Picking up the thread from Saturday’s post and concluding the eight-part series

It might be held that all this talk of light from revelation is bad news for natural law.  Getting people to take natural law seriously is hard enough as it is.  If it gets out that the tradition has been cheating for all these years --  that most of the so-called conclusions of natural reason are cribbed from divine oracles -- then the game is up.  According to the objector, only one cure is possible.  When God comes around with His cheat sheets, honest natural lawyers should say, “No, thank you, I’ll do my own thinking.”  Only then can they expect to be taken seriously in a pluralistic world.

There are two problems with this supposed cure.  First, it is based on a false diagnosis.  When a schoolboy struggling with arithmetic sneaks the answer key, that’s cheating; when he allows the teacher to show him how to work the problem, that isn’t cheating, but honest learning.  The kind of boost that natural reason receives from revelation is not the former kind but the latter.

The second problem with the supposed cure is that it has been tried.  That was the Enlightenment’s project.  Little by little, natural law thinkers scrubbed from their little cups of theory whatever grime of influence might have remained from the centuries of faith, whatever benefit they might have gained from the teacher’s help.  First went the idea of nature; then the idea of law; finally, in our day, the idea of thinking the truth.  In the end they found that they had scoured away the ground that they were standing on.

Where does this leave us?  In wading through the mire of an era whose inmates have tired of supposed Enlightenment and loiter at the gates of the Dark, we should not be too glad-handed with the pearls of faith -- “The Bible says!” persuades only those who are already substantially convinced.  But the philosopher should not be afraid of revelation either.  Although much of it concerns supernatural realities that the natural force of reason is too weak to confirm on its own, yet the light that it sheds on the creational realities is shed to the end that the intellect may see them for itself.  Seeing, it may show them to others.  What finally justifies our hope is that they really are there to be seen.

Although Mondays are normally reserved for lightly edited questions from students, today I’m fudging a little.  This is a question from a teacher about what his student had said.

Query:

We had a heated discussion in the government class I teach after I assigned an online article of yours in which you claimed that it's impossible to be a bad man and a great statesman.  Here's what one of my students wrote:

“I've been thinking a lot about whether a bad man can be a great statesman.  I know that this is possible from history.  David lusted after women, killed the innocent and lied.  I'm not saying I judge him for that -- I respect his choice by God -- but he did commit all these evils, and he was corrupt.  Or look at Jefferson.  I would say he was a good statesman, but we now know that he had illegitimate children with his slaves.  FDR was morally flawed -- he cheated on his wife.  I'm not defending sin.  I just have a difficult time hearing Christians criticize anyone for his actions.  Do any of these critics respond with forgiveness, as they are commanded to do?  Some, probably, but the vast majority sit on their high horses.  Their righteousness is like filthy rags.  That's why I can't agree to the author's otherwise persuasive argument.”

What do you think?

Reply :

It’s striking how readily people soak up ideas from the secular culture and then put a Christian spin on them.  Your student’s reasoning is that since anyone can be forgiven, therefore we are not entitled to judge the character of those who ask to rule us -- instead we should forgive them.  What he overlooks is that only those who repent of their wrongdoing can be forgiven for it, and that rulers in general are much

more well known for obstinate persistence in evil than for repentance.  Because some obstinate sins are even more reckless and dangerous to the common good than others, as citizens we have both a right and a need to judge the character of those who rule us.  Your student judges only those “filthy” citizens who try.

Since your student is trying to reason from the Bible, you might point out to him that the Bible actually requires certain kinds of judgment.  For example, Christ demands in 7:24, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment,” and in Matthew 7:16 he warns against those “who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits.”  Read in context, His famous statement in Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged,” is not a condemnation of judgment in general, but of judging others by higher standards than we apply to ourselves.

You might also point out to your student that the sacred writings of the Christian tradition repeatedly emphasizes the need for rulers to have wisdom and virtue.  This theme runs throughout the book of Proverbs, not to mention the historical books of the Old Testament, which link every national calamity to the sins of the rulers and people.  King David was able to do great things not because of his sin, but because of his willingness to repent of his sin.  Would he have been such a great ruler if he had not listened to the prophet Nathan, who called him to judgment?

As I’ve written on this blog, it's true that a bad man may occasionally do something good.  When he does, however, he does it either because of some spark of virtue left in him, or else for some bad motive like admiration or glory -- in other words, by coincidence.  Though such things happen sometimes (rocks sometimes fall from the sky), you can't count on them.  If you want someone you can trust, you should seek a man who is wise and good.  Who could deny that? We shouldn't judge character hypocritically or self-righteously, but we must judge character.

Only a fool would hire a thug to babysit his children, and only a crook would hire a crook to balance his books.  What is it that makes this common sense inapplicable when we hire scoundrels to rule the country?

“The mystery genre is moral in itself, for in it that which was hidden is made plain, justice is achieved, and events often turn on a simple dispensation of grace.”

-- Fred Baue, "Mystery and Morality"

Finally we come to the supernatural light shed on nature by the sacraments.  It may seem impossible that sacrament could illuminate the natural law.  Doesn’t the grace of the sacraments exceed the resources our nature contains?  Doesn’t the truth about this grace exceed what reason could have discovered by itself?  Strange though it may seem, revelation about things that are above reason provides reason with clues about things that are not above reason.

Consider Saint Paul’s explosive remarks about marriage in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians.  From the outset, the language is daring.  Wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord; husbands are also to submit, but in another and asymmetrical sense, loving their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.  A turning point comes with Paul’s astonishing declaration that this is a “mystery” and it is somehow “about” Christ and the Church.  Suddenly we see that his figures are more than analogies.  He is saying that a certain natural reality and a certain supernatural reality not only happen to correspond, but were made for this correspondence; that in the depth of providence, the marriage of the spouses invokes the Marriage of the Lamb, and in some measure makes it present.  Paul calls this wonder a mysterion, something hidden and now revealed, but the Greek term is much more potent than its English cognate.  It is the same word that the Greek Fathers used from the fourth century onward for the sacraments; the Douay-Rheims Bible even translates it “sacrament.”  It would be extravagant to read all the later developments of sacramental theology back into the text, but it is not extravagant to say that the grace Paul has in mind is the same kind we now call sacramental.  For he is claiming nothing less than this: that because of Christ and among His people, the natural event of marriage is not just a sign of a spiritual event, but a participation in it -- an event of such potency that a man and a woman are really and permanently made one, receiving the grace to be bound with the love that binds Christ with the Church.  Transmundane meaning and power are supernaturally transfused into vessels of flesh.

Not only does the possibility of such grace tell us something about supernatural reality, it also tells us something about natural reality.  Why?  Because though grace exceeds nature, it never violates it; nature could receive nothing from grace had it not been fashioned ahead of time to receive it.  This is certainly true of matrimony, for sacramental marriage builds upon the covenantal and “donational” properties of natural marriage.  Apart from the form of the covenant, the sacrament would be unintelligible; apart from the grace of the sacrament, the donation might seem almost impossible.  Among the laws of the intellect, one of the foremost is this: What we barely fulfill, we can hardly discern.  The sacrament remedies this defect, so we can see the covenant better if we know the sacrament.

The same possibility of insight into natural reality accompanies each of the sacraments.  Consider a dock.  Even if we have never taken the trouble to look at the dock, we can infer something about it from the shape of the ship meant to berth there.  Afterward, we can examine it to see if our inferences are borne out.  Nature is the dock of grace, the place where the Glory chooses to come into berth.  And so, in just the same way as the ship and the dock, if we know something about the sacrament, then we can infer something about the natural institution that the sacrament ennobles.  By knowing something about the sacramental grace, we can more easily perceive the shape of the pre-sacramental reality that is ordained to receive this grace.  Afterward, natural reason can inquire to see if these inferences are true.  And so in an odd and indirect way, it turns out that the sacraments are proper subjects not only for theology, but even for natural law.

In the case of marriage, sacramental illumination clears up many things that would otherwise be obscure.  There is a taste of Godward longing even in natural marriage; somehow it participates in the sensus divinitatis.  In almost all times and nations people have dimly perceived something of transcendent importance about it, and the temptation to make idols of the potencies behind it is very strong.  Alas, whatever we treat as God that is not God betrays us, and from repeated betrayal arises an opposite temptation: to suppress the obscure longing for transcendence and treat marriage as less than it is.  Outside of the influence of the sacrament, no society has found the balance.  None has been able to give the sacred quality of conjugal union its due without idolizing it; none has been able to avoid idolizing it without debasing it; and all too often these tendencies have worked together.  No wonder!  For nowhere outside of the truth of the sacrament can the supernatural end of natural marriage be understood.  Nature is ordained the receptacle of grace: neither divine, nor simply profane, but a natural chalice for supernatural good.

Tuesday:  Conclusion (other posts on Sunday and Monday)

There will be no post tomorrow (Friday, January 23)

because I have been invited to speak at a conference

at Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Ft. Wayne,

Indiana.  The blog will resume on Saturday.

The next beam from supernature onto nature is the light of divine promise.  Two revealed promises are especially important.  The first is the promise of forgiveness -- divine assurance that God restores repentant sinners who accept the means of grace.  From this we learn not to despair of our sins against others.  The second is the promise of providence -- divine assurance that in the end, God will set everything to rights.  From this we learn not despair of the sins of others against us.  Only because of these two promises can conscience serve not as a rock to crush us, but as a dog to hound us home.

Here I can be brief, because I have discussed these matters in other writings.  Suffice it to say that without the former promise, the face of natural law would be only a face of accusation.  Few could bear to look at it at all; none could bear to look at it steadily.  Without the latter promise, the same accusing face would be turned outward.  Contemplation of the wrongs of the world would drive us to yet greater wrongs, on the principle “let us do evil that good may result.”  Whether by its own guilt or by rage at the guilt of all others, intellect would be undermined, and the counsels of natural law would be pulled in perverse directions.

Since every promise affirms something, the promissory sort of light might seem just a variation on the affirmative sort that we have considered already.  Such a conclusion would miss the point, because promises affi rm a different class of truths, illuminating the intellect in a distinctive manner.  How so?  Ordinary affirmations -- man is made in God’s image, spouses join as one flesh, divorce betrays posterity -- draw the attention of natural reason to creational realities right under its nose, which it might otherwise have slighted or overlooked.  Promises do something different, because they inform natural reason of something it never could have known: the place of natural law in the economy of salvation.

Although both kinds of light act upon the thinker’s mind, they do so in different ways.  One merely adds to his data, the other one purges his will.  Assured of God’s mercy, the thinker no longer needs the false comfort of thinking himself better than he is.  Assured of God’s providence, he is also freed from the equally false need to play God with others.  Cleansed of both kinds of despair, he can think about the natural law more honestly because he is no longer desperate or afraid.  Hope turns out to be not only a spiritual virtue but an intellectual virtue as well.

Continued on Saturday