Understanding & Orderly Division (especially as regards law)

1. Our first understandings are general and indistinct.

2. We first move toward distinct and more perfect understanding by division. [“A is not B.”]

3. As we proceed, we make further divisions.

4. But here a problem arises, the problem of order. What division comes first, and what next, etc.?

5. Even though our divisions may be complete (taking in all the particulars), we may well ask: have we taken them in the right order?

6. If there is an order, how important is it that we observe that order? (A most crucial question for all of philosophy—the love of wisdom—is “What comes first?”)

7. We may reasonably suspect that if we have not rightly followed the order, we may misconceive the particulars within that order (more or less).

8. For example: When the geometer divides parallelogram, he first divides according to angles, not according to ratios of sides. Is this by accident, or is it essential to sound doctrine that he divide the genus in this order?

[Turning to law in particular:]

9. When St. Thomas first divides law, he first distinguishes eternal law from all the others.  Is this not reasonable? For every other law derives its essence as law from the eternal law.  [We speak here of the order proper to Sacred Doctrine, which always begins from what is first absolutely.]

10. Other laws are derived from the eternal law. What is the first distinction to be made about these derived laws?

11. For St. Thomas, the question is: Which of these derivations (or participations) are laws, properly speaking?

12. Since law is something of reason, only the rational participation in eternal law has the complete essence of law.

13. Since the rational creature understands the rule by which he is to live, by way of universal propositions which direct his actions, his participation in eternal law is law properly speaking.

14. Irrational creatures partake in eternal law through their natural impulses, which direct them to their natural ends through appropriate means. These impulses derive from God, insofar as He is the author of nature. But since these creatures do not understand how they are to live, this participation in eternal law in not law, properly speaking.

15. God gives law to the rational creature uniquely in two ways: Through the natural order that He has instituted and the creature has discovered through revelation (by speech, which comes from one mind to another). These laws are named (respectively) natural law and divine law.

16. These laws direct us to different ends. Natural law directs us to our natural end, happiness in this present mortal life, through the exercise of moral and intellectual virtue. Divine law directs us to a supernatural end, eternal life, and the beatitude that is the activity of that life. If we had no higher end than the goods we can possess in this life, there would be no divine law (as it has been defined here) but only natural law and human law.

17. Human (positive) laws are particular determinations of natural law, applying it to particular situations, while ecclesiastical laws are similar determinations of divine law.

Participations of eternal law

law (naturally known)		     divine law (revealed)

human law 				ecclesiastical law

by natural inclinations

by reason & understanding

natural law (naturally known)

divine law (revealed)

eternal law

human law

ecclesiastical law