1. On Warding off Acts Contrary to Love

14. About this sense of ‘love’, that is, the sense of ‘not hating’, I draw a distinction, because there is a double good for an enemy per accidens that I am able ‘not to hate’: namely the spiritual good by which he attains, or is naturally fit to attain, God; or some other good, an indifferent good, which can be ordered to the spiritual good or also ordered to the opposite. Examples of the first: loving God with love of friendship as he is the noble good, to desire God for oneself as he is the advantageous good; to listen to preaching, rebuke, and instruction whereby one is converted to love of God. Examples of the second: living one’s bodily life, being healthy, being rich, being brave etc.

a. As concerns Spiritual Goods

15. As regard the first goods [n.14], it does not seem that I can hate or not want them for an enemy per accidens, because perfect love of God is not compatible with not wanting God to be loved by others whose friendship is not known to be displeasing to him (and this friendship can exist both by reason of the noble good, namely for God’s own sake, and by reason of the enemy’s own advantageous good). Similarly, not wanting for others the goods by which they are induced to love God is also incompatible with perfect love of God.

b. As concerns Indifferent Goods

16. But as for the other goods, the indifferent ones, it seems I could hate them for my neighbor, both because I can rightly hate or not want them for myself, and because he can rightly not want them for himself. And whatever he can rightly not want for himself he can rightly not want for another, for whatever I can rightly not want for myself if I were as he is, I can rightly not want for myself.

17. The assumption just made is plain, for I can want myself not to have riches or health or things universally necessary for bodily life, and I can rightly do this in two ways: either first by despising them (for example, if I were to become a pauper voluntarily), or second by wanting God to inflict the loss of them on me because of my sins or, if I am to have them inflicted, to accept them willingly and to rejoice while they are being inflicted.

18. So likewise I can in as many ways will these things, namely voluntary poverty and thus loss of riches, for someone else. I can even want certain evils, I mean temporal evils, to be inflicted by God on someone for his emendation and correction. And if the evils have already been inflicted I can still want them for him by approving the divine judgment and being glad about them. And not only in these ways can I want for him such extrinsic disadvantages, but also, if I believe that, because of temporal advantages, he will always be adding to his sins, I can want for him the evils opposite to these advantages. And this holds in like manner of the goods of fortune and of the goods of the body.

c. A Doubt about Bodily Life

19. But as to bodily life there is a doubt whether I could hate or not want it for an enemy.

20. And it seems that I could:

First because a judge in a criminal case can justly pronounce sentence against him; the prosecution too can, in the same case, rightly act against him; both therefore can want for him the fact of the sentence, namely the killing of him as the guilty party.a

a.a [Interpolation] On this point see Gratian Decrees part 2, case 23, q.5, ‘On those who are to be killed’. Also on the same point Boniface VIII’s Decretals bk.6 tit.4 ch.2 ‘On Homicide’, and bk.3 tit.24 ch.3, ‘Clerics and monks should not be involved in secular affairs’ and ‘A bishop or anyone who^’

21. Likewise, second, if anyone is a hindrance to the Church and attacks it, then since, as far as in him lies, he is hindering the common good (because he is hindering the peace of the Church), and since the common good is more to be loved than the private good of any one person, and since consequently, if both goods cannot be had together, the private good is to be refused so that the common good may be preserveda - since all this is so, it seems that here one could properly will bodily death for such a persecutor, on account of the good he is hindering, namely the peace of the Church.

a.a [Interpolation] On this see Extra ‘On Rules of Right’ Boniface VIII Decretals bk.6 tit. 12, ‘The crime of a person ought not to be to the detriment of the Church’; and Gratian Decrees p.1 d.9 ch.1, d.10 ch.1 on both distinctions; and the Commentator [Michael of Ephesus] on Ethics 9.9.

22. On this article one can say that one cannot absolutely will bodily death, and reject life, for one’s neighbor, because there is after death no way for repentance to be bestowed nor any conversion to the love of God as there is after the loss of riches or of courage or the like - on the contrary, the loss of these things can be an occasion for repentance while the loss of bodily life can never be. Now it does not seem that I could properly will for my neighbor what simply excludes him from the possibility of loving God, as death is such an exclusion.

23. However someone can properly will bodily death for another under a condition, for example if he believes the other will persist to the end in evil. And then he can choose death for him so as either to give space for the saints whom he is hindering or to prevent him adding sin to sin for which he will be more harshly punished after death. And these two reasons are taken from the legend of Saint Anastasia which she wrote to Chrysogonus [Letter 1, in Martyrdom of St. Anastasia, Simon Metaphrastes] about her husband Publius, that, as to the first one, “if God were to foresee that he would persist to the end in infidelity, God would bid him make way for the saints,” and that, as to the second one, “it is better for him to breathe forth his life than to blaspheme the Son of God.”

24. But neither in this case [n.23] nor in the two preceding, namely about the judge [n.20] and the tyrant [n.21], can anyone absolutely want death for his neighbor; on the contrary, rather, he should, as far as he can, not want it.

25. Here one must note, as was touched on in 3 d.15 n.58 and often elsewhere [3 d.16 n.56, d.26 n.116, Lectura 3 d.17 nn.22-23, 26], that when someone, because of the positing of a condition that is simply unwilled, wants something, then simply speaking he does not want it but rejects it. The fact is plain from someone throwing merchandise overboard, who voluntarily throws his merchandise overboard because a storm has sprung up (a storm that he simply speaking does not want). This voluntary act is not solely voluntary, because it is only willed on the supposition of something not-willed; but what is possible only on the basis of a supposition or presupposition of something impossible, is not possible simply.

26. In all these cases, therefore, the reason for death being in some way willed for one’s neighbor is itself not simply willed; for the prosecutor in a court case and the judge of it are bound not to want the defendant to be guilty of the supposed crime.a Someone who suffers tyrannical persecution is also bound not to want the tyrant to be a tyrant against the Church. In the third case too one is held, as far as in one lies, not to want him to be simply reprobate. And so, if what one does not want does come about [sc. the enemy commits a crime] then, on the supposition of what is now wanted instead [sc. punishment for crime], one can want death for him, though with a certain sadness. And this is the same as not to want it simply, for it has often been said above [n.25] that to will something under a condition is sufficient to cause sadness if the condition is realized.b

a.a [Interpolation] and not to want to punish him, as far as one can, for if he commits his crime out of lust or hatred or willingly, he sins mortally. Examine this whole matter in Gratian Decrees p.2 cause 11 q.3 ch. 65, and in Augustine (cited in Master Lombard 3 d.37 ch.5 n.5).

b.b [Interpolation] But is one bound to release an enemy from making amends as one is bound to release him from one’s anger? It seems not, first from Richard of Middleton Sent. 3 d.30 q.2 [“If an enemy seeks pardon are we bound to release him not only from our anger but also from his making amends? I reply that when an enemy seeks pardon a man is bound to release him from his anger...and also when he does not seek pardon; but one is not bound to remit satisfaction or the making of amends for injury caused”]; and from Boniface VIII Decretals 2 tit.14 ch.1.

27. To the first argument, therefore, about the judge and prosecutor [n.20], the answer is plain from what has already been said [nn.25-26].

28. One could make the like reply to the second argument, about a tyrant [n.21]. However, one can reply differently, namely that a tyrant can only cause external persecution (according to our Savior’s remark in Matthew 10.28, “Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul”). For after killing the body a tyrant has nothing more he can do. And such external persecution frequently gives the elect the opportunity to advance in virtue, and especially in patience, which according to James 1.4 “has its perfect work.” For every church in its beginning made progress in this way [cf. Tertullian Apol. ch.50, ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’]. And so, in this case, it does not seem one may licitly desire even temporal death for a tyrant, unless perhaps there were someone who might justly inflict such death on him for his sins (if, say, one were to desire from God that justice be done by some such judge - yet with sadness, because one should always wish that the tyrant were not such as to deserve punishment of death).