3. How Sin is from the Created Will

124. Rejecting this way [n.97], then, because of the two arguments about the omnipotence and omniscience of God [n.119], it remains to ask how sin can be from the created will, as to the first question [n.1], and how not be from God, as to the fourth question [n.20].

125. As to the first, I say that from the three ways (namely the two that posit a per accidens cause with respect to evil, and the third that posits a defective cause with respect to it [nn.77-78, 87]) a single integrated solution can be collected of the following sort:

In the case of sin there come together a positive act as the material element and a privation of due justice as the formal element. There is no efficient cause with respect to this privation but only a deficient cause, according to the third way [n.87]; for the will, which is duty bound to give rightness to its act and does not give it, sins by being deficient. But this ‘being deficient’ (namely not causing or not giving to its act the rightness that is due) is from a cause that could then freely cause it, namely freely give rightness to its act. This then is what it is to sin formally, that such a free cause does not give the due rightness that it could then give.

126. Hereby the [second] way about the per accidens cause [n.78] is evident. Although this cause does not cause what is formally in sin by effecting something but by failing to effect something, yet it does cause it by effecting something positive to which is annexed the deficiency caused by its failure, and on this point stand the authorities from Dionysius [n.78] about accidentality on the part of the effect.

127. There is also accidentality on the part of the cause not properly (properly is when the white is said to be a cause accidentally of understanding, and generally when something is properly an accident of a per se cause such that the cause makes a per accidens unity along with it [n.76]), but by extending the term ‘accident’ to anything that is outside the idea of something, in the way that the difference is said to be an accident of the genus. For, in this way, that by which our will is specifically ‘this will’ is an accident of ‘will in general’, because ‘will in general’ is a perfection simply (which is why it is posited formally in God), and will in this sense is not the proximate cause, even contingently, with respect to sin, because then any lower instance under it would have such a sense of causality, and the divine will would also. But will when it is through some difference contracted to created will (which we describe loosely by saying it is ‘limited’) is the proximate defective and per accidens cause with respect to sin; and so on the part of the cause too, when will in general is taken for the cause to which this difference is understood to be added, this accidentally happens to it per accidens, as if one were to say that animal is not per se but per accidens the cause of understanding because ‘the most perfect animal’ understands; indeed ‘most perfect’ is not the proper idea of understanding what is an accident of animal simply, but ‘rational’ is, because rational is an accident of animal as the difference is of the genus - for we indicate ‘rational’ loosely by saying ‘most perfect’.

128. So it is in the issue at hand. The specific difference, by which ‘will in general’ is contracted to created will (which contraction or difference is now hidden from us), we refer to loosely by the terms ‘limited or defectible being’ or by ‘from nothing’, and to this whole is attributed the act of volition in respect of sin as to a more proper cause than to will of itself; and this is true if it is understand of this substrate, namely of this specific will; and being the cause of sin belongs to this will not only per accidens (as it does to will in general), but also as to proximate cause, so that it can belong to any such will and to no other. And in this way should be understood the first opinion about the defectibility of the will [n.77].