, fori am holy." But the goodness
inculcate them. 18 As with the precepts taught by wise men to of man is virtue, which "makes its possessor good" (Ethics
society at large, the image suggested is one of a father instruct- 2.6). Therefore it was necessary for the Old Law to include
ing his children in what is naturally good for (yet unknown precepts about acts of virtue, and these are the moral pre-
to) them, rather than a monarch laying down positive laws cepts of the Law. 20 .

from a distant throne.

Precepts "are expressed by way of absolute command or pro-
Given the foregoing, we can see why Thomas maintains
hibition" because reason dictates that some acts must be done
that the basic purpose of every law-that is, every law worthy '
"as being so necessary that without [them] the order of virtue
of the name-is ''establishing friendship either between man
would be destroyed." 21 Thomas thus relates the moral con-
and man or between man and God." 19 Defending the reason-
tent of the divine law to the virtues perfective of human na-
ableness of the Old Law's containing moral precepts such as
ture:
"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," he writes:
Just as the chief intention of human law is to create friend- The community for which the divine law is ordained is
ship between man and man, so the chief intention of the that of men in relation to God, either in this life or in the
divine law is to establish man in friendship with God. Now life to come. The divine law, therefore, proposes precepts
since likeness is the reason oflove, according to Sir. 13:19, about all those matters whereby men are well ordered in
"every beast loveth its like," there cannot possibly be any their relations to God. Now man is united to God by his
friendship of man to God, who is supremely good, un- reason or mind, in which is God's image. Thus the divine
law proposes precepts about all those matters whereby hu-
man reason is well ordered. But this is effected by the acts of
18 It should be noted that the third commandment of the Decalogue
all the virtues, since the intellectual virtues set in good or-
is an exceptional case. It goes beyond natural law as such by taking what der the acts of reason in themselves, while the moral virtues
is certainly a requirement of the natural law, viz., that man offer due set in good order the acts of reason in reference to interior
worship to God, and determining it to circumstances that are fitting but
passions and exterior actions. It is therefore evident that the
not inherently necessary, viz., that man set aside for this purpose the
seventh day of the week. Christian theologians acknowledge that this
divine law fittingly proposes precepts about the acts of all
commandment, in forma spedfica, is no longer obligatory. The definitive
the virtues. 22
offering of due worship to God has been accomplished by Jesus Christ
on the cross. Of this paschal mystery-and thus, of this perfect "worship He continues: "Certain matters without which the order
in Spirit and in truth"-we are made participants in the eucharistic ban- of virtue (which is the order of reason) cannot even exist,
quet. It is the Church's responsibility to determine exactly when we are come under an obligation of precept." A statement like this
obliged to participate in that sacrifice, and from the very beginning she indicates why Thomas so firmly defends the immutability
has chosen Sunday as the Lord's Day par excellence, thus abrogating the
legal observance of the Sabbath. On this and related matters, see Kevin
G. Long, "The Nine Commandments: The Decalogue and the Natural 20 ST I-II, q. 99, a. 2.
Law," The Aquinas Review 3 (1996): 137-52. 21 ST I-II, q. 99, a. 5.
19 ST I-II, q. 99, a. r, ad 2. 22 ST I-II, q. roo, a. 2.

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
of the natural morallaw 23 as articulated in both tables of the 2. Scotus, the Second Table, and the Idea of Man 25
Decalogue. 24
Now, John Duns Scotus's treatment of the same matters pro-
ceeds along different lines. He writes:
A practical truth of natural law is either one whose truth
can be ascertained from its terms (in which case it is a prin-
23 It must be stressed that we are speaking here and in the following
ciple of natural law, even as in theoretical matters a princi-
pages of the precepts of the moral law, which for Thomas are unchanging
ple is known from its terms) or else one that follows from
and unchangeable, but which for Scotus (and even more for Ockham)
are radically contingent upon God's wili. All three thinkers agree, how- the knowledge of such truths (in which case it is a demon-
ever, that divine law and human law contain precepts that derive their strated conclusion in the practical order). And strictly speak-
justice from the simple fact ofhaving been willed for the common good ing, nothing pertains to the law of nature except a principle
by one who has care of the community. For Thomas, certain laws pro- or a conclusion demonstrated in this fashion. Nevertheless,
mulgated by God are iustum simply because He promulgates them, and something is said in an extended sense to pertain to the law
not on account of an intrinsic necessity stemming from human nature in of nature if it is a practical truth that is immediately recog-
itself (e.g., "Thou shalt not kill") or from human nature in relation to nized by all to be consonant with such a law. 26
God (e.g., "Thou shalt have no gods before me"). As Thomas explains:
''The divine right [ius] is that which is promulgated by God. Such things Circumscribing "necessity" within severe limits, Scotus ar-
are partly those that are naturally just, yet their justice is hidden to man, gues that the precepts of the second table lack this property:
and partly are made just by God's decree. Hence also divine right may
Those propositions which are true by reason of their terms,
be divided in respect of these two things, even as human right is. For the
divine law commands certain things because they are good, and forbids whether they be immediately so or conclusions therefrom,
others, because they are evil; while others are good because they are have their truth prior to any act of the will, or at least they
prescribed, and others evil because they are forbidden" (STII-II, q. 57, would be true even if, to assume the impossible, no act of
a.2,ad3). willing existed. Therefore, if those precepts of the Deca-
24 Scripture clearly mentions two tables-in fact, two pairs of tables, logue or the practical propositions that could be formed
since Moses smashed the first pair when he saw the golden calf, after
which God asked him to make another pair-on which God himself themselves; so, too, Saint Bonaventure, in his Collations on the Ten Com-
inscribed the commandments (cf Ex. 31-32, 34, Deut. 9-10, etc.), but mandments, trans. Paul J. Spaeth (Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan
nowhere are we told exactly which words were written on each table. Institute, 1995), 25-28. (The equivalent work among Thomas's writ-
Nevertheless a tradition arose that the "first table" contained the first ings, the Collationes in decem precepta, deserves to be better known; it
three commandments, having to do with love of God, while the ''second has been translated by Laurence Shapcote, OP, as Conferences on the Two
table" contained the last seven commandments, having to do with love Precepts of Charity and the Ten Commandments [London: Burns Oates &
of one's neighbor. Jesus lends support to this division by implying that Washboume, 1937].) All this being said, it has to be admitted that each
all laws can be placed under one or the other heading: ''the first and commandment involves both the relationship between man and God,
greatest commandment" is to love the Lord with all one's heart, etc., and the ordered use of created goods.
and "the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (c£ 25 On the matters discussed in this section and the next, see Patrick

Mt. 22:36-40). The scholastics often saw the salient difference in this Lee's enlightening article "Aquinas and Scotus on Liberty and Natu-
way: the precepts of the one have to do with the uncreated good, whereas ral Law,'' Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Assodation 56
the precepts of the other have to do with created goods. At STI-ll, q. roo, (1982): 70-78.
a. 8, Saint Thomas will say that the precepts of the first table order men 26 Ordinatio IV, dist. 17, De iure naturali; Wolter, Will and Morality,

rightly to God, while those of the second table order men rightly among 263; c£ ibid., 295.

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

from them possessed such necessity (e.g., if these were nec- God is God; in him the ideas of all things are identical with
essary: "No neighbor should be hated or killed," "Theft his simple self-contemplation.)
should never be committed,'' and the like), it would follow It was Augustine who wrote the Platonically inspired words:
that apart from all volition the divine intellect would see "The Son is the art of the omnipotent God, full of all the living
such propositions as true of themselves, and then the divine ideas, and all things are one in this art." 28 This theological in-
will would necessarily agree with them or it would not be sight was developed with particular clarity by Saint Bonaven-
right [i.e., the divine will would be disordered] ....
ture, an ardent Augustinian and a colleague of Thomas's in
[If these precepts possessed intrinsic necessity], it would
also be necessary to assume that [God's] will is necessar- Paris, and so it will be helpful to spend a moment with him
ily determined in an unqualified sense in regard to willing for the sake ·of establishing a richer background to our dis-
things other than himsel£ And even if you say that a created cussion of natural law.
will must necessarily be conformed to these truths if it is to In his Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, Bonaven-
be right, this still does not say that the divine will wills in ture distinguishes two kinds oflikeness: the likeness of imita-
accord with them; rather because it wills accordingly, there- tion which is ''the way in which a creature is a likeness of the
fore they are true. 27 Creator," and the exemplary likeness, "the way in which the
exemplary idea in the Creator is a likeness of the creature."
Take note of the last phrase: sed quia conformiter vult, ideo sunt The former is the cause of knowledge in a mind that receives
vera. For a proposition of practical reason or a moral precept sensible species and abstracts the intelligible content from the
to be necessary simpliciter, it must be per se nota to the divine sensible; such a likeness "involves some degree of imperfec-
intellect and naturally willed by the divine will. On no other tion" because it "involves a sort of composition or addition
account, seemingly not even with reference to the nature of in the knowing intellect." For the rational creature, things are
man as eternally present in the divine understanding, can a· the cause of knowledge. The latter kind of likeness, however,
precept be considered to possess such necessity that its con- "causes things to be," and "does not come from outside";
trary would be unthinkable or unwillable. It is important to consequently, no imperfection is implied. Such exemplars of
see why Scotus does not grant necessity to moral law: to do things subsist in the mind of God, are none other than his
so would seem to compromise divine freedom and divine in- very nature, and are perfectly expressive of the realities they
tellectual autonomy. For Scotus, to identify God and the un- cause to be. The Creator's knowledge is the cause of things.
changing exemplar of the creature is, in a roundabout way, to
introduce metaphysical necessity into God's creative causality The divine intellect is the supreme light, the full truth, and
of the contingent universe. Thus creaturely natures are not to pure act. So, as the divine power to produce things is suf-
be regarded as "part" of God's very being, as Saint Augustine ficient in itself to produce everything, so the divine light
had seen them to be. (In saying "part," one does not mean and truth is sufficient in itself to express all things. And
that the natures of creatures are precontained in God as dis- since this expression is an intrinsic act, it is eternal. Be-
tinct beings-for a form is received~ or possessed, according cause an expression is a form of assimilation, the divine in-
to the mode of the recipient or possessor. Thus everything in tellect-expressing all things eternally in its supreme truth

27 Ord. III, suppl. dist. 37, corp.; Wolter, Will and Morality, 275. 28 De Trinitate VI, c. ro, n. r r.

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 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

-possesses from eternity the exemplary ideas of all crea- Thus we are led to see that the Word of God is the perfect ex-
tures.29 pression of creatures, who pre-exist in him in the highest clar-
To speak of the ideas in God as expressive of things is to speak ity and integrity. "A likeness of exemplarity and expression is
ofhis causality with respect to the creature expressed, the to- found in its supreme form in the Creator with respect to the
tal making of the creature according to its eternal pattern in whole of creation, because that which is truth itself, being the
the mind of the divine Artificer: ''The eternal ideas are the supreme light, expresses all things in the most perfect way." 33
productive principles of all things." 30 Although the ideas in Bodily creatures are refracted light, divided by a medium and
the mind of the Creator are other than the Word, there is differentiated by matter. The Eternal Art by which the Father
an intimate connection between idea and Word. Just as the creates-"that Eternal Art which is not only the form that
Word is the expression of the Father, the unique Word be- produces all things, but also the form that conserves and dif-
gotten of the Father by an interior procession of knowledge, ferentiates them, for this is the Being that contains the form
so too the ideas in the mind of God, many in notion but one in all creatures, and is the rule that directs the form in all
in divine substance, are the fullest and truest expression of all things" 34-is the undivided light of pure act, in whom all
creatures. The ideas of created things are expressed through the distinct forms subsist in absolute simplicity. In his discussion
Word of God, and to this Word is attributed the exemplarity of the two different meanings of truth ("the entity of a be-
of creation. "In a true and proper sense, God is Word. But a ing" and "the expressive light in intellectual knowledge"),
word is the likeness of that which is spoken. Therefore, if the Bonaventure shows the way in which the truth of a thing is
Son of God is the Word in whom all things are spoken, it is found more fully in the exemplary idea than in a thing's real
necessary that the likenesses of all things that are expressed be existence in the world:
present in that Word." 31 Hence, as the Word is the necessary
In the first instance ["truth is whatever exists"], truth is
expression of the Father, so creation is the free artistic expres-
the remote principle of knowledge. In the second instance
sion of the divine ideas, brought into being through the Art
["truth is a rightness perceptible only to the mind"], it is the
of the Word, "by which, through which, and according to proximate and immediate principle of knowledge. There-
which all beautiful things are formed." 32 fore, when it is said that truth is found more fully in the real
29 Quaestiones disputatae De scientia Christi, q. 2, corp.; Disputed Ques·
existence of a being than in its likeness, this is true if truth
is taken in the first sense, but not if it is taken in the second
tions on the Knowledge of Christ, trans. Zachary Hayes, OFM (Saint
Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1992), 9o·-9r.
sense. But that truth which is the proximate and immediate
30 De scientia Christi, q. 3, arg. neg. ro; Hayes, Knowledge of Christ, 103. principle of knowledge is found more fully in that likeness
In a Bonaventurean turn of phrase, we find Thomas saying, apropos of which resides in the intellect. It is found particularly and in
the heavenly realm: "In that intelligible world are enclosed, in a way, the the supreme degree in that likeness which is the exemplar
rationes of all things that are brought to completion in this world, as the of creation. Such a likeness expresses the creature more per-
rationes of something effected are enclosed in its cause, and the rationes fectly than the created being itself can. 35
of artifacts in the artificer" (STI-ll, q. 102, a. 4, ad 6).
31 De scientia Christi, q. 2, arg. aff. ro; Hayes, Knowledge of Christ, 86.

32 Itinerarium mentis in Deum, cap. 2, §9; The journey of the Mind to God, 33 De scientia Christi, q. 2, ad s; Hayes, Knowledge of Christ, 92.
trans. Philotheus Boehner, OFM, ed. Stephen F. Brown (Indianapolis: 34 Itinerarium, cap. 2, §9; Boehner, journey, rs.
Hackett, I993), 15. 35 De scientia Christi, q. 2, ad 9; Hayes, Knowledge of Christ, 93.

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
Only through some contact with the original idea can we em- the scope ofhis creative activity: all possible finite participated
brace the full truth of the idea's concrete expression: "God is likenesses ofhis infinite self-subsistent being. These likenesses
truly the eternal mirror which makes possible the knowledge correspond to the intelligible archetypes that Thomas, in line
of every intelligible being." 36 The view expressed here by with Augustine, calls divine ideas. 38 The creature is consti-
Bonaventure, at the level of generality at which we have sum- tuted in being as a finite likeness of that infinite perfection
marized it, is nearly the same as Thomas's. 37 In the domain of whose inexhaustible riches God understands as diversely im-
principles governing man's activity, the relationship of natu- itable. Each distinct imitation is foreknown, at all levels of
ral law to Eternal Law parallels the relationship of creature to identity (genus, species, individual). Hence, when we say all
exemplar-and this parallelism, it may be superfluous to add, horses "participate" in God's idea of a horse, we mean that
is crucial for the traditional view of the natural moral law as each horse is a created likeness of a certain self-understanding
a law discernible by reason. Although Scotus does not depart of divine perfection. God's self-understanding is radically one,
explicitly from this tradition, his doctrine of divine will (and as is his being. Yet precisely because of the infinity of his be-
arguably his parallel account ofhuman will) is already moving ing, he understands all possible kinds and ways of imitation.
in that direction, coloring his treatment of the natural law. The divine ideas represent in God, as it were, the whole range
We should not overlook the fact, then, that the Thomistic of the creature's being, from its most common feature to its
account of natural law presupposes an exemplarist foundation, utmost particularity. God's knowledge is the creative cause of
implying in turn a necessary connection between the beings all that pertains to the creature, 39 whether as individual being
God freely wills to create and the eternally true conditions of
any creatable universe. As perfect intelligence, he foreknows 38 See STI, q. IS, a. 3, ad 2; q. I4, aa. 9 and 12; q. IS, a. 2; De veritate,
q. 2. The most comprehensive study to date of Aquinas's doctrine of
divine ideas and its metaphysical setting is that of Gregory T. Doolan,
36 De sdentia Christi, q. 2, arg. aff. 9; Hayes, Knowledge of Christ, Ss. "Saint Thomas Aquinas and Divine Exemplarism," Ph.D. diss., The
37 For a fuller exposition of the points made in the foregoing para- Catholic University of America, 200 3. In several places, Gilson suggests
graphs, see my article "The World as Symbol of Divine Beauty in the that Thomas's theory of divine ideas is a mere holdover from Augustine.
Thought ofSaintBonaventure," Faith & Reason24/2s (I999-20oo): 3I- But nothing in Aquinas is a mere holdover. No one appreciated more
S4, from which part of the present section has been taken. Cf Etienne than he the need to recognize in creatures their distinctive perfection
Gilson, The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure, trans. Dom Illtyd Trethowan and genuine causal power, precisely to give all the more honor to the
and Frank J. Sheed (Paterson, NJ.: Saint Anthony Guild Press, I96S), generosity and power of their Creator. If exemplarism is explained solely
I27-46. While Bonaventure is an illuminationist and Aquinas an "ab- in terms of an imitation of God's essence and not of his ideas, one cannot
stractionist," they are unanimous in attributing to the divine light and escape denying the positive perfection of creatures; what is stressed is
truth the function of first formal, first efficient, and ultimate fmal cause that in imitating God, creatures fall short of his perfection. Of course,
as regards human acts of knowing. They differ rather as regards how this that is true. But they do live up to their own perfection, exemplified in
causality plays out at the level of cognitive faculties and acts. See Thomas's their imitating God in this respect (their "own'' idea). God wants them to
masterful treatment of these issues in Super Boetium De Trinitate, q. I, a. be that way: imperfect in comparison to his unlimited being, but perfect
I. Armand Maurer's translation of Questions I-4 of this commentary is in respect to their own. Deny the ideas, and you deny this perfection. (I
published under the title Faith, Reason and Theology (Toronto: Pontifical am indebted to Prof Doolan for this insight.)
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, I987); Maurer's remarks on illumination- 39 ST I, q. I4, a. 8; q. I9, a. 4. Saint Thomas clarifies that it is not

ism (xv-xviii) are also helpful. simply God's knowing a thing that brings it into being (that is, if one

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 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

or as member of a species or of any higher genus. The divine too the natural law, wherein the rational creature discerns
knowledge of possible things and the divine willing of their the principles according to which his life should be regulated,
actual existence account for the two most elementary data of is a participation in the Eternal Law through which God gov-
the creature: that it exists, and what it is. 40 erns the universe. By the power of reason, we are able to
Just as the idea of the creature in its individuality and in reach up from this changing world to the unchanging pat-
its species or kind is identical to the divine nature because tern of creation and the law governing it. Both are rooted in
there is no composition in God of thinker and thought, so God's foreknowing and foreordaining the world according to
his wisdom and love. As a consequence, Thomas bases the
necessity of the precepts of the moral law on man's essence
conceives of this knowledge abstractly), but his knowing it and willing it, as eternally known in God's mind, without disregarding the
or, in other words, the cause of a creature is God's knowing approval or
approbation thereof. fact that prior to any of the necessities that may envelop the
40 In attempting to summarize the Cartesian rejection of a doctrine creature there must be a free exercise of the divine will in
of divine ideas, Lilli Alanen voices a common misunderstanding of what populating a contingent world with a variety of natures. 41
that doctrine implies: "There are no models, no prior natures or logi-
cal patterns to which God has to look or conform in creating the truths [of
things]: in creating the truths, i.e., in willing and knowing them, he 41 A clarification is in order, lest one imagine that I am attributing to

makes the models. God could as well have conceived (made) the trian- a created entity some necessity such that God is externally constrained
gle, or any other geometrical figure, in some other way, incompatible and obliged by it. God freely establishes the foundations of all necessi-
with the way in which we actually conceive it, but to conceive how that ties ad extra, since only his own esse is purely and simply necessary to
would be possible is and remains beyond our understanding which is, as be willed, since it lacks nothing of the nature of goodness; the necessity
it were, programmed to represent them in certain determinate ways we attributed to contingent effects flows from what they are freely willed
cannot change or modify" ("Descartes, Duns Scotus, and Ockham on by God to be. Yet-and this is the underlying point-God wills no
Omnipotence and Possibility," Frandscan Studies 45/2 [1985]: 157-88; creature without eternally knowing what it is to be and how it is to act,
185, emphasis added). Surely neither Augustine nor Thomas thought according to its inherent form and ends. For an excellent discussion,
that God had to "look to" models outside himself or "conform to" any see Summa contra gentiles III, chs. 97-98. In the former chapter we read:
standard other than his own intellect. It is precisely in his intellect that "[T]hat God love His own goodness is something necessary, but it does
the ideas subsist, they do not stand over against him. And these ideas are not necessarily follow from this that it should be reflected in creatures,.
immutable not because they are an inexplicable law unto themselves that since the divine goodness is perfect without this. Consequently although
God has to obey, but precisely because they are none other than God's the divine goodness is the reason why creatures were originally brought
act of regarding the perfection ofhis own essence, which is simple and into being, nevertheless this [bringing into being] depends on the sim-
immutable. To him, many "views" of this perfection are possible, though ple will of God. Supposing, however, that God wishes to communicate
he sees this all at once, not by many distinct acts of viewing. It is baffiing His goodness to His creatures by way of likeness as far as it is possible,
to discover how many summaries of Ockham offer a caricature of the this is the reason why creatures are of diverse kinds: although there is
theory of the divine ideas in order to make Ockham's anti-Augustinian no necessity for this diversity being according to this or that degree of
campaign plausible, but this implies one of three things: the commen- perfection, or this or that number of things .... It is therefore clear that
tator has a superficial grasp of the traditional view and possibly also of the dispensations of providence are according to a certain reason, and
Ockham's critique; Ockham himself targets a caricature; Ockham does yet this reason presupposes the divine will." Two errors are thereby
understand the traditional view, and rejects it. If the last is the case, he excluded: "the error of those who maintain that all things follow from
is repudiating the foundations of any rational metaphysics of creation. [God's] simple will, without any reason ... [such that, for example,] the

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 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
Undoubtedly, the only reason man exists is God's uncon- known from their terms or as conclusions necessarily en-
strained decision, for human nature is one of an infinity of tailed by them. These are said to belong to the natural law in
ways in which his divine perfection can be imitated. Granting the strictest sense, and there can be no dispensation in their
man to be such as God knows and wills him, however, cer- regard. . . . But this is not the case when we speak in general
tain rules of human behavior naturally and necessarily follow. of all the precepts of the second table. For the reasons behind
The truth regarding a definite nature, a truth eternally known the commands and prohibitions there are not practical prin-
by God, cannot be altered or negated without violating the ciples that are necessary in an unqualified sense, nor are they
simply necessary conclusions from such. For they contain
principle of non-contradiction. Put differently, the essence of
no goodness such as is necessarily prescribed for attaining
man in the divine mind is self-identical: as one way of reflect-
the goodness of the ultimate end, nor in what is forbidden is
ing the divine being, it has its definition and determination there such malice as would turn one away necessarily from
in God no less than a square, a sea urchin, or a seraph. the last end, for even if the good found in these [precepts]
We return to Scotus. Scotus interprets the first two com- were not commanded, the ultimate end could still be loved
mandments as having rigorous necessity, because only pre- and attained, whereas if the evil proscribed by them were
cepts directly pertaining to God can have necessity from the not forbidden, it would still be consistent with the acquisi-
very meaning of their terms-a negative necessity, it should tion of the ultimate end. 43
be added:
Consider the important test case of whether a man is nat-
Indeed the first two [precepts of the Decalogue, which re- urally obliged to look out for the good of his neighbor and
gard God immediately as object], if they be understood in a for the common good of society. Thomas argues that if one
purely negative sense ... belong to the natural law, taking loves God, one will love one's neighbor and will want him
law of nature strictly, for this follows necessarily: "If God
to love God. Scotus rejects the argument:
exists, then he alone must be loved as God." It likewise
follows that nothing else must be worshipped as God, nor The third way of answering the objection [about the duty of
must any irreverence be shown to him. Consequently, God procuring that one's neighbor also love God] is that even if
could not dispense in regard to these so that someone could it were strictly a matter of the natural law that our neighbor
[rightly] do the opposite. 42 be loved in the way this was explained above, namely, that
Scotus's application ofhis general position to the second table one must want the neighbor himself to love God, because
deliberately severs any intrinsic connection between the laws this is what it means to love one's neighbor, the precepts of
the second table still do not follow from this. For instance,
pertaining to God and the laws pertaining to neighbor:
that one must not kill him, so far as his good [is concerned];
I say that some things can be said to belong to the law of or that one must not want him to commit adultery, so far
nature in two ways: One way is as first practical principles as the good of his partner; or that one must not want him
to steal, so far as the goods of fortune that he uses; or that
sole reason why ftre heats rather than chills is because God so wills," one must want him to show reverence to his parents, which
and ''the error of those who assert that the ordering of causes proceeds consists not just in honoring them but also in supporting
from divine providence by way of necessity."
. 42 Ord. III, suppl. dist. 37; Wolter, Will and Morality, 277. 43 Ibid.

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them. For it is possible for me to will that my neighbor love and freedom. Scotus will not be satisfied until every apparent
God and nevertheless not will that he preserve corporeal restriction of God's autonomy is cut away. As a consequence,
life or conjugal fidelity, and so on with the other precepts. he asserts that the moral precepts are not natural in the strong
Consequently, these two can coexist: that I want my neigh- sense, stating the conclusion twice in succession for emphasis:
bor to love God as I ought to love him (which would be a
"It is true that love of neighbor fulfills the law," but "not in
kind of necessary conclusion from the practical principles)
the way that love of neighbor follows from the first principles
and still do not will him this or that good pertaining to the
second table, since the latter is not a necessary truth. 44 of natural law"; the whole law "depends on this command-
ment ... again understanding this not as something that fol-
Starting from a universal negative precept, "one must not hate lows of necessity from the first principles of naturallaw." 46
God," nothing else follows, he maintains; human nature ne- At stake is not whether human beings need to observe the
~-
cessitates no other duties. "I do not have to will that the com- existing moral law; Scotus is as firm on that point as Thomas.
mon good pertain to another in such a way that God has to At stake is the bottom line of the moral law-why man should
be loved by this other," Scotus remarks, because it is quite be moral, why he should love his neighbor. What philosoph-
possible that God has predestined my neighbor to hell. 45 That ical defense can be given of the Decalogue's moral precepts?
Scotus should argue in this manner seems puzzling until one Are they a matter of nature or a matter of positive law? If
realizes that his overall project is the reduction of commit- the latter, then philosophy must confess its ignorance of the
ments to ideal foundations of natural categories (e.g., man's principles ofhuman behavior and yield to a theological justi-
social inclinations) in the blazing light of divine omnipotence fication based on revelation. 47 On Scotistic terms, we are left
with two ways of explaining the moral precepts of the second
44 Ord. III, suppl. dist. 37; Wolter, Will and Morality, 28 5 (the position
table: either they arise from the free exercise of divine will
Scotus rejects is summarized in his own words on 28 rff.). Thomas would with no reference to the essence of man, or they are greatly
have objected to this reasoning. To love God as a rational being already
implies reasonable habits with respect to oneself and others, a virtuous
"in accord with" that essence but not intrinsically in accord
love of self and love of neighbor. To be a spouse, to own property, to with it, otherwise they would be seen to flow invariably from
possess life-these are real goods tightly bound to human nature. They it. On either account, the moral law must be construed as ex-
can be foregone for a higher cause, but they cannot be looked upon as ternal to man's nature, in such wise that it is imposed, laid
incidental. In the passages cited, Scotus seems to marginalize man's social down, in the manner of positive law. 48 Whether divine will
and bodily nature by separating off this dimension of morality from the
attainment ofman's final end. Lee drives home this objection in "Aquinas
and Scotus on Liberty and Natural Law," 75-76. 46 Ord. III, suppl. dist. 37; Wolter, Will and Morality, 285.
45 Ord. III, suppl. dist. 37; Wolter, Will and Morality, 283. The passage 47 Thomas Williams does not think it problematic to hold that a moral
reads: "One could reply that from this precept, 'Love the Lord, your law dependent only on God's free will can be accessible to natural reason
God,' it does not follow that I ought to want my neighbor to love God. without the benefit of revelation. His explanation is presented in ''Rea-
And when one insists that a perfect and well-ordered love is not jealous, son, Morality, and Voluntarism in Duns Scotus: A Pseudo-Problem Dis-
I reply that I do not have to will that the common good pertain to an- solved," The Modern Schoolman 74 (1997): 73-94. I fmd Williams' argu-
other in such a way that [God] has to be loved by this other. For it is not ment interesting but not fully convincing.
necessary that I will this good for another, if God does not want to be 48 Scotus concurs with Thomas that positive divine law will always

the good of such, as when he predestines one and not another, wishing be in harmony with man's nature; a supremely beneficent Creator does
to be the good of the predestined and not of the other." not legislate injuriously. "The other way in which things belong to the

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is the sole determinant or whether a sort of co-determination (in which is precontained the archetypes of all possible be-
results from the operation of divine omnipotence keeping in ings) and unwill his own volition (in which is precontained
view the exigencies of man's life in society, the Scotistic posi- the choice to reduce to actuality some of the possibles he
tion reduces law to two mutually exclusive modes: the Eter- foreknows); and this would be a violation of the principle of
nal Law, by which is signified the immanent and necessary ac- non-contradiction, an instance of God undermining his own
tivities of the divine essence; positive law, the result of God's being. Thomas recognizes this:
free choice toward his creatures. As the Apostle says, God "continueth faithful, he cannot
deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:13). But he would deny himself if
J. Summary Comparison of the he were to do away with the very order ofhis own justice,
since he is justice itself Thus God cannot dispense a man
Positions of Aquinas and Scotus so that it be lawful for him not to direct himself to God, or
For Thomas, the natural law must be seen in terms of the not to be subject to his justice, even in those matters in which
inner necessity of the creature's essence, its unchanging ex- men are directed to one another. 50
emplar in the mind of God. Whatever the rational creature's As the acts of a creature, human acts are naturally governed
nature gives rise to is either a first principle of natural law by principles that flow from the Creator's knowledge of man,
or deducible therefrom. God is said to have no power over which is to say, from the nature or essence of man as image of
this law, not because he is constrained by an outside rule, but God, a sharer in God's knowledge and providence. By heed-
rather because he cannot not will the nature's self-identity and ing and applying these principles he makes progress in virtue
thus its fitting behavior as eternally known to him. 49 Indeed, and becomes more fully human; by failing to do so he sins
since all that God thinks is identical with himself, to hold that and falls away from his own good. 51
the activity suited to some nature is subject to radical change For Scotus, in contrast, the natural law must be seen in
is to hold that the nature as such may be changed-which, terms of the necessity of the divine will in its immanent ac-
in the last analysis, is to hold that the divine mind is capa- tivity ofloving and knowing itself Whatever the divine will
ble of mutability of thought and variability of will, that its must will when considering its own nature is either a first
thinking is reformulable, its willing arbitrary. In short, such principle of natural law or a conclusion directly deducible
a claim would necessitate that God unthink his own thought
50 ST I-II, q. roo, a. 8, ad 2, emphasis added.
law of nature is because they are exceedingly in harmony with that law,
51 This is why Saint Thomas can make the striking statement: ''God is
even though they do not follow necessarily from those first practical not offended by us except when we act against our own good'' (Summa
principles known from their terms .... Now, it is certain that all the contra gentiles II, ch. 122). In the supernatural realm this process is notre-
precepts of the second table also belong to the natural law in this way, versed but accelerated, since baptism takes a person who is already imago
since their rightness is very much in harmony with the first practical Dei, sharing in the goodness of the creator, and makes him imago Christi,
principles that are known of necessity" (Ord. III, suppl. dist. 37; Wolter, a sharer in the still greater riches of the redemption. Hence, in the order
Will and Morality, 279). of redemption it remains true that we are made more human the more
49 See note 40 on the misconception involved in believing God to we correspond with grace, yet with this difference: the perfect humanity
be "constrained" by his own ideas, and hence in thinking it an act of toward which we are led by the Spirit is not our own but Christ' s-he
homage to divine simplicity and freedom when these ideas are purged from whom all grace comes, unto whom all grace leads, to whom all
from the speculative account of God's creative knowledge. grace causes likeness.

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 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
from a first principle. "Natural" refers to the divine essence by nature or according to his being, are two different claims.
as such, seemingly prescinding from its imitability or from Scotus concedes the first and denies the second.
any conception of possible creatures. As Wolter writes,

The law of nature, in his [Scotus's] system, loses something 4· Difficulties and Dispensations
of its impersonal and inflexible character. Its personal di-
What does each party to the debate make of those perplexing
mension cannot be ignored. Where other scholastics, fol-
lowing Augustine who in turn was influenced by the Stoics, passages in Sacred Scripture where God seems to command
link it with the lex aeterna, Scotus eliminates this last vestige or legislate acts contrary to the content of the second table
of impersonalism. To legislate or command is a function of of the Decalogue? 54 Scotus sees the long-famous examples of
will, not of a nature as such, even if it be the most perfect Abraham's intention to kill Isaac (Gen. 22), Hosea's marrying
of natures. 52 a "wife of harlotry" (Hos. r:2; c£ 3:1), and the Jews plun-
dering the Egyptians (Ex. 12:36) as proving his view of the
Thus only the first two commandments are "natural" because natural law. Yet one wonders ifhe is begging the question by
they pertain directly to the divine nature which must never assuming that God commanded acts of murder, adultery, or
be hated (the first principle of natural law) but must be loved theft, properly so called. 55 Thomas, relying upon a distinc-
(directly concluded to from that first principle). Although tion between the letter of the law and the intention of the
greatly in harmony with the natural law, the second table can lawgiver, sees in no case any revocation of or dispensation
be changed by God, for he is not necessarily bound to any of from the moral precepts of the Decalogue.
these precepts. They are not truths in such a way that, the
divine intellect considering them, the divine will must will Precepts admit of dispensation when there occurs a partic-
them. With the tradition, Scotus admits that the natural law ular case in which, if the letter of the law be observed, the
and its associated precepts, as expressed in both tables of the intention of the lawgiver is frustrated. Now the intention of
every lawgiver is directed first and chiefly to the common
Decalogue, can be said to be "prescribed interiorly in the heart
good; second, to the order ofjustice and virtue, whereby the
of everyone." 5 3 However, that a law is inscribed in man by
common good is preserved and attained. If therefore there
the free decree of his maker, and that such a law must be his
54 For Thomas's handling of these instances, see ST I-II, q. 94, a. 5
52 Allan B. Wolter, OFM, The Philosophical Theology ofjohn Duns Sco- and q. roo, a. 8; for Scotus's, see Ord. III suppl. dist. 37; Wolter, Will and
tus (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), r6r-62. Later he observes: Morality, 269-87. In one place at least, Scotus offers an interpretation
"Many ofScotus' colleagues, following Augustine, made use of an idea of the] ews' despoliation of the Egyptians which closely parallels that of
borrowed from the Stoics. They considered the entire decalogue as are- Saint Thomas: see Ord. III, s.d. 37; Wolter, Will and Morality, 287. On
flection of some impersonal 'Eternal Law' that was written into nature, whether Aquinas believes the precepts of the Decalogue can admit of any
and saw it as binding on God by reason of what he is and the sort of dispensation, see the superb article by Patrick Lee, "Permanence of the
created nature he decided to make .... [T]he values protected by the Ten Commandments: Saint Thomas and His Modern Commentators,"
second table cannot have the same absolute value as those preserved by Theological Studies 42 (1981): 422-43.
the first table. They are not as independent of, or antecedent to, what 55 The despoiling of the Egyptians is not a particularly strong objec-

God wills, in the way the values safeguarded by the precepts of the first tion, since the sacred text says that the Israelites asked the Egyptians for
table are" (ibid., 2oo-2or). their gold and silver and clothing, and implies that the Egyptians freely
53 Ord. III, suppl. dist. 37, ad 3; Wolter, Will and Morality, 287.
handed it over, just to get rid of the plague-bearing Israelites.

29
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw
Peter A. Kwasniewski
be any precepts which contain the very preservation of the man life wholly belongs to God, and since he inflicts death
common good, or the very order ofjustice and virtue, such
on all men, whether guilty or innocent, on account of the sin
precepts contain the intention of the lawgiver and therefore
are indispensable .... Now the precepts of the Decalogue of Adam, he may therefore at any time justly demand a life
contain the very intention of the lawgiver, who is God. For be given back to him. No individual human has the aut~or­
the precepts of the first table, which direct us to God, con- ity to appoint the day and the hour, but the L.ord certan~y
tain the very order to the common and fmal good, which does, and used it with Abraham as a test of faith. (That 1s,
is God; while the precepts of the second table contain the had Abraham taken Isaac's life without being commanded by
order of justice to be observed among men, that nothing his superior to do so, it would have been murder, just as a
undue be done to anyone, and that each one be given his private citizen who intentionally kills a criminal co~ts ,a
due; for it is in this sense that we are to take the precepts vicious act whereas a judge who decrees the same crnmnal s
of the Decalogue. Consequently, the precepts of the Deca- death can, in the right circumstances, be acting virtuously. 57 )
logue admit of no dispensation whatsoever. 56 Again, adultery means sexual intercourse with anoth~r's wife.
Taking up the problematic cases mentioned, Thomas does But a wife is allotted to a man by the law emanatmg from
not see contradictions of the moral law that was promulgated God, the author of the institution of marriage, just as Eve
with the very creation of man, but special interventions from was given to Adam to be his. Thus if God commands inter-
God that change the ordinary course of affairs. So, since hu- course with an unmarried woman, this Callllot be adultery or
fornication, but is tantamount to God's having appointed a
56 STI-ll, q. 100, a. 8. There is a difference between the prindples and
wife. 58 Finally, theft is the taking of another's property. But
the precepts of the natural law. The principles ("do good, avoid evil") are
universal, absolute, immutable and knowable with certitude, but at the
57 C£ ST I-II, q. 100, a. 8, ad 3; II-II, q. 64, aa. 2 and 3. Concerning
same time, somewhat vague, unclear and indeterminate (c£ STI-ll, q.
Abraham and putting men to death, see Lee, "Permanence of the Ten
94, aa. 4- 5). The precepts, on the other hand, are either practical conclu-
Commandments," 433-41. If a State has the authority to punish male-
sions drawn from the principles or certain determinations of them. Even
factors with death, this is only because the State is acting on behalf of God
the precepts of the natural law are sometimes vague and indeterminate
by acting to safeguard the social common good, which, as Thomas often
and require determination by custom and the civil law. All of the latter
says, is the most godlike among created goods. This seems t~ be one ?f
are correspondingly more clear and determinate, but less universal and
the reasons why John Paul II has turned against capital pumshment m
immutable than the prindples of the natural law.
the context of liberal democracies that disclaim, in principle, action on
One interesting test case is raised by Saint Augustine in The City of
behalf of a transcendent principle and perhaps no longer even aspire to
God, 15.16. Did the sons of Adam and Eve sin by marrying their sisters?
a properly common good. . .
Clearly, the natural law commands as a first principle filial piety, which 58 If the woman is a harlot or concubine, she is not, stnctly speaking,
would exclude intercourse or marriage with parents. By extension, that
already married, and so the argument still follows. A diffi~ulty woul_d
is, by a certain conclusion, it would exclude incestuous relations with
arise if God were to assign as a wife a woman already marned, for this
close relatives, especially siblings. However, because the prohibition of
woman is already joined to another in an unbreakable bond. If, ~~w­
sibling incest is a precept, it is not absolute (c£ ST II-II, q. 154, a. 9, corp.
ever one views marriage as a covenant freely instituted by the divme
authority, then it would follow that even if no man has authority to ~s­
and ad 3; Supplement, q. 58, a. 4). It must be weighed against a more
fundamental, positive, and urgent precept, namely, the obligation to per-
solve such a covenant, God retains such authority, and should he will
petuate the race. The same analysis would apply in the hypothetical case
to dissolve such a union, it would be ipso facto dissolved. The statement
of a brother and sister who, as the result ofsome global catastrophe, were
"What God has united, let no man separate" implies only that man has
the last man and woman on earth.
no authority to do this; what God has united, God may separate. (In

JO JI
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
even as God is the Lord oflife and death, he is also the ruler agree that marriage, as a natural institution, is defined by the
of all creation, the "owner" of all good things, for he is their two ends that belong to it by nature: the primary end is the
source. Hence, he is perfectly free to allot these goods as he procreation and education of offspring, the secondary end the
deems fitting, and if he commands that a thing be taken, that lifelong union of two spouses in a common household. God
very command transfers the title. 59 may specify the extent to which the secondary end can be
A still greater scriptural challenge awaits the natural law modified for the sake of the primary. 61 Like Thomas, Scotus
theorist: the patriarchal practice of polygamy and the Mosaic refers to the original "law of nature" instituted by God and
permission of divorce. Aquinas handles these issues with cus- restored by Christ: "They shall be two in one flesh." If any
tomary confidence and serenity. 60 In his attempt to resolve variation from this law of monogamy is to occur, it must be
the same difficulties, it becomes clear that Scotus is not stub- explained either in terms of a divine permission, under excep-
bornly committed to his own view of natural law, for he al- tional circumstances, to relativize the secondary end for the
lows more traditional accounts a place. Aquinas and Scotus sake of a superior achievement of the primary end, or in terms
of indulgence to sinners, as when Moses permitted divorce
like manner, God commands us: The life of an innocent man may never because of the people's hardness of heart. Since it does not,
be lawfully taken, since we are not the origin of that life-although we in and of itself, harm the good of offspring (proles), polygamy
are the guardians of social order and so the ruler may have authority in is not intrinsically sinful, but it is patently deficient as regards
certain cases to take a guilty man's life. However, God is fully justified
in taking even the innocent's life, since he gave it.) Can God establish a
the goods of the spouses' mutual loyalty and the sacramen-
union indissoluble even by his own power? It would seem not; a union of tal symbolism of their union (.fides, sacramentum). 62 In con-
two creatures is a contingent reality, and God is not bound by anything trast, divorce under the Mosaic law remained evil, and like
extra eum. Insofar as the union could be dissolved by divine power, it any moral evil it could be tolerated so as to discourage the
would not be able to bear an exact likeness to the union between Christ commission of worse deeds, but was never approved, though
and the Church, which is eternally indissoluble. Insofar as marriage is
its guilt might be lessened by divine indulgence. That is, Mo-
indissoluble on the part of a Christian man and a Christian woman who
vow their love before God, it does bear this likeness, which is precisely saic divorce seems to involve the toleration of a moral evil,
the good of sacramentum in Augustine's terminology. The hypothetical of a sin, rather than being a genuine dispensation, whereas
case remains nonetheless difficult. Divorce, which is a moral evil, would (ifi understand Thomas aright) polygamy is an imperfection,
be implicit in God's re-assigning a wife from her husband to another an imperfect realization of marriage, but not a moral evil per
man, yet one cannot attribute to God the positive willing of any moral se. Hence, the patriarchs were permitted to have a number
evil. Moreover, if the man to whom God newly assigns the woman were
already married, she would become his second wife, which implies the
of wives, and they could still become holy under those cir-
direct divine willing ofbigarny, contrary to God's original intention as cumstances, whereas divorce, of itself, militates against holi-
specified in Genesis. ness. Many figures of the Old Testament are understood to
59 See STI-ll, q. 94, a. 5, ad 2; q. roo, a. 8, ad 3.
be saints and are liturgically venerated as such (the calendars
6 ° For Thomas's view, see the Supplement of the Summa, q. 65 on the
of Eastern churches, both Catholic and dissident, are full of
plurality of wives and q. 67 on the bill of divorce; for Scotus's view, see
Ordinatio IV, dist. 33, qq. I and 3; Wolter, Will and Morality, 289-311.
The Supplement is the early Thomas of the Commentary on the Sentences, All of this is spelled out clearly in the Supplement, q. 65, aa. r-2.
61

but his position on the topics does not undergo significant change during On the three traditional goods or blessings of marriage, see the
62

his career. Supplement, q. 49·

32 33
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
their feastdays), but no one can be a saint who lives at manifest In a question on the subject of divorce, Scotus admits that
variance with the law of God. We do not find divorced and Christ "returned marriage to an unqualified state of perfec-
remarried saints, but we do find saints under the Old Law tion, namely, as indissoluble as it was under the law of na-
who lived with many wives. ture"; the Mosaic permission to divorce, "like other imper-
This being said, it is nevertheless true that the covenant fections licit under the law of Moses, Christ removed." 64
between man and woman was created to be indissoluble and Indeed, Scotus concedes that "marriage under the Mosaic law
monogamous, as Christ teaches. Consequently, dissolubility was not marriage in an unqualified sense." 65 He also thinks
or polygamy could never be considered secundum naturam in that the book ofDeuteronomy and the prophet Malachi speak
the strict sense. Divorce might be tolerated for a time due to of permission for certain acts which "are still mortally sin-
"hardness of heart," and an imperfect realization of the sec- ful" but "are allowed only to prevent an even graver mor-
ondary end might be allowed for a given period, but in regard tal sin from happening." 66 In this admission we are closer to
to what the divine lawgiver intends, viz., what is simply best Aquinas and the tradition coming through Augustine,] erome,
for the human race, both these policies are a manifest falling and Peter Lombard. From his cautious tone, one gathers that
away. In the Gospel, our Lord teaches that marriage has to be Scotus is not satisfied with the available explanations. His
understood according to the Creator's original plan (c£ Mt. unwillingness to embrace a single account indicates that he
I9:3-6) and links indissolubility to the sixth commandment cannot see the way to applying his theory of divine volun-
(Mt. I9:7-9), as if to show that this precept of the second tarism and creaturely contingency with full consistency. Per-
table is, in its very letter, a direct consequence of man's pris- haps he senses that a full-scale voluntarism would yield shock-
tine nature. 63 The polygamy of the Old Testament was never ing results, and it may be this that holds him back from a
intended to seem attractive. The first polygamist recorded in naked divine-will doctrine rooted in an anti-essentialist re-
Scripture was a murderous descendent of Cain, Lamech (Gen. ductionism. His younger confrere and philosophical antago-
5:I7-24), and the manner in which the patriarchs become the nist William of Ockham will not feel burdened by the same
partners of a number of women is usually far from edifying, scruples.
nor are the households models of peace (c£ Gen. I6, 2I, 29-
30, etc.).
In summary, for Aquinas the allowing of dispensations (e.g., II. Ockham's Subversion ofNatural Law
for patriarchal polygamy) or the toleration of evils (e.g., di- Four distinct theses constitute the foundations of Ockham's
vorce) cannot be construed as a changing of natural law or as ethical theory. (I) There are no natures and no divine ideas of
support for the principle that moral evil may be done for the natures. (2) God has unbounded power to determine moral
sake of procuring a greater good. The precepts of the law legislation and exempt from it. (3) The human will deter-
remain consistent, universal, irrevocable, for they are rooted mines its own end. (4) The normative value of right reason
in human nature and in God's eternal law.
64 Ord. IV, dist. 33, q. 3, re 1; Wolter, Will and Morality, 305; for com-

mentary on Scotus's teaching on marriage, polygamy, and divorce, see

63 Notably, Aquinas's account parallels the argument of Christ, while
ibid., 64-n
the Scotistic view of marriage, at least in Ord. IV, dist. 33 (Wolter, Will 65 Ord. IV, dist. 33, q. 3, ad 2; Wolter, Will and Morality, 309.
and Morality, 297-311), engenders serious difficulties of exegesis. 66 Ord. IV, ad 2b; Wolter, Will and Morality, 311.

34 35
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw
T
! Peter A. Kwasniewski

-the rightness of right reason-is a dictate of the divine will. I of which the individual is a particular expression or instance.
shall concentrate on these elements, placing aside discussions This is another way of saying that God knows John not only as
of the sphere of "right reason." For if all moral principles (in- John, but also as man, as animal, and as substance. Inasmuch as
cluding right reason) exist at the sufferance of divine volition, John is each of these, certain conditions and certain acts will
then it matters little how thoroughly Ockham adopts a tradi- be suitable for his perfection, others harmful to it. Rightness
tional framework of virtues and vices; any such framework and wrongness ofpossible human acts will obtain regardless of
may exist as if necessarily with respect to a given order of whether or not John ever comes into existence. The creature's
creation and set of commands, but in itself it would remain essential foundation in the divine intellect makes it possible
wholly contingent. When the tradition inquires about the ne- to speak absolutely of what is healthy and unhealthy, appro-
cessity of natural law, it means to ask precisely this: whether priate and inappropriate, good and evil, for the creature. 69
any moral precepts are immutably binding on mankind, in Ockham looks upon such a theory with considerable un-
all circumstances; whether human nature essentially demands ease. It seems to threaten not only divine unicity but also di-
conformity to such precepts. Hence the proof of (4) will be vine freedom. He will have none of what he regards as Pla-
decisive in helping us to ascertain the objective status of right tonic natures or Greco-Islamic necessitarianism. 70 Nothing
reason in Ockham's thought, quite apart from its subjective should be posited which might in any way imply that God's
status as a trustworthy measure of human acts from a lower
69 Thus, from all eternity, murder will be evil, even if the world were
or second-level point of view.
never created. Murder could not take place, of course, unless human
beings actually existed, but murder would still be known to be wrong
I. There Are No Natures and No Divine Ideas of Natures 67 just because of the goodness ofhuman life as understood by God. In this
sense, for Thomas, the essential content of the Decalogue is eternal and
For Saint Thomas, "a divine idea is nothing but a given way has nothing to do with the contingency of creation, unlike, for example,
in which God views his essence as capable of being imitated the number of continents into which the earth's land will be divided
by a creature. Prior to the actual creation of a given entity the variety and duration of plant and animal species that will be reduced
there is a divine idea to which that creature will correspond to actuality, the number of races that will diversify the human species,
and so on, none of which has to be one way rather than another.
if it is ever brought into actual being." 68 Such an idea cap- 70
The theme ofOckham's anti-Platonism and his attack on heathen
tures not only the existence of the individual, but the essence metaphysics, particularly in the form of Arabian Aristotelianism, is em-
phasized by all the commentators. Nearly all ofOckham's major disagree-
67 The best study of this question is Armand Maurer's "The Role of ments with Aquinas come down to a contention that, in one respect or
Divine Ideas in the Theology ofWilliam ofOckham," in Being and Know· another, Aquinas had not sufficiently freed himself from the pagan es-
ing. Studies in Thomas Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophers (Toronto: sentialism common to the Greeks and inherited (in different ways) by
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 363-81, the substance Augustine and by the Arabs. Copleston may be allowed to speak on be-
of which is reproduced in the same author's Philosophy of Ockham, 205- half of the secondary literature: Ockham seems to have been engaged in
28. Cf. Klocker's treatment in his book Ockham and the Divine Freedom, "a struggle to liberate Christian faith from the contamination of Greek
n-89. and Islamic metaphysics"; his critique aimed at "effecting a welcome
68 As formulated by John F. Wippel, "The Reality of Nonexisting
liberation of faith from the tyranny of rationalist metaphysics of non-
Possibles According to Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey Christian origin"; "In addition to his logical preoccupations he has in
ofFontaines," Review of Metaphysics 33 (1981): 732-33. See the fuller mind the liberation of Christian faith from what he regards, rightly or
discussion of divine ideas above, in Part I, section 2. wrongly, as the alien yoke of Greek and Islamic ways of thinking, which

J6 37
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

actions toward his creatures are prenecessitated, measured, or knower or his knowledge. Consequently, the ideas are rein-
patterned apart from his command. 71 Although Ockham uses terpreted as connotative terms or concepts. It was a mistake to
Augustinian language out of deference to tradition, he does consider them quid rei, something real. 76 God has in mind no
not grant to ideas any reality within the divine essence. "Now "archetypes"; each "idea" is nothing more than the individ-
to hold with Augustine that there are ideas and at the same ual creature qua producible. In a way, by speaking of ideas in
time refuse to identify them in any way with the divine essence God's mind, we are guilty of projecting onto him something
left Ockham only one alternative. He had to identify them in that is true only of the rational creature's thought-process. 77
some way with creatures." 72 The idea of a creature in God It may be difficult to say exactly what a divine idea can
"can only be the creature itself known directly, perfectly, and be after Ockham has applied his razor to it. But an impor-
individually by God." 73 Ockham pointedly declares that such tant corollary cannot be evaded: there is no such thing as the
ideas "are only of singulars." 74 "The ideas are not in God sub- essence of man in the divine mind; there are no eternal types
jectively and really; but they are in him only objectively, that behind natural forms. God does not create Peter, James, and
is, as certain things which are known by him, for the ideas are John as three instances of man, three circumscriptions or pro-
the things themselves which are producible by God." 75 The jections of an eternally-known archetype with its own fixed
idea denotes the individual creature but connotes the divine identity and suitable perfection. He made Peter, James, and
John as three individual absolutes who, by his free choice,
have contaminated its purity''; '' Ockham evidently wishes to free ethics
happen to have the same basic set of characteristics. Do they
from any elements of Greco-Islamic necessitarianism, which would rep-
resent the divine will as subject to norms in a manner analogous to that share in human nature? No. Is there such a thing as human-
in which the created free will is subject to norms and to obligation" ity? No. They share nothing in common. There is no all-
(History of Medieval Philosophy, 232-33, 238, 254). embracing idea of what they are. Each man is a new and dif-
71 As Copleston puts it: "Even the doctrine of eternal divine ideas
ferent creation not only in his material individuality but in
as exemplars or patterns of creation seems to him to smack of Greek
his very essence. Put differently, a thing's essence is identical
necessitarianism, at any rate if it is interpreted as meaning that the divine
will is constricted by eternal archetypes" (History of Medieval Philosophy,
with its individual subsistence. (In Ockham's view, there is
238). Of course, neither Augustine nor Aquinas had thought that God neither a real nor a formal distinction between essence and
was in any way "constricted" by the divine ideas, which are internal to existence. 78 ) "[W]hat God wills are singular existents, each
him and identical to his nature, since they are nothing other than the very of which is independent of all the others. Any connection
understanding of that nature's inexhaustible imitability. See note 40.
72 Klocker, "Divine Freedom," 252-53. 76 Klocker, "Divine Freedom," 254.
73 Klocker, "Divine Freedom," 2 54- 77 For a study of the contrasting positions, see Alice Ramos, "Ockham
74 Sent. I, dist. 35, q. 5 (OTh IV, 497). Citations ofOckham's theo- and Aquinas on Exemplary Causality," in Proceedings of the PMR Con-
logical writings are from the critical edition published by the Francis- ferettce, vols. 19-20 (Villanova: Augustinian Historical Institute, 1994-
can Institute: Opera Theologica, ed. Gedeon Gal et al., ro vols. (Saint 96), 199-213.
Bonaventure, N.Y.: 1967-1988). Although I do not refer to them here, 78 As articulated by Scotus and his contemporaries, a formal distinc-

critical editions ofOckham's other works are also available: Opera Philo- tion is intermediate between a distinctio rationis tantum (such as that, e.g.,
sophica, ed. Philotheus Boehner et al., 7 vols. (Saint Bonaventure, N.Y., between the definition and the thing defined) and a distinctio realis (which
1974-1988); Opera Politica, ed. H.S. Offl.er et al., 4 vols. (Manchester: obtains between things that can exist separately or at least can be made to
Manchester University Press, 1940-r997). exist separately by divine omnipotence-the parts of a body; substance
75 Sent. I, dist. 35, q. 5 ( OTh IV, 493). and accident). A thing is "formally" distinct when, in essence and in

39
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

between them, any ordering of one to the other, is the result elusion about how this approach will affect the perception of
of that creating will." 79 Even if God decides to make many finality and, indeed, the entire realm of morals:
creatures of the same description, he has no pattern for them With the rejection of realism and the assertion of radical
in mind. Individual men are not "born into" a natural law individuality, beings could no longer be conceived as mem-
that, reflecting the Eternal Law, determines both their ordi- bers of species or genera with a certain nature or potential-
nation to God and their social obligations. For Ockham, ob- ity. In Aristotelian terms, the rejection of formal causes was
serves Klocker, ''every created effect is not an expression of also the rejection of final causes. As a result, only material
an intelligibility grounded in the nature of God himself, but a and efficient causality remained. 82
finite extrapolation of the divine will's power to produce." 80 Ockham does not reject a formal cause within the indi-
Gillespie puts it succinctly: "Divine omnipotence, properly vidual (he accepts the hylomorphic doctrine of the Physics),
understood [in Ockham's system], thus entails radical individ- but this form is in every respect as singular as the substance
ualism.... There are no species by nature, but only individ- itsel£ 83 It does not take many steps to get from this view to
ual things that resemble one another and that thus can be sig- the now-common opinion that "human nature" is a mental
nified, that is, represented by a sign." 81 Anticipating slightly
a later stage of my analysis, I will quote here Gillespie's con- rived from this view: "nature is radically individual and every universal
is thus a distortion of reality. To minimize this distortion it is necessary
concept, it can be thought of by itself, although it may in reality be so to minimize the number of universals, hence Ockham's formulation of
closely united to something else that not even God's power can sepa- the principle as the injunction: 'Do not multiply universals needlessly' "
rate the two (e.g., the soul and its faculties; the soul's faculties among (ibid., I 8).
82 Nihilism Before Nietzsche, 21.
themselves). Aquinas would probably have regarded as arbitrary Henry
83 Since for Thomas the form of a bodily nature is contracted to an
of Ghent's condition that actual separability establishes a real distinction;
in fact, Scotistic formal distinctions may be classified as real distinctions individual suppositum by matter, there cannot be a form that is common
when they pertain to what things are and not merely how we think of or universal, properly speaking, in the world of existing individuals. This
them. Not surprisingly, when Ockham rejects the formal distinction as fact opens up the possibility of a nominalist reduction: there are simply
useless, he thereby rejects a good many real distinctions, too. C£ Alexan- no natures whatsoever. However, this cannot be true, since it is not by
der Broadie, "Duns Scotus and William Ockham," in The Medieval Theo- chance nor by convention that all horses are horses, born ofparent horses,
logians, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 250-65. Part of this able to generate baby horses. The members of a species are really con-
note was adapted from Parthenius Minges, s.v. John Duns Scotus, The nected and, in some way, are one. This real commonness is neither in the
Catholic Encyclopedia (1909 ed.). world, where there are only individuals, nor in created intellects, where
79 Klocker, "Divine Freedom," 256. He continues: "One encounters there is only the concept of a nature, a concept that has to be derived in
a de facto existing singular which speaks only of itself and in a rather un- some way from that nature. (Even if there is only one of a kind-say,
stable fashion at that. All connections between such singulars are also the last dodo on earth-this individual has an infima spedes, a universal
de facto, sequential, and just as unstable" (257). In fact, Ockham goes so common form, because it is ofsuch a nature that there could be others idem
far as to say we cannot know with certainty whether any one thing is the in spede.) Therefore this real commonness must be in God; the common
cause of any other. For example, we don't know whether fire is what is nature subsists in the mind of the first cause ofbeing. It is because God
really burning the wood placed into it, or God is just making it look that knows what a horse is and causes it to be such in fact, that all horses are
way (cf Weinberg, Short History, 241). See note 132. really alike-each expresses somehow one and the same essence as eter-
80 Klocker, "Divine Freedom," 257. nally known and as willed to be instantiated in this or that singular. One
81 Nihilism Before Nietzsche, 17; 19-20. Gillespie rightly points out should add moreover that matter is only the principle of individuation
that the famous principle of parsimony (or "Ockham's razor") is de- in the natural order, for it is the divine idea of the singular as singular

4I
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
fiction or cultural construction, and that, consequently, "rea- 2. God Has Unbounded Power to Determine
son" and "morality" are equally fictitious or constructed. This Moral Legislation and Exempt From It
is routinely said even about maleness and femaleness, and the
heterosexual relationship inherent in their complementarity: In the field of ethics, Ockham is most famous for his discon-
such things do not really exist, but are invented by our brains, certing theses about the power of God over the content of
imposed by our surroundings. Homosexuality is neither more morality. Once moral truths are accepted as having the status
nor less "natural" than heterosexuality. In short, no form of of positive law suspended by a thread from divine omnipo-
behavior or way of life can be good or bad in itself, since tence and liberty, the entire created order, the m:orallaw not
each thing is an absolute novelty that cannot be judged in excepted, is seen to be utterly contingent,
relationship to a natural kind or natural ends. 84 Hence, it is
in the sense that not only its existence but also its essence
not surprising that Ockharn's political philosophy exalts the
and character depend on the divine creative and omnipo-
self-determining individual and, as an eventual consequence,
tent will .... There are [for the tradition] acts which are
critiques what he regards as the overextension of papal au-
intrinsically evil and which are forbidden because they are
thority in secular affairs. 85 evil: they are not evil simply because they are forbidden. For
Ockham, however, the divine will is the ultimate norm of
morality: the moral law is founded on the free divine choice
that is its ultimate foundation. The horse was able to be conceived and
born because of the generative power and resources of the parents, but rather than ultimately on the divine essence. . . . God can do
the first cause of its existence is God's knowing exhaustively this very anything or order anything which does not involve logical
singular and willing it to come to be through a process of natural gen- contradiction. Therefore, because, according to Ockham,
eration. This is true in a yet more mysterious way for the conception there is no natural or formal repugnance between loving God
of a human being, where God acts as proximate agent in the creation and loving a creature in a way which has been forbidden by
of the rational soul. Such reflections permit us to see once again how God, God could order fornication [as an act of virtue]. Be-
crucial is the doctrine of divine ideas in the metaphysical vision of the tween loving God and loving a creature in a manner which
Angelic Doctor. See Gregory T. Doolan, "The Causality of the Divine is illicit there is only an extrinsic repugnance, namely the
Ideas in Relation to Natural Agents in Thomas Aquinas," International repugnance which arises from the fact that God has actually
Philosophical Quarterly44 (2004): 393-409. forbidden that way ofloving a creature. Hence, if God were
84 For Thomas, we are able to judge rightly about singulars because
to order fornication, the latter would be not only licit but.
we first attain, in some way, to universal natures: Super Boetium De Trini-
tate, q. 5, a. 2, ad 4· I would not for a moment imply that Ockham could meritorious. Hatred of God, stealing, committing adultery,
have ceded rights to so manifest a perversion as sodomy. What I won- are forbidden by God. But they could be ordered by God;
der about is whether he realized the extent to which his views might and, if they were, they would be meritorious acts. 86
undermine the reasonableness of any universal discrimination between
virtuous and vicious behavior, or might call into question even the pos-
sibility of securely grasping the intelligibility of any course of behavior. /'esprit laique au declin du moyen age, rev. ed., 5 vols. (Louvain: Editions
These issues will be discussed in the following pages. Nauwelaerts, I956-r970), esp. vol. 5, Guillaume d'Ockham: Critique des
85 Ockham's privileging of personal conscience over clerical author-
structures ecclesiales.
ity deserves a separate treatment by itself. Obviously, what a thinker has 86 Copleston, History of Philosophy, 3:ro4-5. For references to rele-
to say (or not say) about natural law will profoundly alter the political vant passages in Ockham's writings, see Maurer, Philosophy of Ockham,
philosophy he is likely to uphold. See Georges de Lagarde, La naissance de 525-36; Adams, "Ockham's Moral Theory," 27-33.

42 43
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

God was just as free to command us to hate him as to love it may be. "Evil," Ockham writes, "is nothing other than to
him, and had he commanded us to hate him, it would have do something when one is under an obligation to do the op-
been virtuous to do so. Of course, as Ockham admits, we posite. Obligation does not fall on God, since he is not under
could not actually perform this command, because in doing any obligation to do anything." 88 The fact that God has not
so, we would be obeying God, which is an act of love, and willed such things is simply a free choice on his part. Ock-
thus we could not be hating him at the same time. Neverthe- ham is not suggesting that adultery, theft, or hatred of God
less, by means of so provocative an example, Ockham wishes are legitimate in the moral order of the world in which we
to make the point that man's love of God is good because find ourselves. But that is simply a matter ofjact, for it could
commanded, and not because of any relationship between hu- have been otherwise. An oft-quoted passage from Ockham
man nature and God's nature. The goodness is willed into the brings this out clearly:
act by choice, it is not there owing to the kind of act it is.
For Ockham, loving God is good, or murdering the innocent I say that although hate, theft, adultery and the like have
evil, only extrinsically, that is, in relation to the divine will. It a bad circumstance annexed de communi lege, in so far as
[quatenus] they are done by someone who is obliged by di-
would change nothing to say that God had willed that these
vine precept to the contrary, nevertheless, in respect of ev-
acts always be good or evil; they would be no less conven-
erything absolute in those acts they could be done by God
tional for that. 87 without any bad circumstance annexed. And they could be
Nowadays examples of sins like fornication or divorce and done by the wayfarer even meritoriously if they were to
remarriage, being almost universally accepted practices in the fall under a divine precept, just as now in fact their oppo-
modern West, are not likely to stimulate our attention to the sites fall under divine precept .... But if they were thus
radical nature of what Ockham is proposing. According to done meritoriously by the wayfarer, then they would not
his theory, any deeds whatsoever, so long as they include no be called or named theft, adultery, hate, etc., because those
logical contradiction, could be imposed by God upon some names signify such acts not absolutely but by connoting or
or all men as a meritorious moral obligation: wife abuse, child giving to understand that one doing such acts is obliged to
pornography, the raping and torturing of refugees, the exter- their opposites by divine precept. 89
mination of Jews, harvesting organs from the handicapped.
88 Sent. II, qq. 3-4 (OTh V, 59); cf. q. rs (OTh V, 343). It is im-
God is under no obligation to act or to refrain from acting,
to commend or to forbid anything, to institute any kind of portant to note that none of the scholastics regard God as incurring any
obligation, strictly speaking, vis-a-vis creatures; he can be a debtor to no
law or limit whatsoever, while man is under an absolute obli- one, for a debtor stands to receive from another, and owes something
gation to do whatsoever God commands, regardless of what to his benefactor. Nevertheless, the conclusions Ockham derives from
this truth are questionable, to say the least.
87 In passing, one should take note how this view directly contradicts 89 Sent. II, q. 15 (OTh V, 352), translated by Kilcullen. The last sen-

the teaching of the Magisteriurn on intrinsically good and evil acts, a tence is a brilliant example ofOckham's nominalism in action: the name
teaching forcefully reiterated in John Paul II's Encyclical Veritatis Splen- ''theft'' carries a note of disapproval, so if God had commanded theft as
dor. It has often been pointed out that "progressive" moral theology- a meritorious act, we would have found some neutral or positive name
the kind that dissents from Humanae Vitae on the grounds that it envi- for it, so as to prevent any dubious associations! For Thomas, on the con-
sions a changeless human nature with inherent finalities that give rise to trary, thievery, regardless of what one calls it, is always wrong. Kilcullen
unchanging moral precepts-is deeply Ockhamistic in its methodology. thinks that the voluntarism expressed in this passage is relative-in other

44 45
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

Commentators often give the impression that Ock:ham's Indeed, it is a grave misconception to think that the omnipo-
distinction between God's potentia absoluta and his potentia or- tent God cannot upset the moral order even now. Ock:ham's
dinata affords us room for consolation. 90 But of course the statements make it clear "not only that God could have es-
distinction does no more than assure us, provisionally, that tablished another moral order but that he could at any time
acts actually forbidden in the present order will remain for- order what he has actually forbidden. There is no sense, then,
bidden, if this is the correct meaning of God's revelation to in seeking for any more ultimate reason of the moral law than
us. The point of dispute is not about the current moral law the divine .fiat." 91 While it is true that, so far as we know, the
-we are not asking what is right and wrong now, but what present order of nature and grace will remai~ stable, the or-
could have been, and what might become, right and wrong. dained course of things and events may include within it shifts
more fantastical than man is capable of conceiving. 92
For Ock:ham, God does not choose from a set of possi-
words, Ockham is saying that one reason why someone should or should ble worlds, but from a set of possible individual creative and
not do something is the command of his superior, whereas elsewhere he
conservative acts throughout the duration of whatever world
speaks of human acts as having a certain order apart from the command
of any superior. But this resolution is fatally flawed because God is not he causes. To restrain the ordination of the world's unfold-
just "any" superior; he is the total cause from which the entire reality ing progress by appealing to a universal legislative pattern is
of creation is suspended. Hence, if Ockham thinks that the principle of precisely what Ockham's understanding of divine freedom
non-contradiction can be violated only if, per impossibile, God were to rules out. Thus the actual exercise of God's absolute power,
act against his eternal self, and that nothing having to do with creation
i.e., his potentia ordinata, can contain within itself whatsoever
falls within the ambit of divine self-identity, he must believe that the
content of morality is contingently fixed by divine will alone. All the determinations are available in principle to the potentia abso-
other principles he invokes, regardless of their stability in abstractu, are luta. The fixity of which we are authorized to speak is not
therefore relativized in concreto when set against this ultimate horizon. of a regular, unbroken arrangement of affairs-for to speak
90 On this distinction, see two studies by Mary Ann Pernoud: "In-
in this way is to revert to the consoling Platonic model of a
novation in Ockham's References to the Potentia Dei," Antonianum 45 world structured according to changeless forms. We can only
(1970): 65-97; "The Theory of the Potentia Dei According to Aquinas,
Scotus, and Ockham," Antonianum 47 (1972): 69-95. Put briefly, we
speak of the set of possible acts judged by the sole standard of
consider one and the same divine omnipotence under two aspects: con- non-contradiction-a set whose future temporal realization
sidered in itself, God's power is "absolute," unlimited and illimitable, is and must be, from unaided reason's vantage, unknowable
capable of doing or making anything whatsoever that does not violate
the principle of non-contradiction; considered in relation to his love and
91 Copleston, History q[Philosophy, 3:105.
wisdom, God's power is "ordered," i.e., exercised in accord with those
92 The Avignon papal commission that investigated Ockham's theo-
laws that he himself has instituted in his creation. This distinction arises logical propositions for heresy contended that the New Covenant was at
merely in our way oflooking at things, since God's power is infinite and once a free act of God and a permanent, immutable institution. But we
simple. Indeed, Ockham rather stresses that anything whatsoever that must remember that for Ockham the free and the necessary are mutually
God may will would necessarily fall under the rubric of potentia ordinata, exclusive: "Were God compelled to conserve the present state of nature
since God does not and could not act blindly and pointlessly. See Maurer, and grace (due to the metaphysical necessity of his nature or the provi-
Philosophy of Ockham, 254-65; Alanen, "Descartes, Scotus, Ockham"; sional necessity ofhis given world), then God would not operate con-
David W. Clark, "Ockham on Human and Divine Freedom," Franciscan tingently ad extra" (Clark, "Ockham on Freedom," 154). See E. Randi,
Studies 38 (1978): 122-60 (hereafter cited as "Ockham on Freedom"), "Ockham,John XXII, and the Absolute Power of God," Franciscan Stud-
esp. 149-60. ies 46 (1986): 205-16.

47
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

and inconceivable. "The human predicament," David Clark J. The Human Will Determines Its Own End
writes, "arises not from [God's] capricious exercise of abso-
The background to this point is Ockham's original manner
lute power but from [our] ignorance of the fullness of God's
of denying the primacy of intellect over will. In making this
ordained plan. Whatever is possible absolutely could be in-
denial itself, he was only adhering to a view worked out by
cluded in the future unfolding of the ordained will." 93 That
his Franciscan predecessors. However, the way in which he
many commentators have de-emphasized this aspect of Ock-
went about defending the claim was novel, because he did
ham's theology is understandable; one prefers not to linger
not then proceed to put the will in the first rank. As Clark
over the assertion of God's power to subvert the present order
explains:
of nature and grace. Clark summarizes the breadth of Ock-
ham's vision of contingency: Distinct types of activity are not reason to assert different
causes or faculties and so, according to Ockham, the pri-
The difference between possibility and fact must be decided
macy of intellect or will is a false question .... The intellect
from moment to moment. Not that God changes his mind
is the soul thinking; the will is the soul willing. In Ockham's
-from eternity divine foreknowledge and pre-ordination
semantic, the terms "intellect" and "will" signify the same
decided the exact difference between those possibilities to
item, the soul, and connote specifically different acts of the
be realized and those to remain unrealized. But men can-
soul. Giving these "nominal" definitions, Ockham reduces
not claim to know the fullness of God's contingent deci-
the rationalism-voluntarism question to absurdity-Is the
sion. The liberty in which God creates and conserves the
same thing more noble than itself? ... [T]he grammar of
world prohibits men from making any a priori judgments
"connotative" terms is a repudiation of the "faculties" the-
about God's future plan. Whatever is ontologically possible
ory of human psychology that was common to both the
might be ordained as fact tomorrow .... The freedom of
rationalist and voluntarist position. 95
God is problematic for Ockham himself He surrenders the
intrinsic restraint upon freedom that the [divine] intellect Hence when the question arises, Ockham writes:
provided for Saint Thomas. The exercise of divine liberty is
To the first principal argument, I concede that perfect happi-
not restrained by eternal truths or divine psychology or the
ness resides in the most noble power. And when it is said that
metaphysical entailments of "common natures" as in Duns
"The intellect is the most noble power," I agree. Likewise,
Scotus. The Ockhamist brand of freedom means that moral
when someone states that "The will is the noblest power,"
laws could change radically; that the revealed path to salva-
I agree. I concede both assertions because that power which
tion could be altered drastically; that the entire structure of
is the intellect and that which is the will are in no way dis-
natural causality might warp. 94
tinguished a parte rei or a parte ration is. 96
93 "Ockham on Freedom," I 53. One of his disciples, Adam Wodeham, states quite simply:
94 "Ockham on Freedom," ISI-52. All this is true, as far as it goes, "neither the intellect is the more noble power than the will
except that Clark's phrasing of the Thomistic view is unsatisfactory. It
is not as if God's will requires "restraint" by his intellect, as, to be sure, I, q. I9, a. 3 and a. IO). The sole disagreement comes down to which
the human will needs to be guided by practical wisdom. Nor would any matters are truly contingent, and which are not.
Thormst cla1m to "know the fullness of God's contingent decision" as 95 "Ockham on Freedom," 132-33.

regards matters truly contingent, for here God is supremely free (cf. ST 96 Sent. I, dist. I, q. 2 (OTh I, 402).

49
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw
Peter A. Kwasniewski
nor vice versa because the intellect is the same as the will in
well over a thousand years, Christian theologians had taken
every way and vice versa in the same intellective substance." 97
it nearly for granted that man by nature acts for the sake of
I stress the importance of this position because it makes pos-
human fulfillment, that is, to achieve "happiness" as each one
sible the transition to regarding the will merely as "an activity
understands it (some having a better, some a poorer, grasp of
of the soul" rather than as "a distinct nature or faculty within
the actual content of this happiness and the means whereby
the soul that operates according to a consistent formal cause
it may be reached). 103 As we shall see, Ockham's rejection of
for a consistent purpose." 98
this truth is explosive in its consequences. 104
Saint Thomas argues that ''each power of the soul is a form
Natural agents-agents impelled by a natural determination
or nature, and has a natural inclination to something. Hence
to some end-always and necessarily act for that end if no
each power desires, by natural appetite, that object which is
impediments stand in the way. When the eyes are open, they
suitable to itsel£" 99 The will is a power oriented, of its very
must see the colored, provided that the transparent medium is
nature, to the universal good as ultimate end. Human free-
illuminated. A functioning eye cannot not see. Saint Thomas
dom extends only to the choice of "means" to the end, or
does not hesitate to say: "Tending to the good is related to
as Thomas prefers to phrase it, things that stand in some re-
the will, as tending to something pleasurable is related to the
lation to the end, ea quae sunt ad finem. 100 Ockham, on the
concupiscible appetite, and being ordered to sound is related
contrary, asserts that the will is an altogether active power
to the sense of hearing." 105 Ockham disputes this compar-
that "decides its purpose instead of ratifying inevitably some
ison. Freedom must be unlimited, or it cannot be freedom.
pre-conscious or pre-determined end such as happiness." 101
For him, as Clark writes, "[t]he will ... is capable of produc-
The ultimate end, too, is chosen. In our relativistic age, this
ing contrary actions or postponing any action within identical
view is held so widely that it seems to many people a self-
evident proposition. 102 Yet we do well to remember that for a concept or meaning that contradicted what God had authoritatively
revealed would be in danger of damnation. Accordingly, Ockham has
97 Wodeham, Sent. I, dist. I, q. I4, cited by Clark, "Ockham on Free-
also been labeled a fideist. Like traditional Protestants, Ockham would
oppose Planned Parenthood v. Casey not primarily because it is irrational
dom," I34·
98 Clark, "Ockham on Freedom," I35·
or mmatural, but because it contradicts Scripture. A Protestant might
99 ST I, q. So, a. r.
well agree that human liberty is unlimited; this would explain why it,
100 Scotus already questions this formulation in his exaltation of pure
and with it, all of human nature, can be or become totally corrupt. As
I will mention again below, it should come as no surprise that one of
freedom: see Lee, "Aquinas and Scotus on Liberty and Natural Law";
Luther's teachers, Gabriel Biel, was an Ockharnist.
Thomas Williams, "The Libertarian Foundations of Scotus's Moral 103 See Servais Pinckaers, OP, The Sources cif Christian Ethics, Jrd ed.,
Philosophy," The Thomist 62 (I998): I93-215.
101 Clark, '' Ockham on Freedom,'' I 42. See the discussion in Maurer,
trans. Mary Thomas Noble, OP (Washingto~, D.C.: Catholic Univer-
sity of America Press, I995), 244-52; Colleen McCluskey, "Happiness
Philosophy cifOckham, 5IO-I5, and the references given there.
102 As we read in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision for Planned Par-
and Freedom in Aquinas's Theory of Action," Medieval Philosophy and
Theology 9 (2ooo): 69-90.
enthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 85I (I992): "At the heart of liberty is 104 Scotus had already worn a path in this direction. See Thomas
the right to defme one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the
Williams, "How Scotus Separates Morality from Happiness," Ameri-
universe, and of the mystery ofhuman life." This is exactly Ockham's po-
can Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 69 (I995): 425-45.
sition, though of course he would have added that anyone who defined 10 5 Quaest. disp. De virtutibus in communi, a. 5, corp.

50
JI
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw
Peter A. Kwasniewski
circumstances. The active, self-determined and selective op- For the tradition culminating in Saint Thomas, action is
eration of the free will is magnified when juxtaposed with unintelligible apart from an end toward which the agent is
the regular and predictable reactions of nature. In the mind naturally inclined. Any created nature has an end in the pos-
of Ockham, the 'natural' and the 'free' are antithetical no- session of which its perfection consists. The nature is incom-
tions." 106 In order to safeguard the freedom of the will against pletely realized until it attains or is doing that for the sake of
what he perceived to be a subtle determinism-a theory of which it exists; any first perfection, such as a power, needs
willing patterned after the model of the opened eye or the and desires its corresponding second perfection, its activity,
bird's laying of eggs-Ockham "tries to discredit any theory and preferably the best among those activities possible to it. 109
which would determine the mode, object or purpose of vol- Exhibiting once again an unexpected affinity with modernity,
untary activity through the ontological structure of the will. Ockham turns this scholastic principle upside down by insist-
This aspect requires an attack upon the Aristotelian rules of ing that only the free agent acts for the sake of an end. 110 We
explanation since they explain the effect by means of the for- cannot know that any unfree thing acts for the sake of an end,
mal and teleological character of its cause." 107 as its motions may simply be the blind actions and reactions
The will [according to Thomas's teleological view] operates that spontaneously arise from its material construction. Ac-
formally sub ratione boni and fmally for the sake ofhappiness. cording to Klocker:
The mode and purpose of willful actions is thus a matter
of "natural necessity"-an exigency of the will's nature. [Ockham] saw no way to establish fmality in nature. Nature
The irony here, in Ockham's view, is that the tools used to was only itselfbeing itself and would act like itself whether
explain the nature of free will would inhibit its freedom. there was an ultimate fmal cause or not. Ockham was will-
Free and contingent actions cannot be produced through ing to admit some sort of finality in intellectual beings, for
natural necessity. When the will is inserted into the struc-
ture and structures of a "nature," the efficient, fmal, formal Thomas Aquinas," Archiv for Geschichte der Philosophie 76 [1994]: 247-
and material laws that govern its behavior also forbid its 77). Ockham wants to assert that freedom remains unlimited even in
indetermination. The cost of Aristotle's explanation is de- the beatific vision, yet he recognizes a problem: could not a soul already
termination. Ockham insists that the will can choose good blessed fall, by its own choice, from beatitude into damnation? Since he
or evil, happiness or unhappiness as such. Face to face with is unable to found his answer upon any natural inclination of the will to
the good as such, he works out a bizarre solution: while in this life it is
its Creator, the will retains its natural capacity to say "yes"
we who cause our basic volitions, in the next life God causes them in us.
or "no." 108
That is, he causes the blessed eternally to will the good that he is, and the
damned eternally to not-will this good (see Arthur Stephen McGrade,
106 "Ockham on Freedom," 143-44. There is good reason to con-
"Ockham on Enjoyment-Towards an Understanding of Fourteenth
sider this view-viz., that freedom and natnre are antithetical- the moral
Centnry Philosophy and Psychology," Review cif Metaphysics 33 [1981]:
heresy ofthe modern age, as the argument ofthe encyclical Veritatis Splen-
706-28; 723).
dor implies. 109 See the arguments in defense of every agent's acting for an end and
107 "Ockham on Freedom," 140.

108 Ibid., 136-37. I do not agree that "the cost of Aristotle's expla-
for the sake of the good in Summa contra gentiles, III, chs. 2-3. For further
discussion, see my article "The Inseparability of Freedom, Goodness,
nation is determination," at least not total determination. Saint Thomas
and Final End in Saint Thomas," The Aquinas Review 5 (1998): 50-69.
did not think so, and he was no feeble interpreter of the Philosopher (on 110 See Arthur M. Hippler, "Modern Confusions About the Final
this issue, see David M. Gallagher, "Free Choice and Free Judgment in
Cause," The Aquinas Review 2 (1995): 45-58, esp. 52-56.

52
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 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
such beings do propose ends for themselves and act to ac- fore God in his mercy gives you the meaning you are vainly
complish them. But such ends also do not point beyond trying to fabricate on your own." But anyone can see that
themselves to any ultimate end such as beatitude. Because this view, taken at face value, destroys any and all connec-
of the freedom of the will he saw any end as rejectable, tion or likeness between nature and grace, reason and faith,
including final beatitude. 111
human virtue and infused virtue. We must at least be able to
When we consider the free agent, Ockham believes, we recognize the meaningfulness of what God proposes to us in
should see that the final cause of contingent acts of will terms of a meaningfulness implicit within our native experi-
ence. Indeed, all of this stresses the importance of Augustine's
is not embodied metaphysically within the will's power so
(and later, Thomas's) argument that a natural desire for hap-
that happiness, goodness, self-realization or some other nat-
ural goal must appear within the structure of voluntary ac- piness is the driving force of all human action-even though
tions. Instead, Ockham maintains that the purposes of the this desire, due to its creaturely limits, cannot attain the end
free will are a disparate and contingent matter. . . . Free ac- which is concretely man's perfect happiness; hence the need for
tions do not embody the formal exigency or teleological sanctifying grace and all that follows in its wake, chiefly the
urge of their cause. 112 virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and the gifts of the Holy
Spirit. To reject happiness as the natural and necessary end of
What follows from this insistence on the will's power of
human willing is to cut the underlying cord, one might even
self-determination? Again Clark puts it well: "Freedom [in
say the umbilical cord, that binds the rational creature to its
the Ockhamist account] represents a sort of breakdown in
sovereign Lord. 115
the principle of sufficient reason; there is no better reason for
Ockham must have known that his position stood in co!l-
contingent will-acts to occur than not to occur.... The mo-
flict with the entire sweep of Christian thought prior to him.
tive for contingent action is simply personal preference. 'I did
Not even Scotus, who also endorses indeterminacy or indif-
it because I wanted to do it.' " 113 Moreover, "[t]o be intelli-
ference of will, could accept a natural power without some
gible, the will's nature need not be determined to operate on
intrinsic orientation to an end. Hence Scotus developed his
a specific object for a specific motive." 114 This would have to
doctrine of the affectio justitiae to account for the will's in-
be true of each individual will-act: one could act pointlessly,
clination toward the good per se. 116 Clark concludes: "From
endlessly. There need be no reason for a voluntary action. The
Ockham's doctrine of freedom and his rejection of inherent
vision of the French existentialists, of Sartre and Camus-
that human life is a sort of desert or void whose meaning 115 See Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 240-53.
has to be created from within, ex nihilo-is here given its 116 For Scotus, the human will is divided into a tendency toward what
theoretical basis. It is a view that commends itself today to is good in itself, affectio justitiae (whose prime object is God, the summum
bonum), and a tendency toward what is fitting to oneself or away from
a strain of Christian postmodernism, only too happy to say:
what is unfitting to oneself, affectio commodi. The latter is a self-centered
"Yes, your life is utterly meaningless without faith, and there- inclination that has to be opposed or at least restrained in the name of
a purer love of God. On this distinction, borrowed from Anselm, see
111 Klocker, "Divine Freedom," 246. Allan B. Wolter, "Native Freedom of the Will as a Key to the Ethics of
112 Clark, "Ockham on Freedom," 146-47. Scotus," in Philosophical Theology of Scotus, 149-57; John F. Boler, "An
113 Ibid., 148.
Image for the Unity of the Will in Duns Scotus," Journal of the History
114 Ibid., 140.
if Philosophy 32 (1994): 23-44.
54 55
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
finality it is impossible to construct a theory of 'natural law' With regard to any given object, the will's options are not
morality in either the Thomistic or Scotistic senses." 117 Thus merely action versus inaction, but also willing (velle) versus
it should not shock us to find Ockham implying, in a strik- nilling (nolle); and it has all three options, no matter what
ing text, that simple freedom or the power of indeterminacy, right reason may dictate. From this general thesis, Ockham
even more than rationality, is the definitive characteristic of counts the ways a free will can will against (nolle) the good:
human nature. 118 Rational animal is too Aristotelian a title; (a) the will can choose to hate God; (b) the will apart from
man is the free animal. It is worth noting that this was to be divine interference can will against (nolle) enjoyment even
Descartes's position in the fourth of the Meditations on First when the divine essence is clearly seen; (c) the will can will
against its own happiness and will its own misery; (d) the
Philosophy: the attribute whereby man is most like unto God
will can will against its ultimate end, whether because of
is "freedom of choice." 119
ignorance . . . or simply because as a free power it can will
One of the best-known contemporary Ockham scholars, against any object; (e) the will can will against the good in
Marilyn McCord Adams, summarizes the Venerable Incep- general. And with equal detail, he spells out how the free
tor's conclusions: will can will (velle) evils: (f) the will can do unjust deeds
precisely because they are unjust, dishonest, and contrary
117 Clark, "Ockham on Freedom," 148. As Copleston says, Ockham's to right reason; (g) the will can will evil under the aspect
"view on the will's freedom even in regard to the willing ofhappiness in
of evil. 120
general (beatitudo in communi) fitted in very much with his ethical theory.
If the will is free to will or not to will happiness, it would scarcely be
possible to analyse the goodness of human acts in terms of a relation to 4· Right Reason's Normative Value
an end which is necessarily desired" (History, 3:102).
118 See Sent. I, dist. I, q. 3 (OTh I, 426); Clark, "Ockham on Free- Is Determined by Divine Fiat
dom," 148.
119 As Descartes writes: "It is only the will, or freedom of choice,
Posing the question why an act elicited contrary to the dic-
which I experience within me to be so great that the idea of any greater
tate of right reason is morally wrong, Ockham answers: "It
faculty is beyond my grasp; so much so that it is above all in virtue of the would be elicited contrary to the divine precept and the divine
will that I understand myself to bear in some way the image and likeness will which wills that an act should be elicited in conformity
of God. For although God's will is incomparably greater than mine ... with right reason.',' 121 "In other words," Copleston observes,
nevertheless it does not seem any greater than mine when considered "the ultimate and sufficient reason why we ought to follow
as will in the essential and strict sense." In The Philosophical Writings cif
right reason or conscience is that God wills that we should do
Descartes, vol. 2, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald
Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 40. Thomas so," 122 when he might just as well have willed that we never
Williams underlines this point in regard to Scotus: "Freedom thus con- follow reason, or follow it only when it accords with our sense-
ceived [i.e., as the source of acts having no fully adequate explanation] appetites, or follow it when ordered by the State to do so.
is a pure perfection, and like every other pure perfection it can, for Sco-
tus, be predicated univocally of God and creatures. So for Scotus free 120 "Ockham's Moral Theory," 13-14.
creatures (that is, creatures who have wills) are free in exactly the same 121 Cited in Copleston, 3:109, with a reference to Sent. III, 13, C in
sense in which God is free. It is their likeness to God's unconditioned the Lyons edition. The point is also made at De connexione virtu tum, q. 8
creative activity that makes free actions valuable and noble" ("Libertar- (OTh VIII, 428); cf q. 7, a. 4 (OTh VIII, 394-95).
ian Foundations," 210). 122 Copleston, History 3:109.

57
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
Ockham speaks of an act's being "intrinsically and necessar- and a vexing question in Ockham studies. It seems to me that
ily virtuous stante ordinatione divina" 123-that is, its quality of the Franciscan's clear statements about the divine ordination
being intrinsic and necessary is itself derived from the divine as the cause of the very primacy of right reason in human ac-
ordination. Necessity from man's point of view, even what tion are decisive in this regard, for they imply that the deter-
seems rigorous necessity, is contingency from God's. Cople- minative function of reason was ascribed to it contingently. 127
ston summarizes: "A necessarily virtuous act is only relatively (Thus, there might have been a universe in which passion had
so, that is, if God has decreed that it should be virtuous. Given been granted this royal function instead, and reason subor-
the order instituted by God, it follows logically that certain dinated to it. If the first i:nan in this universe had chosen to
acts are good and others bad; but the order itself is dependent follow reason instead of passion, this would have been the fall
on God's choice." 124 When I maintain that strangling an in- of man and the substance of original sin.) The role and po-
fant is intrinsically wrong, I cannot be referring to the deed sition of reason is therefore totally altered in the new system
itself, or to some incompatibility between the law of my na- of ethics, as Pinckaers explains:
ture and this kind of deed; rather, it is always wrong because
Having removed from both divine and human wills all de-
the accident of moral evil has been attached to it by divine
pendence upon their respective natures, Ockham could no
choice. Ockham candidly states: "Stante ordinatione quae nunc longer fmd any links between man and God, as with other
est [By the order that now obtains], no act is perfectly virtu- freedoms, except those issuing from the divine will and
ous unless it is elicited in conformity with right reason." 125 power: such would be the law, the expression of the divine
Statements like these might pass by unnoticed when such a will, acting with the force of obligation.... [A]ccording
mass of text in praise of right reason is ready to hand, but we to Ockham it was no part of the practical reason's function
must not fail to absorb their full implications. to discover, found, or justify moral laws in view of man's
As David Clark has shown, Ockham upholds both right rea- and creation's relationship to God. He no longer spoke of a
son and the free divine will as relevant factors in the deter- natural habitus, of the first principles of the moral law, or of
mination of moral good and evil; he does not waver between synderesis, as treated in the scholastic tradition. The func-
them, but consistently appeals to each. 126 Yet the problem of tion of the practical reason was basically to show to the will
the commandments of God, as they were expressed chiefly
how they are related to one another remains an acute tension
in revelation.... Practical reason and prudence were, then,
simply intermediaries between law and free will. Their func-
123 De connexione virtutum, q. 7, art. 4 (OTh VIII, 393). tion was to transmit precepts and obligations. 128
124 Copleston, History 3:109.
125 De connexione virtu tum, q. 7, art. 4 ( OTh VIII, 394). 127 C£ Maurer, Philosophy ofOckham, 516-39, esp. 537-38.
126 See David W. Clark, ''Voluntarism and Rationalism in the Ethics of 128 Sources of Christian Ethics, 247, 250. That is, we are dealing here
Ockham," Franciscan Studies 31 (1971): 72-87; idem, "William ofOck- with what is possibly the first instance in the Christian era of a full-
ham on Right Reason," Speculum 48 (1973): 13-36. Clark's defense of blown theory of reason construed instrumentally or calculatively. Rea-
Ockham's consistency came under fire in an article by Linwood Urban, son does not penetrate to the ultimate essential roots of things, and in
"William ofOckham's Theological Ethics," Frandscan Studies 33 (1973): this way attain, however obscurely and inadequately, to their divine ori-
310-50. In part, Kilcullen's "Natural Law and Will in Ockham" is in- gins; rather, it is a depositary and transmitter of information, a naviga-
tended as a response to Urban. tional tool. Granted, for Ockham it is still holding and conveying divine

58 59
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
Defenders of Ockham's ethics, among whom Marilyn Mc- the heart, but was one of many scripts that might have been
Cord Adams is perhaps the most dedicated, seem reluctant to put there. The exercise of God's power in the order he cre-
acknowledge that conformity to the dictates of right reason ates endows reason with its perceptions of necessity and its
is, for him, a contingent and humanly non-deducible deter- praiseworthy inclination to regard rational dictates as binding.
mination of the divine will, subject to the same dialectic of How, then, do we reconcile the antinomy of right reason and
obligation and dispensation as are adultery and theft. 129 The divine will in Ockham's thought? Copleston spells out the
most that can be said in favor of right reason is that God dilemma:
has ordained it to be a trustworthy guide, and so, a guide that On the one hand there is his authoritarian conception of
philosophers, without the aid of revelation, can "discover" the moral law. It would appear to follow from this con-
to be reliable. By admitting that the present state of affairs- ception that there can be only a revealed moral code. For
where morals contribute to merit and informed reason is a how otherwise than through revelation could man know a
sure guide to action-is a matter ofjact, i.e., an observable moral code which depends entirely on God's free choice?
arrangement of creaturely affairs, Adams places reason in the Rational deduction could not give us knowledge of it. On
ontological category of the "given," over which God has ab- the other hand there is Ockham's insistence on right rea-
solute power. Hence, faithful to Ockham, Adams implicitly son, which would seem to imply that reason can discern
grants the contingency and thus the non-necessity of right what is right and what is wrong. . .. Like other Christian
reason as the standard of moral acts. mediaeval thinkers he accepted, of course, the existence of
an actual moral order; and in his discussion of such themes
The final word seems to be this. In Ockham's view, man
as the function of reason or the existence of natural rights
cannot help but se~;: certain acts as being harmonious or dis-
he implied that reason can discern the precepts, or at least
cordant with the dictates of reason; they seem to possess an in- the fundamental precepts, of the moral law which actually
ner invariable quality of rectitude or perversity. Yet we should obtains. At the same time he insisted that the moral order
deceive ourselves if we imagined that this standard of moral which actually obtains is due to the divine choice, in the
good and evil were also a standard for God in his free deal- sense that God could have established a different moral order
ings with us. The necessity is psychological and contingent, and that he could even now order a man to do something
flowing from a free divine ordination: it was "written" on contrary to the moral law which he has established. But,
if the present moral order is dependent simply and solely
information, but formally speaking, it need not be doing so, since it is an on the divine choice, how could we know what it is save
instrument whose function is contingently determined. It could also be through God's revelation? It would seem that there can be
the scout and spy of the passions, as it is for Hobbes and Hume.
129 For Pinckaers, the most objectionable aspect of Ockham's ethics
only a revealed ethic. 130
is that it reduces good and bad actions to a mere question of obligation:
in the Franciscan's own words, "a man commits a sin only because he is
bound [tenetur] to do something that he does not do, or does something
that he ought not to do" (Sent. II, q. 15 [OTh V, 343]). For Aquinas,
questions of obligation and debt, command and obedience are very im-
portant, of course, but such concepts are not the foundation, much less
the substance, of moral doctrine. 13 ° Copleston, History 3:107-9.
6o 61
 Peter A. Kwasniewski

III. What Happens to Ethics inscrutable will. There is no other reason-no pattern abiding
Without Natural Law? in the divine mind, no convenientia on the part of the creature.
Recall Ockham's doctrine that intellect and will, whether hu-
It should now be more apparent why Scotus is father to Ock-
man or divine, are in no way distinct, not even formally. To
ham. Scotus's doctrine makes possible the transformation of
will and to think are identical. God "intellects" with his will
the traditional bond between God, human nature, and natu-
and wills with his intellect. Supreme thought is supreme vo-
ral law into the sharp discontinuity between human nature
lition, there is not even a difference in notion by which one
and the divine will characteristic of Ockham's ethical theory,
could speak of a rational priority of knowledge over will. The
according to which God legislates absolutely and unbound-
knowability oflaw and the security of moral judgments is cast
edly because there are no ideal natures foreknown in the di-
into shadows; ethics is protected from the chill of nihilism by
vine intellect. In Ockham, the dualism between Eternal Law
cloth spun of divine dictates. The same problem obtains in
as pertaining solely to the divine nature, and positive law as
physics as in ethics. Causality, especially teleology, is impen-
pertaining to the behavior of rational creatures, is intensified
etrable; we observe mere phenomena and their typical asso-
to the point of placing every determination of the creature on
ciation. 132 It is in Ockham, not in Descartes, that we shall
the side of positive law, and only God's self-referential acts
of knowing and loving on the side of necessity. Thus for
Ockham, the preservation of God's simplicity and free om- tween God and the Leviathan, except that the latter is saddled with
nipotence demands that no conceivable archetypal principle mortality?
132 See Klocker's book Ockham and the Divine Freedom, rs-33- As
"guide" the divine dealings with creatures. Ockham places all
Copleston writes: "To state without more ado that Ockham reduced
ten commandments under the absolute power of God, reduc- causality to regular succession would be incorrect; but he does seem to
ing them simply to choices of the divine free will. Though show a tendency to reduce efficient causality to regular succession. And,
it was not he who invented the formula quia conformiter vult, after all, to do so would be very much in harmony with his theologi-
ideo sunt vera, Ockham was the first to carry it to its logical cal view of the universe. God has created distinct things; and the order
conclusion. which prevails between them is purely contingent" (History if Philosophy,
3:73). See the careful study by Marilyn McCord Adams, "Was Ockham
What happens to the naturalness of moral laws if there is a Humean about Efficient Causality?," Franciscan Studies 39 (1979): s-
no archetype in the divine mind? Naturalness is reduced to 48. Though Adams concludes that he was not, it remains true that the
convention, the fact of God's having historically exercised his teachings of the Venerable Inceptor run in parallel lines to the better-
absolute power in such and such a way. There is no such known views of a host of early modern and modern thinkers. In saying
thing as naturalness; no such thing as an inviolable law in- this, I do not mean that we find in Ockham a preliminary version of, say,
Hume's extreme skepticism, which is based upon a fallacious method
scribed in one's soul, governing one's being; no such thing as
of reasoning and a superficial grasp of metaphysical principles. On the
the ratio legis in any strong sense-there is the brute fact of contrary, it is precisely because Ockham is a powerful metaphysician,
this law and that law. 131 Are you looking for a reason? God's an accomplished logician, and a thinker in dialogue with the tradition
preceding him-in all three respects unlike Hume-that he is worthy of
being studied with utmost attention. As Charles De Koninck once said
131 The haunting parallelism with Hobbesian political philosophy
in a letter to Mortimer Adler, the only philosophical opponents with
should be apparent. What difference would there be, in principle, be- whom one can spend time fruitfully are those who argue in a principled

62
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

:find the wellspring of modern philosophy. In the opinion of we can know the infinite goodness of God, he must, if he is
Hans Urs von Balthasar, "The way [Ockham] alternates be- to maintain that any truth can be reached about human ac-
tween intramundane empiricism and theological positivism tions, postulate the truths upon which they have to be based.
(or a-priorism) represents the original form of all variations Without such postulates, how can human acts be intelligible?
of 'modern' thought." 133 How could they be judged? If this assumption must be made
Unless reason can apprehend for itself a moral law, there for the theory to work, will not the reductionist critic have
can be no conscience. No willful imposition of right rea- the right to ask: How is your transempirical first principle of
son can overcome the suspicion that everything is relative, universal harmony to be justified? Is it intuited? Is it revealed?
conscience a fiction. Ockham anticipates aspects of Kant's How could intuition of items in the world or the knowledge
position on human freedom and the moral law: to save the of special revelation-both contingent on the free exercise of
possibility of an ethical life, we must posit an harmonious cor- God's will, both mediated through human interpretations-
respondence between the act of willing and the structure of suffice for the kind of framework you need? There is no limit
the universe. We must have faith that the universe is so con- to the absurdities that can follow in the wake of abandoning
stituted that it will be friendly to our actions, that we shall the reality of common natures or essences foreknown in God,
be rewarded good for good, evil for evil, that there is not a accessible to a created mind, unchanging in their inner struc-
supreme indifference, irrationality, perversity, behind the play ture, reliably stable in their actual instantiation. The implica-
of images and experiences in which we are immersed from tions of an anti-essentialist metaphysics are rarely unfolded to
birth to death. For Kant, the goodness of God, no less than their ultimate consequences. Ethics requires natural fixity and
his existence, is a necessary postulate of practical reason; a divine ideas. If either is compromised both fall, and morality
framework of abstract conditions must be granted in order becomes indefensible.
to account for moral goodness and badness in acts. 134 Since The traditional doctrine of natural law rests upon a realist
Ockham denies that there is a natural good for man or that doctrine ofknowledge and an exemplarist doctrine of creation
which function together as the preconditions for a genuine
manner, appealing to common principles and drawing conclusions from link between the concepts of the human mind and the realities
them. With such a man, dialogue and meaningful disagreement are pos- outside of it. Because of the disappearance of a metaphysical
sible. With someone like Hume or Kant, fruitful dialogue is impossible. "mediation" between God and the individual creature, it is
A critique can be offered, but it will take the form of a dialectical defense difficult to find in Ockham any intrinsic link between the will
of first principles naturally known.
133 Thea-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 2: The Dramatis Per-
of God and the will of man. Man's will is self-determining,
sonae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, self-orienting, thus unable to be motivated by an external end
1990), 246. which accounts for any chain of actions initiated by desire and
134 Ironically, in view of its avowed purpose ofliberating human con- culminating in a possession perfective of one's being. Man's
sciousness from external constraints, a subjectivism such as the Kantian will is stripped of its need to locate perfection in the perfect
"critical" philosophy, if it is ever to get off the ground, has to impose
good, for if it truly had this irreplaceable need, nothing else
upon its adherents a set of preliminary dogmas-assertions of formal or
structural conditions-that demand more blind faith than any version
would satisfy it and nothing else, in the last analysis, could
of realism. The same holds true in the realm of morals. motivate it. And God's will, by sheer superiority of power,
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

is normative and thus domineering in the ethical situation. tical wit~ himself in which the individuals of a species partic-
But is there any reason to love a God who prevails over the ipate, then one also does away with the mainspring of all free
absolute liberty of the human will by a right scarcely distin- action for the sake of an end. To turn toward the good pre-
guishable from might? Even the choice to love God takes on supposes a desire for that good as perfective of me. To see that
an arbitrary character because this love cannot be grounded good as perfective requires directedness, a tendency toward
in what man is, it cannot be seen as perfective of me, nor its the good prior to any concrete pursuit of it. This tendency or
object as that for which I am made, that to which I must "natural appetite" is the immediate consequence of a thing's
orient myself in order to be mysel£ Far from saving liberty core identity, which the tradition calls its "nature." There is
of will, Ockham destroys the reason for willing, and in so no absolute freedom at the root of one's being because one
doing, overturns the order of perfection necessarily involved is not the creator and conserver of one's being. One is not
in a hierarchy of being-the reciprocity of potency and act, free to negate the conditions according to which purposeful
neediness and gift, that makes intelligible the activities of its activity is possible. Grant such measureless freedom, and you
members. Man's freedom is exalted at the expense of its in- have undermined the intelligibility and even the desirability
telligibility. ofbeing. Without the inner necessity, viz., the will's natural
To deny that the human will is naturally directed to an end appetite for beatitude in the supreme good, one is left with
implanted in it by the author of man's being entails asserting obedience to God because he demands obedience. 135 In this
that the rational creature confers an end upon itself, i.e., that vision of reality, freedom and natural ordination are irrecon-
the telos of the creature is self-appointed and self-derived, with cilably opposed. To be free is to have complete power over
. no other principle of action apart from its act of willing x to opposites, even over the final end for which one exists. It is
be the end to which it directs itsel£ As a result, the will's not enough, as it was for Aquinas, that wayfaring man be free
correspondence to the absolute good would not be a natural to choose in what way he will follow his natural inclination,
measure against which the creature's deviations can be blamed where he will locate his happiness (in riches, in sensuality, in
and its acts of love be praised. If God is the supreme good,
then he is supremely to be loved; but why? Is it because the 135 It would be necessary to ask further questions. What gives to reve-

human will has a natural order to the supreme good; is it be- lation its privileged status, apart from Christian custom? And how strong
cause man, by virtue of what he is, ought to direct himself to is custom? Here is the quandary: according to Ockham's natural theology,
we cannot know by reason that God is the infmite Good, yet we must
this good? But if we use the language of "being" linked with
maintain that his will is the absolute measure ofhuman action. Revelation
an "ought," we are speaking of determinations that require a tells us that God is the infinite Good. Now I am caught in a dialectic be-
being to achieve its fulfillment as a creature of a given kind; tween a custom which alone justifies the ascendancy of this infinite being
we are using the language of natures and ends. In short, intro- over my actions-actions that, proceeding from my will, are exclusively
duce a supreme good, and a moral obligation to conform to self-determined, since I do not have any necessary orientation to the
it, and you are introducing a root-necessity, a stopping point highest good-and a rational knowledge (again, on Ockham's account)
of the possible limitedness, non-uniqueness and non-perfection of the
that cannot be gainsaid amid the multitude of free acts by
deity who rules the visible universe accessible to us. In other words,
which the rational creature directs its course of life. reason gives no preambles to faith. The worlds of reason and of faith
Furthermore, if one does away with essence or nature in are discontinuous and possibly mutually frustrating. An appeal to "right
the strong sense, i.e., an eternal type known to God and iden- reason'' at this meta-ethical level would seem ironic at best.

66
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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

knowledge, in fine art, in God). It is not enough, as it was as Ockham asserts, if they are not even formally distinct from
for Scotus, that man be free to subordinate the a.ffectio commodi each other, can we not speak of "right will" as the measure
to the affectio justitiae and to pursue the simply good over the of the moral act? And if the will determines for itself what
advantageous good, should they conflict. No, to undermine will constitute its beatitude-if, in other words, man gives an
ethical determinism once and for all requires the rejection of end to himself-how can "right will" mean anything other
irresistible inclinations, however they may be described, in than "my will as such"? My will as such is the measure of the
order to vouchsafe the total freedom, the volitional contin- moral act.
gency, of human acts. You may say: "God's will is the overarching measure pre-
But is the traditional view really a form of determinism? supposed to all philosophical analysis." But the man seduced
And what results from negating the dependency of will-acts by Ockharnism replies: "This God ofyours is a tyrant who
on an irreducible desire for union with the good? In music, would have me obey him against my will." You respond: "It
if one denies principles of scale (e.g., that the tonic and the is better for me to obey him. I shall be happier, I shall ...
dominant are more noble, more .final, than the subdominant or peifect myself!" But he asserts: "My will has no natural in-
the seventh), one destroys the order of melodic and harmonic clination to an end. I must endow myself with a purpose, as
progression. There is no longer any reason for putting this note I have no nature to be perfected according to some divinely
after that one. Euphony gives way to cacoph~ny. In fact, one foreknown plenitude with which I must bring myself into
destroys the possibility of melodic or harmonic order, which harmony. Obedience has worth only to the one who freely
rests upon an unchangeable structure of sound in the confines places his happiness in a life of obedience." You shake your
of which the composer chooses particular means of expres- fist: "But God is better than anything else, he is the most
sion. Total compositional "freedom'' leads to the privation lovable being we can know-it would be irrational to defer to
called atonality, the absence of form, synthesis, and mean- something less than him as one's end!" Then your opponent
ing. 136 If the possibility of coherent expression disappears, admits his Nietzscheanism in broad daylight: "I do not want
will not the intellectual virtue of art, as well as its many fruits to believe in a God whose will has bound me to a life and to
(including contemplation), also vanish? In the sphere of ethics a universe to which I did not consent, by which my freedom
it is no different. If the will has the pure power to determine is compromised, in which I must spend the rest of eternity
itself, with no rational order woven into it by nature, one miserable or blissful depending on whether or not I play the
could have a right or a reason, but never right reason. To go slave to this master. He is better than anything else, you say,
further: what of right reason? If reason and will are identical, but his laws are none the less capricious for that, and my will
none the less free. I glory in my self-determination, which
136 Often, even in the most "expressionistic" or "aleatory" works,
not even this deity can remove from me without annihilating
me."137
traces ofthese qualities are present, but only per accidens, i.e., not by the
artist's intention, but merely because man cannot consciously act entirely
without intelligence, and therefore all his works will bear some sign of
137 This imaginary Nietzschean could take as his charter Milton's Par-
that intelligence, if only a sign of the free decision to make something.
(And at times it seems that this is the only thing the artist wants to signify, adise Lost, in which Satan is the real hero. He is the rebel whose very
his raw efficient causality-a truly miserable impoverishment of rational punishment bespeaks the glory of freedom, while the God who sits on
agency.) These observations hold true also for painting, the plastic arts, his white throne, adored and feared, rules over a kingdom of broken
and so on. wills.

68
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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

Ockham's God is all-powerful and all-free, but he is far and the redeemer and God oflove faded into the background.
removed from the all-lovable God to whom Christians raise This God who stepped forth as if newly born beyond reason
their humble prayers, confident in the creator of nature and and justice, beyond love and hope, was a God ofinfinite power
the redeemer of fallen nature. In him everything is perrna- whose dark and incomprehensible form was as much an ob-
nent (unlike the mutability of this life), everything trustwor- ject of terror as oflove and veneration." 139 IfOckham's God
thy (unlike the deceit or inconstancy of our fellow men), ev- is wise, loving, and merciful, we do not have nature, mind, or
erything rationalis in the highest degree (unlike the absurdities happiness as evidence. What Bonaventure saw as a world cry-
we must put up with in this vale of tears). The experience ing out the presence of God and his goodness, 140 we should
of Christian piety as well as the tenets of Christian theology
yield a "portrait" of God diametrically opposed to the one 139 Nihilism Before Nietzsche, 24. Shortly after these words, Gillespie

suggested by Ockham, however defensible his intentions may makes an arresting claim: "It was the idea of such a God that Descartes
had to face and that was the source ofthe question that lies behind his fun-
have been in devising it. One senses that the beneficent cre-
damental principle. Descartes' thought can thus be understood at least in
ator of an intelligible universe, the God of light from whom part as the attempt to open up a space for man, a realm of freedom invul-
the metaphysics of Aquinas may be said to radiate, has, in the nerable to the powers of this God.'' It is well known both that Descartes
parsimonious hands of Ockham, been thrust to an unreach- was influenced by nominalist currents and, moreover, that scholastics
able realm of darkness. In the words of Clark: in the generation prior to his had already written about counterfactual
scenarios in which the manipulation of appearances by an all-powerful
If Scholastic theology intends to justify the ordained word God could rob a man of all certainty about the surrounding world. The
of God then Ockham is somewhat subversive. His meta- careful reader of the Meditations will notice a highly significant detail:
biblical dialectic may be valid as a theological exercise but Descartes deliberately refrains, at the end of the first meditation, from
its explanatory and pastoral value is debatable. The contin- allowing the "evil genius" infinite power (this was first clearly demon-
gencies which Ockham transcends are often the explicit or- strated by Richard Kennington in "The Finitude ofDescartes' Evil Ge-
dinations of God. Conjectures about divine commands to nius," Journal of the History ofIdeas 32 [1971]: 441-46). Had the deceiver
commit murder or theft are not normal or entirely whole- such power, even the cogito argument would falter, and no rational science
some components of a Christian ethics. To preach that the of nature could be launched. Descartes knew all this quite well. His im-
plicit meta-argument: If there were a God such as the Christians believe
diligent and obedient pursuit of salvation might end in an-
in, no science would be possible. But science is possible (and mastery of
nihilation rather than eternal life hardly inspires a congre-
nature will be its indisputable verification); therefore such a God does
gation. At times, God's freedom paints a picture of chaos. not exist. Already Leibniz, ca. 1679, had discerned that Descartes was
Ockham's thesis and antithesis can be so awesome that his more an atheist than a Christian (cf. G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays,
synthesis is either missed or dismissed. Let it be a moot point trans. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989],
whether Ockham really expected a total reversal of the laws 242), and Spinoza's pantheistic extrapolation of Cartesian metaphysics
of nature or a divine revelation of a Newer Covenant. It ("Deus sive natura") only adds support to this view. See note 157.
is sufficient that he released the specter of divine caprice 140 The Seraphic Doctor's words: "All creatures, whether they are

without the philosophical or theological means to control viewed in terms of their defects or in terms of their perfectibility, in
its apparitions. 138 voices most loud and strong, cry out the existence of God whom they
need because of their deficiency and from whom they receive their com-
For the nominalists of the fourteenth century and later, writes pletion. Therefore, in accordance with the greater or lesser degree of
Gillespie, ''God the creator and destroyer became preeminent, fullness which they possess, some cry out the existence of God with a
loud voice; others cry out yet louder; while still others make the loudest
138 Clark, "Ockharn on Freedom," 159-60. cry." Quaestiones disputatae De mysterio Trinitatis, q. I, a. I, corp.; Disputed

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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

be forced to see as a world silent in its opacity, inscrutable in the soul's total enrapturement in the embrace of the Blessed
its purposes, vulnerable to tectonic shifts in law and being. 141 Trinity, source ofher life, goal ofher motion, meaning of her
If there is to be any handle on reality, one must search it being. My self-love and my freedom are blessed and fulfilled
out in the extreme categories oflogical analyticism and gritty if, and only if, I love God for his own sake and above all else,
faith, between which the immense territory of ordinary expe- and if I love myself and others with a view to glorifying him.
rience, the realm of man's hopes and fears, stretches without Then I am truly free to be who and what I am, able to do
light and without warmth. The deep Augustinian roots of ex- all that God delights in my doing. There is no need to see
emplarism, part and parcel of Christology no less than ethics, inescapable tensions between perfection and unselfish love,
have here been eradicated, leaving an eerie world of isolated freedom and obligation, dignity and obedience. 142
substances and positive laws, somewhat like the Newtonian Copleston suggests that Ockham's cleavage between sci-
universe. This impoverished metaphysical universe offers no ence and faith left open the possibility of turning away from
natural home for mankind and gives him no natural signposts God in favor ofhuman preoccupations, much as a wayward
for his confidence. What could a moral "norm" be-would it youth might forsake the house ofhis father for the excitement
have a meaning more than superficial-if it is rooted in sheer of independent living.
self-determination of will, human and divine? Depth cries out
If the creature is regarded as having a real essential relation
to depth, one autonomous entity to another.
to God, and if it cannot be properly understood without
For Aquinas, moral discourse is anchored in an eternal ref-
this relation being understood, it is reasonable to conclude
erent, moral absolutes are discoverable, perennial, immutable,
that the study of the way in which creatures mirror God
defensible. For Ockham, moral discourse becomes dialectical, is the most important and valuable study in the world, and
if not a mere exercise in dialectic; to speak of absolutes in the that a study of creatures in and for themselves alone, with-
Augustinian manner is to speak of chimeras. The Ockhamist out any reference to God, is a rather inferior kind of study,
road leads us to a supremely powerful monarch ruling in a · which yields only an inferior knowledge of the world. But if
chaos of contingency. Moral laws, like dew or manna, fall creatures are "absolutes," they can perfectly well be studied
from heaven-there is nothing more to them. To the ques- without any reference to God. Of course ... when Ockham
tion "why love God, why love my neighbor?," the Ockhamist spoke of created things as "absolutes" he had no intention
replies: "Because God says so; he commands you to do it." of questioning their utter dependence on God; his point
Such an answer would replace I 500 years of ethical reflection of view was very much that of a theologian; but none the
less, if we can know the natures of created things without
with an adolescent's picture of adult authority. The disciple of
any advertence to God, it follows that empirical science is
Saint Thomas has a more convincing answer. Friendship with
an autonomous discipline. The world can be studied in ab-
God and with one's neighbor, as it commences in this life, straction from God, especially if, as Ockham held, it cannot
is the fruit of rational insight, love, and obedience; it is the
beginning of one's perfection, which will come to fruition as 142 On the harmony of freedom and obedience to moral law, see

Veritatis Splendor, which summarizes the contemporary conception of

Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, trans. Zachary Hayes, OFM (Saint obedience as alienating heteronomy, and then proposes the Thomistic
Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1979), rr6. understanding of a participated theonomy. For a detailed study of this
141 Not because these shifts will occur, but because, in principle, they
approach written prior to the encyclical, see Martin Rhonheimer, Nat-
could occur at any moment, if God had made provision for this in his ural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View if Moral Autonomy, trans.
ordered exercise of power. Gerald Malsbary (New York: Fordham University Press, 2ooo).

72 73
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw
Peter A. Kwasniewski
be strictly proved that God, in the full sense of the term
possibility of shifting the accent does not seem to have oc-
"God," exists. 143 curred.144
The historian Egon Friedell argues in like manner: Once the rift opened, it could not be bridged. By his doc-
trine of the human will as self-determining and the divine will
[Ockham's] skeptical-critical subtleties were simply the pow-
erful expressions of his religiousness. The thought of the as law-imposing, Ockham and those whom he influenced in-
unlimited divine despotism was soothing rather than irri- troduced an unbearable tension fated to be overcome by dis-
tating to him. His submissiveness would not be satisfied carding the divine and idolizing the human. Man is his own
if he imagined any limitations, even those of causality and "life-project," answerable to no one: such is the kernel of
morals, to God's omnipotence .... He laid the emphasis eighteenth century libertinism, nineteenth century nihilism,
entirely on the Credo [ofTertullian's Credo quia absurdum]: and twentieth century existentialism. 145
it was just the fact that faith and knowledge were two sep- That Friar William himself would have scorned such a view
arate things which made the preservation of faith possible. is clear from everything we know about him. Despite his
But how if, one fine day, it occurred to someone to lay falling out of favor with Pope John XXII over complicated
the emphasis on the absurdum and so arrive at the conclu- canonical issues, 146 he seems to have been a devout Francis-
sion that this fact of faith and knowledge being two differ- can who faithfully lived the evangelical counsels. (In this re-
ent things annihilates faith and saves knowledge? A shallow
gard he might be contrasted with Luther, who by marrying a
notion, but an extremely dangerous one. To Ockham this
nun broke his solemn vows and was complicit in her breaking
143 History 3:70-71. Copleston's argument has to be glossed. The pa-
of her own, or with Descartes, who fathered an illegitimate
gan Aristotle, long before the advent of Christian philosophy, perceived child from a Protestant woman and had the child baptized in
that the study of even the humblest natural things contributes to know- a Protestant church in Holland.) Ockham held the positions
ledge of the divine (cf Parts ofAnimals, I, 5, 645a4-u). While it is true we have discussed because he wanted above all to guard and
that the most noble reason for studying any reality other than God is the reverence the attributes of God, his omnipotence, his free-
illumination such a study can shed upon divine things, it does not follow dom, his independence of creatures, his infinite sovereignty
that there is no other legitimate reason to study the order of creatures,
and that such study has no value apart from its usefulness in theology. .
and majesty, his incomprehensible mystery, the transcendent
Speculative knowledge-including mathematics and ''empirical science'' purity and limitlessness of his being. He did not want to see
-is distinct from art, technology, and practical wisdom. It is perfective God being used by scholastic thinkers as though he were a
of the mind as such and so requires no extrinsic justification from above rationally predictable principle standing Zeus-like at the top
or from below, from theology or from utility. In this sense, the sciences of a pagan cosmology. Perhaps Ockham was right to feel that
can be justly called "autonomous disciplines." The problem Copleston
second-rate theologians of his day had become too confident
has in mind is not the study of natural things, not even the pursuit of
increasing knowledge about them as a perfection of the human intellect, and cavalier in their discussions of the God "who dwells in
but the isolation of this study from a larger intellectual and religious con- unapproachable light" (r Tim. 6:r6). Most ofhis defenders
text. Any and all studies must ultimately be integrated at least by a love
144 A Cultural History of the Modern Age, trans. Charles Francis Atkin-
of charity for the divine Good who is author of all being, and at best by
an explicit theological intentionality, so that progress in the understand- son, 3 vols. (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930), r:88-89.
145 See Veritatis Splendor, n. 46 and surrounding paragraphs.
ing of created things may serve to deepen wisdom about their uncreated
146 See John Kilcullen, "Ockham and Infallibility," The Journal of Re-
source and goal. Something similar is true for the arts and the manner
and purpose of their productions. ligious History r6 (1991): 387-409. This article is posted on its author's
website.

74
75
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THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski

today argue that Ockham was committed to the defense of the Among the th.i.nkers who took up where Ockham left
primacy of God's will, which he, as a Christian, believed to off, one could cite as representative Nicholas of Autrecourt
be the expression of God's superabundant goodness and the (c. 13oo-after 1350), Robert Holcot (d. 1349), and Pierre
root of his loving and saving works toward men. 14 7 We and d'Ailly (1370-1420). Nicholas was a notorious figure whose
all creatures are radically dependent on this will for our be- quasi-Cartesian opinions included the following: (a) Aristo-
ing and our goodness; we depend on it for natural and super- tle's philosophy is a confused mass of barely probable con-
natural life. Hence we must obey it always and in all things clusions; (b) no one can attain certainty about things in the
with the unconditional faith Abraham showed in believing world because our powers of knowing ~e too weak; (c) our
the promise of a child, and in obeying God's command to arguments can reach the level of probable guesses at best,
sacrifice the same child. This is what even natural reason is because the only truth clear to us is the principle of non-
telling us-obey God's will. Scripture reinforces the lesson. contradiction; (d) God's existence can in no way be proved;
Ockham can thus be portrayed as a kind of mystic of the di- (e) we would make a better use of our time doing community
vine will, celebrating God's boundless freedom and creativity work than studying theology. 148 Rob~rt Holcot used the no-
and the higher freedom we gain through obedience to him. tion of God's potentia absoluta to undermine traditional claims
If, as Chesterton remarked, Aquinas should have been called about causality, divine and human knowledge, natural law,
Thomas a Creatore, then surely Ockham's nickname could have grace and predestination, beatitude, and the Incarnation. 149
been Guillelmus a Voluntate Divina. Pierre d' Ailly thought that the reality of divine omnipotence
Good intentions notwithstanding, however, a Christian rendered impossible any certainty about the natural or super-
theologian does more harm than good when he allows meta- natural orders. 150 It is in the writings of men like these that
physics to be crushed under the weight of isolated theological we find the real origins of modern skepticism and a host of
demands. Although sacra doctrina has its sources in revelation, other anti-philosophies. Hence it comes as no surprise that
much of its framework and many of its working principles the University ofParis condemned nominalism several times
rest upon intuitions of the human intellect and the sciences in the fourteenth century, that Nicholas was compelled to
educed from these, which prevent theology, not to mention burn his writings, and that even French kings got involved
ordinary life, from veering into nonsense. A good Christian
can be a poor philosopher; there is no guarantee that sanctity
148 On Nicholas, see Weinberg, Short History, 267-83; Copleston,
will translate into science. What is worse, dubious ideas in-
History cif Philosophy, 3:135-48. A short biography and some texts are
troduced into theology even for the best of reasons can end included in Arthur Hyman and James]. Walsh, eds., Philosophy in the
up working untold damage-in theology first of all, but also Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1973), 703-13. Of the few
in the whole realm of sciences subordinated to it, and even- works of Nicholas that are extant, by far the most important is The Uni-
tually in the thoughts and deeds of common folk, misshaped versal Treatise. This has been translated by Leonard A. Kennedy, CSB,
by misshapen leaders. Richard E. Arnold, SJ, and Arthur E. Millward (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1971).
149 See L.A. Kennedy, The Philosophy of Robert Holcot, Fourteenth-

147 See Klocker, Ockham and the Divine Freedom, 7-13, 85-89, 107- Century Skeptic (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1993).
150 See L.A. Kennedy, Peter ofAilly and the Harvest cifFourteenth·Century
14; Adams, "Ock:ham: Voluntarist or Naturalist?," 245-47; idem, "Ock-
ham's Moral Theory," 33-35. Philosophy (Lewiston, N.Y.: ~dwin Mellen, 1989).

77
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw
Peter A. Kwasniewski
in the dispute over whether the nominalist school should be Luther's Disputation Against Scholastic Theology ( r 517) allow
tolerated. 151 one to infer the decrepitude into which theological studies
If we move a century ahead, we find that one of Mar- had fallen by the year of its publication. "Man is by nature
tin Luther's teachers, Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), was a nomi- unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to
nalist heavily indebted to Ockham. 152 One can see evidence be God, and does not want God to be God." "Virtually the
throughout Luther's work of the deplorable state of theo- entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace." "In-
logy in the late medieval period. 153 A few propositions from deed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one
without Aristotle." "The whole of Aristotle ... is to theo-
151 See Hyman and Walsh, Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 649-so.
logy as darkness is to light." "He who is outside the grace
152 S~e Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest if Medieval Theology: Gabriel
Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, of God sins incessantly, even when he does not kill, commit
1967). A vast amount ofwor:k has been done on the intellectual pre- adultery, or become angry." "What the law wants, the will
history of the Protestant revolt. It must be emphasized that the connec- never wants, unless it pretends to want it out of fear or love."
tion between Ockham, Biel, and Luther is far from simple; it is not a "Anyone's will would prefer, if it were possible, that there
matter of two straight lines drawn between three dots. Luther differed would be no law and to be entirely free. Anyone's will hates
with Biel over matters as important as freedom of will, good works,
and justification. But it would be ·even stranger to deny the influence
it that the law should be imposed upon it; if, however, the
of the Ockhamist movement on the whole oflate medieval thought, or will desires imposition of the law it does so out of love of
to doubt the pronounced effect of the confused and confusing world sel£" "To love God is at the same time to hate oneself and to
of early sixteenth century scholasticism upon Luther. "In fact, the in- know nothing but God." 154 Many lines of the Disputation are
fluence of Ockhamism outside Spain, where [traditional] scholasticism wild exaggerations of sentences regularly met with in theolo-
continued to flourish, was so great that by the time of Luther there was,
gians and mystics of the High Middle Ages, or, in other cases,
for example, only one university in Germany that was not dominated by
the nominalists" (Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche, 24); "Through the are brusque dismissals of opinions torn out of context. Its
predominance of nominalist thinking in England it played an important
role in the development of English empiricism, especially for Bacon and
Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins if the European Reformation (Ox-
Hobbes" (ibid., 26). Too, the revival of systematic skepticism in theRe-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), esp. 69-121; Steven Ozment, The Age if
naissance and Reformation periods among both Catholic and Protestant
Reform I 2 5o- I 55 o: An Intellectual and Religious History ofLate Medieval and
apologists could not have occurred unless the ground had been prepared Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). As Mc-
for it by a widespread conceptualism. "The research of the last forty
Grath notes, it was not a particularly edifying spectacle when, in IS21,
years or so," claims John White, "seems to show not only that Ockham
a debate between Melanchthon and the theologians of the Sorbonne
was one of the most influential thinkers of the fourteenth century, but
revealed the existence of at least eight different theological camps: Al-
that his, along with Scotus's thought, dominated the medieval universi-
bertists, Egidists, Thomists, Scotists, Scotellists, "Modernists," Ock-
ties in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Indeed, it seems that these
hamists, and Gregorists. It was nearly impossible at this time to identify
two traditions formed the bulk of university thinkers for some 2 so years
a common Catholic theology. This became one of the great problems
(IJOO-ISSO)" ("Ockhamand Nominalism"). On Luther's indebtedness
at the Council of Trent as well. For example, there was no standard
to Ockham and nominalism, see Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man Be-
sacramental theology, and it was only agreement on the most general
tween God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New York: principles that permitted the drafting of texts acceptable to all.
Image Books, 1992), u8-2I. 154 Props. 17, 41, 44, so, 62, 72, 8s-86, and 9S, trans. Harold].
153 On the fascinating subject of the relationship between late me-
Grimm, in Luther's Works, vol. 31: Career of the Reformer I, ed. idem
dieval scholasticism and the formation of early Protestant theology, see (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 19S7), 9ff.

79
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs oF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
content displays a childish oversimplification and impatience Still, it is as important to see the ways in which Ockham and
that could well be a desperate reaction against the infernal di- his medieval partisans really differ from the quintessential mod-
alectics practiced by Ockham and his followers. A document erns-from Luther, Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza,
like this could only have been written in dark times of great Hobbes, Hume, Kant, et alia-as it is to notice how their
confusion. views overlap in suggestive ways. Medieval thinkers were,
Inasmuch as Ockhamism played a significant role in late so far as we can tell, sincere believers who employed hyper-
medieval thought, it also exercised a strong but often hidden trophic doubts or counterfactual scenarios as instruments for
influence upon the birth of early modern philosophy. The testing the tensile strength of discourse about God and cre-
Cartesian revolt against Aristotelian physics and metaphysics ation, the same God whom they worshiped in the holy sacri-
would have been inconceivable had the road not been paved fice of the Mass, bringing to his feet all the gifts of the world.
by nominalism's deconstructive tendencies. As Gilson demon- They were mistaken in methods or conclusions, but they do
strated, the celebrated author of the Meditations on First Philo- not strike one as perverse in their intentions or impious in their
sophy was not nearly as original as moderns unacquainted with actual religious beliefs. With the early moderns, it is different.
the world of late scholasticism thought him to be. On the We are really in a different world. Whatever Luther's famil-
contrary. Descartes as a youth was nurtured on the eclectic iarity with Gabriel, Ockham, or other scholastics, whichever
scholasticism of his Jesuit teachers, and in his later efforts to devotions he sentimentally retains, he is no longer a Catho-
build a new system, he often recycled and refurbished the lic. He is not a man who preaches and teaches within the bo-
ideas of his contemporaries. 155 To take one example among som of the Church. However much Descartes plunders the
many, the scenario of an evil genius who tries with all his writings of "decadent scholastics" and makes a pretense of
might to deceive the seeker of certainty-a scenario that peo- faith, he is not one of them, and has little care for religion. 157
ple instantly associate with Descartes, the daring skeptic-is a
secularized version of the elaborate counterfactual hypotheses
is so, how, by unaided reason, could we know whether we may or may
floated in nominalist circles. 156 not trust our senses? We might believe that the world isn't this way, we
may even have decisive reasons for believing it isn't, yet this would still
155 Gilson's groundbreaking studies were La doctrine cartesienne de Ia be an object of a sort of faith.
liberte et Ia theologie (Paris: Alcan, 1913) and Etudes sur le role de Ia pensee 157 This is patently obvious if one reads the Discourse on Method with

medievale dans Ia formation du systi!me cartesien (Paris: Vrin, I95I). care. Of countless examples, one need only consider Descartes's provi-
156 Some late medieval thinkers were getting worked up by the prob- sional code of morals in Part 3, which consists of a conventional pragma-
lem of the divinely-caused intuitive cognition of non-existent objects. If tism that repudiates any vows by which one would limit one's freedom
God can make me think that I am seeing a sheep when there is no sheep (first maxim, applicable above all to the vows of baptism, by which the
outside my mind, then can I be certain that the whole world is not simply natural freedom to follow the world, the flesh, and the devil is perper-
a fantasy? Or: if God could make a wolflook exactly like a sheep, then tually forsworn); a voluntarism that maintains it is better to pursue any
ifl saw the sheep I would be mistaken in thinking it was a sheep. But if course to the end, once it has been chosen, so as to avoid remorse or
that's true, then I could be mistaken about everything. So I can't know regret (second maxim); an explicitly Stoic naturalism that limits man's
anything. All this speculation is not the expression of sheer perversity. good to what is within the limits ofhis nature and his natural power, and
The background is discussions of eucharistic transubstantiation. If God exalts as the best life the one that is entirely within the bounds of unaided
can bring it about that what looks, tastes, and feels like bread is not bread, reason (third and fourth maxims, where the only happiness mentioned
then could not the whole universe be similarly manipulated? And if this is that of the Stoic "gods"). All this is profoundly anti-Christian, as is

Bo 8I
 THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw Peter A. Kwasniewski
He is (and understood himself to be) a revolutionary aspiring With Hitler's camps and Stalin's purges, with weapons of war
to undreamt-of ends, who was willing to use scholastic lan- that have obliterated millions of civilians, with liberal abortion
guage to win a hearing and to infiltrate the schools. 158 And it laws spread over the face of the globe, with schools instruct-
is from this point-Luther the self-appointed reformer of re- ing children in methods of fornication, with legalized adul-
ligion, Descartes the solipsistic reformer of physics and meta- tery ("no fault" divorce) in nearly every Western nation, and
physics-that the story familiar to many of us, the story of with many other examples only too well known, the twentieth
Western intellectual decadence and revolt against the institu- century has gone a long way toward establishing a transvalua-
tional Church, picks up and gains momentum. It will, over tion far more radical and pernicious than the one effected by
time, become a revolt against God and nature, reason and Ockham: man believing himself to be endowed with absolute
sanity. power and limitless freedom over the moral law. 160 I do not
We are in a position, as men of the fourteenth century think we could have gotten to this extreme of absurdity were
were not, to see where seemingly remote, abstract, "theoreti- it not for Ockham and the movement shaped by his ideas. It
cal" mistakes can lead when they mold the secret thoughts of is no wonder Leo says later in the same Encyclical:
statesmen or trickle down to the masses. This will not bring
us comfort, but it may bring us wisdom. Recall the forceful Domestic and civil society even, which, as all see, is exposed
judgment of Pope Leo XIII in Aeterni Patris (I 897): to great danger from this plague ofperverse opinions, would
certainly enjoy a far more peaceful and secure existence if
Whoever turns his attention to the bitter strifes of these days
and seeks a reason for the troubles that vex public and private
"[A]s the possibility of error, and actual error, are defects of the mind
life must come to the conclusion that a fruitful cause of the
and attest its imperfection, so the pursuit of what has a false appearance
evils which now affiict us, as well as those which threaten us
of good, though a proof of our freedom, just as a disease is a proof of
lies in this: that false conclusions concerning divine and hu~ our vitality, implies defect in human liberty. The will also, simply be-
man things, which originated in the schools of philosophy, cause of its dependence on the reason, no sooner desires anything con-
have now crept into all the orders of the State, and have trary thereto than it abuses its freedom of choice and corrupts its very
been accepted by the common consent of the masses. For, essence."
since it is in· the very nature of man to follow the guide 160 As Alice Ramos writes: "The late medieval conception of an om-

of reason in his actions, if his intellect sins at all his will nipotent God led to a new vision of man and nature, a vision which
soon follows; and thus it happens that false opinions, whose emphasizes will over reason, and freedom over necessity and order.
seat is in the understanding, influence human actions and The transformations which the Ockharnist omnipotent God undergoes
pervert them. 159 throughout the history of philosophy result in a kind of modem thought
which sees man as a superhuman being who, through the application
ofhis infinite will, is able to recreate the world. The absolute power of
the dualist metaphysics of Part 4 that Descartes disingenuously suspends God is thus replaced by the absolute human will. The revelation of the
from a God too easily understood and too quickly forgettable. · world as the product not of reason but of will, of a divine omnipotence
158
See The Philosophical Writings cif Descartes, vol. 3, Correspondence, which could change the existing order of things, gradually gave way to a
trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and An- universe governed by man's infinite will, and susceptible to even greater
thony Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 153, 157, disorder and chaos, than had been imagined possible under the absolute
173, 209-10, 212, and passim; Gillespie, Nihilism, 28 ff. power of God" ("Ockham and Aquinas on Exemplary Causality," I 99-
159
Aeterni Patris, n. 2. C£ Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, n. 6: 2oo).
,- I

THE METAPHYSICAL RooTs OF NATURAL LAw

a more wholesome doctrine were taught in the universities

and schools-one more in conformity with the teaching of
the Church, such as is contained in the works of Thomas
Aquinas. 161

161 Ibid., n. 28. In the paragraph that follows Leo singles out for praise

"the teachings ofThomas on the true meaning ofliberty, which at this

time is running into license, on the divine origin of all authority, on laws
and their force, on the paternal and just rule of princes, on obedience to
the higher powers, on mutual charity one toward another."

I wish to thank Ronald P. McArthur, Michael Waldstein, Gregory T.

Doolan, Walter]. Thompson, and Kevin G. Long for their helpful com-
ments on earlier versions of this article.