Discussion Thread:
How does Aquinas’ idea of Christian kingship build on previous Natural Law concepts?! Be sure
to include a discussion of justice, covenantal statesmanship, and Christian kingship, especially as
seen in the relationship between medieval religious and civil offices.
Thomas Aquinas is a thinker from the medieval era. He, like many other philosophers, has many
thoughts in common with philosophers of other time periods. Aquinas shares many ideas with
the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (Hill 2016). Though Aquinas was a follower of
Aristotle, he was more dedicated to being a disciple of God and the Church. In this way, Aquinas
was not afraid to take Aristotle’s beliefs and go further with them – for example, establishing a
link between human reason and Christian faith. Acknowledging the two as separate but
intertwined, stating that reason is given to individuals by God in a self-evident way, but that
people are able to make their own thoughts from self-evident knowledge (Crowe 2019). St.
Thomas Aquinas viewed eternal law as necessary to be able to harmonize irrational being
therefore, being devoted to God and His divine, ‘natural’, law, provides sufficient guidance
(Rashid 2020). Aquinas suggests that natural law is a subset of eternal law known to all men that
they may pursue the truth (Aquinas 2002). He also suggests that God gives human beings these
natural inclinations, however, human beings have reason and free will – which allows humans to
decide in which way they want to act on their natural tendencies (Rashid 2020).
Aquinas contends that a ruler of a state is needed no matter the circumstances and a just
ruler/government is one where the ruler works for the common good and not for the good of a
specific class of citizens. There are a couple of different forms of un-mixed governments which
Aquinas holds as legitimate or just: kingship, aristocracy, and polity. He also states three unjust
forms of un-mixed governments: tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy (Aquinas 2002). With this
thinking, Aquinas believes a kingship is the best form of government (Aquinas 1949). He states
this because he believes keeping the unity and peace makes a government more useful and a state
ruled by many people cannot “preserve the stability of the community if they totally disagreed,”
(Aquinas 1949, Book 1, Ch. 3). In this argument to suggest a kingship is the best form of
government, Thomas Aquinas suggests that a natural governance is always governed by one; for
instance, how the heart rules over the body, reason presides over the soul, there is one king
(queen) bee among bees, and God who rules over the whole universe – and if artificial
multitudes are to mimic the unity in natural things it can be assumed that what is best for human
multitudes is to be ruled by one person (Aquinas 1949). In this sense, it seems as though
Aquinas’s preferred form of governing would be a Christian kingship. “…so too the way to
govern may be learned from the divine government of the world,” (Aquinas 1949, Book 1, Ch.
15) this quote implies that the king of a state or society should learn how to govern by following
how God governs the universe – he should be a Christian king. Aquinas contends that the end
goal of a society is to end up with God or in possession of God, which is or should also be the
goal of the individual; therefore, the “assembled multitude” needs to be governed by a kingship
who also shares the same end goal and can bring them to it (Aquinas 1949).
Aquinas states that a person can be a good citizen of a regime and not have the virtue that is
necessary to be a good human being (Aquinas 2007).
“For the virtue of a good citizen needs to be in all citizens, since the political community
is then necessarily the best. But it is impossible that all citizens have the virtue of a good
man unless every citizen in a good political community is necessarily a good man,”
(Aquinas 2007, 190).
Aquinas makes the argument that rulers and statesman need to be wise and virtuous and that an
ordinary citizen is not equal to a ruler or statesman because they did not possess the same virtue,
“For the virtue of a ruler and that of an ordinary citizen are not the same,” (Aquinas 2007, 191).
While it seems, Aquinas thinks in this way, he also disagrees with Aristotle’s position that the
state should be a vessel for God’s authority over morality, though Aquinas does clearly contend
that a ruler should be concerned about leading its people to virtue but not in a coercive way
(Finnis 2021). Aquinas also seems to suggest no need for a “social contract” to create a
government or state but that does state that the laws which are implemented act as a covenant
