The Precepts of the Old Law: One End, Many Commands; Moral, Ceremonial and Judicial Precepts (ST I-II q.100 aa.1-4)

Orientation #

He announces the start of question 99, on the distinction of the precepts of the Old Law, with question 100 (on each genus of precept) to follow. He notes that the division into moral, ceremonial and judicial was distinguished from the law of nature earlier (prev. lecture). The class covers the six articles’ list and then works through articles 1–4.

The neighbouring classes treat q. 98 on the Old Law and q. 99, aa. 5–6, on further kinds of precept and on temporal rewards.

The class, in order #

1. The plan of the question (“about the first six things are asked”) #

He lists the six articles: (1) many precepts or only one; (2) whether it contains moral precepts; (3) whether besides these, ceremonial; (4) whether besides those two, judicial; (5) whether besides these three, others — “I hope not… three is first number about which we say all”; (6) the way the law induced men to observe them. Aside: Thomas found the three kinds in a psalm which uses three different words for them. Aside on counting the articles of the Summa: “a word count is your friend.”

Digression (not on the text): stoning for adultery; the modern Muslim practice of throwing homosexuals from a building; Ben Carson asked whether he would support a Muslim president — his own answer: “It depends upon how much of a Muslim he is.”

2. Article 1, objections: one precept only (“I’m really interested to see who’s going to argue for there to be one precept”) #

1. Law is nothing other than a precept; the Old Law is one; therefore one precept.
2. Romans 13: the commands are summed up in the one word, “love your neighbour as yourself.”
3. Matthew 7:12, the golden rule — “for this is the law and the prophets”; so the whole law is one precept. Sed contra: Ephesians — Christ emptied out “the law of the commands by decrees” (plural), spoken of the Old Law.

Attached to the golden rule: his pro-life use of it as a major premise — “Don’t you wish that you had been aborted?” He anticipates the reply “that’s not really a human being, not a person,” and reports a student’s version (“we were aborted too” — answer: “How would you have known who was aborted?”). A student describes growing up with pro-abortion parents and the inconsistencies in that position. He remarks of the third objection: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

3. Article 1, the body: one by end, many by means (“all the precepts of the old law are one according to their order to one end”) #

1. A precept is obligatory, about something that ought to come about.
2. That something ought to come about follows from the necessity of some end; so a precept by its very notion implies order to an end — what is commanded is necessary, useful or expedient for the end.
3. But for one end many things can be necessary or expedient.
4. Therefore the precepts are one by their order to one end (beatitude), many by the diversity of what is ordered to it. He notes Thomas has “order” in there, and order is defined by before and after.

Example for step 3: “I need not only the filet mignon, I need the wine to go with it” — and the steak knife.

Reply to obj. 1: the art of building (ars aedificativa) is one by the unity of its end, the house, but contains diverse precepts for diverse acts — the carpenter one thing, the stone mason another.

He flags the whole answer: “That’s pretty good, Thomas.” Aside on Shakespeare’s “looking before and after”: since Thomas reasons, he has an immortal soul, and is “probably laughing over us now, stumbling over the text.”

4. Digression: philosophy as one knowledge, and modern philosophy as a history of errors (“they speak as if wisdom began with them”) #

Philosophy is one knowledge ordered to wisdom, i.e. to a knowledge of God; so is theology, God being the beginning and end of all things. A student asks whether anyone has tried to rename philosophy, since it is no longer love of wisdom; he answers that modern philosophy is a corruption — Augustine’s phrase, “an immature and perverse love of reason.” From the first philosophers to Plato to Aristotle to his followers there is real development; after that, chaos. His doctoral thesis compared the three roads in our knowledge in Aristotle and in Descartes; a colleague wrote on Hume. St Alphonsus (inferred as the author he recalls) or the book he found at St Mary’s College: a History of Heresies, description and refutation, which is what studying the moderns is like — “I wonder what this guy’s error is.” De Koninck on the proemium of the first book of Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics] and Descartes’ misunderstanding of confused and distinct. Thomas on the Latin Averroists: “they speak as if wisdom began with them.”

Two attached stories: a friend who wanted “my own philosophy” (“I don’t really want to do that”); Professor Greif in the seventies setting hippie-influenced students to construct the true, non-“white male” virtues — they came out exactly the same as the traditional ones.

5. Article 1, replies to objections 2 and 3 (“the end of the precept is charity”) #

Reply 2: 1 Timothy — the end of the precept is charity; every law tends to constitute friendship, of men to each other or of man to God. Hence the whole law is fulfilled in love of neighbour as in a certain end of all commands; and love of God is included in love of neighbour, since the neighbour (proximus, “the next-door guy”) is loved on account of God. He notes the saints’ expression of loving someone “in God” — “there’s more reason to love you in God than to love you in yourself.” Matthew 22: on the two commands the whole law and the prophets hang — a before-and-after of cause and effect; in Aristotle causes are “above,” the effect hanging from them, where we say “ground,” a different imagination of the same dependence.

Reply 3: Aristotle, Ethics IX — the friendly things toward another come from the friendly things of a man toward himself, when a man is related to another as to himself; ho philos estin allos autos, “a friend is another self” (Shakespeare: “a second self”). So the golden rule unfolds the rule of love of neighbour implied in “love your neighbour as yourself.” He stresses that two of the ten books of the Ethics are on friendship, which the moderns do not appreciate, and that Aristotle makes friendship better than justice: justice gives only what is owed, friendship goes beyond, making society livable.

Student exchange: modern laws (hate-crime legislation, multiculturalism) do not foster friendship; a liberal Harvard study found diversity atomizes people, reducing trust between and within groups. Al Gore’s slip, “out of one, many.” He replies that in reasoning we go from one to many (many conclusions from one principle), but in the heart it is the reverse — from many made one: husband and wife one flesh, more so in the child; the modern concept of marriage is two adversarial individuals contracting. Joke heard on EWTN: the family exists so you don’t have to argue with strangers. Story of a Christian Brother at St Mary’s who agreed but wanted others to raise the point at the faculty meeting, since he had to live with those men.

6. Article 2, objections: does the Old Law contain moral precepts? (“we’ll see what the Houdini does to this”) #

1. The Old Law is distinguished from the law of nature; moral precepts belong to the law of nature; therefore not to the Old Law.
2. Divine law ought to come where human reason fails, as in matters of faith above reason; but reason suffices for moral precepts.
3. The Old Law is called a law of killing (2 Corinthians); moral precepts do not kill but vivify (Psalm 118, “in these you will make me alive”). Sed contra: Ecclesiasticus 17 — who adds discipline inherits the law of life; and the gloss on Hebrews 12: disciplina is the learning of morals through difficult things. Therefore the divine law contains moral precepts.

Aside, in the ceremonial vein: the instruction that when the Pope enters one should not reach out to shake hands — they clapped and stood anyway.

7. Article 2, the body: friendship with God requires likeness, so virtue (“be holy, because I am holy”) #

1. Human law chiefly aims at friendship of men to each other; divine law chiefly at friendship of man to God.
2. Likeness is a cause of love — Ecclesiasticus, “every animal loves what is like itself” (“I like you because you’re like me: two arms, two legs, two eyes”).
3. So friendship of man with God, who is best, is impossible unless men be made good; Leviticus 19, “Be holy, because I am holy”; Aristotle: the highest friendship is that of the virtuous, and the good of man is virtue, which makes good.
4. Therefore the Old Law must give precepts about acts of virtue — the moral precepts.

He ties it to the first petition of the Our Father, and to the Anima Christi, where the first word is sanctifica — communion sought for growth in charity, which Thomas treats as a kind of friendship.

Student on St Alphonsus: God has to command us to love Him, which shows how little we know it. His answer: if a man said “I command you to love me,” you’d say “Who the hell are you?” — but to love God is to love the common good; another human being is not the common good. Augustine: God is the good of every good. Aside: Hippo, the Vandals arriving as Augustine died, and the word “vandalize.”

8. Article 2, replies (“grace presupposes nature, so divine law presupposes natural law”) #

Reply 1: the Old Law is distinguished from the law of nature not as alien to it but as adding to it; as grace presupposes nature, divine law presupposes natural law. He attaches his own point: the first road in our knowledge must be the natural road, from the senses which animals have to reason.

Reply 2: divine law provides not only where reason is incapable but where reason can be impeded. About the most common precepts of natural law reason cannot err in universal, but by the custom of sinning it is obscured in particulars; about the other moral precepts, which are conclusions deduced from the common beginnings, the reason of many men wanders, so that things bad in themselves (secundum se) are judged licit. Parallel: among things to be believed are both what reason cannot attain (God is three) and what right reason can attain (God is one), the latter revealed to exclude the error of human reason that happens in many.

Attached: his night at the abortion clinic for the kickoff of the forty days, cars honking or shouting obscenities. And the text in the De anima (inferred) where the early Greeks assigned a cause of knowledge but could not explain how mistakes occur — their account is therefore lacking, “and to be mistaken is the usual state of man.” Illustrations: the crowd of Republican candidates, where most predictions must be false; the early Greek philosophers, who all name a different beginning of things, so all but one — perhaps all — are mistaken. Kasurik quoting De Koninck: after reading modern philosophy he feels like jumping off the bridge.

Reply 3: Augustine, De spiritu et littera — the law as regards moral precepts kills occasionally [i.e. as an external, occasional cause], in that it commands the good without giving the aid of grace to fulfil it.

9. Article 3, objections: are there ceremonial precepts besides moral ones? (“I rest my case. Till Thomas overthrows me”) #

1. Every law given to men directs human acts; human acts are called moral; so only moral precepts.
2. Ceremonial precepts pertain to divine worship; worship is an act of the virtue of religion (which Cicero in the Rhetoric says brings worship and ceremony to the divine nature); acts of virtue belong to moral precepts. [He notes Thomas holds religion closest to the theological virtues.]
3. Ceremonial precepts are figurative; but Augustine, De doctrina christiana II, says words hold the chief place in signifying among men; so no need for figurative acts. Sed contra: Deuteronomy 4 — “I have written ten words in two stone tablets,” and God commanded him to teach the ceremonial and the judicial besides. The Ten Commandments are the moralia; so there are others. He remarks that the argument from authority is the strongest argument in theology, and jokes at Thomas arguing both ways: “Not a very restful life at this Thomas.”

10. Article 3, the body: the direction of divine law is the reverse of human law (“the divine law does the reverse”) #

1. Divine law is chiefly instituted to order men to God; human law, to order men to each other.
2. Hence human law legislates about divine worship only in order to the common good of men, and so invents many fictitious things about divine matters as seems expedient for forming morals — as is clear in the rites of the gentiles.
3. Divine law does the reverse: it orders men to each other in the way suited to the order to God, which it chiefly intends.
4. Man is ordered to God not only by inward acts of mind (taken broadly, to include will) — believing, hoping, loving — but by exterior works professing his subjection to God; these are called ceremonies.

Two etymologies of caeremonia he gives as Thomas gives them: from munera (gifts) and Ceres, god/goddess of fruits, since offerings were first made from fruits — “one guy did and one guy didn’t do so good” [Cain and Abel]; or, per Valerius Maximus, from the town Caere near Rome, where the sacred things of the Romans were taken when Rome was captured by the Gauls. He concludes the word itself matters little; what matters is that these precepts pertain to the worship of God.

11. Article 3, replies (“divine things are not able to be manifested except under sensible likenesses”) #

Reply 1: human acts extend also to divine worship, so the law given to men contains precepts about these. (Ceremonial acts are acts of man — genuflection as example.)

Reply 2 — the key distinction: the precepts of the law of nature are common and need determination, by human law and by divine law. As determinations made by human law are not natural law but positive law, so determinations of natural law made by divine law are distinguished from moral precepts. To worship God, being an act of virtue, is a moral precept; to worship with such offerings and such gifts is ceremonial. Boundary case he works out with the class: the speed limit is a determination of “do not kill” — thirty or forty-five miles an hour is no law of nature, but a reasonable determination for preserving life when everyone drives. (Attached story: worrying about a car with a light behind him on the way to class.)

Reply 3: Dionysius, De caelesti hierarchia ch. 1 — divine things can be manifested to men only under sensible likenesses; and likenesses move the soul more when not only expressed in word but offered to the senses. Hence scripture uses both metaphorical words and things proposed to the eye — the ceremonial precepts. Example: incense as prayer going up, as the psalm at evening prayer says.

He announces a stop here, then goes on to article 4.

12. Article 4: judicial precepts (“judicialia, which are the determinations of justice among men”) #

Objections: (1) Augustine, Contra Faustum: the Old Law has precepts of life to be lived and precepts significant of life — the first moral, the second ceremonial; so no third kind. (He interjects that his own argument would be the reverse: there must be a third, since three is the first number about which we say “all,” as Aristotle uses in treating the three dimensions.) (2) Psalm 118, iudiciis tuis non declinavi — judgments are the rule of living, which is moral. (3) Judgment is an act of justice (Psalm 93), and acts of virtue belong to moral precepts. Sed contra: Deuteronomy 6 — “these are your precepts and the ceremonial and judicial,” where praeceptum by antonomasia means the moral ones. He glosses antonomasia with his own examples: genuflecting on entering church is “a law,” but by antonomasia “law” means not committing adultery, murder, theft. Aside: “I have the hardest time stealing from anybody… even covering the church’s money, I can’t. No love in that.”

Body: divine law orders men to each other and to God; both in general belong to the dictate of natural law, to which the moral precepts refer; but naturally known principles are common, in practical as in speculative matters (things equal to the same are equal to each other), and both need determination. As the common precept about divine worship is determined by ceremonial precepts, so the common precept about justice among men is determined by judicial precepts. Hence three kinds: moralia (the dictate of natural law), caeremonialia (determinations of divine worship), iudicialia (determinations of justice among men). Confirmation from Romans 7, “the law is holy… the command just and holy and good”: just as regards the judicial, holy as regards the ceremonial (holy = dedicated to God), good, i.e. honestum, as regards the moral — “so we’ve got another three.”

Replies: (1) moral and judicial both direct human life, so both fall under Augustine’s member “precepts of life to be led.” (2) Iudicium signifies the carrying out of justice by applying reason to particulars in a determined way; so judicial precepts agree with the moral as derived by reason, and with the ceremonial as determinations of common precepts. Hence sometimes “judicial” covers judicial and moral together, sometimes (Leviticus, “make my judgments and observe my precepts”) praecepta means the moral and iudicia both judicial and ceremonial. (3) Acts of justice in general belong to the moral precepts; their determination in special to the judicial.

Closing exchange: his teacher Kasurik dined with a group of lawyers in St Paul to study the treatise on law; the lawyers had difficulty with natural law, being at home with the law of Minnesota or Ramsey County. A student argues that English common law is very much based in natural law, its policies entwined with it. He agrees but insists you cannot simply deduce them: laws about firing guns in the city, speed limits, practicing medicine without a license, and product-liability suits are determinations protecting human life.

His words #

• precept — the command; law “is nothing other than the precept itself.”
• order to an end — of the very notion of a precept; and order “is defined by before and after.”
• ars aedificativa — the art of building, one by unity of end, many in its precepts.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Aristotle’s Physics].
• proximus — “the next-door guy,” the neighbour.
• antonomasia — naming by the chief instance: “precept” simply means the moral precept.
• ho philos estin allos autos — “a friend is another self.”
• disciplina — “the learning of morals through difficult things” (gloss on Hebrews 12).
• quaedam moralia — “certain moral precepts,” as you shall not kill, not steal.
• secundum se — “as such,” in itself.
• occasionaliter — the law kills “occasionally,” which he glosses as “a name for an external cause.”
• caeremonia — from munera and Ceres, or from the town Caere near Rome.
• determination — what human or divine law adds to the common precepts of natural law (speed limit; particular offerings).
• honestum — the “good” of Romans 7, as regards the moral precepts.
• chiefly — his English for principaliter: “because the prince is the chief.”

Texts #

Read in class #

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 99, prologue and aa. 1–4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Romans 13; Matthew 7:12; Ephesians (law of commands by decrees); 1 Timothy (end of the precept is charity); Matthew 22
• Ecclesiasticus 17; gloss on Hebrews 12; 2 Corinthians; Psalm 118; Leviticus 19; Deuteronomy 4 and 6; Romans 7; Psalm 93; Leviticus (“make my judgments”)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX (friendship, a friend another self)
• Augustine, De spiritu et littera; De doctrina christiana II; Contra Faustum
• Pseudo-Dionysius, De caelesti hierarchia, ch. 1
• Cicero, Rhetoric (religion brings worship and ceremony to the divine nature)
• Valerius Maximus (etymology of caeremonia)

Mentioned #

• Aristotle, De anima (inferred) — the early Greeks could not explain error
• Aristotle on the three dimensions and “three is the first number about which we say all”
• Aristotle, Ethics, books VIII–IX on friendship; friendship better than justice
• Shakespeare (“looking before and after”; “a friend is a second self”)
• Thomas on the Latin Averroists; Thomas on charity as friendship
• Augustine: God is the good of every good; “an immature and perverse love of reason”
• Psalm with three words for the three kinds of precept

His questions #

• Are there many precepts in the Old Law or only one? — One by their order to one end, beatitude; many by the diversity of things ordered to that end.
• What is the one end of all the precepts? — Beatitude.
• Does the Old Law contain moral precepts, or do those belong only to the law of nature? — It contains them; the Old Law adds to the law of nature rather than being alien to it, as grace presupposes nature.
• If human reason suffices for morals, why does divine law give moral precepts? — Because reason, though unerring in the most common precepts, is obscured by the custom of sinning in particulars and wanders in the conclusions.
• Does the Old Law contain ceremonial precepts besides the moral ones? — Yes: to worship God is moral, but that one worship with such gifts and offerings is a determination, and so ceremonial.
• Is it a law of nature that we drive thirty miles an hour in the city? — No — a reasonable determination by human law of the natural precept preserving life.
• Are there judicial precepts besides the moral and ceremonial? — Yes: they determine in particular the common precept of justice among men, as the ceremonial determine divine worship.
• What is the first request in the Our Father? — That His name be hallowed — tied to “be holy, because I am holy.”
• Has there ever been an initiative to rename philosophy, given what the moderns did to it? (student) — No such initiative named; modern philosophy is a corruption, “an immature and perverse love of reason.”