This article argues that promulgation is the formal cause of St. Thomas Aquinas’s definition of law, and that an ordinance of reason is the material cause. This conclusion is based on the premises that promulgation is related to ordinance of reason as specific difference to genus, and specific difference is related to genus as form to matter. Three differing opinions are examined, namely, that ordinance of reason is a formal cause and an act of the will is the material cause, and two opinions that see, for different reasons, promulgation as a material cause and ordinance of reason as a formal cause. These opinions are instructive in determining the formal quality of reason in an ordinance or command, and in determining that what individuates can be taken as a material cause. However, neither of these principles is sufficient in establishing something other than promulgation as the formal cause of the definition of law as such. Lastly, an objection that viewing an ordinance of reason as material cause lessens reason’s importance is answered.
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to establish that promulgation is the formal cause of St. Thomas Aquinas’s definition of law as found in the Summa Theologiae: «an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated». That there is a correspondence between Aristotle’s four causes — material, final, efficient, and formal — and different elements of St. Thomas’s definition of law is not an original proposition. However, there is disagreement about how to understand this correspondence with respect to promulgation, ordinance of reason, formal cause, and material cause. An exposition of how promulgation is a formal cause of the definition of law will illumine both the roles of promulgation and ordaining reason in law itself, and the roles of formal and material causes in definitions. The scope of this article is not the history of juridical and canonical hermeneutics, but the philosophical examination of promulgation as formal cause by delving into certain theoretical positions. […]
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