15.7 Some Reflections on SCG 3,111–163
15.7 Some Reflections on SCG 3,111–163
If you believe that God exists, and that God’s nature is as Aquinas takes it to be in SCG 1, you will not think it odd that in SCG 3,111–163 Aquinas pursues the topic of providence while taking people to be governed by it. And you might applaud him for doing so on the ground that people are different from other things in the spatiotemporal world. Aquinas singles us out as able to make choices and as able to know and love God. If he is right to do so, then he would seem right to claim that, if God exists, he must govern us in a special way.
You might also think that God’s governing of people has to involve promulgating divine law to us, that God has to instruct us how to behave and how not to behave. For if good law aims at human well-being, then must we not be taught what divine law is so as to aim at the beatific vision? And how can we be taught how to achieve beatitude unless informed of this by God? If we want to arrive at a certain destination, then we need to be told how to get there; and if God is our final end, then we would seem to be lost if we have not been instructed how to get to God. Instruction, of course, can take different forms. Hence, for example, I might give you precise instructions when it comes to getting from London to Munich, or I might educate you so that you can work out on your own how to make the trip. Either way, though, you are being guided by me so as to arrive at what you seek. If we seek beatitude, therefore, and if this is obtainable, it seems plausible to suppose that God will guide us to it either by explicitly telling us what we need to do so as to arrive at it or by making this clear by some other means.
Yet in SCG 3,111–163 this is exactly what Aquinas claims that God has done. In these chapters he speaks of guidance to beatitude given to us by divine revelation (as in the Ten Commandments and the teaching of Jesus). But he also speaks of guidance given to us by reason. As well as saying that God has revealed what is needed for beatitude, he says that God has conveyed divine law to us by giving us reason, which he takes to show us what we should and should not do if we are to be united with God.
Is Aquinas convincing when he speaks in SCG 3,111–163 of what God has taught us under the guidance of reason? Some people will respond to this question by wondering whether there is any such thing as reason, considered as an entity to be understood. Indeed, from the time of Plato to the present, philosophers have asked whether we can know what reason might be and what it might lead us to know. Aquinas, though, has no doubt that reason is real enough in the sense that we can think well so as to be intellectually justified in reaching conclusions on the basis of true premises that entail them. As I have also shown, he thinks that reason can lead us at least to know what is in accord with divine law and what conflicts with it when it comes to our behavior. Hence SCG 3,117–129.
Much of what Aquinas says in these chapters would today, I assume, be thought of as largely uncontroversial. We should justifiably feel uneasy with his sweeping claim that men are more perfect than women when it comes to reasoning (see SCG 3,123). Yet it seems hard to deny that people need to get on together so as to flourish as individuals (see SCG 3,117). And Aquinas is surely talking practical sense while reflecting on how engaging in polygamy could lead people to be unhappy in certain ways. We might doubt his claim that all men naturally desire to know their offspring, but we can surely appreciate his point that polygamy might lead to pain for both women and men who practice it. We might especially agree that women married to one man might end up being treated as servants of the man rather than his equals. Circumstances may differ, of course, so it is not inconceivable that the many wives of one man might all end up being equally valued by their husband. But they might not.
Aquinas’s insistence that latria should be given only to God is something else that makes sense. Even an atheist can acknowledge that nobody should worship anything less than what Aquinas takes God to be. When speaking of latria, Aquinas is talking about reverence due to God as creating us and as giving us all that we have. If God is the creator of all things, then it would surely be stupid to bow down in worship to one of God’s creatures. It also makes sense to say (see SCG 3,118) that union with God depends on right belief concerning God. If we take union with God to involve loving and worshiping God, then seriously wrong belief about God would seem to impede such love and worship. That is because to love X and to worship X, while being seriously mistaken about what X is, can mean not loving or worshiping X. Love and worship resemble support. I may claim to support someone: a political figure, say. But if my beliefs about that person are sufficiently off the mark, it is not that person whom I am supporting, no matter how much I might protest to the contrary. Similarly, if my beliefs about an object of my love or worship are sufficiently off the mark, the object of my love or worship is not what I take it to be.117
Remembering, however, that in SCG 3,117–129 Aquinas is concerned to explain how we should act or not act by virtue of reason, we might wonder whether he has successfully made a good case for all that he says in these chapters. In particular, one might wonder whether he has proved his case in what he says about sexual activity in SCG 3,122–126.
Much of this turns on the claim that sexual relations, or sexual activity in general, needs to consist in behavior open to procreation. It is not Aquinas’s view that someone sterile should not have sex with another person. He rejects this position.118 He does, however, claim that sex is intended by God for the production of children. If sexual activity is not engaged in as open to procreation, he says, it is “against nature” because the end of sexual activity is the preservation of the species (see SGC 3,122). Yet why should we suppose that this is the only right end for sexual activity? Obviously, human beings would disappear if everyone permanently refrained from sexual activity. So sexual activity is a necessary condition for the survival of the human species. But does it therefore follow that sexual activity not open to procreation is unnatural and, therefore, wrong?
If we take what is natural to be whatever occurs in the realm of nature, then sexual activity not open to procreation is evidently natural since it occurs. If we want to know what is natural, then all we have to do is note how things in the world behave, and some of them have sex, or use their sexual organs, with no possibility of procreation resulting.
Evidently, though, Aquinas is thinking of “natural” as an evaluative term, not a purely descriptive one. He claims that there is something wrong, and therefore against nature, in sexual activity not geared to procreation. And he does so because he thinks that sexual activity is necessary for the survival of our species. Even if it is, however, why should we conclude that sex not open to procreation is always wrong? If I need to do X in order to obtain Y, why should my doing X without wanting to obtain Y be thought of as a mistake of some kind? I need to eat in order to live. But might I not sometimes reasonably eat without a view to survival? Might I not, for instance, consume a piece of chocolate just for the pleasure of it? And when it comes to our survival as a species, good though this might be, why suppose that sexual activity not geared to procreation is a threat to it? Human beings will continue to exist whether or not some of them engage in sexual activity not open to procreation. In Aquinas’s day, infant mortality rates were high, so one might understand why he thought that people should behave sexually so as always to aim at procreation. Even in the time of Aquinas, however, there was no chance of the human race dying out because people sometimes engaged in sexual activity with no possibility of conception occurring.
Could it be that nonreproductive sexual activity is against nature since all people are drawn to have sexual intercourse that might result in conception? Could it be that it is against nature since all animals are sexually drawn in this way? Aquinas does not raise these questions in SCG 3,122–126. Yet in Summa Theologiae 1a2ae,94,2 he says:
There is in human beings a bent towards things which accord with their nature … that is in terms of what they have in common with other animals; correspondingly those matters are said to be of natural law which nature teaches all animals, for instance the coupling of male and female, the bringing up of young, and so forth.119
One can, I think, safely assume that this line of thinking lies behind what we find in SCG 3,122–126. And in SCG 3,122 Aquinas specifically claims that the purpose of the sexual act is directed to generation, which indicates that there is just one sexual act under discussion in this chapter, one that all people and other animals want to engage in: heterosexual intercourse.
However, not all nonhuman animals want always to engage in this.120 Neither do many people. That many people do not seems obvious and is witnessed to by the governments in the world that have now found it right to acknowledge same-sex marriage. So why conclude that if even a majority of people are spontaneously drawn to have heterosexual sex, it follows that there is one sexual act to which all people are drawn, this being a reason to argue that sex not open to procreation is against nature?
It might be suggested that people who have nonreproductive sex are really attracted to reproductive sex and perversely engaging in nonreproductive sex just for the sake of pleasure. Yet the evidence these days seems to be against that suggestion. Given recent research on homosexuality, and given the testimony of people declaring that they have never been attracted to sexual activity leading to procreation, the suggestion seems questionable. It might be said that people not attracted to heterosexual intercourse are ill or ailing in some way, and I suspect that this is what Aquinas thought while arguing that sexual activity can have only one proper or legitimate end. But he does nothing in the SCG to show that people not attracted to heterosexual intercourse are sick or ill. He seems to proceed on the assumption that all human beings naturally desire heterosexual sex.121 Given that assumption, one might understand why he thinks that God has given us sexual organs only for the purpose of procreation, or that all human beings are naturally directed only to reproductive sexual activity. Has he, however, successfully shown by reason that the use of our sexual organs must always to be accompanied by an intention to allow for conception?
There is a long Christian tradition that holds that our sexual appetites can only be properly satisfied by heterosexual intercourse open to procreation. And Aquinas is a major contributor to this tradition, not only because of what he says about sex in the SCG but also because of what he says about it in his Summa Theologiae. Yet does he, in SCG 3,122–126 (and more specifically in SCG 3,122) prove by reason that this tradition is solidly grounded? You may think that he does. Yet there is surely a topic for debate here.122
At this point I leave you to think on this matter and on other arguments offered by Aquinas in SCG 3,122–126. For I now need to proceed to SCG 4, in which Aquinas writes about the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Incarnation, Christian sacraments, and the resurrection of our bodies.