"the opinion is false of those who asserted that it made no difference to the truth of the faith what anyone holds about creatures, so long as one thinks rightly about God. . . . For error concerning creatures ... spills over into false opinion about God....""falsam esse quorundam sententiam qui dicebant nihil interesse ad fidei veritatem quid de creaturis quisque sentiret, dummodo circa Deum recte sentiatur, ... nam error circa creaturas redundat in falsam de Deo sententiam...."
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles II.iii.6, citing Augustine, On the origin of the soul IV.4, as trans. James F. Anderson. Latin from Corpus Thomisticum. Cited, tellingly, by Emmanuel Perrier O.P., in his lecture "Thomas Aquinas on creation and nature" (which opens with a reference to four de-natur-ations of secularism), Thomistic Institute Angelicum, 5 October 2019, at 25:10 and following:
To hold on[to] natural law ethics is not only legitimate on philosophical grounds; it is also a theological necessity for Christians.... Many Catholics today, influenced by the general movement of de-natur-ation, share the opinion that we should spare ourselves the burden of defending natural law ethics, and ... focus instead on preaching the Gospel. Faith in Jesus Christ seems enough. But besides the fact that it would lead, it would be a direct path to a religious kind of de-natur-ation like Qur'an, what would be our faith in Christ if it were no more the faith in Jesus Christ our Lord? To have faith in Jesus Christ our Lord we need natural law ethics because Jesus Christ is our Lord in governing the universe, that is, every nature towards its end.
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