HKB
1 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: natural law and higher law · forms of government · equity, mercy, and pardon · divine law dispensations · dispensation in law · common good
Usually: argument (1) · detachment (1)
“Consequently he who is placed over a community is empowered to dispense in a human law that rests upon his authority, so that, when the law fails in its application to persons or circumstances, he may allow the precept of the law not to be observed.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · precept
“If however he grant this permission without any such reason, and of his mere will, he will be an unfaithful or an imprudent dispenser: unfaithful, if he has not the common good in view; imprudent, if he ignores the reasons for granting dispensations.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · insight
Aquinas explains dispensation in law: a community leader may suspend a general precept for a justified common-good reason, but doing so arbitrarily makes him unfaithful or imprudent, and only God can dispense from divine law.
*On the contrary,* The Apostle says (1 Cor. 9:17): "A dispensation is committed to me." *I answer that,* Dispensation, properly speaking, denotes a measuring out to individuals of some common goods: thus the head of a household is called a dispenser, because to each member of the household he distributes work and necessaries of life in due weight and measure. Accordingly in every community a man is said to dispense,…