God is (for Aquinas) the basis of the debt of justice.69 What happens if we remove God from this picture? If there is no God, then it would appear that there is no duty to charitable giving, nor any basis for an objective order as the foundation of distributive justice; the only foundation remaining for justice would be the subjective claim to rights. Given that condition, there would be no objective order for rights and so any order of justice would have to be founded on an individual’s voluntaristic assertion of right and the power of an omnicompetent state to enforce those rights.  is is precisely the position of the modern liberal state which, in prescinding from all metaphysical commitments about the com-mon good, emphasizes the subjective claim of individuals and the power of the state to determine the good by positively willing an order of justice into being. Moreover, since in this circumstance the goal of justice must be conceived of wholly in terms of immanent goods (as opposed to transcendent ends), it dis-proportionately concerns itself with redistributions of material wealth for each individual who has voluntaristically asserted a right. But this materialist, statist idea of justice comes about only on the assumption that God, and charity as a principle distinct from justice, are illegitimate principles for human relations

God is (for Aquinas) the basis of the debt of justice.69 What happens if we remove God from this picture? If there is no God, then it would appear that there is no duty to charitable giving, nor any basis for an objective order as the foundation of distributive justice; the only foundation remaining for justice would be the subjective claim to rights. Given that condition, there would be no objective order for rights and so any order of justice would have to be founded on an individual’s voluntaristic assertion of right and the power of an omnicompetent state to enforce those rights.   is is precisely the position of the modern liberal state which, in prescinding from all metaphysical commitments about the com-mon good, emphasizes the subjective claim of individuals and the power of the state to determine the good by positively willing an order of justice into being. Moreover, since in this circumstance the goal of justice must be conceived of wholly in terms of immanent goods (as opposed to transcendent ends), it dis-proportionately concerns itself with redistributions of material wealth for each individual who has voluntaristically asserted a right. But this materialist, statist idea of justice comes about only on the assumption that God, and charity as a principle distinct from justice, are illegitimate principles for human relations