This Augustinian sense of tragic limits is,
however, only one of the mainstreams
in Christian moral reflection upon the state. Another, quite
different and far more optimistic, is St. Thomas Aquinas.
For Aquinas the political order is part of the created order of nature,
not a result of the fall. To understand the human person is to understand
our being as essentially rational. Moreover to understand human as
reasoning beings means also to understand them as members of common or
public discourse. It is by talking together, Thomas held, that we
actualize our human potential for rationality. By talking together we
enter a world of shared meanings, and so come to order and make sense out
of our life.
For Aquinas the political order is that fundamental
teacher which
wins us out of our “idiocy” - which is to say, out of our
idiosyncratic aloneness. The state is a res
publica; it
provides us with “common things” by which and within which we
transcend our immediacy and carry on the common concourse of life. As
human beings we are reasoning beings, and as reasoning being we are
necessarily social beings.
The fall damaged but did not fundamentally destroy this underlying
capacity to reason, which means to reason together. Thomas maintained this
position by distinguishing (as Irenaeus had centuries before) between the
image of God (the imago Dei)
and the likeness of God (similitudo Dei)
- as first Gensis puts it, “in the image and likeness God created He
them.”
In the fall, Aquinas held, we lose the likeness of God (the so called
theological virtues) but not the image of God - which is our national
rational capacity, and includes the first principles of morality. Far more
than Augustine, Thomas stressed that it is reason that stands at the core
of human personality. And reason is social; it is actualized only in the
talking of it. Without this rational core, there can be no shared human
perception of things, no common valuings and, consequently no continuing
order or coherence within which the will can take hold, have an intention,
and follow through from means to ends. In sharp distinction from
Augustine, from Thomas perspective selfishness presupposes society, and
society presupposes a political order.
“It is natural for man,” Aquinas says,” to be a political and social
animal, even more so than all other animals, as the very needs of nature
indicate. For all other animals nature has prepared food, hair for
covering, teeth, horns, claws as means of defense, or at least speed of
flight. Man, on the other hand, was created without any natural provision
for these things. But instead of them all, he was endowed with reason, by
the use of which he could procure all these things for himself by the work
of his hands. For one man could not sufficiently provide for life,
unassisted. It is therefore, natural that man should live in the company
with his fellows.”
Self-interest, for Aquinas, if perceived accurately, carries us not to
individual selfishness but to the common good. Public order is what we
have in common; and it is what we have in common that blesses us.
This is Aquinas’ positive doctrine of the state. Now what if his hopes
for an international order? At least amongst Christian princes, his hopes
were considerable.
The civil law (ius civile)
of particular nations must hold itself accountable to the natural law (ius
naturale) or
“first principles of morality” which are available to all people
through rational reflection. But what is to be done where Christian
nations and rulers disagree as to the reasonable consequences upon their
practical activity of this higher natural law? There must be an
authoritative interpreter, one who does not normally interfere directly in
the affairs of state, but who upon extraordinary occasions, can and indeed
must take a direct hand to arbitrate authoritatively conflicting claims
for justice.
For Aquinas too, the rational agreement which can be secured amongst
humans - especially humans of diverse customs and political communities -
is fragmentary and precarious. It needs the firmer cement of authority.
Thomas was hopeful about the prospects for order amongst the Christian
princes precisely because Christians, he thought, had such a higher
authority in the head of the Church, the Pope of Rome. As Thomas said:
“In order that spiritual matters might kept separate from temporal ones,
the ministry of this kingdom was entrusted not to earthly kings, but to
priests and especially to the highest of them, the successor of St. Peter,
vicar of Christ, the Roman Pntiff, to whom all kings must be subject, just
as they are subject to our Lord Jesus. For those to the care of an
intermediate end pertains should be subject to him to whom the care of the
ultimate and belongs, and be directed by his rule.” For St. Thomas, the
end goal of human life is heavenly blessedness. And that determines the
final relationship between the religious and secular authority.
The peace of the city in the earth - the maintenance of world order -
depends for Aquinas upon the mutually recognized authority of the head of
the Church at Rome. But already when Thomas offered this vision of hope,
the events of history were carrying the Christian west beyond any possible
implementation of his hopes. The immediate future was to belong not to
some unified Christian Empire but to individual nation states, where
Christians would come to identify themselves first an Englishmen or
Frenchmen Germans, and turn in their hopes for peace not to the Pope but
to the might of their national armies, or, later, to secular international
organizations. The result is that peace has remained elusive and
temporary.