This essay argues that the new natural law theory (NNLT) propounds five errors that place it on a collision course with the traditional Thomistic understanding central to the moral magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. These root errors are argued to be (1) the denial of the primacy of speculative over practical truth, (2) the negation of unified normative natural teleology expressed in the NNLT doctrine of the putative “incommensurability” of basic goods prior to choice, (3) failure to affirm the (...) transcendence of the common good, (4) negation of the essentially theonomic character of the natural law, and (5) the intentionalist construction of human action. The teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas is held to be a superior light for understanding Catholic moral life. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1 (Spring 2013): 105–131. (shrink)

First principles and the challenge of Parmenidean monism -- St. Thomas on analogia entis in the Scriptum super sententiis and in De veritate -- Consideration of objections to the view that the analogia entis is the analogy of proper proportionality -- The analogy of being and the transcendence and analogical intelligibility of the act of faith.

The object of the moral act is a subject of some controversy in modern discussions of Christian ethics. Pope St. John Paul II, in the encyclical Veritatis splendor, speaks to the nature of the moral act with reference to Thomistic philosophy. This article discusses the foundational elements of Thomas Aquinas’s account of natural law and provides some important clarification of the nature of the moral act as addressed in the encyclical.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:YVES SIMON'S APPROACH TO NATURAL LAW STEVEN A. LONG St. Joseph's College Rensselear, Indiana VES SIMON'S recently reissued work, The Tradition f Natural Law, originating from the author's lectures of 958 at the University of Chicago, represents an uncommonly intelligent approach to a philosophically complicated subject. Rather than immediately moving to defend the much-challenged notion of natural law, or to outline a positive account of the latter, he considers (...) the recurrent questions that render natural law theory a permanent feature of the speculative landscape. After all, in one sense anyone who is convinced that there is a morally normative natural order-that some things " by nature " are unjust-is a "natural lawyer." The same phenomenon that nourishes sceptical impulses-diversity in customs and moral convictions-renders ineluctable the asking of the question whether any of the competing customs or moral tenets is ratified by the evidence of nature. As Simon puts it: There would be no eternal return of natural law without an everlasting opposition to natural law. Again, this opposition thrives on the contrast between the notion of actions that are right or wrong by nature, and the lack of uniformity which we observe in actual judgments.1 · Yet as Simon later observes: There is a rumor that modern ethnology has demonstrated the absence of uniformity among peoples in matters of so-called natural law. That is rather naive. This lack of uniformity was well known long, long before what is called modern science came to exist. In 1 Yves Simon, The Tradition of Natural Law (hereinafter cited as TNL) ed. Vukan Kuic (New York: Fordam University, 1992), 4. 125 126 STEVEN A. LONG fact, modern ethnologists would be rather more critical and skeptical about stories of strange customs than men of antiquity or of the Renaissance.2 Simon recognizes that the opposition to natural law theory that is predicated on the notion that natural law implies the absence of divergent moral convictions is "as old as the theory." 3 Such objection is a mere prefatory hurdle marking one's entry into contemplation of the densely interwoven fabric of natural law. The subject of natural law is, Simon insists, difficult because it is engaged in an overwhelming diversity of doctrinal contexts and of historical accidents. It is doubtful that this double diversity, doctrinal and historical, can so be mastered as to make possible a completely orderly exposition of the subject of natural law.4 As Dr. Russell Rittinger points out in his introduction to the volume, Simon is aware that there is not merely one " tradition" of natural law, but several.5 The contrast between convention and nature is susceptible of quite diverse formulations, and these are in large part dependent upon social and institutional factors. Nonetheless, in Simon's focus upon the doctrinal and historical problematic of natural law theory, he achieves the difficult feat of elucidating root speculative questions. Indeed, it is a major strength of Simon's treatment that he is wary of the ideological use of natural law theory. As he puts it: an ideology is a system of propositions which, though undistinguishable so far as. expression goes from statements about facts and essences, actually refer not so much to any real state of affairs as to the aspirations of a society at a certain time in its evolution. These are the three components which, taken together, distinguish ideology from philosophy. The notion of truth which an ideology embodies is utilitarian, sociological, and evolutionistic. When what is actually an expression of aspirations assumes the form of statements about 2 TNL, 5. 3 TNL, 5. 4 TNL, 5. 5 Russell Hittinger's Introduction to The Tradition of Natural Law, xix. YVES SIMON'S APPROACH TO NATURAL LAW 127 things, when these aspirations are those of a definite group, and when that group expresses its timely aspirations in the language of everlasting truth-then, without a doubt, it is an ideology that we are dealing with.6 By contrast, " the law of philosophy is altogether one of objectivity." 7 Whereas objects of aspiration are not purely speculative objects of contemplation, but are also ends, "the object of cognition alone is a pure... (shrink)

This essay attempts concisely to articulate the necessary role played within moral theology in general—and within the moral theology of grace in particular—by the metaphysics and natural philosophy of human agency. It argues for the priority of the speculative with respect to the practical inasmuch as speculative knowledge precedes desire, and desire precedes intention; for the centrality of unified normative teleology; for the primacy of being over relation; and for the primacy of sound doctrine regarding the divine causal providence for (...) the moral theology of grace and freedom. (shrink)

This monograph first introduces a methodology called “hamartia poetics,” which explores how novels generate their own semantic conceptions of “sin.” A poetics of sin rests on four fundamental assumptions about narrative itself: (1) narratives present a transformation from one condition to another; (2) in narratives, states of being only “exist” as compared with others; (3) narrative makes possible the act of sin; and (4) the act of sin cannot exist without the possibility of combinatory transformation. Second, it applies hamartia poetics (...) to Dickens’s Bleak House, arguing that the novel simultaneously establishes two codes of sin, but that these codes ultimately converge into one. (shrink)

This study examines the logical coherence of the theological claim that Jesus was "truly man and truly God." The primary question dealt with is whether or not it is possible for one person to have all of the properties necessary for being fully divine and all of the properties necessary for being fully human. The philosophical approach is analytic, focusing upon alleged coherence problems generated by applying the Indiscernibility of Identicals to statements about Jesus. Two extended arguments against the coherence (...) of the doctrine of the incarnation are examined and rebutted. The bulk of the study is a presentation and evaluation of five modern philosophical approaches to solving the coherence problems generated by the Indiscernibility of Identicals. These are Relative Trinitarianism, the One-Nature view, the Reduplicative maneuver, kenoticism, and the Two-Minds view. Relative Trinitarianism is rejected because it denies the Indiscernibility of Identicals as a logical principle. The One-Nature view unnecessarily alters the concept of divinity and it, too, is rejected. Traditional kenoticism is judged an inadequate response to the incoherence challenge, but a revised kenoticism does show that many statements about Jesus can be coherently stated. This revised kenoticism eliminates coherence problems concerning many properties of Jesus, but not all. Some statements about Jesus, particularly modal statements, can be coherently stated as reduplicative statements. The problem is that some Steven A. Long incarnational property adjectives do not appear to be logically attributive, hence they cannot be predicated reduplicatively. Though the Two-Minds view is rejected, some features of it are used to show how incarnational property adjectives can be logically attributive and predicated reduplicatively. The conclusion is that there are no convincing arguments against the coherence of the incarnation and that a revised kenoticism and the Reduplicative maneuver together can be used to formulate a coherent interpretation of the doctrine of the incarnation that is possibly true. (shrink)

A response to Kenneth Schmitz's "Created Receptivity and the Philosophy of the Concrete" The Thomist vol. 61 no. 3 p. 339.

David Nelsen [[sic]] follows the well-trodden path beaten by those who object to an over-universalized and over-deductive version of St. Thomas Aquinas's ethics. Focusing on the "priority" of prudence and the virtues vis à vis more speculative considerations of natural law, the book admirably stresses the role of prudence in enhancing human knowledge of ends. Inasmuch as one end is often ordered in act to another, prudence--which rightly concerns means-nonetheless clearly extends to the deepening and enrichment of our acquaintance with (...) the right order of ends. Basing his case for the priority of prudence upon the indeterminacy of the will regarding any created good and the presumed consequent lack of any natural ordering save to the final end, Nelsen argues that knowledge of the primary precepts of the natural law is too vague and abstract to be helpful in determining action. According to this interpretation, St. Thomas does not intend natural law considerations as "a source of concrete moral information" supplementing a prudential ethics of virtue. (shrink)