God and the Natural Law: A Rereading of Thomas Aquinas by Fulvio Di Blasi (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 497 God and the Natural Law: A Rereading ofThomas Aquinas. By FULVIO Dr BLASI. Translated by DAVID THUNDER. South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2006. Pp. 264. $37.50 (cloth). ISBN 1-58731-351-0. Fulvio Di Blasi's God and the Natural Law is a penetrating inquiry into the theological foundation ofThomistic natural law. The book is written in response to a trend among contemporary natural-lawtheorists towards a theory of natural law without God. Di Blasi rightly notes the difficulty with this position: "Natural law without God easily becomes a lex naturalis without lex" (68). According to Di Blasi, the main features of this trend are most clearly delineated in the "neoclassical theory of natural law" proposed by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Contrary to the neoclassical natural-law theorists, Di Blasi aims to show the central importance of God in the natural law. After an introduction highlighting current trends among contemporary natural-law theories, chapter 1 examines in detail the neoclassical critique of the conventional or traditional reading of Thomas's natural-law doctrine. The conventional view, according to the critique of the neoclassical theorists, derives the content of the natural law from mere facts of nature which, of themselves, are unable to yield any sense of duty or moral obligation. Hence, conventional natural-law theorists attempt to locate the source of moral obligation in an extrinsic, arbitrarily imposed, divine command which falls prey to the "naturalistic fallacy"-the supposed fallacy of deriving an ought from an is. The neoclassical theorists instead posit principles of practical reason which are derived neither from mere facts of nature nor from the divine will, but from our primordial intuitions of basic values. Of course, the neoclassical theorists do not deny that God is the ultimate source of moral duty; rather, their claim is that moral obligation is knowable apart from any knowledge of God as a creator and providential governor. Hence, they effectively banish God from ethics and from the doctrine of natural law (neoclassical theorists find evidence for this position in Aquinas by appealing to the fact that for St. Thomas the being of God is not self-evident). Thus the contemporary trend towards natural law without God, Di Blasi points out, goes hand-in-hand with a trend towards separating ethics and metaphysics. This sets up Di Blasi's own account of natural law in chapters 2 and 3. In chapter 2, Di Blasi turns to an analysis of the necessary theological presuppositions of Aquinas's natural-law doctrine. His aim is to show that the natural law depends upon a natural knowledge of God (not only known by means of unaided human reason, but also accessible in some way to all men) and the natural inclination to love God "before oneself and with a greater love." Di Blasi begins by showing that for St. Thomas natural moral goodness is defined by conformity to the divine will since the very essence of moral action presupposes that man wants something because he knows that God wants it. Indeed, the notion of moral goodness as conformity to the divine will is implied in the very meaning of natural law as an extrinsic principle of human action. Natural 498 BOOK REVIEWS law not only pertains to human reason; it presupposes an authority capable of imposing its will upon other subjects. The Thomistic notion of moral goodness and the account of natural law as extrinsic principle of action, however, presuppose that we have a natural knowledge of God apart from divine revelation. Indeed, Di Blasi maintains that for Aquinas "man's moral sense is not only inseparable from his sense of God, but coextensive with it" (86). He goes on carefully to refute the claim of the neoclassical natural-law theorists that God is, for the most part, unknown to man since his existence is not self-evident. Di Blasi argues that for St. Thomas the non-self-evidence of God should not be taken as a denial of a natural knowledge of God, but as a rejection of St. Anselm's argument for the existence of God which begins with the idea of God as that-than-which...