Abstract

Aquinas says that offering sacrifice to God is “of the natural law” because man has a “natural inclination that he should tender submission and honor” to God. Aquinas’s characterization of sacrifice as natural undermines two common mischaracterizations of Aquinas’s natural law theory: that “natural inclinations” means pre-rational “urges” generally and that natural law pertains exclusively to secular matters. For Aquinas, inclinatio naturalis in the sense proper to natural law means those inclinations that follow upon man’s substantial form in a teleological order; the “natural” for man includes properly human things, e.g., virtue and political life. Worship—an act of justice—is natural for man, even if specific rites are determined by divine law. Aquinas’s account of sacrifice as natural illustrates the proper sense of inclinatio naturalis. His teleological account of natural inclination raises questions about attempts to disengage Aquinas’s natural law from natural teleology or sectarian religious claims.