Budziszewski’s work Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law purports to answer some of the most difficult questions ever posed to man. Namely, the book deals with the question of just how far government can and should go in helping to protect people and provide for the general goodwill. When dealing with something as complex and nebulous as “natural law,” a number of different forces will come into play, and in this work, the author deals with the ways in which Christianity influenced Aquinas’s understanding of the natural law. Aquinas, a man who is well-respected for his views both on religious and secular matters, is heavily influenced by his own Christian principles in his quest for an understanding of Aristotle’s ideas. Still, according to the author of this work, there can be some legitimate complaints of Aquinas from Christians who take a closer look at his Aquinas’s views.
According to the author, Aquinas approaches the question of natural law with an eye trained in Christianity. For instance, Aquinas has personal views of Christianity that are all-encompassing. In his own philosophy, he recognizes that all things are dependent upon God. Because he operates under this assumption, Aquinas also approaches the question of the natural law based upon this proposition. He recognizes the existence of things other than God in nature. Still, he recognizes that even those things that are not God are actually dependent upon God in some manner. In searching for the truth as laid out by Aristotle, Aquinas also recognizes that there is a universal force that drives the actions and motivations of all men. Aristotle, according to the author of this book, is inadequate in his ideas, though, because he believes only that the universal good is happiness. It is Aquinas’s Christianity that allows him to take this concept of Aristotle and expand upon it.
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Once Aquinas discovers the Aristotlean concept that the natural law must arise from some universal truth, he uses his Christian philosophy to develop a more nuanced view that is more in line with what the author of this book is actually looking for. The author admires Aquinas in a way, as he writes at length about the way in which Aquinas was able to identify universal truths arising from God. Aquinas recognizes that in order for there to be sin, there must be a God, and Aquinas, too, finds that the philosophy of Aristotle is not nearly enough. Aristotle, it seems, believes that happiness is the universal natural law that drives the actions and decisions of all people. What Aristotle does not deal with, though, is what sort of scale one might use for happiness. The strength of Aquinas’s work, as the author so eloquently details, is the fact that he is able to recognize that there must be a standard that is not subject to the whims or preferences of individual people. In order for something to be natural law, it must come from a higher authority that all people adhere to. What is good and what is not? This question, according to Aquinas, can only be answered based upon some larger standard.
As an intellectual, Aquinas sometimes allowed himself to stray a little bit from the scripture, and this is something that the author takes issue with. The author writes of Aquinas, “There is much for a Christian to complain of in Thomas Aquinas, and I speak as one who loves him. Though he knows that everything other than God is utterly dependent on God, he sometimes gives the impression that what goes on in nature is somehow less dependent on him than are the effects of his grace.
Though he knows that there can be no sin without the complicity of the mind, he sometimes gives the impression that the mind has not fallen as far as the rest of us.” This criticism from the author makes clear that Aquinas, in trying to find the natural law, is sometimes beholden to his secular urges. This is the author’s critique on Aquinas’s understanding of original sin. Aquinas was a man who did not like to concede the fact that human beings had fallen completely. Aquinas recognized the fall of man to some extent, but as a smart thinker of his day, he was sometimes too willing and far too apt to try and protect the sanctity of human thinking. This is one of the ways that Aquinas abandons his Christian approach as he is trying to reconcile the philosophy of Aristotle with his own thoughts on the natural law.
Ultimately, Sir Thomas Aquinas was a man who brought a very complex and very nuanced view to a difficult subject. As he looked hard to understand the natural law philosophy of Aristotle, he did arm himself with an understanding of Christian doctrine. As the author notes here, his Christian principles in many ways influenced his ability to see the natural law. He recognized that Aristotle did not go far enough in defining the natural law, even though Aristotle had been correct that there must be some standard, above all men, from which the natural law could flow. While Aquinas was a man who was able to use his Christianity for good in this regard, the author is correct in noting that Aquinas was also subject to the whims of secular philosophy, as he often strayed too far away from scripture.
- Budziszewski, Janusz. Written on the heart: The case for natural law. InterVarsity Press, 1997.
- Lisska, Anthony J. “Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstrution.” (1996).
- Westerman, Pauline C. The disintegration of natural law theory: Aquinas to Finnis. Brill, 1998.
- Young, Jeffrey T., and Barry Gordon. “Economic justice in the natural law tradition: Thomas Aquinas to Francis Hutcheson.” (1992): 1-17.
