Selections from Three Works. Francisco Suárez
demonstrated. For a locution on the part of God, externally actualized, can be nothing more nor less than an infusion of enlightenment or of intelligible forms, or the production of some sign making manifest Himself or His will; but all this, God does through His will, nor is any impulse or act of the intellect subsequent to the act of the will, more necessary for this effect than for other effects.
In nowise, then, may law, as it exists in God, be assigned to an act consequent upon [an act of] will. The same is therefore true with respect to any lawmaker whatsoever; since all lawmakers participate in the basic characteristics of law, which dwell in God by His essence, so that in due proportion [all] imitate those characteristics.
8. The second opinion: law is held to be an act of the will. There is, then, a second general opinion, according to which law is an act of the lawmaker’s will. In support of this opinion, one may cite all those who assign command to the will, as do Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta, IX, qu. 6), Gabriel (on the Sentences, Bk. II, dist. xxxvii, qu. 1, art. 1, not. 3), Major (on the Sentences, Bk. III, dist. xxxiii, qu. 7), Occam (on the Sentences, Bk. III, qu. xxii [qu. xii], art. 4), Almain (Moralia, Tract. III, chap. ii), and Angest (on the Moralia, Tract. I, pt. III, corol. iii).9 Bonaventure also supports this view, when he says (on the Sentences, Bk. III, dist. xvii, art. 1, qu. 1, ad penult.): ‘The will is that within which resides the rule and command of what is in the person who wills.’10 Joannes Medina (Codex de Oratione, Qu. 2) expresses himself in like manner. The opinion in question is furthermore attributed to Durandus and to Gregory of Rimini (on the Sentences, Bk. I, dist. xlvii) in so far as they assert that the divine will is a rule to which we are all bound to conform. Scotus,11 too, is cited in behalf of this opinion, in that he says, in certain passages (on the Sentences,
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Bk. II, dist. vi, qu. 1 and dist. xxxviii, qu. 1, ad ult. and quodlib. 17), that the ordering of another to the performance of any action is a function that pertains to the will. And in yet another passage (ibid., Bk. III, dist. xxxvi, qu. 1, art. 2), he assigns the function of command to the will. This same view is defended at length by Castro (De Potestate Legis Poenalis, Bk. II, chap. i).
9. Moreover, [this second opinion] can be upheld by argument. First, it may be argued that Scripture and the civil laws (iura) give the name of law (lex) to the will of God, and to the will of the prince. ‘He hath made his ways known to Moses: his wills to the children of Israel’ (Psalms, xxxii [cii, v. 7]), that is to say, He hath made known His precepts. Again, we have the words: ‘Teach me to do thy will’ (ibid., cxlii [, v. 10]). In the second book of Machabees (Chap. i [, v. 3]), we read: ‘And [may he] give you all a heart to worship him, and to do his will […]’, that is, to obey His law. Thus Christ our Lord has said, in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Thy will be done’, which was to say, Thy law be obeyed. Again, in the prayer in the garden He said: ‘Not my will, but thine be done’, that is, thy command be done. For so it had been written of Him, according to the Psalms (xxix [xxxix, vv. 8, 9]): ‘In the head of the book it is written of me that I should do thy will.’
The customary reply [to the argument based on these passages], an answer drawn from the Master of the Sentences [Peter Lombard] (in the Sentences, Bk. I, dist. xlvii) and from St. Thomas (Summa, Pt. I, qu. 19, art. 9 [art. 11]), is that the passages in question refer to the will as expressed by some sign,12 which is will not strictly but metaphorically speaking.
10. However, even though the will when expressed by a sign may be so called [only] in a metaphorical sense, it must be indicative of some true will. For, why should it be called will metaphorically, unless because it has a relation to true will? And it has no such relation save as a sign, wherefore it is called ‘the will, as expressed in a sign’. Hence, the will which it has indicated is that which is fulfilled in the strict sense, and which has been designated in the passages above-cited by the term ‘law’. Accordingly, in
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the civil law (ius) also (Digest, I. iii. 19), law (lex) is said to have its own will; for written or external law undoubtedly indicates the will of the prince, and this is declared to be the will of the law itself; therefore, will of that sort is law existing in the prince himself.
Thus we read (Digest, I. iv. 1 and Institutes, I. ii, § 6) that, ‘What the prince has decreed, has the force of law’, words which certainly indicate an act of the will.
One may also cite the philosophers who say that law ‘is the decree and resolution of the state’, as Plato puts it in the Dialogue already cited (Minos [314 B]); or that it is the consent of the state, in the words of Aristotle (Rhetoric to Alexander, Chaps. i and ii). For a decree indicates an intention of the will and—a clearer example—consent is an act of the will.
Anselm, also, in his De Voluntate Dei, has attributed [the function of giving] precepts to the divine will; and again, in the De Conceptu Virginali et Originali Peccato (Chap. iv), he has assigned to the will the function of commanding.
11. The second opinion is confirmed on the basis of the characteristic properties of law. Secondly, the opinion in question may be proved primarily on the basis of the characteristic properties of law. For all those properties which were attributed to an act of the intellect, are more appropriate to the will, and there are certain properties which are appropriate to the will and cannot be attributed to the intellect; therefore, …
The major premiss is clearly true, because, in the first place, there is assigned to law the attribute of being a rule and a measure; and this characteristic is particularly appropriate to the divine will, as may be inferred from various statements made by St. Thomas (I.–II, qu. 4, art. 4; qu. 19, art. 9; II.–II, qu. 26, last art.; and, more expressly, II.–II, qu. 105, art. 1). He says that the divine will is the first rule by which human actions should be measured; but that the wills of human superiors constitute a secondary rule, imparted by the first. The reason supporting this view is the fact that we ought to do or will that which God wills that we should, as Anselm declares in the work, De Voluntate Dei.
12. Another characteristic property of law is that it enlightens and directs the subject. In connexion with this property, indeed, we should note that it may be attributed to law, in so far as the latter dwells within
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the subject himself; in which sense there is no doubt but that law is an act of the reason and, formally speaking, enlightening reason, as we have remarked in the preceding Chapter. Consequently, in reading the various authorities, one should take care lest he be led astray through ambiguity. For these authorities, inasmuch as they define law in terms of reason, are often speaking of it as it exists in the subject himself, in which sense the natural law is said to be right reason, imparted by nature; and thus it is that law enlightens, since it reveals the will of the lawmaker. Therefore, it would seem that there dwells within the lawmaker himself that will which objectively (so to speak), or even effectively, enlightens the subject; in accordance with the words of Anselm (De Voluntate Dei [Chap. iv]): ‘The will of God is the master of the human will.’
13. The third characteristic property which we were to discuss, is that law orders. But this property is one which most properly pertains to the will; as Scotus (in the passage cited above) rightly declares, and as I have demonstrated in my Treatise on Predestination.13 Moreover, the point can be well confirmed by the statement of St. Thomas (Summa, Pt. I, qu. 107, art. 1) that one angel through his will orders his concept [to be made known] to another angel, and in this way speaks to him; hence, the function of ordering pertains to the will. This explanation applies to the matter in hand. For such ordering by law takes the form either of a relation of the means to the end, or of a locution which indicates the will of the prince. And in either form, the ordering is most properly attributed to the will. For it is the will that orders the means to correspond to the end, since it is the will itself which strives towards the end, chooses the means for the sake of the end, and so decrees that these means be put into execution; and it is also the will that gives the command for the locution, while in God, or in an immaterial inferior being, the ordering of the locution is likewise accomplished through the will. Therefore, ordering by law, in so far as this property exists in the superior who orders or employs the locution, is always a matter pertaining to the will.
14. Hence, there