The sub-title of this paper by Professor Olivier Du Roy is “from Origen to Martin Luther”.
Origen’s teachings on the subject date to 230 CE and Martin Luther’s to his first public sermon in 1510. So Du Roy essentially picks up in time were Chilton ends and extends the subject through the Christian line from the period of the early Church Fathers to the Reformation.
Du Roy holds doctorates in both Theology (Strasbourg) and Philosophy (Paris). His dissertation for the Philosophy degree was titled “The Golden Rule: History and Range of an Ethical Maxim”. That has not been made available in English.
Du Roy is a scholar of and prolific writer on Islam as well as on the philosophy of St. Augustine. But his topic for the Neusner-Chilton volume is the Golden Rule as a “law of nature” by which he means:
“… a law inscribed in the heart of man, according to a metaphorical expression, borrowed from a law inscribed by God on the tablet on Mt. Sinai. The precept ‘Do not do unto others as you would not have them so unto you’ is now taken as a commandment on the same level as those of the Decalogue, which it recapitulates.”
This is a fascinating statement, which Du Roy follows with another equally fascinating idea.
“The commentary on the Decalogue through the Golden Rule follows this line: the Golden Rule provides the key to understanding the prohibitions of the Decalogue. It is not an additional precept, but it does permit man on his own to understand what is good or evil by transferring to others what seems to him unjust or painful when he suffers it himself.”
These are fascinating statements, in my view, because:
1. Du Roy specifically associates the Golden Rule with the negative, “Do not do” language rather than the “do unto others” active version, and
2. The idea that the Rule is a key to understanding the prohibitions of the Decalogue; an explanation as opposed to a precept on its own, is a perspective that I haven’t found elsewhere.
In his study of Origen (born 185 CE) Du Roy cites Origen’s view that regarding the gentiles certain “things which are said to be written in their heart agree with the evangelical laws, where everything is ascribed to the natural justice…For what could be nearer to the natural moral senses than that those things men do not want done to themselves, they should not do to others…” (emphasis in the source)
According to DuRoy, Origen made the connection between the Golden Rule verses of Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:13, and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 2:14 to argue that there is an inherent ethic shared by humans as a natural law. The verse from Romans reads:
“For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.” (KJV)
DuRoy writes that:
“…faced with pervasive paganism and the desire to affirm Christian moral value, Christian thinkers very quickly made the connection between the gospel maxim of the Golden Rule and this law which Paul declares was not absent among the pagans. What is this law that the pagans have for themselves? “What men do not want done to themselves, they should not do to others. For Justin, for Irenaeus and for Origen, this is the natural law of which St. Paul speaks.”
“…from that point on, this doctrine of natural law, the content of which is the Golden Rule, would spread throughout the whole of the patristic period.”
DuRoy brings detailed excepts from Jon Chrysostom and St. Augustine, 4th and 5th century church fathers, which explicitly refer to the universality of the injunction to avoid doing to others what you find hateful.
It is interesting that in the passage from Augustine, we find the advice that, in determining proper action, “you should imagine yourself in the same situation”.
Harry Gensler has included the “imagine” component in his four-part approach (Knowledge, Imagination, Testing and Action) to making Golden Rule decisions. And both Wattles and Gensler have qualified their re-statements of the rule with the “same situation” language.
DuRoy finds examples of similar thinking and writing on this subject through the centuries between Augustine and Luther (except for a few opponents such as Aquinas, who “disparaged …the conception of natural law”) but finds it in “all of the great reformers”.
In Luther, he writes “we have found more than 40 texts, in all period of his life and preaching”, which make this point.
Luther, however, looks to the “do unto” statement as his text, in contrast to others who base their teaching on the “do not do” approach. Luther writes:
“This Law is impressed upon all, Jews as well as Gentiles; and all are therefore bound to obey it. In this sense, our Lord says in Mt.7.12: “All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also unto them; for this is the law and the prophets.” The whole law handed down to us is, therefore, nothing else than this natural law which everyone knows and on account of which no one is without excuse.”
From that time “as long as we remain in the Christian tradition…the Golden Rule unquestionably remains the first principle of natural law”. And “even in secularized form” the same is largely true.
I’ve written in a previous post about Luther’s emphasis on the active nature of the “do unto” injunction. His interpretation took that command to limits that might be regarded as both dangerous and unhealthy.
It is interesting that DuRoy brings mostly examples stated in the negative or passive form in presenting the idea of the Rule as a natural law and in tracing its history in the centuries between Origen and Luther.
We’ve noted the precedents for the ideas of “imagination” and “similar situation” qualifiers have been cited in Du Roy’s paper. He also brings a precedent for the use of the term to “treat” others as you would be treated. This is in a quote from Voltaire from the 18th century, which also uses natural law language:
“Only the author of nature may have made the eternal laws of nature. The single fundamental and immutable law for men is the following: Treat others as you would be treated. This law is from nature itself: it cannot be torn from the heart of man.”
©Charles R. Lightner