Christian Economic Ethics: History and Implications

8 The Medieval Period

8 The Medieval Period Thomas Aquinas and Natural Law Ethics Introduction The medieval period in Christian history includes many thinkers and a number of different perspectives. The limitation of space here requires us to focus our treatment on only one of the most important of these figures, Thomas Aquinas. One indication of the importance of this man is that when scholars today refer to “Thomas,” it’s clear that they don’t mean Thomas Hobbes, Paine, Jefferson, or Pynchon. They mean Thomas Aquinas. This chapter will present an overview of Aquinas’s ethical theory, based on the natural law. The next chapter will examine four economic problems he addresses with this approach: property ownership, the just price, slavery, and usury. All have important implications for economic life in the twenty-first century. Thomas A Thomas Aquinas quinas Thomas was born to a noble family in Aquino, in southern Italy, about the year 1225. From early childhood, his parents educated him at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino and wanted him to become a Benedictine monk. However, he eventually prevailed in his own desire to become a member of the Order of Preachers, a Dominican priest. He was educated at the University of Paris and taught in Rome and Paris for many years. Thomas was an enthusiastic student of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, combining that secular perspective with the Christian view of God as Creator and ruler of the universe. Although Thomas was critical of those who adopted too much of the pagan philosopher’s worldview, his own 123 work was condemned by the Archbishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, for holding “heretical” pagan ideas. History vindicated Aquinas, as his theology became broadly influential and he was declared a saint within a half century of his death and within two centuries a doctor of the church, a status on a par with Ambrose and Augustine. Although he died before he reached the age of fifty, Thomas’s many writing have set the course of much of Roman Catholic theology over the seven centuries since he died. Natural law ethics Thomas Aquinas developed a method for thinking through moral issues that has remained central to Roman Catholic moral theology for seven hundred years: the ethics of the natural law. As we saw in Chapter 6, several of the church Fathers drew heavily on the Stoic tradition of natural law—and the treatment of “natural facts”—in their teaching and preaching about how Christians ought to live their lives. Aquinas takes a large step forward in developing these notions by combining the philosophical framework of Aristotle with the Christian conviction that God is Creator of all that exists. (In fact, Thomas’s debt to Aristotle is so great that he simply refers to him as “the Philosopher.”) In doing so, Thomas proposes an ethic of virtue—arguing that only virtuous behavior is ultimately fulfilling for humans, precisely because it corresponds to human nature, as God intended it in creation. In arguing that human reason unaided by biblical revelation can understand the natural law, Thomas does not reject that revelation. He insists that God’s grace daily acts to “perfect” nature and that the Christian must always stand in faith in daily life. Nonetheless, because this volume focuses on economic life and because Thomas treats economic issues such as property, the just price, and usury without explicit recourse to these theological resources, we will focus here on his natural law ethics. To understand this perspective, we will look in turn at Thomas’s view of eternal law, natural law, and human law and then we’ll also review his treatment of “the divine law,” that is, God’s law as revealed in the Scriptures. As we shall see, Thomas has a thoroughly theistic view of existence and yet develops a powerful method for addressing moral problems that is based in human reason, a method available even to those who do not have divine revelation. 124 | Christian Economic Ethics THE ETERNAL LAW Whether the eternal law is a sover Whether the eternal law is a sovereign plan existing in God? eign plan existing in God? Just as in every artisan there pre-exists a plan of the things that are made by his art, so too in every governor there must pre-exist the plan of the order of those things that are to be done by those who are subject to his government...