I. To the Second Question

A. Sin is Formally the Privation of Good

33. Although these questions, according to the Master, belong to different distinctions, yet their solutions are connected, and because of this connection in this way they can be asked together; and among these questions the first to be solved is the second [n.10], because its solution occupies a place in the others.

And although one could preface here without proof what the word ‘sin’ means (for before any questioning about anything there is need first to have knowledge of what the word means), nevertheless that sin is formally the privation of good is shown by the authorities adduced for the opposite [n.14], and by the following sort of reason, that an inferior agent is bound in its acting to conform itself to the superior agent, because if it is in its power to conform or not conform then not to conform is a sin. For that is why it is called ‘sin’ (speaking of sin whether against divine law or against human law), because the one sinning could have conformed to the law of the superior agent and did not. Therefore the act which is in the power of the non-conformer, and which is thereby voluntary, is not formally sin, because it would not be a sin if it did conform to the superior rule; so the idea of sin in that act is precisely the privation of the conformity.

B. Of which Good Sin is Formally the Privation

34. From this can further be inferred of which good sin is formally the privation.

1. Opinions of Others

35. It is posited [Alexander of Hales, William of Auxerre] that sin is the privation of the good in which it is, because it harms it, as is argued from Augustine City of God 12.6 [n.13]; in another way [Thomas Aquinas] that sin is the privation of a supernatural good, namely grace; or in a third way [Bonaventure] that it is the corruption of the acquired habits to which evil acts are virtually repugnant, as a habit generated from acts formally bad is repugnant formally to habits of virtue.

2. Rejection of the Opinions

36. Against the first of these ways there are four arguments:

First, because since the good, in which the sin is, is finite, it could be wholly consumed by having some finite good taken away from it repeatedly.

37. And if it be said that the taking away is of parts in the same proportion, and so it goes on ad infinitum - on the contrary, a second evil can be equal to the first in malice or worse than it, so it corrupts a part that is of the same or greater amount; therefore, by a process in this way of equal or greater sins, the nature of the good is at length totally consumed.

38. Second, because intellectual nature can be created only by God and, thereby, it is simply incorruptible as regards the creature, so that no creature can destroy it; therefore someone sinning in his act cannot destroy any part of his nature, because the part, as concerns incorruptibility, would be of the same idea as the whole nature, for an incorruptible is not made up of corruptibles.

39. Further, what is formally repugnant to an effect does not destroy a nonnecessary [sc. contingent] cause of that effect; sin states formally a deformity or wrongness repugnant to rightness in an act; so it does not destroy a non-necessary cause of this rightness (the will is a non-necessary cause of rightness, both because it does not cause an act of rightness necessarily but contingently, and because if it causes an act it does not necessarily cause it to be right). The proof of the major is that a contingent cause in respect of something is able not to be and not to cause; so the cause need not be destroyed when the thing caused does not exist. The point is plain by way of likeness from the opposite: for what alters a thing - by introducing something repugnant to a quality in it - corrupts the substantial form for this reason, that the sort of quality in question necessarily follows the substantial form; therefore a thing that is corruptive precisely of some contingent concomitant thing cannot corrupt what it is contingently thus concomitant to.

40. Further sins would not differ in species, because they are privations of a good and privations only get their specific difference from the opposed positives.

41. Further, the same arguments (some of them [the second, third, and fourth, nn.38-40]) prove that sin is not formally privation or corruption of grace [n.35] (although the first argument [n.36] does not prove this), because grace is totally destroyed by a first mortal sin. However there is another specific argument here, namely that a second sin will not be a sin, because it will not corrupt anything that a sin is of a nature per se to corrupt, for the grace that would be corrupted is not present.

42. The second argument [n.38] is conclusive here, because grace is by creation from God alone and is preserved by him alone; and when it is destroyed, it is annihilated - because annihilation is the destruction of that of which creation is the production. The third argument [n.39] is also conclusive here, because grace is a contingent cause with respect to rightness in an act. The fourth [n.40] is also likewise conclusive, because all mortal sins would be of the same nature in formal idea of privation.

43. The same arguments (some of them [the first and third, nn.36, 39]) are also conclusive against acquired justice or virtue [n.35], because although acquired justice does not remain always incorruptible as nature does [nn.36-38], and although it is not corrupted by one mortal sin as grace is [n.41], yet mortal sin is not per se the privation of it, because mortal sin can stand along with it.

44. And if you say about this contention [n.43] that mortal sin cannot stand along with acquired justice - on the contrary: acquired justice can exist more intensely in him who sins mortally than in him who does not sin, namely if the latter has a justice of nine degrees and the former one of ten degrees and the former sins mortally. Let us posit that in the former the tenth degree of justice is corrupted, so he still has a justice equal to him who did not sin mortally; so if the latter had sinned mortally with a like sin, that sin in him would not have been repugnant to his justice of nine degrees [sc. because it is supposed to be repugnant only to the tenth degree], and so would not have corrupted it.

45. The third argument [n.39] is conclusive here, because any such habit is only a contingent cause with respect to an act of sin.

3. Scotus’ own Solution

46. I concede, then, according to the preceding solution of the question [n.33], that sin is a corruption of rightness in second act, and not of natural rightness or of any habitual rightness but of actual moral rightness. But I do not understand the corruption to be that which is a change from being to non-being (for sin can remain after such a change of justice from being to non-being, and can also be present without such change from being to non-being); but I understand the corruption formally, the way privation is said to be formally the corruption of its opposed positive; for in this way the idea of sin is formally the corruption of rightness in second act, because it is opposed to that rectitude as a privation is opposed to its positive; not opposed, to be sure, to a rectitude that is present (because then two opposites would be present at once), nor to a rectitude that was first there in the act (because in order for there to be a change from opposite to opposite no act remains), but to a rectitude that should have been present.

47. For free will is duty bound to elicit all its acts in conformity with a higher rule, namely in accord with divine precept; and so, when it acts against conformity to this rule, it lacks the actual justice that is due (that is, the justice which should have been present in the act and is not present [n.51]); this lack, to the extent it is the act of a deficient will (as shall be said in one of the solutions [n.125]), is formally actual sin.

48. This is clear from authorities:

The first is from Augustine On the Two Souls ch.11 n.15, “Sin is the will to keep or pursue what justice forbids, and from which it is free to abstain;” this is to say in brief: sin is willing something forbidden, so that the will there is the material element (and to this extent the whole is attributed to the will, because the whole is in the will’s power) and the thing forbidden or prohibited is the formal element, because it signifies the disagreement with a higher rule.

49. Ambrose similarly in his book On Paradise ch.8 n.39 (and it is in the Master’s text), “Sin is transgression of heavenly commands etc.”

50. With this agrees what Augustine says City of God 12.8, “The will is made bad in that which would not happen if the will did not will it; and so voluntary failings are followed by just punishment. For the will falls not toward bad things but in a bad way, that is, not toward bad natures but for this reason in a bad way, that it falls against the order of natures from that which is highest toward that which is lower... And thereby he who perversely loves the good of any nature...becomes bad and wretched in a good thing, having been deprived of a better.” It as if he were to say: the positive act of willing a creature is not sin formally, but lack of due order in the act is, an act in which the created good should be loved for the sake of the supreme good - and the will fails of this order by resting in a created good; and this failing is formally sin.

51. With these authorities [nn.48-50] reason agrees, because every sin is formally injustice, and sin of this sort is injustice of this sort and consequently is a privation of justice of this sort [dd.30-32 n.51]; therefore actual sin is formally actual injustice, so it is privation of actual justice, that is, of the justice that should have been present in the act.

4. Four Queries about Sin and their Solution

52. From this solution [nn.46-51] is made plain a solution to the queries raised about sin: first, whether the per se idea of sin is more a matter of aversion from [God] or of conversion to [creatures]; second, how mortal sins can be specifically distinct if the formal idea of sin lies in aversion; third, how one mortal sin can be more serious than another if they are aversions from the same good (for pure privation does not seem to admit the more and less, according to Anselm On the Virginal Conception ch.24). [Fourth query n.63.]

a. To the First Query

53. To the first [n.52] I say that aversion from the ultimate end can be understood in two ways: formally or virtually.

54. Formally either by contrariety or by negation, such that the will refuses the end, or does not wish something when it should wish it; and such refusing is hating while not wishing is to omit the precept [Deuteronomy 6.5, Matthew 22.37], “Love the Lord thy God etc.”

55. Virtually, such that when something is necessary for attaining the ultimate end, the will, having turned away from that necessary thing, thereby turns away virtually from the end (in the way the intellect, when it denies the conclusion,a turns away virtually from the principle of itb).

a. a[Interpolation] some conclusion that follows from some principle.

b. b[Interpolation] and in the way a sick man is said to turn away from health when he turns away from a bitter drink without which health cannot be had.

56. The first aversion [aversion formally, n.54] is, in itself, of the same idea [sc. aversion both by contrariety and by negation]; nor is it included formally in every sin whatever; for hatred of God is a specific sin, and omission of the precept “Love the Lord thy God etc.” is another specific sin.

57. In the second way [virtually, n.55] aversion is common to every mortal sin, because in every such sin the will is disposed in disordered way with respect to something necessary for the end. - Where does this something necessary come from? From the divine will prescribing it to be observed, “if you wish to enter into life” [Matthew 19.17-19]; not from another practical syllogism (for the need here is not to inquire into the doctrine of the philosophers but into the precepts of God in Scripture).

58. This sort of aversion from God is the essential idea of any sin whatever; for as the formal idea of rightness is the proper end in an act about some being that is for the end, so too the proper lack of such rightness is the proper lack of virtue that comes from the end, because it is the proper formal aversion from that which is proper for the end; and in this way aversion is nothing other than disorder of will about something ordained for the end by divine precept, about which thing the will ought to be ordered.

b. To the Second Query

59. From this the second query is clear [n.52], because since privations are made distinct in species by the distinction in species of the opposed positive states, then lackings of rectitude in acts are diverse in species the way that distinction belongs to privations and numbers, by the number of rightnesses in acts that would have to be held to be diverse.a And so sins are not distinguished by the way they turn toward their objects (which are not bad save materially), but their formal idea is distinguished by reference to the specifically different rightnesses that ought to have been present in them.

a. a[Interpolation] and sins that are diverse in number from the numerical distinction of the positive states, these sins, which are certain privations namely privations of the rectitude that should be present in acts, are distinguished formally by the distinctions of such rectitude - as that, since specifically diverse rectitudes ought to have been present, the lackings of these rectitudes are specifically diverse.

60. Thus too there can be several sins of the same species present, and these sins are the privations of the numerically several actual aptitudes that ought to have been present in the successive diverse acts.

c. To the Third Query

61. As to the third [n.52], it is also clear that that sin is more serious in kind which is opposed to a better rightness; now the rightness is better which, ceteris paribus, is more immediate to the end. This point is plain from a likeness in principal premise and conclusion, for the error is greater and more false which redounds more on the premise, or by which a truer conclusion, and one nearer the premise, is denied.

62. But, speaking of the same kind of mortal sin, that sin is more serious where the will sins with greater lust - because the more the will strives, the more perfect the act it would cause, and it is bound to give the act a rightness with the same proportion, if the act is capable of rightness or, if the act is not capable of rightness, it is bound to guard itself from that act more than from another act less repugnant to rightness; and so, by failing to do so, it sins more. An example of this is if the intellect, when erring about one conclusion, has a more necessary object than when erring about another conclusion, then the error of the intellect in the first case is the worse the more the true (opposed) act ought to have been more perfect.

d. To the Fourth Query

63. From this is also easily made plain that, if sins could be continued infinitely, nothing unacceptable would follow; for the sins would corrupt the good infinitely - not by the corruption that is a change, but by the corruption formally that is a privation, and this not privation of a good that was present [n.46] but of a good that ought to have been present. Now infinite goods or infinite right acts are due from the will if it is conserved infinitely, and therefore, without any diminution of the will or of any first act in it, an infinity of such goods can suffer privation.

64. And if it is objected against this way [n.63] and in favor of the other two [n.35], which posit that nature or grace is corrupted:

The proof [Aquinas, Lombard] that nature is corrupted is from Luke 10.30, “and having beaten him with blows [sc. the man journeying to Jericho], the thieves departed,” where the gloss [Nicholas of Lyra] says, “sins wound man in his natural powers” -which would not be true if sin took nothing away from the perfection of nature but only prevented such perfections from existing in second act.

The proof [Aquinas] that grace is corrupted is that grace is destroyed by mortal sin; because if sin were not formally corruptive of grace, then grace could stand along with it, which is absurd.

65. To the first proof I reply that the wounded traveler lost no part of his nature, although its continuity was broken and thereby rendered less fit for its operations, or rather deprived of good use of itself; thus nature “while remaining in its integrity” (according to Dionysius Divine Names ch.4) is wounded when it is made unfit for right use, which is done by repeated lack of actual rightness.

66. To the second proof I say that sin cannot corrupt grace causally [n.42] but only by way of demerit, so that the will naturally averts itself [sc. from rightness] prior in nature to God’s ceasing in nature to conserve grace; now it is necessary that every privation be formally the privation of some positive state, with which the privation cannot stand; sin therefore is not formally the privation of grace, and it destroys grace not by incompossibility but by demerit.

C. To the Principal Arguments

67, To the arguments.

As to the first [n.11], ‘word, deed, desire’ are taken by way of matter, but ‘desire’ states the proximate matter, word and deed the remote matter; ‘against the law of God’ states what is formal in sin.

68. As to the second [n.12], it is plain that sins are distinguished by distinction of privations, in the way privations can be distinguished [n.59].

69. As to the third [n.13], it is plain that corruption is formally this privation of this good, which would be present in the act if the privation were not there and the good not being taken away by it. And as to Augustine, sin does harm the thing it is in - not in itself, by taking away something that belongs to the thing’s nature, but by taking away from it some perfection that befits it, namely actual justice.

70. And if it is objected that ‘the justice was not present, therefore it cannot be corrupted’, the response is plain from what was said; for it follows therefrom that the justice is not corrupted by a corruption that is a change from being to non-being, but it is corrupted formally by the fact that its privation is present and it is not - just as original sin corrupts the original justice that it is the privation of, but not a justice that was previously present [sc. in a new born infant, dd.30-32 nn.50, 53 55].