Aquinas’s Law of the Heart: Natural Reason

Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93653-6_3

Aquinas’s Law of the Heart: Natural Reason

Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle²

Chapter
First Online: 05 September 2018

236 Accesses

Abstract

This study exposes Aquinas’s reconstruction of Augustine’s rhetorical law of the heart as a proof text for his own scholastic theory of the natural law as permanent in the heart. It documents Aquinas’s dependence on Aristotle’s physics of movement and psychology of reason and his proposed metaphysical reconciliation of their contradictions. It discovers Aquinas’s dependence on an undetected source for his first principle of the natural law in Nemesius of Emessa on the demonstrative topic of the rational nature. It analyzes that as a premise for conclusions that were logically necessary but not ethically obliging. Aquinas’s contrary claims for the first principle of the natural law as an obliging rational command were illogical and his usage of the passive periphrastic construct for command was ungrammatical.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 49.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 64.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 89.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-I, q. 91 a. 2; q. 94. See also q. 95 a. 2. For the Leonine edition, a critical revision of which is in progress, see http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/.
2.
Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-I, q. 91 a. 2. “… dicit Glossa, ‘etsi non habent legem scriptam, habent tamen legem naturalem, qua quilibet intelligit et sibi conscious est quid sit bonum et quid malum.” Cf. Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria, facsimile rpt. of Strassburg: Adolph Rusch, 1480–81, 4 vols. (Turnholt: Brepols, 1992) ad loc. “si non habeat scriptam legem habet naturalem, quia intelligit et sibi conscius est quid sit bonum et quid sit malum.” Anselm of Laon was its editor, according to multiple sources, for the Pauline epistles. E. Ann Matter, “The Church Fathers and the Glossa ordinaria,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Backus, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 1:107. In general see Lesley Smith, The “Glossa ordinaria”: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
3.
Glossa ordinaria ad. loc. The gloss attributed to Origen is apparently an editorial summation of Rufinus’s Latin abridgement of Origen’s commentary on Romans. For the law written in their hearts as “what they can sense naturally,” see Origen, Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos 2.9.3, in Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes, ed. Caroline P. Hammond Bammel, 3 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1990–97); and rpt., 4 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 2009–12). For the diffusion of Origen’s works in Latin copies, see Henri de Lubac, Exegese médiévale: Les quatres senses de l’Écriture, 2 vols. in 4 (Paris: Aubier, 1959–64). Cf. Peter Lombard’s theological alteration of Origen in the Glossa to “by natural reason illuminated through grace.” Peter Lombard, Collectanea in omnes d. Pauli apostoli epistolas, in Patrologia cursus completus series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1800–75), 191:1345–46.
4.
Glossa ordinaria ad loc. Lombard, Ad Romanos ad loc. identifying “heart” with affect, where faith operates through love, as Ambrose [Ambrosiaster] although it is not there. See Ambrosiaster, Commentaria in XII epistolas beati Pauli, in Patrologia latina, 17:71, but per rationem naturae and natura duce.
5.
Augustine, Confessions libri tredecim 2.4.9, ed. Lucas Verheijen (Turnout: Brepols, 1981).
6.
Summa theologiae II-I, q. 94 a. 6.
7.
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, “Augustine’s Law of the Heart: Thieves’ Honor,” in this volume, pp. 35–66.
8.
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, “The Prudential Augustine: The Virtuous Structure and Sense of His Confessions,” Recherches augustiniennes 22 (1987): 129–50; see also idem, “A Likely Story: The Autobiographical as Epideictic,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 57 (1989): 23–51.
9.
See Theodore C. Burgess, Epideictic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1902).
10.
Augustine, Retractationum libri duo 2.6.1, ed. A. Mutzenbecher (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999).
11.
Summa theologiae proem.
12.
Cicero, De inventione 1.7.9.
13.
Augustine, Retractationes 2.5.1; Boyle, “Prudential Augustine.”
14.
Cicero, De inventione 1.5.7; 2.59.177; 1.24.34–36; Topica 23.89. Burgess, Epideictic Literature, pp. 119–26.
15.
Cicero, De oratore 2.5.20.
16.
Boethius, De topicis differentiis 4, in Patrologia latina, 64:1173–1216; Boethius’s “De topicis differentiis,” trans. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 79, 80.
17.
Summa theologiae II-I, q. 94 a. 2.
18.
Ibid. a. 6.
19.
Augustine, Confessions 2.3.8, 2.4.9.
20.
Boyle, “Augustine’s Law of the Heart.”
21.
Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.4., ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, 2 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995). Cited by Brent D. Shaw, “Bandits in the Roman Empire,” Past and Present 105 (1984): 3; Nicholas K. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors, and Pirates in the Roman World (Stroud: Tempus, 2003), p. 195. By this date Augustine’s knowledge of their habits may owe also to Apuleius, Metamorphoses 3.27–4.22, with sharing the loot at 3.28 and disguises at 4.14–15, 7.8. For their vocabulary, see Werner Riess, Apuleius und die Räuber: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2001), pp. 32–44. See also Vincent Hunink, “‘Apuleius, qui nobis Afris Aer est notior’: Augustine’s Polemic against Apuleius in De civitate Dei,” Scholia: Studies in Classical Antiquity 12 (2003): 82–95. For other fictional authors on the pirate share, see Philip de Souza, Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 216. For piracy in Homer, whom Augustine read in school, see pp. 17–21.
22.
Summa theologiae II-II, q. 66 a. 8 ad 3.
23.
Boyle, “Augustine’s Law of the Heart.”
24.
Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.1.
25.
Boyle, “Augustine’s Law of the Heart.”
26.
His grammar schooling was at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work, rev. ed., trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), p. 4. For his first biography, see Guillaume de Tocco, Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino, de Guillaume de Tocco (1323), ed. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1996), pp. 100–2. For Terence as a major author in medieval Italian schooling, see Jessica Levenstein, “Terence,” in Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 2:1072. For context, see Francis Newton, The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
27.
Aristotle, Poetica 4 1449a.
28.
Summa theologiae II-II, q. 53, a. 6 ad 2.
29.
Terence, Eunuchus lines 46, 57–63, in Terence, ed. and trans. John Barsby, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 1:321.
30.
Summa theologiae II-II, q. 153 a. 5.
31.
Terence, Eunuchus lines 64–68, 188; trans., pp. 321, 323.
32.
Boyle, “Augustine’s Law of the Heart.”
33.
Aquinas, De malo, q. 15 a. 4, citing Terence, Eunuchus lines 57–58, 67. This dates perhaps slightly earlier to circa Paris 1270. Giles Emery, “Brief Catalogue of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in Torrell, Aquinas, p. 336.
34.
Summa theologiae I-II, q. 73 a. 5; q. 75 a. 4.
35.
Ibid. I-II, q. 42 a. 5; II-II, q. 162 a. 1 (supplement); I-II, q. 46 a. 2; II-II, q. 106 a. 2; I-II, q. 42 a. 5, compared with I-II, q. 45 a. 1. His citations are from Augustine, Confessions 2.6.13, 2.7.15.
36.
Summa theologiae II-I, q. 90.
37.
Ibid. qq. 90–108.
38.
Ibid. q. 90 proem; q. 90 a. 1; I q. 82 a. 3; II-I q. 17 a. 1.
39.
Ibid. qq. 90–108.
40.
Ibid. q. 91 aa. 1, 2, 6.
41.
Tony Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law (London: Continuum, 2011); Owen Anderson, The Natural Moral Law: The Good after Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 46–64.
42.
Jean-Pierre Torrell, Aquinas’s “Summa”: Background, Structure, and Reception, trans. Benedict M. Gavin (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), pp. 14–15; Torrell, Aquinas, pp. 328–29; Emery, “Brief Catalogue,” p. 342.
43.
Emery, “Brief Catalogue,” pp. 343–44.
44.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 94 a. 4.
45.
Ibid. I q. 18 a. 1; II-I q. 17 a. 9; I q. 115 a. 2.
46.
n. 37.
47.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 91 a. 2.
48.
Dated to 1273 by Emery, “Brief Chronology,” p. 341.
49.
Aquinas, In psalmos Davidis expositio ad loc.
50.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 91 a. 2.
51.
Ibid. I q. 1 a. 1.
52.
See Raphael Loewe, “The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate,” in The West from the Fathers to the Reformation,” vol. 2 of The Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975–76), pp. 145–48, 149.
53.
The Hebrew textus receptus for the Authorized Version (King James Bible) was the rabbinic bible Mikraot Gedolot in its editio princeps (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1524–25).
54.
For Augustine’s controversy with Jerome, see Timothy M. Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 161–66.
55.
Vetus latina database (Brepolis online) reporting exalta Codex Casin. (Amelli, 1912) and leva HIER.psalt.iuxta.Hebr. (de Lagarde, 1874). Based on the records of the Vetus Latina Institute in Beuron but online database available by subscription only.
56.
Augustine, Enarrationes in psalmos, ed. Eligius Dekkers and Iohannes Fraipont, 3 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956) ad loc.
57.
See Françoise Dumas, “Monnayage et monayeurs,” in Artistes, artisans et production artistique au moyen âge,” ed. Xavier Barral I Altet, 3 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1986–90), 1:483.
58.
Summa theologiae II-I proem.
59.
Ibid. I q. 93 a. 6 ad 1, a. 4.
60.
Ibid. q. 92. Aquinas, In 4 Sententiae 15.2.5; Summa theologiae II-II q. 32 a. 8; In 4 Sententiae 32.1.2, 36.1; Super 1 ad Corinthianos 3.3.
61.
Summa theologiae I q. 105 a. 2; II-I q. 6 a. 1.
62.
Ibid. I q. 79 a. 3 (italics mine).
63.
See Rosa Padellaro de Angelis, L’influenza del pensiero neoplatonico sulla metafisico di s. Tommaso d’Aquino (Rome: Abete, 1981); Pierre Faucon, Aspects néoplatoniciens de la doctrine de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: H. Champion, 1975).
64.
Summa theologiae I q. 18 a. 3.
65.
Ibid. II-I, q. 112 a. 1.
66.
John Rziha, Perfecting Human Actions: St. Thomas Aquinas on Human Participation in Eternal Law (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).
67.
Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy, trans. Gerald Malsbary (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp. 241–51; Fulvio Di Blasi, God and the Natural Law: A Rereading of Thomas Aquinas (South Bend, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2006), pp. 121–24.
68.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 91 ad 2; q. 10 a. 1.
69.
Ibid. q. 93 aa. 1, 2, 3, 6.
70.
Ibid. q. 91 a. 2; q. 90; q. 91 a. 2. See also Aquinas, De motu cordis, ed. Fratres Praedicatores, in Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P.M. edita (Rome, 1976), 43:91–130.
71.
Summa theologiae I q. 1 a. 1, q. 2 a. 1. I q. 18 a. l. I q. 9 aa. 1, 2; q. 10 a. 1. I q. 2 a. 3; q. 19 a. 1; q. 75 a. 1.
72.
Ibid. II-I q. 94 a. 2; see also q. 91 a. 3. For self-evidence, see John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 34; Germain G. Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa theologiae, 1–2, Question 94, Article 2, Natural Law Forum 10 (1965): 172–75.
73.
Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-I q. 94 a. 2.
74.
Ibid. q. 91 a. 2.
75.
Ibid. q. 94.
76.
Ibid. q. 35.
77.
Nemesius, Premnon physicon sive Peri physeōs anthrōpou liber, trans. Nicolo Alfano, ed. Carl Burkhard, rev. Friedrich Lammert (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1917).
78.
William Telfer, trans., Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa (London: SCM, 1955), pp. 217–18, 206–8, 275, 370; R. W. Sharples and Philip van der Eijk, trans., introduction to Nemesius, On the Nature of Man (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), pp. 11–14, 20–21, 23–25; Eiliv Skard, “Nemesiosstudien,” Symbolae osloensis 17 (1937): 9–25; 18 (1938): 31–41; 19 (1939): 46–56; Friedrich Lammert, “Hellenistische Medizin bei Ptolemaios und Nemesios: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der christlichen Anthropologie,” Philologus: Zeitschrift für klassische Altertum 94 (1940): 125–41; Alberto Siclari, L’antropologia di Nemesio di Emesa (Padua: Garangola, 1974), pp. 149–80.
79.
Gérard Verbeke and J. R. Moncho, eds., Némésius D’Emese, De natura hominis: Traduction de Burgundio de Pisa (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), pp. lxxxvi–xcii.
80.
See Emil Dobler, Zwei Syrische Quellen der ‘Theologischen Summa’ des Thomas von Aquin, Nemesios von Emesa und Johannes von Damaskus: Ihr Einfluss auf die anthropologischen Grundlangen der Moraltheologie (S. Th. I-II, qq. 6–17, 22–48) (Freiburg: Universitäts, 2000); idem, Falsche Väterzitate bei Thomas von Aquin: Gregorius, Bischof von Nyssa oder Nemesius, Bischof von Emesa? Untersuchungen uber die Authentizität der Zitate Gregors von Nyssa in der gesamten Werken des Thoms von Aquin (Freiburg: Universitäts, 2001); idem, Indireckte Nemesiuszitate bei Thomas von Aquin: Johannes von Damaskus als Vermittler von Nemesiustexten (Freiburg: Universitäts, 2002).
81.
E.g., Albertus Magnus, De bono 3, q. 5, a. 2 in Opera omnia, ed. Heinrich Kühle et al. (Monasterium Westfalorum, 1951–), 28:201. See also Moreno Morani, La tradizione manoscritta del “De natura hominis” di Nemesio (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1981).
82.
Beatrice Motta, La mediazione estrema: L’antropologia di Nemesio di Emeso fra platonismo e artistotelismo (Padua: Poligrafo, 2004).
83.
See Summa theologiae I, q. 75–76.
84.
Note 80.
85.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 7 a. 4; cf. Nemesius, De natura hominis 29, 30, trans. Burgundio of Pisa, ed. Verbeke and Moncho, pp. 119–24.
86.
See Gerard Verbeke, “Man as a ‘Frontier’ according to Aquinas,” in Aquinas and Problems of His Time, ed. idem and D. Verheist (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1970), pp. 195–223.
87.
Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis 1, trans. Burgundio, pp. 9–10. The Greek is tēs de logikēs physeōs to kephalaion esti pheugein men kai apostrephesthai ta kala. Nemesius, Peri physeōs anthrōpou 1, as De natura hominis, ed. Moreno Morani (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1987), p. 5.
88.
Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-I q. 94 a. 2.
89.
Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles III c. 3. See also Summa theologiae II-I q. 92 a. 1.
90.
Ibid. q. 17 a. 1.
91.
See Aristotle, Topica 1.1 100a–b.
92.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 94 a. 2; q. 91 a. 3. See above p. 80.
93.
Ibid.
94.
E.g., Rhonheimer, Natural Law, pp. 11–12, 59, 63, 138.
95.
Aquinas, Commentarius in psalmos ad loc.
96.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 94 a. 2.
97.
Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar, ed. J. B. Greenough et al. (Boston, 1931); Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. F.A.C. Mantello and A.G. Rigg (Washington, 1996).
98.
Grisez, “First Principle,” pp. 168, 174, 190–92, 181–82, 186, 182–83.
99.
Note 87.
100.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 17 a. 1. For “reason commands,” see Rhonheimer, Natural Law, pp. 11–12, 59, 63, 138.
101.
II-I q. 17 a. 1.
102.
Ibid. q. 19 a. 3.
103.
Ibid. q. 17 a. 1. Cf. I q. 19 a. 3.
104.
Ibid. III q. 78 a. 2.
105.
Ibid. II-I q. 90 a. 1. Aristotle, Physica 2.9 200a.
106.
Note 72.
107.
Ibid.
108.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 17 a. 1.
109.
E.g., Aquinas, De veritate q. 9 a. 7; Summa theologiae I q. 109 a. 3.
110.
Ibid. II-I q. 92 a. 2.
111.
Aquinas, In Symbolum Apostolorum a. 1; Super Iohannem 3.1.3; Super Sententiarum 4 d. 24 q. 1 a. 3 qc. 2 ad 3.
112.
Charles E. Little, “The Authenticity and Form of Cato’s Saying ‘Carthago delenda est,’” Classical Journal 29 (1934): 429–35. See also Silvia Thürlemann-Rapperswil, “‘Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendum,’” Gymnasium 81 (1974): 465–75. Pliny, Historia naturalis 15.20.74; Plutarch, Cato maior 27.2.
113.
Summa theologiae I q. 79 a. 13.
114.
II-I q. 17 a. 1. See above pp. 80–82.
115.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 19 a. 5.
116.
Ibid. q. 77 a. 2.
117.
Ibid. a. 3; q. 90 a. 4; cf. Justinian, Digestum 44.7.3.
118.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 94 a. 3.
119.
Ibid. q. 106 a. 1.
120.
François Garnier, Le language de l’image au Moyen Âge: Signification et symbolique, 2 vols. (Paris: Léopard d’or, 1982–89), 1:170.
121.
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 11.1.66.
122.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 95 a. 2.
123.
Ibid. q. 91 a. 6.
124.
Albert the Great, De animalibus 6.1.4, 12.2.1, ed. Hermann Stadler, 2 vols. (Munich: Aschendorff, 1916–20), 1:453, 838.
125.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 91 a. 6.
126.
Ibid., I q. 75; II-I q. 91 a. 1; I q. 81 a. 2; II-I q. 94 a. 2.
127.
Leonard E. Boyle, The Setting of the “Summa theologiae” of Saint Thomas (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982). See also Marian Michèle Mulchahey, “First the Bow Is Bent in Study”: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998).
128.
Summa theologiae II-I q. 94 a. 2.
129.
See Torrell, Aquinas, pp. 4–7. Guillaume de Tocco, Ystoria, pp. 102–3. For Naples, see Darlene Pryds, “Studia as Royal Offices: Mediterranean Universities of Medieval Europe,” in Universities and Schooling in Medieval Society, ed. William J. Courtenay and Jürgen Miethke with David B. Priest (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 83–92. For Aquinas’s education in theology at the University of Paris, see Torrell, Aquinas, pp. 36–74. See in general Spencer E. Young, Scholarly Community at the Early University of Paris: Theologians, Education, and Society, 1215–1248 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
130.
Leonard Boyle, Setting. See also Mulchahey, “First the Bow.”
131.
Summa theologiae praef.
132.
Torrell, Aquinas, 1:142–43, 146, 328–29; Torrell, Aquinas’s “Summa,” pp. 10–15.
133.
Torrell, Aquinas, 1:145–46, 160–61.
134.
Leonard Boyle, Setting, pp. 26, 29.
135.
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, “Chaff: Thomas Aquinas’s Repudiation of His Opera omnia,” New Literary History 28 (1997): 385. See now the critical edition of Guillame de Tocco, Ystoria.
136.
Note 1.
137.
See Emery, “Brief Chronology,” p. 340.
138.
Thomas Aquinas, Super epistolam B. Pauli ad Romanos lectura c. 2 lectio 3. It is dated to Naples 1272–73, and Summa theologiae II-I to Paris 1271. Emery, “Brief Catalogue,” Works, pp. 340, 333.
139.
Origen, In Epistulam ad Romanos 2.9.3, trans. Rufinus.
140.
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, “Aquinas’s Natural Heart,” Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013): 266–90.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle

Authors

Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Boyle, M.O. (2018). Aquinas’s Law of the Heart: Natural Reason. In: Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93653-6_3

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93653-6_3
Published: 05 September 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93652-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93653-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics