The Authority of the Divine Law: A Study in Tannaitic Midrash by Yosef Bronstein (review)

Spinoza's positive account of the divine law is an extremely radical one, almost uniquely so in the context of seventeenth‐century debate. God is not a legislator who issues decrees and punishments, and prescriptions only become laws when they are ordained by a human agent. Human beings must therefore take responsibility for the laws under which they live. This chapter analyses Spinoza's complex defence of this position, tracing his distinctions between divine law, divine natural law, and revealed law. It also explains how the Treatise employs these resources to defend a number of controversial claims. Some of these are positive—for example, philosophy rather than Scripture yields the clearest understanding of what divine law prescribes. Many of them are negative—for example, Spinoza's account of law is designed to undermine the providentialism around which Calvinist theology is organized. Here we see Spinoza articulating the practical implications of his own philosophy.

In part II, we examined Jewish writings to the end of the first century CE that navigate the incongruity between Greco-Roman and biblical conceptions of divine law. For the most part, these writings accept and work within the framework set by the Greco-Roman dichotomy of divine law vs. human law. Philo and Paul are two of the clearest examples of writers who employ this dichotomy and seek to assimilate Mosaic Law to one or the other of its terms. They arrive at radically different conclusions as to whether the Mosaic Law can be classified as divine law or positive human law, and they rely on different elements of biblical divine law discourse to support their particular classification. Philo identified the Mosaic Law with the divine natural law of Greco-Roman (primarily Stoic) tradition. Paul differentiated Mosaic Law from the universal law written on the heart....

This chapter lays out ten different discourses and practices of law in ancient Greek and Roman sources (referred to as G-R 1, 2, etc. throughout the book). A critical feature of all of these discourses and practices is their presumption of a dichotomy between the unwritten natural or divine law on the one hand and positive human law on the other. Thus, all Greco-Roman constructions of divine law begin with a common premise: divine law and human law possess different and usually diametrically opposed traits. The divine or natural law—in addition to being unwritten—is generally portrayed as rational and universal, corresponding to truth, conducive to virtue, and static or unchanging. By contrast, human positive law takes the form of concrete rules and prohibitions that can be set in writing. It does not of necessity possess any of the characteristics that are inherent in the very concept of divine law: it will contain arbitrary elements that do not correspond with truth, and it must be enforced coercively; it is particular and subject to variation, and its ability to produce virtue is a matter of considerable debate.

This chapter explores the rabbinic concept of divine law on the specific question of truth. It examines a wide range of rabbinic texts that shed light on a constellation of questions addressing the divine law's relationship to truth: Is truth in the form of a mind-independent, objective measure associated with the divine law in rabbinic texts, and if so, in what way? Is biblical divine law understood to be identical with or to conform to truth—whether an eternal, unchanging, and universal rational truth as for Philo, or empirically verifiable or divinely revealed ontological reality as for some Qumran writings, or some other standard or conception of truth? Alternatively, is divine law divorced from truth, and if so, does the divorce of truth and divine law undermine the latter's claim to authority and divinity? Finding the answers to these questions is complicated by certain structural dissimilarities between biblical divine law and Greco-Roman conceptions of divine law.

Natural Law and Friendship with God Scott Roniger NEAR THE BEGINNING of book VII of the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle says that the function (ergon) of the political art (politikēs) is the making of friendship (poiēsai philian).1 Near the start of book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics, he says, "It seems too that friendship holds cities together and that lawgivers (nomothetai) are more serious about it than about justice. For oneness of mind (homonoia) seems to resemble friendship, and lawgivers aim at this especially."2 The legislator possessed of the political art and prudence to legislate well for the common good has the natural end, as legislator, of forming friendships amongst his citizens by ordering the polity in such a way as to make it fertile soil for the growth of oneness of mind and life characteristic of friends. Saint Thomas Aquinas, devoted student of Aristotle that he was, argues that "every law aims [tendit] at establishing the friendship either of men with one another or of man with God."3 [End Page 237] Aquinas articulates the end (finis) of law in various ways: the common good, communal happiness, virtue, and, as we have just seen, friendship.4 These various descriptions of the end of law add nuance to his treatment of law, and they are not unrelated to each other. I wish to suggest that friendship has a kind of governing role over the other descriptions of the end of law. The common good of a polity, its communal happiness in the life of virtue, is founded upon and culminates in the various forms of familial, utilitarian, civic, and virtuous friendships that excellent law makes possible and encourages. Near the beginning of book I of De libero arbitrio, St. Augustine (through Evodius) distinguishes between the temporal, man-made law of a given polity and the eternal law upon which it is based.5 Aquinas, devoted student of St. Augustine that he was, clearly distinguishes human and divine law, and he correlates friendship amongst men with human law and friendship between man and God with divine law. "For just as the main intention [intentio principalis] of human law is to establish friendship of men with one another, so too the intention of divine law is mainly to establish man's friendship with God."6 Human law aims at the constitution of human friendship, and divine law aims at the constitution of friendship between human beings and God. With this framework in place, we raise the question that we wish to discuss in this paper: In light of what has been said about human law and divine law, what can be said about the natural law? Does the natural law aim at friendship amongst men themselves or friendship between men and God?7 Developing an [End Page 238] adequate answer to this question will require us to raise and respond to related philosophical questions and, in the final section of this paper, to go beyond philosophical thinking by reflecting theologically on human friendship with God in light of God's revelation.8 I. Natural Law as Divine Law The first step in answering our question is to determine whether the natural law is a human law or a divine law. To this end, it is important to recall Aristotle's distinction between immanent and transitive actions and to see that legislating is a transitive action. Immanent actions, such as seeing and thinking, remain "within" the agent, while transitive actions, such as building and cutting, "stretch out" from the agent and terminate in something external to him. The activity of legislating originates with the active thinking and directing decisions of the legislator and terminates in the shaped thinking and directed actions of the citizens subject to him. As Aquinas says, law can exist in two ways: "In one way, as in the measurer and ruler. And since this is proper to reason, law in this sense is in reason alone. In another way, as in the ruled and measured. And this is how law exists in [End Page 239] all the things that are inclined in any way by any kind of law."9 Although it...

For most of us today a law means a rule that is enacted by some legislature. If the law proves to be a flaw, then a new law would replace it. Earlier a law was a command which could not have been replaced by another law at will. In this we can detect the difference between the ancient and the modern understanding of law and law-making. The explanation must be sought by pointing out the relativity of law in our modern conception of law compared to ancient perception of how a law must be treated once framed – it has the force of a command. In what follows the three aspects of law – the divine, natural and positive laws – will be discussed with the assumption that the dominant idea of law today is based on the conception of the relativity of law which fits most the newly emerging third concept of nature that tends to suit modern man’s need to oust both religion and philosophy. This third meaning of nature is best expressed by the concept of virtual reality. It is a covering term for all the arts of modern man that he has been creating by modern sciences and technological developments. Thus the state of religion (divine law) and the state of nature (natural law) are to be understood by exploring the state of modern politics which provides the actual conditions of modern virtual reality, and presupposes the dominance of the relativity of laws.

The Law as a Policy Aim in Jagiellon Poland Over the course of history, on countless occasions the law had been treated as an instrument for conducting policy. Such is also the contemporary understanding of the function of law in democratic countries. Yet, during the Jagiellon period the law was a means, not an end. It was defined in absolute terms, as a desirable ideal state for which one should strive. Consequently, it was politics that served as a means for the realization of the goal, which was the law, and not conversely. Moreover, the view that civil law should be in accord with divine law and natural law, was widely accepted. Consequently, creating new laws required an axiological justification. Among the goals of the constitutions passed by Parliament, the legislators enumerated, among others, the wellbeing of citizens, peace, good government, order, justice. At the same time, in the opinion of the gentry, it was the privileges which in many cases constituted a departure from the common law and served as a means of realization of one’s immediate political goals, this playing a highly negative role. This type of policy was curbed by the limitations imposed by the concept of common law perceived as superordinate over particular and individual rights, and at the same time understood as wise law that was in accord with the divine and natural law. In its relation to politics, common law was therefore perceived as a goal to which all group and individual rights used in the form of political instruments should be subordinated. The Polish common law which had been shaped during the first Jagiellon rulers, became the fundamental goal of the policy of the Polish state during the reign of the last representatives of this dynasty.

Chapter 5 offers a philosophical presentation of the logic of law first through an examination of Franz Rosenzweig's New Thinking as an extension of F.W.J. Schelling's theology of divine freedom. Schelling's theology introduces philosophically the link between divine freedom and law earlier introduced in the Biblical analysis of God. Rosenzweig's essay, “The New Thinking,” deepens the analysis of the nexus between divine freedom and divine law and articulates the impact of both on freedom of human action and knowledge of the world. This chapter shows therefore how the logic of the law introduces a paradigm shift in analyses of how human desire relates to power and the production of knowledge about the world.

It is characteristic of non-instrumental views that the content of law is, in some sense, given; that law is immanent; that the process of law-making is not a matter of creation but one of discovery; that law is not the product of human will; that law has a kind of autonomy and internal integrity; that law is, in some sense, objectively determined. In the Medieval period in Europe, two distinct but commingled types of law possessed these characteristics. The first type was natural law and divine law in the Catholic tradition – the Ten Commandments, for example. Divine and natural law were thought to be binding upon and to be infused in the positive law that governed society. They were pre-given by God and were the product of God's will, unalterable by man. They were objective in that they constituted absolute moral and legal truths that were binding on all, providing the content of and setting limits upon positive law. These laws and principles were disclosed through revelation (mainly scripture) and discerned through the application of reason implanted in man by God. As medieval scholar Walter Ullmann put it, “the law itself as the external regulator of society was based upon faith. Faith and law stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect effect.” The second type was customary law. Everyday life during the Medieval period was governed by customary law, or, more accurately, by overlapping and sometimes conflicting regimes of customary law: feudal law, the law of the manor, Germanic customary law, residues of Roman law, trade customs, and local customs.

Invincible ignorance is defined as the state in which one cannot overcome his ignorance, despite one’s utmost diligence, and hence cannot be blamed for the acts resulting from that circumstance. It is particularly relevant with regard to law and principles that one is bound to know. The main problem with the admission that such a state may occur results from the difficulty of assessing the subjective element present in such a state: How can we know that one applied his diligence to the utmost extent? This notion emerged in the 12th century. But while medieval theologians elaborated such a notion, they nonetheless stressed that in reality no one could be guiltlessly ignorant of natural and divine law. The arrival of the Spaniards to the Americas triggered the awareness that entire nations could, in fact, be invincibly ignorant of Christianity. The Spanish theologians then started to use this notion, admitting the existence of invincible ignorance of some principles of divine and natural law. Their argumentative strategy rested on emphasising the subjective element of invincible ignorance. In this article, I examine Vitoria’s Relectio de Indis against the medieval doctrinal background. I also analyse Vitoria’s, Domingo de Soto’s and Juan Gil de Nava’s unedited lectures on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae as well as the works by Matias de Paz, Juan Lopez de Palacios Rubios, Juan de Celaya and Bartolome de Las Casas.

l.6~ BOO:J{ Rll}VIEWS 'the Theory of Morality. By ALAN DoNAGAN. The University of Chicago Press, 1977. Pp. xvi +278. That religion and morality iuay be conceptualized as genuinely distinct entities is hardly all that novel a notion, as the long natural-law tradition in Western thought bears ample witness. The potential problem posed for moral theory· by this distinction may be obscured by the clear and obvious fact that functioning moral traditions tend to be associated with religious traditions and that most people's ordinary moral judgments therefore reflect the general influence of whatever composite religious and moral tradition they happen to be a part, more often than not by inheritance. In secular society, however, the problematic element in the distinction between religion and morality has manifested itself with a vengeance as it were and has taken the form of· the conflicts between the inherited moral tradition, which in the West is, of course, Christian, and various systems of philoophical ethics which seem so contrary to that tradition. It is this situation and its attendant confusion concerning matters moral which serves, so to speak, as the basic background for this book, the stated purpose of which is to determine, first, what a theory of morality is a theory of and, second, what a philosophical theory of morality would be. With regard to the first of these issues, the author, whose goal after all is a philosophical system which will do justice to traditional morality (and to do so without the problems associated with that other noteworthy philosophical attempt at this, namely intuitionism) , is quite clearly concerned with conceiving morality in terms true to what it has historically meant to moralists themselves, that is, " a standard by which systems of mores, actual and possible, were to be judged and ·by which everybody ought to live, no matter what the mores of his neighbors might be" (p. 1). This way of approaching the subject naturally leads him to consider the contribution made to moral theory by the Stoics, whom the author sees as having been the first to have formulated. a reasonably clear conception of morality understood as a standard for judging systems of mores. Of particular importance , therefore,-especially in view of the actual moral traditions, the Jewish and the Christian, with which the book is most concerned and to which repeated references are made-is the Stoic assumption that there is a divine law, which expresses divine reason and for the ascertaining of which law human reason is, in principle at least, adequate. Thi~ divine law can, moreover, be distinguished from all other divine commands which do not express divine law, in this sense of divine law, and which are knowable, therefore, only by revelation. It is in this Stoic spirit that the author rejects both Anscombe's contention that morality can intelligibly be treated as a system of law only by presupposing a divine lawgiver and also her inference that those who deny BOOK REVIEWS 168 the existence of such a divine lawgiver, if they choose to discuss ethical topics, should follow Aristotle's example and do it by way of a theory of the virtues. In response, the author' argues that the conception of morality as virtue is not really an alternative to the conception of morality as law and sees a counterpart "precept of moral law" for each "precept of moral virtue." Moreover, as undoubtedly befits an approach based on such manifestly universalistic principles, he praises the Stoics for having conceived the divine law as valid for all men in virtue of their common rationality in contrast to Aristotle, for example, who " did not succeed in distinguishing moral virtue as such, the virtue of a man as a man, from political virtue, the virtue of a citizen of a good city " (p. 4) . Like Stoicism (although less obviously so, according to Donagan), Judaism and Chris~ianity also distinguished between the divine law, which is binding on all and is in principle at least ascertainable by all, and other, more particular divine commandments which are binding only on some. Obviously, it is these inherited moral traditions which constitute our common morality and with which, therefore...

Introduction 1. Life and Times: Childhood - Civil War - Education - Historical context - Influences - Patrons and friends - Works 2. Method: Definition - Experience - Experimentation - Game Theoretic Interpretations - Geometry - Logic - Observation - Reasoning - Resolutive-compositive method 3. Language: Absurdity - Definitions - Indexicals - Meaning - Names and Universals - Ratiocination - Rhetoric - Uses and abuses 4. Political Philosophy: Absolutism - Authorization and Alienation - Commonwealth - Duties of soverseigns and subjects - Equality - Laws of nature - Interest - Liberty - Monarchy and other forms of government - Obligation - Parental authority lies naturally in the mother - Private judgment - Power - Resistance and non-resistance - Rights - Social Contract - Sovereign - State of nature - Subjects - War and Peace 5. Moral Philosophy: Appetite and Aversion - Deliberation - Desire - Duty - Egoism - Equality - Fear - Folly - Good and evil - Human nature - Law of nature - Manners - Prudence - Obligation - Right of nature - Right and wrong - Self-preservation - Small morals, distinguished - Virtue - Wisdom 6. Religion: Anglicanism - Ecclesiology - Episcopacy - Erastianism - God - Hell - Heresy - Independency - Kingdom of Darkness - Miracles - Mohametans - Natural Religion - Presbyterianism - Puritanism - Revelation - Roman Catholicism - Salvation - Scripture - Superstition - Things Indifferent - Toleration - Trinity - Worship / 7. Law: Adjudication - Casuistry - Civil law - Divine law - Educative function of law - Equity - Good laws, defined - International law/ international relations - Judgment - Legislation - Natural law - Positive law - Revenge - Sin and Law - Crime and Punishment 8. Science and Philosophy: Body - Cause - Liberty - Materialism - Motion - Necessity and Contingency - Optics - Passions - Plenism - Reasoning, instrumental - Space and Time - Squaring the circle 9. Epistemology: Belief - History and historical knowledge - Knowledge - Opinion - Sensation and perception / 10. Lessons and Unsolved Mysteries: Hobbes's legacy - Hobbes and liberalism - Right to revolution - Does Hobbes's philosophy presuppose atheism? - What political forms can count as sovereign? - Is Hobbesian sovereignty obsolete in a world of global independence? Bibliography Index

This article introduces the definition and connotation of the term Natural Law and Natural Moral Law. It also explains briefly the important viewpoints of the Chinese and Western philosophy and theology. The article especially cites Thomas Aquinas' view on the gradations of law among the 'Eternal Law', 'Natural Law'. 'Divine Law' and 'Human Law' and his theories on common moral and the transcendent moral. This article also explains the stand points of Ockham, Martin Luther and John Calvin, in either objecting or amending the theological aspect of the theory of Natural Moral Law. It also touches on the ethical studies of the segregation between moral and religions during ancient Greece and the Enlightenment Project. Secondly, there is a discussion on Buddhism's perspective of the Natural Law -the Law of Dependent Origination that explains that all phenomena arises and ceases according to causes and conditions and that our life is filled with ignorance and self-love (ego desire). The 'self-love' that everyone is equipped can in fact be cultivated into an opposite direction so that one develops a sense of sharing the feelings of others by putting oneself in others' shoes. The practice of putting oneself in others' shoes, the interrelationship among the dependent originated phenomena and the equanimity of the dharma nature of dependent origination, are the three major principles of Moral Law encompassed in the Natural Law. From the perspective of Buddhism, moral norms and moral principles all originate from Natural Moral Law. Even the norms formulated by the Buddha are still founded on Natural Moral Law to help practitioners develop wholesome moral habits during the process of practice. Moral and meritorious joy are not the apocalyptic or kindness bestowed by a god. According to Buddhism's theory of consistency in virtues and merits, the gods reap the merits of being reborn in heaven according to the virtuous deeds that they have done in the past. The practice of wholesome deeds with the hope of gaining good rewards; has its relative values in preventing one from doing bad and try to be good. However this can only lead to a limited degree of meritorious reward. We should not practice virtues just for the sake of gaining meritorious rewards. We should practice upholding precepts with the mind of putting ourselves in others positions, practice giving with the realisation of emptiness in three aspects (namely, realise that the donor, recipient and the item that is being donated are empty in nature) or non-attachment to the four forms. In this way we can pave our way to the noble stage.

'Old Law' and 'Divine Law' in the War

Starting from an analysis of chapter 4 of Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus the relation between ‘Divine Law’ and Spinoza’s claim that God cannot be a lawgiver is further examined. It is shown that Spinoza’s reinterpretation of the notion of ‘Divine Law’ as the rule of life leading to human perfection, that is, the intellectual knowledge and love of God is not consistent with some of the central tenets of the Ethics; that, as opposed to what is claimed by Spinoza himself, it is irrelevant to political philosophy; and that it mainly serves as a smoke screen for the denial of God’s legislative will, which in the seventeenth century was associated with atheism.