ABSTRACT
Commentary on Thomas’ fourth article aims to counter recent Christian efforts to deny that there is a natural law justifi cation for war. These efforts are variously the attempt to show that theological ethics has no place for autonomous morality and that the vital reduces to the holy and the natural to the evangelical.2 Whatever the terms, the logic is to deny the ordered hierarchy amongst values, and it contrasts sharply with how the “papal revolution” (Berman) related to Germanic law (PR, 82-3). There is a tendency to deny low values the status of value because the “height” through which distinctions amongst values is made is opposed by equalitarianism. The theories of nature and grace introduced midtwentieth century by de Lubac and Rahner especially hamper Christian thinking about value hierarchy. This is the thesis I defend now.
