I received an email a few weeks ago asking that I lay out my views on the origin of social authority in the family as opposed to contract or consent. I am not sure if they are fully formed…. but here goes.
The basic difference between Catholic and Modern views on the origin of political authority lies in the gulf between realism and nominalism. The rejection of the reality of universals necessarily entails the rejection of the social nature of man. Man’s social nature therefore cannot be the basis of civil authority. Nevertheless, there are Catholic authorities (albeit Jesuits) who hold that even though the authority of the state comes from nature and so from God it is mediated through the people because, in the event that the state were dissolved by some cataclysm, social authority would revert to a pure democracy. This pure democracy would then function as a constitutional convention bestowing legitimacy on the form of government its constituents elect to impose upon themselves and their descendants. What is the alternative to this account?
The family is the alternative. Man’s social nature is most obviously displayed in his dependant condition at birth, his need for sustenance, protection, socialisation and education, the frame of the male and female bodies and the need of the latter for protection and sustenance from the former while she provides their offspring with sustenance, protection, socialisation and education. The end of man in the-most-excellent-reciprocal-willing-of-the-good-of-the-best-possible-other demands the exemplary friendship of the child’s parents in the indissoluble bond of matrimony. The family and not the individual is the fundamental unit of civil society. Indeed, only two factors obstruct the simple identity of the family with civil society: a) the impossibility of marriage within the family b) the supernatural end of man. Because human beings cannot marry their kin without escalating disastrous consequences the family cannot perpetuate itself without forming a wider society that transcends itself. St Thomas points out in the De Regno that because the actual end of man in this order of providence is supernatural the true King can only be He Who unites man to the Divine Nature in Beatitude – Jesus Christ. Thus all the Kings of the Christian People must be subject to Christ’s Vicar, the Roman Pontiff, as to Himself.
How does this logic impact upon the question of the state of society at its actual beginning in time and in some hypothetical moment of destruction and re-constitution? Revelation has some very interesting light to shed upon these questions. It is clear from Genesis that the effects of the Fall have a progressive element. With each successive generation between the Fall and the Flood the life span of the antediluvian patriarchs diminished. According to Augustine’s interpretation our first parents possessed complete control of all their bodily functions. On this principle it ought to have been possible for them to beget pairs of children who, through a judicious distribution of chromosomes, were scarcely related to each other at all. If, as Genesis seems to imply, the loss of the praeternatural gifts was in some sense progressive then the key natural factor which prevents the family from being an unqualifiedly perfect society is removed. What of the supernatural factor? This too is resolved by revelation. For originally Adam would have transmitted sanctifying grace by generation to all of his descendants so this Adamic familial commonwealth would have truly fulfilled St Thomas’s requirements to qualify as a perfect community.
The Fall, of course, dramatically alters this but it does not abolish it altogether. Adam was still the recipient of revelation capable of conveying saving truth. The distinction between the family and the state was established by the Fall but (if we are right about the delayed removal of the praeternatural gifts) it was not yet applied. Likewise, the fact that the perfect exercise of the evangelical counsels is rendered by the Fall incompatible with property, marriage and autonomy establishes the distinction between priesthood and kingship (because, in fallen man, the state of perfection required by priesthood is incompatible with the requirements of kingship) but the delayed effect of the Fall postpones the necessity of investing these offices in separate persons. Adam passes the plenipotentiary sovereignty of the human race to Seth, Seth to Noah, Noah to Shem (who I am assuming is Melchizedek), Melchizedek to Abraham, Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob and Jacob to the people of Israel as a whole. In the Exodus the full distinction between family and commonwealth, priesthood and magistracy is established. These successions pass down through the Levites and the scribes, the judges and the Davidic line until they converge once more in the Messiah Who reigns for ever and administers the Church militant through St Peter and the Apostles and their successors down to the end of time (ideally assisted by a suitably docile temporal power).
This resolves the question of a hypothetical moment of social destruction and re-constitution. The unqualifiedly perfect society in this world – the City of God – The Catholic Church – is indestructible and will endure until the end of time. The hypothesis of social destruction and re-constitution can never be realised. The question of the nature and prerogatives of the family in the abstract is best answered in the eloquent words of the Irish constitution, “The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.” The contingency upon the Divine Will of man’s actual end in any order of providence means that the sovereign authority in the perfect society can necessarily only be established by positive revelation – even were man’s end merely proportionate to his nature. As it is, God made us for Himself and the sovereignty is taken by the Divine King Jesus Christ Himself and wielded on earth through the power of the keys.
January 28, 2012 at 7:09 pm
Thanks, Aeliane, for this tour de force!
If for the sake of clarity (and not just to provoke any stray de Lubacians) we were to imagine man in the state of pure nature, presumably it would still be the case that Adam’s authority over all his descendants would remain for as long as he chose, and that they could never have the right on their own initiative to depose him.
And what – just as a thought experiment – of polygenism? Would we then say that political authority emerged when the heads of various families agreed somehow to surrender some part of their domestic authority to allow for the emergence of the State? But could they bind their successors?
Incidentally, Cornelius a Lapide, definitely overdue for a revival, thinks that Melchisedek wasn’t Shem, on the grounds that he was too far west and that we have Shem’s genealogy (and Melchisedek is said by St Paul to be without genealogy). Perhaps he could have been a legatus a latere of Shem.
A Lapide’s complete works are available here:-
http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080014741_C/1080014741_C.html
January 28, 2012 at 8:11 pm
According to the argument I gave even a state of nature would need some sort of revelation to tell man that he was in a state of nature (because reason cannot demonstrate an existential negative). One might suppose that the revelation would include the establishment of a legitimate civil authority. If one supposed it didn’t then I suppose that would constitute natural Adam as plenipotentiary monarch with the authority to promulgate both public and private law. I seem to remember Thomas says that death is unnatural to man in that his intellect is immortal but all knowledge comes through the senses so that the fact of death is proof of man’s penal condition. This seems to imply that a state of pure nature would necessarily include some praeternatural gift of immortality. One might suppose this gift would necessarily include the capacity to engender genetically unrelated offspring and so the perfection of the family as a society. Given final governmental responsibility (as opposed to administration) is an essentially moral function which any un-fallen human being ought to be able to perform there seems to reason why the headship of the human family need necessarily be distinguished from sovereignty. The natural Adam (or any successor(s) appointed through public laws instituted by him) might be deposed only under the usual conditions (tyranny, no legal recourse etc.). If there were no positive public laws in place to deal with the deposition of a tyrant presumably legitimate authority would devolve upon the next most senior human being (the head of the family).
I would have thought polygenism would have exactly the consequences you suggest. I think any agreement would bind the successors of the constituent families although for the reasons mentioned one supposes they would be immortal. The terms of the founding agreement might be violated of course and then all bets would be off. The possibility of tyranny permitting resistance would still exist and all would be subject to whatever revelation had occurred.
I’m sticking with the Shem/Melchisedek thing. Isn’t there an argument that the remark about a genealogy refers to a Levitical genealogy?
January 28, 2012 at 10:05 pm
With regard to tyranny, St Thomas in the De Regno doesn’t believe that one can ever legitimately depose someone who is simply tyrannical by his way of ruling. If he has no higher superior on earth the only recourse is prayer. One who usurps power is different, and even if tolerated for a while may be deposed unless it will lead to a greater evil.
I haven’t heard that suggestion about Melchisedek. The language of Hebrews 7:3 is quite strong; for Shem we do have a father and a beginning of days and end of life. I quite like the idea of Melchisedek as a sort of Cardinal Legate in partibus infidelium.
January 29, 2012 at 12:40 am
He is definitely against strictly revolutionary (in the sense of illegal) action. The only authority he would recognize with no earthly superior would be the Pope. Obviously one cannot depose the Pope however annoying he may be. Thomas does say that a people to whom belongs the right of appointing their ruler may remove him if he is a tyrant even if they have subjected themselves to him in perpetuity “because he himself has deserved that the covenant with his subjects should not be kept, since, in ruling the multitude, he did not act faithfully as the office of a king demands.” It is hard to tell what he would say about what would obtain in a hypothetical order of pure nature in which the supreme ruler was hereditary and an unendurable tyrant as he never discusses hereditary monarchy as a form of government.
January 29, 2012 at 4:00 pm
The argument about Melchizedek is that Hebrews 7:3 refers to the fact that unlike the Levites his priesthood did not depend on the genealogy of his parents (apparently there were certain requirements concerning the female genealogy as well as the male Ezra 2:61-63; Neh 7:63-65). Furthermore, Levitical priests could not begin office until they were thirty and could not exercise it past the age of fifty (Num 4:3, 43). Hence “he is without father or mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest for ever.” So the argument of St Paul seems to be simultaneously one about the ritual nature of Melchizedek and Christ’s priesthood and about the typological conection between that priesthood and Christ’s dual nature. St Thomas seems to support the former point about genealogy in his commentary “there are two reasons why his [Melchizedek's] genealogy is not given in the Scripture: one is because the generation of Christ is ineffable: ‘Who shall declare his generation’ (Is. 53:8); the other is because Christ, Who is introduced as a priest, does not pertain to the Levitical priesthood, nor to a genealogy of the Old Law.” Who Melchisedek was was not settled either among the Rabbis or the Fathers but the possibility that he was Shem was considered and occasionally supported by both (including apparently Ephraem the Syrian and Jerome). Thomas also mentions the Shem theory without comment as if he accepted it “According to a Gloss the Hebrews say that was Shem, the first-born of Noah, and when Abraham obtained the victory, he was 390 or 309 years old, and met Abraham, his nephew.”
January 29, 2012 at 5:58 pm
I have just done some calculations on the basis of the veritas Hebraica (as mediated through the Douai version), and according to these Abram was born 292 PD (Post Diluvium), when Sem was already 390 years old. Abram left his homeland 367 PD and begot Ismael 376 PD; the meeting with Melchisedek takes place some time between these last 2 dates, at which time Sem was still alive, as well as some of the others mentioned in Genesis 11 (namely, Sare, Heber, and Sarug; also possibly Reu, who dies 370PD and maybe Arphaxad, who is said by the Clementine Vulgate to die 340PD but by other versions to died 440PD).
Cornelius a Lapide makes the point that Noah himself dies 350 years PD, according to Gen 9:28, at which point Abram was 58, and that Abram could thus have seen all his ancestors up to and including Noah.
Do you have a reference to SS Ephraem and Jerome?
January 29, 2012 at 8:39 pm
St Ephraem the Syrian (Commentary on Genesis 11,2) & St Jerome (Letters 73)
February 6, 2012 at 12:24 pm
St Ephraem certainly seems to accept the identification, judging from this translation
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56174298/St-Ephraim-the-Syrian-Commentary-on-Genesis
He also reports the tradition that it was Melchisedek-Shem whom Rebecca consults (Gen.25:22).
St Jerome is more cautious. He says that this is what learned Jews say, but that it is up to his correspondent to believe it or not, as he chooses.