Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations. Christian Thomasius
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referred to. Attention should be paid to the intention of the Apostle, and then the matter will be clear. He argues thus: either the reason for works in the cause of justice is the same for Jews and for Gentiles, or God regards the person. God does not, however, regard the person. Therefore the reason for both is the same. The minor premise is proved, or, rather, is contained within verse 11.71 For God does not regard the person. The proof of the major premise and the connection is contained in the following verses and can be summarized in this syllogism: all those who sin equally cannot, as far as their sins are concerned, be judged differently before God. Jews and Gentiles have sinned equally, therefore… . The Apostle proves the minor premise in verse 12.72 For whoever has sinned without a law (that is, pagans) will also perish without a law: and those who have sinned against the law (the Jews) will be damned by the law. Having argued thus, the Apostle proceeds to verses 14 and 1573 (in which the entire core of the objection that was raised resides) and shows that his statement that Gentiles had sinned without a law was not to be understood simply and absolutely, but in a certain sense. Pagans lacked the external promulgation of the divine law (these are the words of Mr. Mylius on this passage), which was made to the Israelites in the Sinai desert. That is what Paul means when he says they have no law. In the meantime, he says, nature provided what was required by the law and they therefore were a law to themselves; that is, they had within themselves and in their entire nature the means to balance this defect to a certain degree. Will therefore the law insofar as it is revealed be opposed to natural law?74
Among the modern theologians I mention Mr. Osiander, who in the Typum legis naturae, page 158, where he speaks of the nature of the human intellect, calls it an “indifferent and indeterminate power, according to Aristotle,
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a bare slate,” since on the same page he adds a reference to that passage of the Apostle, but see also pages 129ff., where he argues against those who deny that there is a natural law and insist that humans introduced all laws for themselves on grounds of utility. He first refutes this opinion by referring to the same passage from Paul; then he argues against those people on the basis of reason and adds a reference to natural ideas and says that “Reason is by nature instructed with certain theoretical principles which are so evident that they are evident even to an infant if the relevant terms are put forward, for example, what a whole is, what a part is … and so it is to be understood that the knowledge of these terms is pre-existing and based in the mind.” Thus this venerable man says quite clearly that these ideas are mere possibilities until the terms are understood. Finally, the fact that even the smallest infants are credited with faith by the theologians is no obstacle, although faith requires some knowledge, and this knowledge has to be actual [i.e., not potential]. For faith is not the work of nature. But we are here concerned with a natural effect that can be demonstrated with the light of reason, and that need not be explained through obscure and meaningless words. Therefore, just as a physician who denies that a virgin can give birth does not in that respect contradict a theologian who says that the virgin Mary did give birth, so the philosopher, when he denies that there is natural knowledge from birth, does not contradict the theologian who asserts that faith is awakened in infants by supranatural means from birth. Rather, this philosopher, if he is a Christian and sees Scripture telling us that infants have faith, does not allow himself to be drawn into the debate of the Scholastics, whether this children’s faith is an act or a potential or an ability, but will think roughly as follows:
Holy God, you have said in your word that you have not manifested the mysteries of faith to the wise of this world, but to the foolish and those who believe that all of wisdom is of no use in understanding even the smallest point of the mysteries of faith; you have through your elected vessel reminded humans that in matters of faith they should not allow themselves to be deceived by philosophy. See, almost the entire world has come to the point that it wants to measure the incomprehensible mysteries of faith with some sort of Scholastic theology, which is nothing other than a chaotic mixture of reason with your revelation. But help me
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to prefer the authority of your word to the authority of humans, however great they may be, and if I see in matters pertaining to faith your words before me, which are either wholly clear or can be interpreted by reference to other parallel passages, help me to believe these by simply assenting to them, even though I do not understand how the predicate is connected to the subject, and not to try to express your ineffable mysteries with metaphysical distinctions or other useless subtleties of this kind. Therefore, if your word teaches me that infants, who do not have the use of reason, believe in Christ, I believe this, even though I cannot form a distinct concept of this for myself, because I know that your word does not lie. But I do not know what this “faculty” [habitus] is which the Scholastics, who want to explain Scripture from philosophy, intruded into Scripture, and which they insist is neither a potential nor an act. And so, while they want to be understood clearly, the effect is that they themselves do not understand what they want, and nor do others who hear them… .
§47. In the same chapter 2, §65, I aim to prove that divine positive law must be derived from divine revelation and I refer to the passage by the Apostle, Romans 7:7: “I would not have known that concupiscence is a sin if the law had not told me: thou shalt not desire.” This passage I interpreted to mean that the Apostle here professes that he, if left to the devices of his natural reason, would not know that concupiscence is a sin unless the divine positive law had told him: thou shalt not desire. But later I noticed that not all of the theologians shared that opinion, that this law, “thou shalt not desire,” is positive law, but some considered it to be natural. Based on this opinion one could argue against my doctrine as follows: the law on concupiscence rests on creation itself, and this requires from us that we are as we have been created, and that is without any desire for evil; therefore this precept is such that if God’s justice and truthfulness are to remain intact he cannot do anything other than demand that man is such as he in his holy counsel had destined him and made him to be. For the law on which creation rests is natural, not positive. From what has been said it follows that the difference we looked for between natural and positive law in §64 does not cover the whole question, because the knowledge of natural law must be sought from right reason, positive law, however,
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from revelation. This would be valid if our reason itself had not been obscured: while it recognizes and detests the more obvious vices, it does not extend to the deeper and more subtle ones, which it would, however, have recognized equally well in the state of innocence, even though we would have known the positive laws only from revelation. And therefore it is the result of the corruption of nature, which the Apostle himself deplores, that he does not even realize his own illness except from the renewed promulgation of the law, etc. But though I placed this periphrasis of the passage from Paul into my Institutes, I did not do so without consulting our theologians, and above all I looked to the words of the late Scherzer in his Systema theologiae, locus 7, §9, page 154: “Innate concupiscence is prohibited in the Decalogue; therefore it is a sin. In Romans 7:7, concupiscence is discussed, the lawlessness of which cannot be recognized on the basis of the law of nature.”75 And if you compare these words of the blessed Scherzer with my Institutes or my exegesis of this passage, I am certain that I will not have diverged from his meaning in the least way, and that this doctrine is one that will not cause any unrest in the church, even though other theologians favor a contrary opinion. I do not want to argue with them, but it does seem to me that—leaving other things aside—this disagreement can be easily resolved by distinguishing between the law of nature in the primordial state and that in the state after the fall, so that the objection against our opinion is relevant to the former, but we, following the blessed Scherzer, speak of the latter. And I believe that with this distinction the dispute can be resolved better than if you distinguish as follows: it is one thing for something to be prohibited by natural law, another for the prohibition to be recognized by reason alone in its present state. For, first, Scherzer not only says that the sin of concupiscence cannot be recognized by reason, but he says notably that it cannot be known from the law of nature. Second, I suspect that this distinction can be attacked on the basis of the passage from Paul, Romans 2, verses 14 and 15. While this testifies that the laws of nature are inscribed on the