Valentin Tomberg was born in St. Petersburg on February 26, 1900. Having been baptized a Protestant, he entered the Greek Orthodox church shortly before 1933, and, in 1945, became a Roman Catholic. In 1938 Tomberg emigrated to the Netherlands and began actively to lecture on Christological topics. At the beginning of 1944 he moved to Cologne, where he was awarded the title of Doctor of Law for the dissertation here published in English for the first time. This dissertation marked an important turning-point in Tomberg’s life: humanistic studies he had presented during his thirties are now replaced by a strict orientation towards a Platonic model of knowledge, and a medieval, so-called “realism of universals.” Tomberg came to regard the modern path away from natural law (founded upon religion) and toward legal positivism (oriented toward power) as a dismantling of the different levels of law (and at the same time a loss of both the idea and ideal of law)—that is, as a process of degeneration or “fall,” which he seeks to reverse in the direction of regeneration.
Praise
“A polyglot and polymath whose mother was shot by Soviet police and who later wrote this work while bombs exploded around him in Cologne stood in a unique position to reflect on the degeneration of jurisprudence: the comprehensive understanding and practice of law in human society, the ‘art of the good and the equitable,’ which distinguishes civilization from barbarism. In this concise overview Tomberg encapsulates the ideal, idea, and concept of law: the eternal law, the natural law, and positive law, inseparably interlinked. His critique of the Western fall from theonomy into rationalism and finally into positivism is balanced by a hopeful vision of how the study and exercise of law might be invigorated by humanistic and Christian wisdom.”
— PETER A. KWASNIEWSKI
author of Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright
“In Tomberg’s eyes the opportunistic toleration by the mass of legal scholars and lawyers of the human catastrophe of the Second World War was the consequence of the degeneration of jurisprudence that had begun in the medieval controversy between realism and nominalism, continued in the Renaissance and Early Modern period, led to the European revolutions, and culminated in the modern totalitarian state. In his jurisprudential studies he sought to contribute to a regeneration of jurisprudence, and thereby to a regeneration of law as well.”
—MICHAEL FRENSCH
author of Wisdom as Person
“Valentin Tomberg’s personal experience with the criminal states of Soviet Union and Nazi Germany showed him how law that has become an instrument of evil can be regenerated by the awakening of moral consciousness.”
—HARRIE SALMAN
author of The Social World as Mystery Center
About the Author
Valentin Tomberg was born in St. Petersburg on February 26, 1900. Having been baptized a Protestant, he entered the Greek Orthodox church shortly before 1933, and, in 1945, became a Roman Catholic. In 1938 Tomberg emigrated to the Netherlands and began actively to lecture on Christological topics. At the beginning of 1944 he moved to Cologne, where he was awarded the title of Doctor of Law for his dissertation, The Art of the Good: On the Regeneration of Fallen Justice, published in English for the first time by Angelico Press. This dissertation marked an important turning-point in Tomberg’s life: humanistic studies he had presented during his thirties are now replaced by a strict orientation towards a Platonic model of knowledge, and a medieval, so-called “realism of universals.” Tomberg came to regard the modern path away from natural law (founded upon religion) and toward legal positivism (oriented toward power) as a dismantling of the different levels of law (and at the same time a loss of both the idea and ideal of law)—that is, as a process of degeneration or “fall,” which Tomberg seeks to reverse in the direction of regeneration. He also proposes a new way of organizing the academic study of law, in which the higher levels of law would be included, and in which access to the idea and the ideal of law would be restored.
