Teleology and the Natural Law – Part III: Natural Law Teleology in Veritatis Splendor
John Paul II’s historic papal encyclical Veritatis splendor was promulgated in 1993.1 He formulates its purpose around the necessity of reflecting upon “the whole of the Church’s moral teaching, with the precise goal of recalling certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine.”2 In a word, the encyclical seeks to rearticulate the Church’s teaching about the moral life according to its proper “theological nature.”3 This focus emerges in large part because of a “lack of harmony between the traditional response of the Church and certain theological positions, encountered even in Seminaries and Faculties of Theology.”4
The specific purpose of the present Encyclical is this: to set forth, with regard to the problems being discussed, the principles of moral teaching based upon Sacred Scripture and the living Apostolic Tradition, and at the same time to shed light on the presuppositions and consequences of the dissent which that teaching has met.5
the encyclical frequently repeats the fundamental point that “only God can answer the question about what is good, because he is the Good itself.”6 The Church teaches (following the example of Our Lord himself) that she always brings the question of goodness—particularly moral goodness—“back to its religious foundations.”7 Thus the per se theological nature of the question of moral goodness emerges clearly and early in the teaching of the encyclical.8 The significance of this theocentric foundation of the moral teaching of the Church is recognized when one understands that “the moral life presents itself as the response due to the many gratuitous initiatives taken by God out of love for man.”9 The moral life is the human response to the divine initiative in the order of nature and in the order of grace. The centrality of the divine initiative runs throughout the Church’s considerations of moral truth on both the natural and supernatural horizons. Per se, God’s initiation is an integral part to the ontological-moral fabric of all of reality. “God has already given an answer to this question [about the identity of the good]: he did so by creating man and ordering him with wisdom and love to his final end, through the law which is inscribed in his heart (see Rom 2:15), the ‘natural law.’”10 Veritatis splendor identifies the divine answer to the question as “already” present and given—indeed, imparted—in the natural law. The natural law is, as it were, the primordial answer to the question about human goodness and the perfective fulfillment the divine order extends to the human order.11 The question of moral goodness receives its existence and its subsequent intelligibility through its created nature and the relevant order which is necessarily concurrent with such creation. The existence and the order of man proceeds from God’s own divine wisdom and love. Moreover, this wisdom and love constitute man in a created order established formally with a particular final end. Teleology is a constitutive element of the human person, and it is present even within the most intrinsic and inherent recesses of human nature. The natural order is permeated with teleology. This wise and loving order receives specific denomination within the title “natural law.” The natural law is, simply, the teleological order flowing from God’s wisdom and love.12 The intelligible ratio which the human intellect perceives within created reality is the “rational—and thus universally understandable and communicable—character of the moral norms belonging to the sphere of the natural moral law.”13 The encyclical reminds us “of the fact that the natural moral law has God as its author, and that man, by the use of reason, participates in the eternal law, which is not for him to establish.”14
The divine and therefore revealed tenor of this ordering receives concrete expression in and through the precepts of the Decalogue. The encyclical cites Aquinas’s sermons on the Decalogue for clarification about the nature of the natural law: “[The natural law] is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation.”15 The encyclical adverts to the moral “centrality of the Decalogue,” because every precept contained therein is an interpretation and application of “what the words ‘I am the Lord your God’ mean for man.”16 Indeed, “the different commandments of the Decalogue are really only so many reflections of the one commandment about the good of the person, at the level of the many different goods which characterize his identity as a spiritual and bodily being in relationship with God, with his neighbor and with the material world.”17 Here goodness—particularly, the human good—stands as centrally important and theocentrically founded: “The commandments of which Jesus reminds the young man are meant to safeguard the good of the person, the image of God, by protecting his goods.”18 The encyclical adverts to the various remotions of goodness. The goodness of the person receives its objective nature from its correlation to the imago Dei.
Moreover, the good of the person is also related to the proper order which the moral agent ought to preserve and instill in external goods. Thus, goodness receives its full expression even amidst its broad diversity. The commandments “bear witness to the fundamental relationship between freedom and divine law.” The encyclical emphatically teaches that “human freedom and God’s law are not in opposition; on the contrary, they appeal one to the other.”19 In short, the encyclical cautions the moral agent not to forget about “the fundamental dependence of freedom upon truth.”20 “God’s plan poses no threat to man’s genuine freedom; on the contrary, the acceptance of God’s plan is the only way to affirm that freedom.”21
The first explicit reference to the natural law in the document appears within an examination of human freedom and moral truth. The encyclical observes the modern penchant for “detaching human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth.” Because of the deleterious detachment, “the traditional doctrine regarding the natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts is rejected.”22 This analysis of the natural law is quite significant. The encyclical, in effect, argues that a robust account of the natural law plays an integral part of the unity between human freedom and moral truth. Moral truth and moral freedom presuppose and require the natural law. How can this be? Initially, the existentially complex dynamism between freedom and truth appears to be only per accidens related to the Church’s teaching on the natural law. On the contrary, however, the encyclical argues that there exists a far more immanent and intrinsic connection between human freedom and moral truth precisely within their natural law foundation. The encyclical suggests that the natural law is an integral part of the synergistic nature of human freedom and moral truth.
Veritatis splendor observes that “this law is called natural law… not because it refers to the nature of irrational beings but because the reason which promulgates it is proper to human nature.”23 Nonetheless, this rational foundation identifies as its source “the divine wisdom as moving all things to their due end.”24 The encyclical summarizes these themes under the heading “theonomy”: “Others speak, and rightly so, of theonomy, or participated theonomy, since man’s free obedience to God’s law effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in God’s wisdom and providence”25 Citing the Second Vatican Council, the encyclical explicitly references the teleological nature of the eternal law and, derivatively, of the natural law.26 The eternal law is divine providence, “a love which cares.”27 Moreover, this loving, providential care, affects man “not ‘from without,’ through the laws of physical nature, but ‘from within,’ through reason, which, by its natural knowledge of God’s eternal law, is consequently able to show man the right direction to take in his free actions.”28 The natural law is realized through man’s rational participation in the intrinsic, impressed ordering of the eternal law. “The natural law enters here as the human expression of God’s eternal law.”29 The human person expresses the ordering ratio of God which has been impressed; and thus this human expression of the order of the eternal law is per se teleological. Veritatis splendor leaves us no ambiguity regarding the teleological nature of this order: it is through “a natural inclination to its proper act and end” that the rational creature shares in “the Eternal Reason” itself.30 Hence, the natural law emerges as a teleological unity because of its rational conformity to the eternal reason of God. “It follows that the natural law is itself the eternal law, implanted in beings endowed with reason, and inclining them towards their right action and end; it is none other than the eternal reason of the Creator and Ruler of the universe.”31
The encyclical observes that some ethicists “can be tempted to take as the standard for their discipline and even for its operative norms the result of a statistical study of concrete human behavior patters and the opinions about morality encountered in the majority of people.” Moreover, other moralists “conceive of freedom as somehow in opposition to or in conflict with material and biological nature.” Both positions ultimately rely upon a moral analysis which is fundamentally extrinsic to the reality of the human person; and thus they are ultimately unsatisfying because they do not conform to the truth of the eternal law (which is intrinsic). Veritatis splendor diagnoses the shared malady at the root of both errors: “Here various approaches are at one in overlooking the created dimension of nature and in misunderstanding its integrity.”32 “For some, ‘nature’ becomes reduced to raw material for human activity and for its power.” This conceptualization reduces nature to the level of a pure privation of human freedom—“inasmuch as it represents a limitation and denial of [due] freedom.”33 “For others… nature would thus come to mean everything found in man and the world apart from freedom.”34 Here nature (seen over against human freedom) is reduced to a pure passive potency, and would thus “be reduced to and treated as a readily available biological or social material.”35 A radical conception of human autonomy that is inimical to the teleological order of human nature is not adequately proportioned to the Church’s understanding of the moral life. Such a conception of absolute human autonomy fails to consider the truth of the eternal law as it is impressed upon all contingent being, and thus occasions two fundamental moral errors. The conclusion both errors necessitate is unsatisfying: “When all is said and done man would not even have a nature; he would be his own personal life-project. Man would be nothing more than his own freedom.”36 This conclusion does not attain the fully satisfying position because it separates the unity between authentic freedom and moral truth that the encyclical is expressly intent on maintaining.
There is an immanent and intrinsic connection between human freedom and moral truth precisely within the natural law constitution of the human person. The natural law does not admit to any “division between freedom and nature.”37 Veritatis splendor states that “since man’s free obedience to God’s law effectively implies that human reason and will participate in God’s wisdom and providence” some theologians have “rightly” classified these themes under the heading of theonomy or participated theonomy.38 Theonomy thus encompasses the inclinative ordering of God’s impressed wisdom but under a formally theological aspect.
From Natural Teleology to Natural Law Teleology
Every being has a nature, per se. Every nature has an end, per se. Therefore, every being has an end, per se. All being is thus formally and necessarily teleological in essential constitution. There are no “end-less” beings. Because all beings have a nature, they have a necessarily concurrent end. Moreover, there are no “end-less” motions or actions. Motions and actions are only intelligible vis-à-vis an end, elsewise the motions and actions would have no intelligible reason for beginning and no terminative point of conclusion, per se. Finally, there is no such thing as an “end-less” order. The end gives rise to and specifies authentic order; and it belongs to reason to grasp and impart the due priority and posteriority proper to order. The teleology of final causality carries universal significance and relevance within any consideration of being.
Natural teleology becomes natural law teleology when the natural teleology is assumed by reason. This is why Aquinas defines the “natural law” as the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law. Only the rational creature is able to participate in the eternal ratio of God under the formal aspect of ratio. Additionally, the rational creature is able to grasp aspects of God’s eternal law as formally God’s. This is why Veritatis splendor and others describe the human participation in God’s eternal law as properly “theonomic.” Through his reason, man is able to recognize the formal integrity of the eternal law of God as both theological (because of its divine establishment) and legal (because of its essential teleological constitution). Understanding the teleological order proper to law requires rationality. Understanding God’s eternal law as law and as God’s requires rationality. Once the full ratio-nal dimension of the eternal law of God is recognized, the eternal law can be accurately described in the knowing subject as the natural law.39 It is through this formally rational comprehension that the eternal law is the natural law. For through this comprehension, the rational creature is able not merely to participate passively in the law of inclination the eternal wisdom of God impresses on all contingent being, the rational creature is also able to participate actively in this teleological order under a formally teleological aspect. Teleology, order, and rationality are all mutually referential (even in their merely passive instantiations). Thus, the rational creature alone can grasp their interdependence and conjoined integrity. Only the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law is properly natural law because he alone grasps the full natural ratio-nal saturation of the eternal law in all of its natural impressions.
However, even when reason understands the intrinsic teleology of the natural order, the law of inclination proper to natural teleology still remains. The passive participation of all creatures (non-rational and rational) in the eternal law is the essential precondition for the rational creature’s active participation in the eternal law. The fundamental law of inclination universal to all contingent being is not forfeited through the rational knowledge of the law of inclination. The universal law of the eternal ratio absolutely precedes the natural law proper to rational creatures. The rational creature’s participation in the eternal law is dependent upon the prior teleological constitution of all created reality.
For two, fundamentally different, considerations of Veritatis splendor, see: Michael E. Allsopp and John J. O’Keefe, eds., Veritatis Splendor: American Responses (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1995); and J.A. Di Noia, O.P., and Romanus Cessario, O.P., eds., Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology (Princeton, NJ: Scepter Publishers, 1999). For an examination of the context and significance of Veritatis splendor, see Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., “Before and After Veritatis Splendor: The Renewal of Moral Theology,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 23, no. 4 (2023): 637–54.↩︎
VS, §4.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid., §5.↩︎
Ibid., §9. “Only God can answer the question about the good, because he is the Good” (§12).↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
“What man is and what he must do becomes clear as soon as God reveals himself” (ibid., §10).↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid., §12.↩︎
“But if God alone is the Good, no human effort, not even the most rigorous observances of the commandments, succeeds in ‘fulfilling’ the Law, that is, acknowledging the Lord as God and rendering him the worship due to him alone (cf. Mt 4:10). This ‘fulfillment’ can come only from a gift of God: the offer of a share in the divine goodness revealed and communicated in Jesus, the one whom the rich young man addresses with the words ‘Good Teacher’” (ibid., §11; emphasis original).↩︎
Of course, the following analysis does not downplay the significance of the distinction between ens naturae and ens morale.↩︎
Ibid., §36.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid., §12. Saint Thomas Aquinas, In duo praecepta caritatis et in cecem legis praecepta. Prologus: Opuscula theologica, II, No. 1129, ed. Taurinen (1954), 245. the encyclical also points to resonances of this teaching in STh I-II, q. 91, a. 2 and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1955.↩︎
VS, §13.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid. Emphasis original.↩︎
Ibid., §17.↩︎
Ibid., §34.↩︎
Ibid., §45.↩︎
Ibid., §4.↩︎
Ibid., §44.↩︎
Ibid., §43; citing STh I-II, q. 93, a. 1.↩︎
John Paul, II. Veritatis Splendor, Vatican website, March 6, 1993,
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor_en.html, no. 41. Emphasis original.↩︎
“The Council refers back to the classic teaching on God’s eternal law” (VS, §43). Emphasis original. Veritatis splendor is here referring to Dignitatis Humanae, §3.↩︎
VS, §43.↩︎
Ibid. Here the encyclical cites STh I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 1.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid., §44; citing Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, 219. Emphasis original.↩︎
Ibid., §46. Emphasis added.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
See ibid., §48.↩︎
Ibid., §46.↩︎
Ibid., §50.↩︎
See Romanus Cessario, O.P., Introduction to Moral Theology, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 206–8.↩︎
For a further development of this theme, see Stephen L. Brock, “The Legal Character of Natural Law According to St Thomas Aquinas” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1988).↩︎
