LAW AND GRACE

Recap

 In the last lecture, we saw that the vision of freedom that's at the heart of gospel morality is
that there is an essential sense of freedom as an ability to will the good.
o In order to have freedom we need to have an ability to identify the good in order to
will it.
 In this context, John Paul II said that there is a way in which the law of God serves our
freedom, Precisely as a kind of knowledge of the good.
o That the law can set us free, is a positive sense of law in relation to freedom in
Gospel morality.
 People who have a defective notion of freedom or a defective notion of morality don't have
a positive sense of law.
o The law is thought to be a limitation of our freedom. It's that part of morality that
comes to us and says, no you can't do this, and you have to do that.
o The law is seen as restrictive and a source of problems in our lives, rather than
serving our freedom in the way the Gospel envisions it.

What law is and how it serves our freedom

In Veritatis Splendor, St. John Paul II strikes at a positive sense of what law is and the positive
sense of how law enters into the life of the Christian disciple.

 We can highlight two things that John Paul II wants to emphasize, that is, two positive ways
in which we can understand the meaning of law in Catholic moral theology.

1) He asks us to see that law is a matter of God's providence over us, in otherworld’s, it
is a way of God caring for us.

 So whenever we think about law and we want to have a positive sense of

law, the way Catholic moral theology does, we should think law is Fatherly
care. Law is God's loving care over us or again what we also call in
theological terms providence.

 Law illuminates for us the meaning of our own freedom. In his

Fatherly care God offers us the understanding of freedom.

2) Because of God’s providence over us, the Law is a gift of wisdom that God gives us.

 Law is not to be thought of here simply as an obligation in itself opposed on us,

but law is a sharing of wisdom.

o As we receive that wisdom through the law, now we begin to develop a

sense of obligation not just to the law itself, but an obligation to the truth
or the wisdom that we received through the law.

Thus, John Paul II asks us to see that in Gospel Morality God's law is a gift, not an
obligation imposed on us. Rather, it is a gift of wisdom—the wisdom by which:

 we better understand what is good,

 we better understand what to will with our freedom,

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  ow to live our freedom.
 We are obliged to live according to the truth that we now have through this gift
of law.
In short, it is God's way of caring for us as a loving father and it is God's gift to us, a gift of
wisdom. Wisdom about what is good, wisdom about our freedom, and wisdom on how to love.

The perfection of our freedom is found in the acceptance of God's law

Since the Law is God’s way of caring for us and a gift that he gives to us, it represents a way
for us to have the perfection of freedom.

 By accepting the law and living the law we have a kind of perfection of our
freedom.
o Since freedom has the ability to wield the good, it presupposes or
requires an ability to identify the good. Law is pictured as that ability to
identify or know the good.
 Our knowledge of good enhances our ability to be free, precisely
because it is a knowledge of the good.

 John Paul II says that our natural ability to identify the good that we need to will is
called in Catholic moral theology the Natural Moral Law.
o If we're going to have a natural power that is freedom, he rightly says it is
necessary to think that we have a natural ability to identify the good.
o So the natural power of freedom requires a natural ability (natural moral law)
to identify the good that we need to will.

Now by speaking of the natural law, we're clearly also indicating that there are other
kinds of law.

There are different expressions of the moral law, all of them interrelated: eternal law - the
source, in God, of all law; natural law; revealed law, comprising the Old Law and the New
Law, or Law of the Gospel; finally, civil and ecclesiastical laws (CCC §1952).

 As we distinguish the natural law from other forms of law, the Catholic understanding is
that natural law has a preeminent place in Catholic moral theology.

 The Natural Law is our natural ability to identify the good. It is necessary for us to
have the power of freedom in a natural way. But it is not the only kind of law.
o The law of the Gospel may be the most important law in the life of the
Christian.
 The Catholic idea is that law can be understood as a measure of our action that will
be found in reason.
o So it's a way in which reason measures our action as good or evil.

 The Catechism says all law understood as a measure of our behaviour, has its origin in
the eternal law. Although, natural law is preeminent, eternal law is more fundamental.
o The eternal law is the law upon which all other laws are based.
o The natural law in fact is defined as our rational participation in the eternal law.

So what do we mean in the first place then by the eternal law?

 It is the plan of God for the universe that directs all movements in the universe.

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  It's the plan, the wisdom with which he creates.
 This is first then in the mind of God.
 But then also revealed in a way in his creation.

Natural law is that it's a rational participation in the eternal law.

 The natural law is the way in which what is in the mind of God, the eternal law
has entered into the mind of the human.
 So we don't want to think of the natural law as something different from the
eternal law.
 It is how we have from God naturally, not yet through faith but through our
natural reasoning function. We have a share in the wisdom that is in the mind of
God.
 We have some knowledge of the truth about what is good and it comes naturally,
it's not something we have to learn. Or reason to.
o We cannot have a human mind without having this knowledge of the
truth within it.
o On the one hand we can't learn it, on the other hand, we can't be without
it.

The first layer of the structure of natural law in us:

 Natural law in terms of a natural knowledge what we're going to see
emphasized that sometimes you have the metaphor written on the human heart,
but it's the same point, that we have principles of the law written by God into the
human mind.
o From that natural knowledge of the principles, though, we're able with
our human reasoning power to develop further senses/levels of the law.

 The principles are:

o in the first place, a natural knowledge of the goods of the person. A
knowledge of what is good, of the human existence, and human
flourishing.

 John Paul II recommends the Thomistic expression of natural law.

o That there are goods of the human person that we all tend to and we all
recognize as good—these are the first principles of the natural law.

The second layer of the structure of the natural law in us

 From those principles we reason to primary precepts leading to obvious
conclusions about these goods.
o For example, our natural knowledge that life is good, should lead us
to easily conclude that life is to not be destroyed, but rather, it should
be preserved and protected.
 This is the first conclusions that we make from the principles
that God has given us.
Remote precepts of the natural law

 We can also reason further, though, and develop in our minds what are called
remote precepts of the natural law.

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 o We can think even further, well if life is good it should not be
destroyed, but we shouldn't do bodily harm get angry as these harm
oneself and others.
o This requires more reasoning, more time. It is something that not
everyone develops in the same way.
We all start at the same level. We all have the principles of the natural law given
to us by God, written on the hear. We all can easily, and almost unavoidably,
conclude the precepts of the law, the most important ways to promote and
protect the goods of the person.

And most of us reason to but it's not always the same in each person to defer
their precepts.

The three attributes of Natural Law.

In Catholic theology, natural law is characterized by three important attributes:

1. universal
2. Immutable
3. indelible.

To say that the natural law is universal means two things.

i. In the first place, anyone with a human mind has this knowledge of the good.
God writes it on the heart or God gives it to us in a very creation of the human
intellect. We have a natural knowledge of the good, at least in the form of
principles. So everyone has this knowledge.
ii. The other meaning of universal is that therefore this is a law that governs all
humans. Everyone everywhere is under this law at all times and in all scenarios.
 This knowledge never ceases to be valid because it's a knowledge about
what is good, in terms of the human person, so every human person is
under this law.

The Natural Law is immutable, even if the way we apply the law, or the concrete
manifestations of the law in our lives, vary.

 So what is true about the human person and good for the human person is
unchanging or as we said immutable. So we don’t have to think about maybe
historical relativism or something like that when we talk about natural law.
 Culture, other things come and go and change but what it means to be human
and a good human is going to be the same for everyone with that humanity and
that's the meaning of how this law is immutable.

Finally, the third point is that this law is indelible.

 That means that the law cannot be forgotten. It cannot be remove or erased from
the human mind. So again we don't always live in accord with this knowledge.

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 o Sometimes we act contrary to this knowledge but that doesn't mean
we've ceased to have this knowledge. The natural law will remain in us
engraved on the heart by God, it's indelible.

o The catechism points out this is especially true with regards to the
principles.

 That no one can cease to know the principles of the natural law.
It's part of our Catholic faith. We don't believe that there's anyone
who's ignorant about the basic goods of the human person.

But the Catechism also points out that in our historical condition, because of the
limitations of sin We sometimes fail to reason well to the precepts and further
precepts of the natural law.
o This is not the way it should be—it is only an effect of sin. As a result:
 Our reasoning power that is at the heart of this meaning of natural
law is affected or hindered by sinfulness.
o Thus, how we come to have the precepts and how clearly we
come to have them in their mind can be affected.
 We have a hard time grasping the meaning of the precepts, the
conclusions about what is good and what is evil.

Because of the limitation brought by sin, we need divine positive law in order to
really fulfil our freedom the way we we're meant to have it.

 Divine revelation or the law of divine revelation coming to complement and

complete natural law very much in a way that we would understand how faith
enlightens reason.

 So, if reason is the basis of natural law we can say that natural law needs
completion through the law of divine revelation the way reason itself needs to be
illuminated or enlightened by faith.

Divine positive law in Catholic moral theology means the law that's stated by God in sacred
scripture. It is positive because it is stated by God.

 The law of sacred scripture into:

1) the old law of the old covenant, and

2) the new law of the new covenant in Christ.

And we do want to accept that on the one hand both these laws are legitimate law.

 Both of them have a validity.

 The old law had its validity as part of divine positive law.
 It is what God taught the people of the old covenant.

At the same time, we mustn't think of them as somehow evil.

 There's a great difference between the old law and the new law that gives us a
real reason to emphasize more clearly and especially the new law.

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 So we can accept that the old law is valid, it is a law that God gave his people. It's valid in
that context, it was valid for the Old Covenant.

 With the new covenant, we don't just have a new law that replaces the old laws. That we
have a new covenant or a new context, or we get a new law. It's much more than that.

o The new law isn't just new chronologically, but it's a different kind of law that helps
us to see better, in fact, what is the meaning of law.
 The new law is the law of the gospel.
 It is the law of Christ in his teachings and in his example.
 It's also, especially the law of the grace and the active presence of the
Holy Spirit in us.

(We still are operating with the notion that law is a way is which we measure our
actions: the way in which we identify what is good and what is evil).

o Compared to the Old law, the new law is new not simply because we have a clearer
sense of what is good but we have maybe clearer ideas about what is good, how we
should live. For example:

 Jesus completes some of the Ten Commandments of the old law. He says
you heard this but I tell you that.
 Also, the Sermon on the Mount is clearer of what good we should do.
o But it's not just that clear sense of what is good in our minds, but importantly it is a
measure of our actions by empowerment.
 When God empowers us to love and imitate the love of Christ, the new
become the measure of our own lives. That's the measure of the choices we
make.
 Am I living in accord with that empowerment of God's grace?
 Am I living in accord with the active presence of the Holy Spirit in me?
 That's what it now means to say am I living in accord with the gospel law or
the new law of the gospel.
 Although this empowerment can become in a way even more enlightening,
the teachings of Jesus and the example of Jesus give us a clear sense of what
it is good and enhance our freedom in that way.
 We have the power of God's grace and the active presence of the Holy Spirit
in us to strengthen us and empower us to do the good, that makes us more
free.
o But as we're empowered to love the way Jesus loved, we also get
maybe a clearer sense of our potential.
o We begin to understand that we're capable of more than maybe what
our sinfulness suggested.
o We're capable of more than we would have reason to if we took an
assessment of ourselves.
o But when we're empowered through the new law, we get a new
standard by which we'll measure ourselves.
In short, we rediscover our full potential through this empowerment of the
Holy Spirit. This is a new experience that reason hindered by our sinfulness
cannot give us.

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It is clear that as we complete the Catholic understanding of law, we already have in place
that for us the natural law is essential and in a way pre-eminent to the understanding of
freedom.

 We have the new law as the law of Christian life because it's the empowerment of
the Holy Spirit. It's the empowerment of God's grace in us.
 In Catholic moral theology, other forms of law are valid, but they do need to match
up with the guidance that God is already giving us in the natural law and in the new
law of the Gospel.
 For example, in Catholic moral theology there is a validity to laws that are
made by humans. Whether it's Church law (sometimes call Canon law) made
by the members of the Church at different periods in history.
 Whether it's civil law, made by those in civil government, there is a validity to
human laws.
o They are binding on us even though we have our own natural law. Even
though we've been given the Holy Spirit.
o I other words, these other laws are still valid and we have to accept them as
valid measurements of our own lives, of our own use of freedom.

At the same time, again as a kind of balancing point, what we'll see in Catholic moral
theology is that the legitimacy of these human laws is limited by the natural law and the law
of the gospel.
 That is these laws made by humans cease to be true law, cease to be just if they
contradict the natural law or the law of the gospel.

Continuity between all the laws.

 So in fact we have now a way as it were to keep that continuity between all the
forms of the law.
o We started with the eternal law, the natural law, the new law, when we come
to human law, we are going to see then, it is always what is truly good that is
it binding on us.

 If law begins to deviate from what is truly good, it does cease to be law, it's not bringing us
a wisdom about what is good anymore. Remember that:
o The natural law in itself can't deviate although we sometimes fail to bring it to its
full meaning.
o The holy spirit can't deviate from what is good. There's a kind of value in the natural
law, in the new law that we have as preeminent.

 Civil law Could be valid, should be valid, and so far as the existence that true meaning of
what is good into our lives.

o But where it is ceases to correspond to what is truly good for the human person, it
ceases to be law.

 The element of what the true understanding of Catholic law is, is that what is inside us is the
true sense of law. The active presence of the Holy Spirit in our heart is the best example of
what law is all about. Because the law is not some kind of external obligation imposed on
us.

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Thus, our own sense, our own interior knowledge of what is good, what is true and
therefore what is the best way to live our freedom.