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“The Natural Knowledge of God and the First Principles of the Natural Law in Thomas Aquinas”
by Dr. Brett Smith
Thomas Aquinas College, New England
Thomistic Summer Conference 2024
In question 100 of the Prima Secundae, Thomas Aquinas states that the command to love God is among the first principles of the natural law.[1] He says that these first principles are self-evident (per se nota) to all people capable of reason.[2] On the other hand, Thomas argues that God’s existence is not self-evident in this life, since we do not know His essence,[3] and clearly, at any rate, there are atheists in the world. There is a difficulty here. How can people know per se that they should love God when they do not know per se, or even simply do not know, that He exists?
I think the key to untying this knot is to discover what concept of God and what sort of knowledge Aquinas has in mind when he says all men know per se that God is to be loved. Thus, I will speak first about the natural knowledge of God in Aquinas and then about how the first principles of the natural law are known. Then I will combine these observations to explain how it can be that the obligation to love God is self-evident to all men.
Lawrence Dewan[4] located three texts in Aquinas’s corpus that suggest a natural knowledge of God common to most or all people. Dewan’s solution to the problem before us today perhaps fits best with the earliest of these texts, Summa Contra Gentiles 3.38. Dewan thought the naturally known command to love God was “more a simple grasping of the goodness of being, than the reception of a law from a lawgiver.”[5] I agree with Dewan that it is a simple grasping of the goodness of something, but I think the idea of God whose goodness they grasp is more specific than just being. This concept of God is evident in the two later texts: The Secunda Secundae, q. 85, a. 1, and Lectura Super Psalmos 8c (or section 54 in the Parma edition).[6]
1. The Natural Knowledge of God
Text 1: Summa Contra Gentiles 3.38. Thomas wrote the Summa Contra Gentiles book 3 within the span from 1260-1265.[7] In chapter 37, Thomas has just said that man’s ultimate happiness consists in the contemplation of the truth because this is what is proper to man among all animals. All virtuous action in every area of human life ultimately leads to the contemplation of God as the highest truth.
In this context Thomas introduces his idea of the common knowledge of God:
For there is a common and confused knowledge of God which is found in practically all men; this is due either to the fact that it is self-evident that God exists, just as other principles of demonstration are—a view held by some people, as we said in Book One—or, what seems indeed to be true, that man can immediately (statim) reach some sort of knowledge of God by natural reason. For, when men see that things in nature run according to a definite order, and that ordering does not occur without an orderer, they perceive in most cases that there is some orderer of the things that we see. But who or what kind of being, or whether there is but one orderer of nature, is not yet grasped immediately in this general consideration.[8]
People see order, and they infer that there must be an ordinator—something or someone that is responsible for the order we see. This cognitio of God is present in virtually all people (quasi omnibus hominibus adest), which we may take to mean all rational people, if they are thinking rationally. All rational people have a concept of an ordinator and know that such a thing exists.
Thomas goes on in chapter 38 to explain that this knowledge of God is not sufficient for the ultimate happiness of contemplation. One reason for this is that it can be attached to an incorrect object. He says that some have attributed the origin of order to natural elements or even humans who give order to society. This, he says, is why certain men were worshipped as gods. This knowledge of God, it seems, is not sufficient to distinguish God from lower things. At this point, it is just a knowledge that there must be someone or something that gives the world order. The proportion of the population—in any time—who denies this must be very small.
Text 2: Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 85, a. 1. Thomas wrote the Secunda Secundae of his Summa Theologiae in 1271-1272.[9] Question 85 is the question on sacrifice. Thomas begins his inquiry by asking whether sacrifice belongs to the natural law. He argues that it does, beginning his response as follows: “Natural reason tells man that he is subject to a higher being, on account of the defects which he perceives in himself, and in which he needs help and direction from someone above him: and whatever this superior being may be, it is known to all under the name of God.”[10] Here Thomas follows a different line of argumentation than in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Rather than connecting the natural knowledge of God with order, here he connects it with perfection. People see their own imperfection and know not only that they need help but also that it is possible to obtain it, in some sense. The being from which they can obtain help must be superior, and so they know they are subject to this being. That which all people call God is the higher being that is capable of giving direction and help.
If we take “all (omnes)” in the straightforward sense, it seems that this concept of God is one that all people have. The fact that Thomas is referring to a deliverance of natural reason among all nations seems to confirm this interpretation. Since all people have this concept,[11] he must be showing us his revised idea of the confused natural knowledge of God, rather than referring to the clear demonstrative knowledge that only a few can have.
This natural concept of God is a good deal more particular than the one presented in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Whereas in the early to mid-1260s Thomas believed the natural knowledge of God could allow one to mistake a man or a natural principle for God, here it appears that anything equal to or below man in the hierarchy of being and perfection is out of bounds. This God must be understood as higher than man. This God is capable of rendering both help and guidance. Therefore, this God can intervene in the world in some way (whether through providence or miracle he does not specify), and, to give guidance, must have some kind of intelligence. Thomas does refer to this God as a quidquid (whatever), however, so perhaps we should not say it is necessarily personal.
Also significant here is how Thomas says people know they are obliged to sacrifice. As mentioned above, they infer the obligation from their common concept of this higher being, together with their natural inclination that tells them the inferior (man) should be subject to and honor the superior (God): “Now just as in natural things the lower are naturally subject to the higher, so too it is a dictate of natural reason in accordance with man's natural inclination that he should tender submission and honor, according to his mode, to that which is above man.”[12] I believe the natural inclination to which he refers here is the twofold rational inclination to know the truth and to live in society. More on that in a moment.
Text 3: Lectura Super Psalmos 8c. Thomas wrote his Lectura Super Psalmos in 1273.[13] In his comments on Psalm 8, Thomas returns to the idea of a natural knowledge that someone or something must have given order to the world. This time, however, Thomas presents a view that is subtly but importantly different from the one he has espoused in the Summa Contra Gentiles. After citing Cicero and Aristotle as inspirations for this observation, Thomas states, “We enter the world, and we do not see how it was made, but from the very fact that it is well-ordered we ought to perceive that it was made by someone.”[14] The word translated “someone” here is aliquo. This form could be masculine or neuter, and therefore indicative of a person or not. However, Thomas uses the phrase ab aliquo to echo an illustration he has just given from Cicero, and in that illustration a person is clearly meant.[15] More telling here is Thomas’s assertion that we “ought to perceive (debemus percipere).” Thomas seems to see this inference as one all rational people should make. All people should know that someone gave order to the world.
As in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas says that not all people have had this knowledge. Unlike the earlier work, however, he refers to the reduction of order to natural causes as an example, not of the common knowledge of God, but of its rejection. One can see this in the clear contrast between what we ought to see and what the naturalists thought. Right after saying “we ought to perceive that it was made by someone,” Thomas continues, “There have been certain men in error who attribute the causes of things to material necessity … nevertheless it can in no way be so among the heavenly bodies.”[16] Those who attribute the origin of order to purely natural causes are no longer in the category of those who have the natural knowledge of God. Thomas has switched the naturalists from confused knowledge to ignorance because he has a different common notion in mind, one that is intelligent, rather than merely the cause of order. And so he says about the motion of the heavenly bodies, “One must reduce this to nothing but an intellective cause.”[17]
Thus we see in the Lectura Super Psalmos that when Thomas returns late in his career to discussing the natural knowledge of God gained from observing order in the world, the concept of God that all people have is more specific and less universally acknowledged than before (i.e., in the SGC). I think Thomas is referring to the same concept of God he invoked in the Secunda Secundae. All rational people have such a concept from their experience of the world, and they all should draw from their experience the immediate, confused but certain inference that such a God exists.
Yet, Thomas knows that there were naturalistic philosophers who denied this, so he no longer thinks that all rational people will infer that God exists. He has said just above in his exposition of the same Psalm that those who reject the knowledge of God pervert natural instinct.[18] It seems that is his new account of the naturalistic philosophers. They are ignorant because they choose to ignore their natural instinct. They are rational, yet limited in their knowledge by some perversion.
Since these two later texts are closer in time to the 1271 composition of the Prima Secundae than is the Summa Contra Gentiles, our initial assumption should be that this later natural concept of God is the one Thomas has in mind when he says that all men know per se that they should love God.
This also makes good sense of the text of Prima Secundae question 100, since Thomas says to love God is to refer all things to God, and that to do this one must first be disposed and then receive infused charity.[19] If the way to obey the per se notum first principle that God is to be loved involves a disposition to receive charity, it would seem the concept one has of God would have to be consistent with that response. One must have in mind a God that it would make sense to love, or at least to seek with interest. It hardly makes sense to seek or love the natural cause that has ordered the world, or the bare notion of being, but it does make sense to seek a higher intelligence worthy of honor and capable helping us.
2. The First Principles of the Natural Law
Now we know what is meant by “God” and “love” in this law. Finally, we need to say how all men know it. We have from q. 100 that the per se nota first principles of the natural law include only the commands to love God and neighbor, the command to do evil to no man, and others like these that do not require even a modicum of consideration. People just know that these things are good. Just six questions earlier, Thomas has explained how one can have an immediate awareness of something as good:
[T]he first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.[20]
Matthew Levering explains this first precept of the natural law as a “natural inclination toward the good.”[21] The additional inclinations Thomas mentions—those toward self-preservation, reproduction and education of offspring, knowing the truth about God, and living in society—are to be understood as each expressing “an aspect of the natural inclination toward the human good.”[22] In a sense, then, there is only one inclination, applied in the various areas of human life.[23] By natural inclination, we all apprehend certain things as good, prior to any rational reflection.[24] In the very same act in which we perceive them as good, we perceive that we ought to seek them, because that is what “good” indicates. This is how the inclinations make known the first principles of the natural law.[25]
As Randall Smith has shown, the inclination to know the truth about God and to live in society connects, in its respective parts, to the commands to love God and neighbor.[26] If we recognize that this two-fold inclination is the distinctly human, distinctly rational, inclination, it makes perfect sense that Thomas would see it as the foundation of moral reasoning. It is precisely as a rational creature that every human perceives truth and social life as goods to be pursued.
Thomas’s account of how all people know about the command to love God, therefore, should be understood in its simplest terms as follows. Every person, as rational, perceives God, understood as the highest truth, as a good to be pursued. Thus the principle, “God is to be loved,” is simply an articulation of the principle “Good is to be done and pursued,” as it appears in the distinctly rational aspect of human life.
But of course, not everyone believes in truth, and I have said that the natural concept of God is more focused: a higher intelligence capable of helping us.
3. The Command to Love God as per se Known to Atheists
This brings us to our final problem. Thomas acknowledges that some have denied the existence of a higher intelligence. This appears to include rational people, for in the Super Psalmos he has naturalistic philosophers in view, who looked only to material causes. These texts may seem at first to render intractable the problem of how every rational person can know per se, “God is to be loved.” Those who deny the existence of God would seem not to apprehend Him as a good. Without such apprehension, it would seem that the natural reason would not generate the principle, “God is to be loved.”
The key to solving this problem is to understand what Thomas means by per se notum. In Prima Secundae, question 94, article 2. Referring to the first principles of the natural law, Thomas states, “[T]he precepts of the natural law are to the practical reason, what the first principles of demonstrations are to the speculative reason; because both are self-evident principles (principia per se nota).”[27] The claim that a proposition is known per se is the claim that its truth follows necessarily from the meaning of the terms.[28] This is why it is possible for something to be per se notum in itself (its truth really is contained in the meaning of its terms) even though it is not per se notum to all. Some may not know, for example, that the meaning of the term “angel” already includes the fact that it cannot be circumscriptively in a place.[29] Thomas indicates, as shown above, that the first principles of the natural law are known per se to all. Here Thomas explains what that means: “certain axioms or propositions are universally self-evident (per se notae) to all; and such are those propositions whose terms are known to all.”[30] He gives the classic example, “every whole is greater than its part.” Since all people naturally understand the meaning of the terms, and since that meaning contains the truth of the proposition, the proposition is per se notum to all.[31] Anyone who denies such a proposition is not acting rationally.
The same applies to the principles of the natural law. The good is “that which all things seek after,”[32] and so the natural inclinations deliver the notion of the good to all people, as discussed above. This is why Thomas says, “[W]hatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.”[33] For example, John knows, as do all, that the meaning of the term “good” includes the notion of a thing to be done or sought. John apprehends X as a good. Thus, assuming his apprehension is correct, John knows that the meaning of the term X includes the notion of a thing to be done or sought. This is how he knows per se that “X is to be done or sought.” If there is something that all people apprehend as good, all people will know per se that they should do or seek this thing.[34] In the case of natural inclinations, the good apprehended by all is the same for all because the inclination is the same for all. By means of the rational natural inclination all people perceive truth as a good to be sought and the superior as worthy of their service.[35] Since they naturally have a concept of a superior intelligence capable of intervening in the world, they all apprehend this concept as a good to be sought, and sought with devotion. This is how they know per se that they should love God.
Nothing that I have just said requires that one also understand God to exist in reality. For Thomas, of course, this is true in the vast majority of cases, and it ought to be true in all cases, if people would make the rational inference that they should. We have seen this from the three texts Dewan has identified. We have also seen that there are rational people who refuse to make this inference, due to the perversion of natural instinct.[36] This does not change the logic of the obligation. The atheist still has the natural concept of God. He still apprehends it as the kind of good that it is through his rational natural inclination. Therefore, the atheist still understands the meaning of the terms, and the meaning of the terms still includes the truth of the proposition.[37] The atheist understands “God is to be loved” per se. He simply does not think that has any relevance, since he thinks that God does not exist.
Conclusion
I hope that I have offered a plausible solution to a difficult problem in Thomas’s thought. He knows there are atheists, but he says that the command to love God is per se known to all people. I have suggested that he can hold both of these positions without contradiction. This is so because the per se knowledge all people have is delivered by the combination of a natural inclination towards God and a natural concept of God which are both present in all rational people.[38] They understand “God” to indicate a higher intelligence capable of intervening in the world and worthy of sacrifice. Their natural rational inclination causes them to perceive this as a good to be pursued with devotion. The principle, “God is to be loved,” is simply an articulation of this apprehension. Thanks to the inclination, the obligation to seek God is contained in the naturally understood meaning of the term “God.” Most people also affirm that such a God exists, but some do not. In both cases, the obligation is per se notum.
On the way to this conclusion, I have paid special attention to the texts Lawrence Dewan has adduced in support of the natural knowledge of God in Thomas’s thought. I have argued that these texts present a more robust natural knowledge than Dewan uses in his solution. The natural concept of God, which Thomas develops fully only in the two later texts, is of a higher intelligence that is significant to human life, both for what it can do and for what man owes to it. This general notion faces every rational person, who then must choose to acknowledge the existence of such a thing, or not, and choose to seek it, or not. People know what they should do, according to Thomas, but they need grace to know it fully and to carry it out.
[1] In the secondary literature of the past century, there has been much disagreement about how many precepts belong to the natural law and whether there are graded levels of natural law precepts. For an overview of this literature, see Randall Smith, “What the Old Law Reveals About the Natural Law According to Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 75 (2011): 96-105. I concur with Smith’s determination that the key to resolving this debate is to look to question 100 in the Prima Secundae (Ibid., 104-105).
[2] STh I-II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 1; cf. STh I-II, q. 100, a. 1, a. 3; a. 11. See also discussion below.
[3] STh I, q. 2, a. 1: “Therefore I say that this proposition, ‘God exists,’ of itself is self-evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject, because God is His own existence as will be hereafter shown. Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature—namely, by effects.” All English quotations from the Summa Theologiae, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1947).
[4] Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order,” in Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 207-208 (emphasis original).
[5] Dewan, “Natural Lights,” 210.
[6] The dates of composition are taken from Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas Volume 1: The Person and His Work, rev. ed., trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 101-104, 258-259, 329.
[7] Torrell, Aquinas: Volume 1, 101-104.
[8] Summa Contra Gentiles 3.38: “Est enim quaedam communis et confusa Dei cognitio, quae quasi omnibus hominibus adest: sive hoc sit per hoc quod Deum esse sit per se notum, sicut alia demonstrationis principia, sicut quibusdam videtur, ut in primo libro dictum est; sive, quod magis verum videtur, quia naturali ratione statim homo in aliqualem Dei cognitionem pervenire potest. Videntes enim homines res naturales secundum ordinem certum currere; cum ordinatio absque ordinatore non sit, percipiunt, ut in pluribus, aliquem esse ordinatorem rerum quas videmus. Quis autem, vel qualis, vel si unus tantum est ordinator naturae, nondum statim ex hac communi consideratione habetur.” Latin for the Summa Contra Gentiles is according to Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Opera omnia, volumes 13-16, ed. the Leonine Commission (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1918-1948), emended edition (Taurini:1961). English translation is taken from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis, James F. Anderson, Vernon J. Bourke, and Charles J. O’Neil (New York: Hanover House, 1955-57), electronic edition by Joseph Kenny, http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles. htm.
[9] Torrell, Aquinas: Volume 1, 329.
[10] STh II-II, q. 85, a. 1c: “Respondeo dicendum quod naturalis ratio dictat homini quod alicui superiori subdatur, propter defectus quos in seipso sentit, in quibus ab aliquo superiori eget adiuvari et dirigi. Et quidquid illud sit, hoc est quod apud omnes dicitur Deus.”
[11] Note the sed contra (STh II-II, q. 85, a. 1, sed contra): “At all times and among all nations there has always been the offering of sacrifices. Now that which is observed by all is seemingly natural. Therefore the offering of sacrifices is of the natural law.”
[12] STh II-II, q. 85, a. 1c: “Sicut autem in rebus naturalibus naturaliter inferiora superioribus subduntur, ita etiam naturalis ratio dictat homini secundum naturalem inclinationem ut ei quod est supra hominem subiectionem et honorem exhibeat secundum suum modum.”
[13] Torrell, Aquinas : Volume 1, 258-259.
[14] In Psalmos Davidis Expositio 54 (trans. mine): “Nos intramus mundum, nec videmus quomodo factum sit; sed ex hoc ipso quod est ita bene ordinatus, debemus percipere quod est factus ab aliquo.” Latin of the In Psalmos Davidis Expositio is according to the Parma edition of 1863, as transcribed by The Aquinas Institute. https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~Psalm.Ps8
[15] In Psalmos Davidis Expositio 54: “Tullius dicit in Lib. de natura deorum, et fuit dictum etiam ab Aristotele, quamvis in ejus libris quae apud nos habentur non inveniatur, quod si aliquis homo intraret palatium quod videret bene dispositum, nullus est ita amens, qui licet non videret quomodo factum fuerit, quin percipiat quod fabricatum sit ab aliquo.”
[16] In Psalmos Davidis Expositio 54 (trans. mine): “debemus percipere quod est factus ab aliquo. Et hoc specialter ostendit ordo corporum caelestium. Fuerunt quidam errantes qui causas rerum attribuunt necessitati materiae…Hoc autem… nullo tamen modo in caelestibus corporibus.”
[17] In Psalmos Davidis Expositio 54: (trans. mine): “Hoc autem nonnisi in causam intellectivam oportet reducere.”
[18] In Psalmos Davidis Expositio 53: “Duplex namque est genus hominum, qui consequuntur naturalem et rectum instinctum, sicut sunt simplices, vel sapientes. Quod sapientes cognoscant Deum, hoc non est magnum; sed quod simplices sic. Sunt autem quidam qui naturalem instinctum pervertunt: et isti cognitionem Dei repellunt: Ps. 81: nescierunt id est nescire voluerunt, neque intellexerunt et cetera. Job 21: dixerunt Deo, recede a nobis; scientiam viarum tuarum nolumus.”
[19] STh I-II, q. 100, a. 10 : “Non enim est impossibile hoc praeceptum observare, quod est de actu caritatis, quia homo potest se disponere ad caritatem habendam, et quando habuerit eam, potest ea uti.” ; STh I-II, q. 100, a. 10, ad 2: “sub mandato caritatis continetur ut diligatur Deus ex toto corde, ad quod pertinet ut omnia referantur in Deum. Et ideo praeceptum caritatis implere homo non potest, nisi etiam omnia referantur in Deum.” Delhaye recognizes the tension created by the connection of charity with the love command and the Decalogue in this passage (La Décalogue, 91). He concludes that the entire Decalogue, for the Christian, is not natural law precisely because one needs charity to keep it (Ibid., 93). For the reasons given in main text here, I think this is a mistake. In addition, scholastic theologians like Thomas did not normally treat natural law and theology as mutually exclusive. Rather, as Porter argues, “[T]he scholastics construe nature, reason, and Scripture as three mutually interpreting sources for moral norms” (Natural and Divine Law, 140). See also Smith, “Precepts of the Natural Law,” 45-75, where he refutes the misconception that Divine Law is only intended to bring man to his supernatural end.
[20] STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2c: “primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur supra rationem boni, quae est, bonum est quod omnia appetunt. Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum. Et super hoc fundantur omnia alia praecepta legis naturae, ut scilicet omnia illa facienda vel vitanda pertineant ad praecepta legis naturae, quae ratio practica naturaliter apprehendit esse bona humana.”
[21] Matthew Levering, “Natural Law and Natural Inclinations: Rhonheimer, Pinckaers, McAleer,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 155; The other way scholars will read this first principle is as purely formal, as though people have a concept of the good before they fill in that concept from their natural inclinations. This seems to be the view represented in the following places: Adam G. Cooper, “Degrading the Body, Suppressing the Truth: Aquinas on Romans 1:18-25,” in Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 121; Smith, “Precepts of the Natural Law,” 125-133; Stephen J. Pope, “Overview of the Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown Uinversity Press, 2002), 35. What I take Levering and others like him to be saying is that we only have the categories of good and evil because we have inclinations. These inclinations are given by God in our created nature, so they tell us what really, objectively, is good and evil for humans to do. Besides Levering, this latter view seems to be espoused in the following places: William Patrick Lee, “The Natural Law and the Decalogue in St. Thomas Aquinas and Blessed John Duns Scotus,” (PhD diss., Marquette University, 1980), 105-111; Pinakaers, Sources, 410; R. A. Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural Law Teaching (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), 46.
[22] Levering, “Natural Inclinations,” 155.
[23] And so Thomas can say more simply in STh I-II, q. 94, a. 4, “to the natural law belongs those things to which a man is inclined naturally.”
[24] For good accounts of how this works, see, Lee, “Natural Law and the Decalogue,” 104-105 and Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts, 41-51.
[25] Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts, 27: “[B]y recognizing the natural inclinations present in man we come at the same time to grasp the truth of the self-evident principles of the natural law.”
[26] Smith, “Precepts of the Natural Law,” 242-246.
[27] STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2: “praecepta legis naturae hoc modo se habent ad rationem practicam, sicut principia prima demonstrationum se habent ad rationem speculativam, utraque enim sunt quaedam principia per se nota.”
[28] To be precise, this must be so without recourse to a middle term, as Tuninetti explains “Daß es selbstverständliche Prinzipien gibt, heißt eben, daß die Wahrheit gewisser aussage aus der bloßen verbindung von subjekt und prädikat ohne hilfe eines Mittelterms hervorgeht” Luca F. Tuninetti, Per Se Notum: Die logische Beschaffenheit des Selbstverständlichen im Denken des Thomas von Aquin (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 186.
[29] STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2; John Duns Scotus will later take Thomas and others to task on this very point. See Lectura I D.2, p.1 q.1-2, n. 17-20 (Lectura in Librum Primum Sententiarum Prologus et D.1-7, Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia XVI, ed. commissio scotistica [Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1960], 115-116). Scotus’s critique would not apply, however, to the per se nota status of the first principles of the natural law because their terms are understood naturally—from regular human experience—and are not defined through a deductive argument. Scotus accepts this kind of per se notum principle and argues that such principles deliver certain knowledge. Scotus, Lectura I D. 3, p. 1, q. 3, n. 173-176 (Vat. 16:293-294).
[30] STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2: “quaedam sunt dignitates vel propositiones per se notae communiter omnibus, et huiusmodi sunt illae propositiones quarum termini sunt omnibus noti, ut, omne totum est maius sua parte…” ; As Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts, 30, points out, Thomas’s claim is not that principles that are per se nota to all are innate. It is only that all know and understand the meanings of the terms, which terms contain the truth of the proposition. See also note 35.
[31] Thomas follows Aristotle in holding that all human knowledge originates from sense experience. Thus, as Clifford Kossel has noticed, “the ‘all’ in ‘known to all’ often refers to a (mostly) mature person with adequate experience of social life” (“Natural Law and Human Law,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002], 173). Such experience is necessary in order for people to understand the terms in self-evident moral propositions. Given such experience, however, people hold to the first principles of the natural law with no necessary reflection, and these principles can include “some necessary relations involved in their terms” (Ibid.). Kossel gives the knowledge that murder is wrong as an example of one of these basic precepts. As we have seen above, the inclusion of murder among first principles is not correct. Thomas says the commands of the Decalogue require a little reflection and are not known naturally by all, but only by the vast majority of people. Otherwise, Kossel’s point is sound.
[32] STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2: “bonum est quod omnia appetunt.”
[33] STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2: “omnia illa facienda vel vitanda pertineant ad praecepta legis naturae, quae ratio practica naturaliter apprehendit esse bona humana.”
[34] Specific applications, of course, will vary. For a priest, the apprehension of reproduction and nurture of children as good does generate the principle “I ought to do or seek the production and nurture of offspring.” This does not mean, however, that he must carry out this action directly. He could seek these things through sound teaching in his parish, leaving certain parts of the task (those involved in marriage) to others. In the case of the principle “God is to be loved,” however, the obligation involves referring all things to God, and so it necessarily applies to everyone in the same way.
[35] On the latter, see the discussion of STh II-II, q. 85, a. 1 above.
[36] One reason Thomas suggests is a choice to ignore the deliverances of natural instinct (see note 19), but there may perhaps be other reasons as well.
[37] Armstrong, significantly, refuses to discuss the inclination to know the truth about God as self-evident because he thinks such an inclination would presuppose the existence of God: “In other words, employing S. Thomas’s own criterion (of requiring to know the meaning of the terms involved) it could only be self-evident if it is first known that God exists.” Primary and Secondary Precepts, 49. As the atheist example shows, however, one can understand the meaning of the term “God” in a way that allows for the obligation generated by the inclination to be self-evident without necessarily believing that God exists. Knowing the meaning of a term simply is not the same thing as affirming the existence of that to which the term refers.
[38] That is, all rational people who have had sufficient experience of the world to know the meanings of the terms. see note 35 above.
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