Thomistic Summer Conference 2024 Lecture: Dr. Brett Smith

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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.

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