R.J. Snell, professor of philosophy and Director of Eastern University’s philosophy program, responds to the critics of the Manhattan Declaration who believe that “the natural law forgets sin and thus depreciates the necessity of Christ and the supremacy of Scripture”:
There is no cheery optimism in Aquinas with respect to reason. The human is disordered;, one might even say we suffer a totality of depravity since not a single human capacity or function remains in the state of original justice. Yes, humans are utterly messed up, but they are still human beings, and as human beings, as rational animals, they still possess the natural law, for to lose the natural law would be a loss of humanity, actually to become a beast. Not, that is, to act bestially—humans do so—but to be a beast. And this has not happened, since original sin does not change our essence—nor could it. The basic human goods remain the same basic human goods for Adam and for Hitler, and the flourishing of human persons qua persons has not changed. But sin does change our willingness to function as we ought, as we can all attest.
There is, then, no contradiction between the natural law and original sin, at least as understood by Thomas Aquinas. The “Manhattan Declaration,” therefore, remains the declaration of cosmopolis, for insofar as the declaration is reasonable it is reasonable for all, even us sinners.
February 8th, 2010 | 3:28 pm
The natural law certainly does not forget sin. On the contrary, it gives us a unique way of understanding sin’s terrible visage. It helps us view sin as not only an offense against God and (usually) against our fellow man, but also, deeply and essentially, an offense against ourselves– because sin is so unnatural to us, so harmful to us ourselves.
The idea that man’s intellect is so perverse as to make natural law null and void is self-contradictory in my opinion. For once one has come to this conclusion, one would have to own that he came to it through his own rational power. But since his own rational power is known to him to be too corrupt to be reliable, he would have to admit that he’s (at least probably) wrong, and therefore that natural law must stand after all.
How could natural law be against a certain construct one might call “supremacy of Scripture,” when scripture itself affirms natural law? See St Paul’s commentary (I’m a Catholic, you don’t get chapter and verse) on the pagans and their “natural” duty to follow the law.
February 8th, 2010 | 3:53 pm
I can’t reconcile this reasoning:
But only a wooden and uncharitable reading of Aquinas stops here, for Aquinas has a sophisticated view on the question. He holds that the prelapsarian human was endowed with the grace of original justice, a rectitude whereby reason is subject to God, the lower human powers subject to reason, and the body subject to the soul. Such a person would not sin because he or she is properly ordered; without concupiscence, the unfallen human would always follow the dictates of right reason. Original sin, among other consequences, deprives the human of this original justice, destroying the harmonious relation of human powers to each other and to God.
If all of this were true, then by what means did Eve have the desire to pluck the forbidden fruit? A truly ordered person could not have been tempted by whispered knowledge that would lead to an unreasonable act. Since desire itself is sinful and precedes sinful acts, Eve must have been disordered prior to her/our infamous downfall.
February 8th, 2010 | 4:19 pm
Dear R. Hampton: You wrote that “A truly ordered person could not have been tempted by whispered knowledge that would lead to an unreasonable act.” However, if this were the case, Jesus could not have been tempted, true? Even an ordered reason can be tempted by external influences.
When discussing the devil’s role in temptation to sin, Aquinas says that temptations may arise through “he that persuades the will that the object proposed has an aspect of good, because he also, in a fashion, offers the will its proper object, which is a real or apparent good of reason” (ST I-II.80.1). Even an ordered person may be mistaken about an apparent good of reason–and after succumbing to this temptation, may come to desire the sin even while knowing what it truly is.
February 8th, 2010 | 4:39 pm
WHY, JEREMIAH?
Know yourself; you’re free to know
this: you’re perverse!
You hate to owe, or blessings bestow,
upon whom you owe; the creditor’s cursed.
In debt for life to life, you loathe life;
It’s loaned; that much you know;
And the soul’s repaid in the tear of flesh
Love exchanged in the telling blow.
Hope’s gone then; now war is happy-hour;
Voices raised to hurt who’s loved most;
Violence found to better the sex;
Children killed for burning toast.
Damned creature, reversed in a glass;
So clever, yet bottom of your class.
Eli Silas 1984
February 8th, 2010 | 5:50 pm
Even an ordered person may be mistaken about an apparent good of reason
That’s certainly true now, but Mankind before the fall ought to be something different. If Eve acted on good intentions, then her true sin wasn’t coveting what God had but disobeying his word. However…
Original sin, among other consequences, deprives the human of this original justice, destroying the harmonious relation of human powers to each other and to God.
For Eve to have placed the logic of the serpent above that of the command of God she must have lacked this original justice and/or a harmonious relationship between herself and God, and thus must have been disordered.
As such, original sin doesn’t deprive us of anything for we (those who sin in despite and because of their good intentions) are no different then Eve before the fall.
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