Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations. Christian Thomasius
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have to stop here or we must see how we can extricate ourselves from this difficulty. What if we said that this state of perfection was known to pagans, too? Indeed, there are countless testimonies of Greek and Latin philosophers and poets to this effect.
§14. Yet I fear that this will not be enough. Pagans knew of the state of innocence but only had a very confused notion of it. They knew about
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it, not from the dictate of reason, however, but from their contacts with the Jews.
§15. Therefore, we need to try another approach. Perhaps we Christians are privileged over the pagans. They were not allowed to interfere in theology because they only taught jurisprudence. But we go further, for what we teach is Christian jurisprudence.
§16. But here again the theologians guarding the borders of their discipline will tell us to retreat and not to climb over the fence that separates our discipline from theology. The term Christian jurisprudence will be suspect to them, because if by this we mean a discipline that borrows its principles of proof from theology, it will be vain for us to try to cover up our trespassing with a few slogans, especially as far as natural jurisprudence is concerned. But if we restrict our proofs to theological matters, our Christian jurisprudence will not deserve its name any more than, for example, arithmetic is a Christian arithmetic because its principles allow us to calculate how many measures of wine filled the vessels at Canaan.18
§17. Therefore, we halt, especially as we know a way of avoiding this problem. For just as arithmetic, for example, does not encroach on theology, even though it applies its own principles to examples from sacred history, so we will not sin if we apply our principles to the state of innocence. It is one thing to borrow principles of demonstration from another discipline, another to apply these principles to an object taken from another discipline.
§18. And this is especially true of history, which, whether it is sacred or profane, is used by all four faculties.
§19. Thus, it is permitted to talk about man’s state of innocence, but only on the basis of sacred history, for the traditions of the pagans or the rabbis in that respect are mere trifles.
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§20. This state of innocence was perfect since in it man was created in the image of God. Therefore, the miseries which accompany the corrupt state today were absent.
§21. The human body was certainly endowed with the same members as a healthy person is today, and there was the same distinction of the sexes. And the members of the body would have been directed by the soul, immediately from creation in the case of Adam and immediately from birth in his children. We are not really concerned about the size of humans in the state of innocence since that adds nothing directly to human perfection.
§22. Moreover, man would never have died or fallen ill. He would always have enjoyed the most wholesome food and drink. Digestion would have been excellent. Poison would not have harmed. Whether man would have eaten meat in that state is an idle rather than a useful question. I believe he could have but cannot imagine that he would have wanted to.
§23. The sense organs were, as far as we can imagine, perfect and completely reliable. There would have been the pleasures of the senses, but subject to laws. Thus, there would have been the pleasure derived from touch in that it can be based on physical causes and anatomical principles, but not the kind of pleasure that causes man to lose self-control and is called lust. Humans would have enjoyed powers of locomotion immediately from birth, and these would not have been disturbed or impeded [by illness].
§24. Concerning his intellect, man would not only have been so perceptive in natural matters that he would have recognized at first sight the natures, qualities, and forms of created beings, which today are concealed from us or are barely perceived even after the most laborious research. In moral matters, too, man would have possessed supreme prudence in understanding law and its significance for his actions. Thus we must criticize the belief, defended by Grotius and others,19 that the Protoplasts were
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simple-minded and ignorant of vices rather than being endowed with the knowledge of virtue. This belief would also be an insult to God.
§25. And I do not see any reason why I should think differently about infants. They would indeed have been able from birth to reason with their parents on any subject whatsoever and would only have required a very brief period of time to be informed of the meaning of words which had their meaning from the imposition of man, not from the nature of the thing itself.
§26. The will enjoyed a great degree of liberty. Man could choose between sinning and not sinning but was more inclined to not sinning.
§27. Moreover, man in the state of innocence was not for one moment outside a society, but was joined immediately in a society with God, which was unequal but in which there was greater love and trust than can today exist in any paternal society.
§28. Man, however, by his nature desired something similar to himself, but did not find this similarity in God, because divine perfection was too distant from him, and thus it was not good that he was alone. Therefore God, in his supreme benignity, created a female companion for Adam, that is, Eve, whom he created from his rib (which yet was not superfluous in Adam, and its removal did not mutilate his body) and gave to Adam in matrimony.
§29. This society in the state of innocence was supremely equal, for only after the fall the power to command was transferred by God to the husband in order to punish the wife, and before the fall the common cause of subjection, imperfection, could not be attributed to Eve.
§30. The Apostle teaches that it does not befit wives to rule over their husbands, and he uses the argument that Adam was created earlier than Eve.20 But one cannot infer from this that in the state of innocence Adam commanded Eve because Eve could not command Adam.
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§31. The argument put forward by others, that the husband is superior to the wife in dignity and power because God intended to create the wife to complement the husband and not vice versa, establishes a priority of order but not a superiority of dignity or power, as can easily be shown with the example of a society of merchants.
§32. Such was the society of the state of innocence; would it have continued to exist if man had not lost his integrity? Some have thought so and denied that paternal society would have existed in the state of innocence. This has recently been argued among the English by Thomas Hobbes, who made bad use of his intellect, and among the Dutch by that horrible author Adriaan Beverland.21
§33. We not only defeat those authors with the words of the divine benediction: “go forth and multiply,” but rout them by pointing out the shape of the human body and the members destined for procreation.
§34. We believe, however, that this society too would have been equal, but would have differed from conjugal society in that children would have had to show reverence toward their parents not so much because of a priority of order, but because they received the benefit of procreation from them.
§35. For the debt of reverence does not presuppose the imperfection implied by subjection, and the cause of paternal rule, as will be shown in its appropriate place, would have been absent in the state of innocence.
§36. But the domestic society of masters and servants [servi] would certainly have been absent from the state of innocence. For the economic need, which introduced this society both on the part of the master and the slave, would not have existed in the state of innocence, not to mention the division of property.
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§37. And would there have been a commonwealth? That will become clear if we consider the structure of the commonwealth. It consists of the power to command, which is directed to preserving public peace and the sufficiency of all things. We have already shown that there was no political power in the state of innocence. And power would not have been necessary to obtain either peace (since there would have been no fear) or sufficiency (since there would have been no lack of anything).