15.3 Love of Neighbor, Right Faith, Worship of God, Marriage, Sex, Food, and Nature (SCG 3,117–129)
15.3 Love of Neighbor, Right Faith, Worship of God, Marriage, Sex, Food, and Nature (SCG 3,117–129)
In SCG 3,117–128 Aquinas argues for these conclusions:
1. God’s law requires us to love our neighbor, considered as someone with whom we share a common end (SCG 3,117).
2. God’s law requires us to believe truly concerning God, this being something that depends on “right faith” (SCG 3,118).
3. Since we rely so heavily on our senses, providence arranges that we should employ physical objects and physical rituals when approaching God or trying to think about him (SCG 3,119).
4. God’s law requires that only God be worshiped (SCG 3,120).
5. God’s law is given so that we may make proper use of bodily and sensible things (SCG 3,121).
6. Male human beings should not commit fornication, and they should not engage in sex except with a view to possible procreation (SCG 3,122).
7. Sex belongs within marriage, which (1) should last as long as both partners are alive, (2) should be monogamous, and (3) should not take place between close relations (SCG 3,123–125).
8. Not all sexual intercourse is sinful. Sexual intercourse is proper, and in accordance with reason, as long as it is open to conception (SCG 3,126).
9. The use of food is not sinful if guided by reason and aimed at bodily preservation. People may also rightly make use of money so as to take care of themselves and others (SCG 3,127).
10. We are social animals who depend on each other in various ways. So we need to be governed by divine law in order to live with each other on the basis of reason (SCG 3,128).
11. Some human acts are right according to nature (secundum naturam), not just as ordered by law (SCG 3,129).
It seems clear that Aquinas regards these conclusions as rationally defensible. As I have said, in SCG 3,117–129 he frequently cites the Bible. Indeed, in SCG 3,120 he bluntly asserts that “the divine law is promulgated” in Exodus 20, where we find the Ten Commandments listed.20 However, SCG 3,117–129 should, I think, be read as an exercise in moral philosophy to which scriptural quotations serve as a kind of divinely authenticated backup. Aquinas holds that God governs us by means of our reason. In SCG 3,117 he also says that “divine law is offered to people as an aid to natural law” (lex divina profertur homini in auxilium legis naturalis).21 By “natural law” he seems to mean directions for action based on what is natural or instinctive to all people as made to exist by God, this to be taken as giving us reason for embracing or avoiding certain ways of behaving.
What reasons does Aquinas give in defense of conclusions 1–11?
15.3.1 Loving Our Neighbor (SCG 3,117)
The arguments here are:
1. We share a common end, so we “should be united with each other by a mutual love.”22
2. God loves human beings in that he directs them to the beatific vision. If someone loves God, therefore, that person should love all people as directed to God by God.
3. We are social animals, so we should get on together and will the good of others.
4. We need some peace and quiet if we are to attend to God. Love between people makes for this.
5. “It is natural for all people to love each other.”23 This is obvious from the way we spontaneously come to the help even of people we do not know.
15.3.2 Right Faith (SCG 3,118)
1. We can only enjoy the vision of God if we are guided by faith. “Therefore, we must be led to the right faith by the divine law.”24
2. In order to be totally and perfectly subject to God, people must not believe something false about God. “Therefore, people are ordered to the right faith by divine law.”25
3. Someone in error concerning God cannot love God or desire God as an end. Therefore, people “must be bound by divine law to hold a right faith concerning God.”26
4. False opinion is a kind of vice since it deflects us from truth, which we need to lay hold of as good for us given that we are intellectual beings. So divine law prohibits “false opinions about God and matters concerned with God.”27
15.3.3 Our Dependence on Our Senses and the Worship of God (SCG 3,119–120)
In writing SCG 3,119–120 Aquinas is concerned with what we might call “religious observances.” He is thinking of ritual, liturgical events, cultic practices, veneration, and devotional behavior; and he argues that these are means by which divine providence draws us close to God given our bodily nature. He writes:
Since it is connatural for us to receive knowledge through our senses, and since it is very difficult to transcend sensible objects, divine provision has been made for us so that a reminder of divine things might be made for us, even in the order of sensible things. The purpose of this is that the intention of people might be better recalled to divine matters, even in the case of someone whose mind is not strong enough to contemplate divine things in themselves.28
Aquinas is clear that our use in worship of physical things and bodily practices does not derive from any need in God. For example, with respect to “sensible sacrifices,” he says that their purpose is to remind us that we owe what we are and what we have to God as “Creator, Governor, and Lord of all.”29 He continues:
Certain blessings using sensible things are provided for us, whereby we are washed, or anointed, or fed, or given drink, along with the expression of sensible words, so that we may be reminded through sensible things that intelligible gifts come to us from without, and from God, whose name is expressed in sensible words. So, certain sensible works are performed by people, not to stimulate God by such things, but to awaken us to divine matters by these actions, such as prostrations, genuflections, vocal ejaculations, and hymns. … We do these things for our sakes, so that our attention may be directed to God by these sensible deeds and our love may be aroused. At the same time, then, we confess by these actions that God is the author of soul and body, whom we offer both spiritual and bodily acts of homage.30
In short, Aquinas thinks that people owe God homage, worship, and adoration by bodily behavior.
Aquinas uses the word latria to signify the adoration or worship of God, and in SCG 3,120 he stresses that latria is due only to God. He does so since he is aware that some have said that certain things that are not divine should be worshiped. Indeed, in SCG 3,120 he gives examples of claims to this effect, though he rejects all of them while concluding:
It is unreasonable for people who maintain only one, separate, first principle to offer divine cult to another being. For we render cult to God, as we have said [see cf. SCG 3,119], not because God needs it, but so that a true opinion concerning God may be strengthened in us, even by means of sensible things. But an opinion on the point that God is one, exalted above all things, cannot be established in us through sensible things unless we honor God with something unique, which we call divine cult. So, it is evident that a true opinion concerning the one principle is weakened if divine cult is offered to several beings.31
15.3.5 Bodily and Sensible Things (SCG 3,121)
The thesis of SCG 3,121 is that God requires us to govern our love and use of bodily things by reason. In defense of this thesis Aquinas offers four arguments.
First, he notes that, just as our minds can be raised to God by physical things if we use them in a proper way, the improper use of physical things can lead us to focus, to a greater or lesser degree, on what is less than God.
Second, he maintains that our bodies are subject to God and should, therefore, be directed by our reason. He observes: “It pertains to divine providence, of which divine law is but a rational plan proposed by God to us, to see that individual things keep their proper order. Therefore, we must be so ordered by divine law that our lower powers may be subject to reason, and our bodies to our souls.”32
Third, he says, good law promotes virtue, and “virtue consists in this: that both the inner feelings and the use of corporeal things be regulated by reason.”33
Finally, Aquinas argues that good lawmakers legislate in accordance with reason and that divine law must, therefore, command us to submit to what is reasonable.
15.3.6 Fornication and Marriage (SCG 3,122–125)
At the end of SCG 3,121 Aquinas claims that this chapter has “refuted the error of some who say that those acts only are sinful whereby one’s neighbor is offended or scandalized.”34 He means that one can act against reason without doing harm to anyone since one’s actions can be unreasonable in themselves even if they involve people happy to go along with them. In SCG 3,122–125 Aquinas develops this thought with an eye on sexual activity, the purpose of which he takes to be procreation.35
Here are some of the arguments presented in these chapters.
1. Fornication is essentially sinful since it involves a man ejaculating without intending to produce offspring and to provide for them. “The emission of semen ought to be so ordered that it will result in both the production of the proper offspring and in the upbringing of this offspring.”36
2. Every emission of semen is contrary to human goodness except in cases when a man has sex with a woman while being open to the conception of a child. So it is sinful and “contrary to nature” (contra naturam) for a man to ejaculate deliberately without intending to conceive and to provide for a child, unless, for example, he does so while knowing that the woman with whom he is having sex is sterile.37
3. A man prone to fornication might have sex having abandoned his wife and having conceived a child with her. Yet “it is appropriate to human nature that a man remain together with a woman after the generative act” and not engage in fornication. This is the case whether or not a woman abandoned by a man is able to fare well for herself and her child.38
4. It takes a lot of time and effort to rear children, to provide for them physically, and to educate them. So “it is natural to the human being for the man to establish a lasting association with a designated woman, over no short period of time. … Therefore, marriage is natural for people, and promiscuous performance of the sexual act outside marriage is contrary to human good.”39
5. It is a grave sin, second only to homicide, “for a man to arrange for the emission of semen apart from the proper purpose of generating and bringing up children” since “the inordinate emission is incompatible with the natural good; namely the preservation of the species.” “After the sin of homicide, this type of sin appears to take next place, for by it the generation of human nature is precluded.”40
6. People should remain married for life since “it is natural that the father’s solicitude for his son should endure until the end of the father’s life” while “the natural order demands that father and mother in the human species remain together until the end of life.”41
7. Divorce would be against justice when it comes to women since “the female needs the male, not merely for the sake of generation … but also for the sake of government, since the male is both more perfect in reasoning and stronger in his powers.”42 Women are there for men for purposes of generation, and it would be wrong for a man to disown a once beautiful woman he married were she to have aged, lost her looks, and be no longer able to conceive.
8. Wives are subject to their husbands. “So, it would be against the natural order if a wife were able to abandon her husband. Therefore, if a husband were permitted to abandon his wife, the society of husband and wife would not be an association of equals, but, instead, a sort of slavery on the part of the wife.”43
9. Fornication can result in a man fathering a child without knowing who his child is. But fathers of children have “a certain natural solicitude to know their offspring.”44 Moreover, “if a husband could put away his wife, or a wife her husband, and have sexual relations with another person, certitude as to offspring would be precluded. … So, it is contrary to the natural instinct of the human species for a wife to be separated from her husband.”45
10. Polygamy is contrary to reason.46 That is because all animals able to reproduce sexually have an inbuilt instinct to resist promiscuity and because “all animals desire to enjoy freely the pleasure of the sexual act, as they also do the pleasure of food; but this liberty is restricted by the fact that several males may have access to one female, or the converse.”47 Also, “Men naturally desire to know their offspring, and this knowledge would be completely destroyed if there were several males for one female. Therefore, that one female is for one male is a consequence of natural instinct.”48 To be sure, “certainty as to offspring is not precluded if one male has relations with several women.”49 But the freedom to have sex with one spouse at will is taken away from both men and women by the practice of polygamy.50
11. Friendship (amicitia) consists in equality of some kind (in quadam aequalitate consistit), which would be lacking between spouses if they had more than one spouse at the same time. “So, if it is not lawful for a wife to have several husbands, since this is contrary to certainty as to offspring, it would not be lawful, on the other hand, for a man to have several wives, for the friendship of wife and husband would not be free, but somewhat servile. … For among husbands having several wives the wives have a status like that of servants.”51
12. Reason suggests that close relatives should not marry since “there is in matrimony a union of diverse persons,” not people united by physical origin.52 “Those persons who should already regard themselves as one because of having the same origin are properly excluded from marriage, so that in recognizing themselves as one in this way they may love each other with greater fervor.”53 Also, “because the acts performed by husband and wife are associated with a certain natural shame (quandam naturalem verecundiam habeant), it is necessary that those persons to whom respect is due because of the bond of blood should be prohibited from performing such actions with each other.”54
15.3.7 Is Sexual Intercourse Intrinsically Sinful? (SCG 3,126)
The word “sin” (peccatum for Aquinas) is usually taken to mean an offense against God, and one’s view of what constitutes sin will obviously depend on what one takes God to will. In SCG 3,126, however, Aquinas still appears to be arguing in defense of various positions on the basis of reason, not revelation or any particular view when it comes to what God is. He is obviously doing so as one who thinks that what reason indicates is backed up by what we find taught in the Bible; so the reference to sin in SCG 3,126 alludes to what Aquinas takes the Bible to teach when it comes to offense against God. That said, however, SCG 3,126 seems to be arguing that reason tells us that not all sexual intercourse (understood as between a man and a woman) is wrong.55
Why, though, does Aquinas take sexual intercourse to be something that people can sometimes engage in while respecting what reason requires? He does so because he thinks that people can have sexual intercourse with a view to possible conception, that they can do so “in a manner which is suited to the generation and upbringing of children.”56 “Carnal union,” he says, “is the end of certain bodily organs,” and “that which is the end of certain natural things cannot be evil in itself.”57 Aquinas views sexual intercourse to be directed to the perpetuation of the human race. So he denies that sexual intercourse is always sinful, though he is clear that it is sometimes sinful depending on who is doing what with whom, for what reason, and in what context.
The line of thought in SCG 3,126 carries over into SCG 3,127 so as to argue that there is nothing intrinsically wrong or sinful in the consumption of food, as long as we eat in accordance with reason. “The proper end of taking food,” says Aquinas, “is the preservation of the body by nutrition.”58 It is right to eat to keep ourselves alive. Aquinas accepts that we might fail to eat in a healthy way, and he thinks that we might be culpable on this score. He also thinks that we might be blamed for other reasons when it comes to our eating habits. But he is clear that “to use either plants or the flesh of animals for eating or whatever other utility they may have for us is not a sin in itself.”59 This conclusion, in turn, leads Aquinas to argue that the use of possessions other than food is licit insofar as we use them according to reason. If we are going to procreate, then we need to support ourselves financially. With that thought in mind, Aquinas concludes that “the possession of wealth is not in itself illicit, provided that the order of reason be respected.”60 He goes on to say that what he has noted in SCG 3,127 refutes the errors of people (unspecified) who entirely reject the institution of marriage and who reject those who have acquired wealth on which they draw.
15.3.9 Human Relations (SCG 3,128)
As I have shown, SCG 3,117 maintains that divine law requires us to love our neighbor. SCG 3,128 develops this point so as to conclude that living in harmony with others is necessary for our fulfilment. For one thing, says Aquinas, we are better off working together than on our own, and people can be of assistance to each other by instructing each other well and by aiding each other in other ways. He also argues that we need to be at peace with each other and to give each other what justice requires. In this connection he appeals to Exodus 20:12–17, according to which we should honor our parents and refrain from murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness.
15.3.10 “According to Nature” (SCG 3,129)
In SCG 3,129 the thesis is: “Things prescribed by divine law are right, not only because they are put forth by law, but also because they accord with nature.”61 It is obviously Aquinas’s view that God’s law has been declared by God in the Bible. Yet it is equally obvious that Aquinas also believes that divine law accords with reason, and SCG 3,129 shows him trying to justify this belief by specifically appealing to human nature. So we find him saying that “the things prescribed by divine law are naturally right in themselves.”62 Again, he observes: “There are certain operations that are naturally suitable to people, and they are right in themselves.”63
According to Aquinas, if something has a nature, “there must be definite kinds of operations which are appropriate” to it and are consequent to it.64 Aquinas also thinks that “it is obvious that there is a determinate kind of nature for people.”65 Consequently, he reasons that “there must be some operations that are in themselves appropriate to human beings.”66 What kind of operations? Aquinas is evidently thinking of those approved in SCG 3,117–128: loving our neighbor, acting in accord with right faith, engaging in religious observances, worshiping God, governing bodily and sensible things by reason, and living in harmony with each other.