Pillar III — Rome
The Emanation of Rome
Rome as the cradle of natural law and the foundation of civilizational order. On Roman law, marriage, the common good, and the crisis of contemporary Europe.
The Foundation of Civilization
Rome as the Cradle of Law
Alongside Athens — the cradle of philosophy and science — and Jerusalem — the source of Divine Revelation — ancient Rome constitutes the third great pillar upon which European civilization rests. In the teaching of Rev. Prof. Tadeusz Guz, Rome occupies a special place: as the creator of a legal system that to this day shapes our understanding of justice, marriage, the state, and human dignity. Rev. Guz does not treat this heritage as a museum exhibit — on the contrary, he constantly points out that abandoning Roman law is one of the main causes of the crisis of contemporary civilization.
Rome and Law — The Cradle of Social Order
Rev. Prof. Guz articulates the division of roles between Greece and Rome with characteristic precision:
"(...) Greco-Roman antiquity, expressed through science, an entire great culture, and the Roman Empire as well, is a very important reality for understanding broadly defined civilization, Latin and Atlantic culture, or the culture of Europe (...) The Romans, essentially and primarily, concentrated when it came to science or structuring their daily life on understanding and mastering law. Hence it is said that just as ancient Greece is the cradle of science, ancient Rome is the cradle of law. (...)"
Law was not merely an administrative tool for the Romans — it was an expression of a deep conviction regarding the existence of an order embedded in the very nature of reality. This conviction found its philosophical expression in the classical definition of natural law, which Rev. Guz invokes as the foundation of all legal reflection:
"(...) The classical definition of natural law is participatio legis aeternae, that is, participation, sharing in the eternal law. What does this mean? It means that my human conscience has direct access to the law called eternal. (...) This points to what ancient pagan thinkers discovered in Greece centuries ago: that law comes from God. And we Catholic Christians know even more precisely that the name of God has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. (...)"
Natural Law as Participation in Eternal Law
The discovery by the Romans that law has its source outside of man and outside of the state — that it is a participation in a higher order — constitutes, according to Rev. Guz, one of the greatest intellectual and moral achievements of antiquity. For natural law is neither an invention of philosophers nor a decision of legislators:
"(...) God the Creator called an ordered human being into existence and named this order within man the law. (...) Natural law is that law, that order which Personal God Himself, revealed in His Son Jesus Christ in the fullness of time, created specifically for every human being. And this law, every person individually — just as they individually received their soul and spirit from Divine hands — receives written into their conscience, that is, into their reason. (...) The essence, the warp of this law is the Decalogue. (...)"
Rome, intuitively grasping this truth, built the entire edifice of its legislation upon it. Rev. Guz emphasizes how astonishingly faithful Roman law proved to be to natural law — even without the fullness of Christian Revelation.
Marriage and Family in Roman Law
One of the most eloquent examples of Roman law's fidelity to natural law is its definition of marriage. Rev. Prof. Guz recalls it as a reference point for contemporary disputes:
"(...) marriage was clearly defined by the Romans in the Code of Justinian: Roman law defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. But just as there is a departure from law toward theories, European law is likewise bidding farewell to Roman law. (...) We have departed from natural law, from Roman law, in central dimensions, and that is why today we have such a problem with the legal definition of the stability of marriage. (...)"
Rev. Guz outlines the consequences of this departure with remarkable clarity, combining the legal issue with economic and demographic ones:
"(...) Even the greatest economy will collapse if marriage is unstable. (...) If there is no stable marriage, there are no children. (...) A child is the greatest treasure. There is no richer bank in a state than a child. There is no greater insurance guarantee for the future than a child. (...)"
Aristotle, Roman Law, and the Foundation of the State
Rev. Guz presents Roman law not in isolation from Greek philosophy, but as its practical completion. The Aristotelian theory of the state found its legal embodiment in Rome:
"(...) Aristotle defines the 'state' as a 'community that has reached the goal of full self-sufficiency, brought into being for the sake of life and existing for the sake of a perfect life as the highest good.' In other words, if man, as an individual and simultaneously a social being, wants to be a community, that is, an ordered society not only in a legal and moral sense, but also culturally, he creates a state. (...) In material terms, the legislator creating a well-organized state should primarily focus on the marriage of a man and a woman and guarantee them fundamental marital and family rights. For the basis of the stability of the state's existence is marriage as the most important community from which the family arises, followed by the community. So said Aristotle over 2300 years ago, which Roman law accepted as the foundation of the European understanding of the state. (...)"
This foundation has not only a legal dimension, but a deeply anthropological one:
"(...) The most important task of marriage is to procreate and raise children. By giving life to children, marriage fulfills itself most perfectly as a community, because nothing more valuable than life can be passed on to another human being. If the primary concern of the state is life and man, and consequently marriage and the family, then in the state there exists an order focused on human life as the most valuable good in the order of nature. (...)"
The Common Good and the Purpose of Power
Roman law, rooted in natural law, also formed a specific philosophy of power. Rev. Guz recalls the classical principle that ought to govern every form of governance:
"(...) The Greeks and Romans, their thinkers, understood the common good — indeed — as the good of the state in a material and spiritual dimension. But the essence of the common good according to classical Greek and Roman philosophy, and later, of course, Christian philosophical thought, is man; his personhood and all the rights flowing from it. For there would be no law as law without the personhood of man. Just as there would be no law at all without the personhood of God, who is cognitively reachable through our human reason. (...)"
This principle translates into concrete political obligations:
"(...) Authority, starting from the simplest within the family and ending with the state, is to serve the good of man. In the case of state authority, it is understandable that the supreme constitutional principle should be the common good of all. (...) The Church calls every person and its children, those who belong to the Church, to respect authority, honor it, and support it in realizing the common good. The only point where a person is permitted to refuse obedience is when state or local authority contradicts natural law. (...)"
And Rev. Guz formulates the goal of politics in a way that unites ancient wisdom with Christian anthropology:
"(...) And therefore the most important goal of politics and the most important task of politics, as well as the goal and task of law, is to secure the good of every human being, regardless of whether they are born or unborn, whether healthy, a child, a young person, or an elderly man or woman worn out by work. (...)"
The Limit of Rome — Absolute Elevation of the Finite
Despite all its greatness, Rome — like Athens — did not escape a fundamental error: the absolute elevation of its own culture and order. Rev. Prof. Guz diagnoses this fall with philosophical insight:
"(...) The Romans were so fascinated by law that they reached the pantheistic conviction of the presence of the absolute Logos solely within the Cosmos. Thus science was understood, and they became intoxicated with Roman divinity to such an extent that they lost a realistic assessment of reality — of the world surrounding the Roman Empire, which was judged as servile and which mercilessly deprived the ancient Romans of the illusion of the divine character of their existence, reducing its splendor to ruin. (...)"
The mechanism of this failure serves for Rev. Guz as a timeless lesson:
"(...) The absolute elevation of what is Roman, or of what is finite and earthly in general, inevitably had to lead the impressive culture and science on the Tiber to degradation. (...) Similarly today, anyone who breaks the highest imperatives of natural law, such as pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept), places themselves in the position of God, which in turn becomes the cause of the fundamental destruction of the state and law. (...)"
Logos as an Immanent Order — Achievement and Limit
Synthesizing the achievements of both great ancient civilizations, Rev. Guz points out both their undeniable contribution and what they were unable to discover on their own:
"(...) This Greco-Roman attempt at a systematic understanding of reality based on the Logos discovered the Logos as an immanent order of existence. (...)"
This discovery was grand — but insufficient. Logos as the internal order of the cosmos is not yet the Logos that became flesh. Only Christian Revelation opened before human reason the fullness of truth about God and man:
"(...) Only Christian philosophy, broadly understood, referring to the understanding of God — indeed as one, but existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as simultaneously the highest Truth and the highest Love — opened before human reason fascinating spaces of systematic reflection on God as love and on man, whose most important dimension of existence is to become a loving being. (...)"
The Urgency of Returning to Natural and Roman Law
Rev. Prof. Guz does not stop at historical analysis — he formulates a concrete appeal to contemporaries:
"(...) Broad education regarding natural law must be conducted (...) we lack the grounding of a broadly understood legal and judicial culture in natural law. And we must rebuild this through education. (...) Classical natural law needs to be taught (...)"
Without this return to foundations — warns Rev. Guz — we risk repeating the error of ancient Rome: replacing law with ideology, and reality with illusion:
"(...) the communists learned from Hegel that if there is something in reality that does not fit human thought, then so much the worse for reality (...)"
Incarnation of the Idea
Rome in the "Athens of Roztocze"
The heritage of ancient Rome is one of the four pillars upon which Rev. Prof. Guz builds the center "Athens of Roztocze" in Szozdy. In the words of the founder of this foundation, Rome occupies a strictly defined and irreplaceable place:
"The Athens of Roztocze is a project-synthesis of Jerusalem as a symbol of Divine Revelation of the Old and New Testaments, the antiquity of ancient Greece as the cradle of philosophy and science in general, ancient Rome with Roman law astonishingly faithful to natural law, and at the same time the capital of the Holy Catholic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ as true God and true Man, based by the will of its Divine Founder upon the College of Apostles with St. Peter at its head."
The architecture of the center refers to the classical tradition — columns, Doric and Ionic orders, porticos, and colonnades — serving as a living reminder that Rome is not a dead page of history, but a living source from which Europe should still draw. Inside the House of Ancient Philosophy, on the timbered walls, alongside stone from local fields and cross-sections of old trees, a rich symbolism of time is inscribed — a symbolism that Rome received from the Greeks and passed on to Christian Europe.
Summary
Rev. Prof. Tadeusz Guz's teaching on ancient Rome is not a lesson in legal history, but a living diagnosis of the present. Rome as the cradle of natural law, as a civilization that — though pagan — was able to read with astonishing fidelity the law written by the Creator into the nature of man and the world, is a permanent reference point for Rev. Guz. Its fall — caused by the absolute elevation of the finite and the confinement of the Logos within the cosmos — serves as a warning to every era that attempts to build order without God. The return to Roman law, understood as participation in eternal law, is according to Rev. Guz one of the conditions for saving European civilization.
Quotes are drawn from the broadcasts "Unfinished Conversations with Rev. Prof. Tadeusz Guz" aired on Radio Maryja and TV Trwam, as well as from other public addresses of Rev. Prof. Tadeusz Guz. Compilation of quotes and context based on the text by Aldona Ciborowska and Edward Małachowski.