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Reason, Will and Legalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Daniel Westberg
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Catholic moral theology since Vatican II has largely turned its back on certain aspects of the tradition of moral theology inherited from the time of the Counter-Reformation. What has been rejected is a false view of natural law, legalistic casuistry, and a mechanistic approach to morals which they imply. Quite rightly, theologians have sought more creative, more flexible and above all more spiritual frameworks. We need to be clear, however, about what we are rejecting and for what reason.

For some time, certain Catholic scholars have pointed out the dangers of a voluntaristic view of the nature of law, i.e. seeing law as primarily the product of the will (of man or of God). Francisco Suarez, very important in the development of the theory of natural law, has now become the object of attack, and is being blamed for much of the distortion of the Thomist understanding of law. William May has recently criticised him for his voluntarism and also for his ‘deductivism’—the creation of a highly elaborate system of laws, ranging from general laws at the top of the system from which are deduced particular regulations. This spirit of encompassing all human actions within a network of laws and precepts is the essential characteristic of legalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 68 , Issue 809 , October 1987 , pp. 431 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 See Davitt, T.E., The Nature of Law, St. Louis: Herder, 1951Google Scholar, and Bourke, V.J., Will in Western Thought: an Historico‐Critical Survey, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1964Google Scholar.

2 Davitt, pp. 86–108; Bourke, 176 ff.; Suarez figures in Finnis, J., Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford: Clarendon, 1980Google Scholar, esp. 337 ff.

3 Wm. May, E., ‘The Natural Law Doctrine of Francis Suarez’ New Scholasticism 58 (1984) p. 409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Pinckaers, S. O.P., in Les sources de la morale chrétienne: sa méthode, son contenu, son histoire, Fribourg‐Paris, 1985Google Scholar, demonstrates the connection between nominalism and voluntarism, and the consequences of law seen as something exterior, a threat to liberty, and morality seen in terms of obligation.

5 De Legibus, Lib. II c. 5, Vives ed. V, 100 ff.; cf. May, p. 417.

6 De Legibus I c.5, n.5, V, p. 18.

7 De voluntario et involuntario, Disp. Ill, sect. 1, IV, p 256.

8 The standard interpretation of St. Thomas’ psychology of action, especially at the point of choice or decision, has been a voluntarist one, i.e., that it is the will that chooses (cf. Lottin, O., Psychologie et morale, Vol. I, Gembloux, 1957)Google Scholar. That Thomas actually teaches the intimate combination of both reason and will has been recognised by Pinckaers, Les Sources, ch. 16.

9 De Legibus, II, c. 6, nn. 14–17, 21–24, V, p 109 ff.; cf. May, p. 419.

10 May, pp. 409, 422.

11 Grisez, Germain, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol IGoogle Scholar, Christian Moral Principles, Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983.