Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations. Christian Thomasius
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§71. God holds power over man because he is his creator.
§72. But I will demonstrate from the most solid proofs that God wants to exercise this power over man and that he wants at the same time to take care of the affairs of men. These proofs are all based in the first principle that it is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time.
§73. (1) God is the creator of man. This assertion depends on the definition of God since we have demonstrated his existence above.
§74. (2) God therefore wanted man to be a rational animal. This is evident from the definition of man.
§75. (3) This means that God wanted man to live according to some norm, or law. This, again, flows from the definition of man, because it does not conform to the rational essence of man, to live without a law.
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§76. (4) Furthermore, God wanted man to act with love and fear according to a prescribed norm or law. I prove this from the definitions of law and obligation which I have provided above.
§77. Thus, God also wanted to take care of the affairs of humans. This flows from the definitions of love and fear, because someone who is not concerned with my affairs would be feared and loved in vain.
§78. I believe there can be no room for doubt here and there is no need for further explanation, since I have said that “a rational animal cannot live without a law.”
§79. Because beasts do not have a law, it does at first seem to contradict the excellence of man that he lives bound by a law, since it is inappropriate to restrict the freedom of a more excellent creature, but to concede liberty in every way to a less noble one.
§80. Yet the matter is obvious concerning beasts. They do live according to a norm infused into them by the supremely wise creator, but they cannot act according to an external norm because they are destitute of all liberty of action.
§81. Thus, when natural liberty is predicated of beasts, it does not denote a faculty of action implanted in them, but a part of the earth granted to them by nature and without consideration of human ownership, in which they exercise the locomotive powers of their bodies.
§82. Yet man has free will and is therefore able to direct his actions according to an external norm.
§83. But it is clear that he must put this ability into practice if he compares his nature with that of the other animals with respect to the body and the soul.
§84. Concerning the body he detects a greater weakness, when it comes to preserving himself without the help of other humans, than in brute
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animals. This weakness is so great that he would necessarily perish if other humans were not under an obligation to come to his help.
§85. Concerning the soul, insofar as he is corrupt in this state after the fall, he sees a greater depraved tendency to harm others. This is the result of several effects which are absent in beasts, even according to the opinion of the Peripatetics. If these people were not coerced by the fear of a greater evil, humankind would perish.
§86. But more than anything else, if man considers his soul, insofar as it is still right in this imperfect state, he will notice that he does not have a soul implanted in him only for the purpose of preserving the body (as are the souls of beasts), but one which consists of faculties that are stimuli to a fear of the Deity and to a social life. He notices that among humans there is a huge diversity of talents and inclinations which does not exist among beasts, and that this not only requires direction by a law to prevent the disturbance of peace by it, but that it [law] requires some sort of order and norm insofar as it helps to bring about peace and tranquillity among humans.
§87. Those who deny the principles that have so far been put forward concerning God are called theoretical atheists; you can divide these into crass and subtle. The former I call those who claim that there is no God. The latter are those who either claim that God does not care about the affairs of men or who say that he cares about them in such a way that they leave man no liberty of action, that is, who invent a sort of Stoic fate.
§88. For just as he who denies the existence of God destroys the foundation of all morality, so are all moral precepts similarly in vain if you accept those two last assertions.
§89. For if God does not take care of the affairs of humans, there is no ruler, and there will be nobody who must be obeyed.
§90. And if everything is directed by fate, there will be no obligation and no fear.
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§91. For if by fate we mean God himself, it is in vain that he is feared and loved if I cannot acquire his love or avoid his anger.
§92. If by fate we mean something other than God, he is feared and loved in vain because he cannot make me happy and cannot punish me.
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§1. The structure of our argument demands that we learn about the main points of natural law and of divine positive law. And we shall start with natural law.
§2. By the first principle of natural law we should not understand the first practical principle, or the first principle of jurisprudence or of jurisprudence in general, insofar as it is distinct from natural and revealed jurisprudence. For by this first principle we mean, or certainly should mean, a proposition that comprehends all other precepts of natural law under a common axiom—one, so to speak, which presupposes the two other, more general axioms, that God and a ruler [imperans] must be obeyed.
§3. Thus, there will be three requisites, according to which, like a touchstone, we shall examine a principle of this kind. These are that it is (1) true, (2) adequate, (3) evident.
§4. I say true; that is, it must not contain any false proposition.
§5. Adequate; that is, this proposition truly contains all precepts of natural law within itself, and no other precepts than those of natural law.
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§6. Evident; that is, it can be shown from the first practical principle, abstracting from revelation, that this is the divine will, and the link between it and the conclusions is evident and tangible.
§7. Perhaps you are laughing at such a circumstantial apparatus, and secretly you are delighted because you think you have with little effort found what we are looking for. What, you think, is this other than Do that which necessarily conforms to the rational nature of man, and omit that which is repugnant to it. We have already inserted this into our definition of natural law above, deriving it from the principle of noncontradiction. Thus its truth is clear, as are its adequacy and its evidence.
§8. But restrain your joy. You should have remembered that I had earlier promised a more detailed discourse on the conformity with the rational nature of man. I had in mind this chapter. In fact everyone makes a lot of noise about right reason, but when they are asked what right reason is and what the conformity with the rational nature of man is, then they are stuck. The connection of this principle with the first practical principle is indeed evident, but the connection of the conclusions with the principle itself is obscure. My complaint about the circumscription that everybody gives, however, is that truth is hidden away and thus, together with truth, adequacy and evidence are concealed.
§9. This was the subject of controversy for a