I. To the Question

A. About the Many Ways of Taking the Term ‘To Be Penitent’

9. Here one needs to understand that, besides the way according to which ‘penitence’ is taken for the sacrament of penitence [infra n.25], ‘penitence’, or rather ‘to be penitent’, can be taken in many other ways:

For as is had from what was said in distinction 14 questions 2 and 3 [nn.86-92, 168, 187], penitence happens to have a sort of justice avenging its own proper sin; and next to that there is an elicited act proper to it, which is a certain imperative willing of a penalty, as of what avenges the fault; in third rank is an effect next to the elicited act, which effect is an act, or acts, on which follows a penalty of avenging (for the will cannot, by an act of will, command a penalty save by first commanding the cause of the penalty, because passions are not in the power of the will save by the mediation of acts); fourth and last there follows the penalty consequent to the act commanded by the elicited act of penitence itself as virtue; and the penalty is the remote effect of the elicited act.Scotus seems to be following specifically here the analysis of the idea of penitence given in d.14 n.90 (save for the omission of the fifth part): “.. .one needs to know that ‘to be penitent’ requires...a distinct prior knowledge of that about which one is penitent. Here I say that the following things are disposed in order: (1) to command the coming together of the partial proximate causes of sadness; (2) and the conjunction of these partial causes that are the proximate effect of the command; (3) and there follows further the remote effect of this command, namely the sadness itself; (4) next contentment in the sadness can follow, which is an act of will having sadness for object; (5) and finally joy in the sadness, according to the saying of Augustine, “Let the sinner grieve over his sin and rejoice in his grief.” ³⁵

10. The distinction between all these is plain from the fact that they can be separated from each other:Cf. d.14 n.91: “The distinction between these is plain: the distinction, indeed, of the first one, namely the command, from the proximate cause of sadness, as of the principal and remote cause from the proximate and second cause; the distinction of the second one from the third, as of the cause from the effect and of the action from the passion; and the third one from the fourth, as of the object from the action; the fourth one from the fifth, as of the object from the passion that is desirous of this object.” ³⁶

For the virtue can exist without the elicited act (as is plain of itself) and conversely, because (as was said) the first act conformed to right reason (of a nature to generate virtue) can be had before anything of virtue is had, because it is the cause of generation of the first degree of virtue.

11. Similarly, the elicited act, which is second, can be without the third, namely without the commanded act, because an act that is commanded does not at once follow the act of command in the will (because the will in commanding is not omnipotent), and conversely.

12. The third can be without the second, namely some act causative of a penalty can be without the act of the will commanding this act, just as someone can at once have detestation of a sin, committed by himself, from contemplation of God, though he not command such an act to be elicited as avenging the fault.

13. The third can also be without the fourth, because those acts that would be of a nature to generate the penalty are not always followed by the penalty, because of indisposition perhaps in the power itself that is receptive of the penalty, just as on the willing-against, or hatred, of sin committed sadness does not always follow, as was said before.

14. And the fourth can also be without the third, because this penalty can be without this ordered act that would be of a nature to cause the penalty, because that act, as ordered, is not the precise cause of the generation of the penalty.

Each one of these, then, can be without any other, and any two or three can be together without any other or any others.

15. To the matter at hand, about the term ‘to be penitent’, properly it is (as was said before d.14 n.61) ‘to hold a penalty’; but ‘to hold’ includes the act of the holder, namely that he hold it voluntarily, and the application of the penalty to himself, that he hold it in himself. This habit, therefore, can be called ‘penitence’, which is a certain habitual holding of the penalty, as a principle habitually inclining to inflicting a penalty on oneself voluntarily; and the elicited act of it can be called ‘actual penitence’ or ‘the to be penitent that is a certain willing inflictive of a penalty on oneself’; and the next act, commanded by the elicited act of justice, can be called ‘to be penitent’, because it is to have a penalty in oneself, at least in its cause; nor can something that is equally principally an object of will be otherwise had as in its cause; the fourth, namely, ‘to be punished with a penalty following that act’, is not properly to be penitent but rather (so to say) to be made penitent, that is, to be held by the penalty or, in more common usage, to be punished.

B. About these Ways of Taking the Term with Respect to Penitence as Virtue

16. To the issue at hand:

The three things aforesaid [sc. contrition, confession, satisfaction, n.2] are in no way parts of penitence as virtue (the way argued to the main point [nn.2-7]), because that virtue is a certain simple form in the will, as is charity and anything else other than justice.Or “any other justice.” My reason for translating it as I do (making iustitia ablative and not nominative as in the printed text) is because justice is not a simple but a multiple virtue, and because to say charity is another kind of justice seems odd. ³⁷ And the point is plain from something else, that it is permanent, just as it is permanent things that belong to virtue. But contrition and confession and satisfaction are certain things that have their being in their coming-to-be; but a permanent thing does not consist of parts that have their being in their coming-to-be. Again, the last two [sc. confession and satisfaction] are not in the will as in a subject, but are certain exterior things.

17. Likewise I say that they are not parts of penitence said in the second way [n.9], because that act too is a certain simple act, as it is an act of a simple virtue. It is plain too from something else, that the act is immediately from the will itself, as elicited by the will; but confession and satisfaction are not acts immediately elicited by the will but commanded by it.

18. Speaking, however, of penitence in the third way, namely for the proximate cause of the very punishment to be inflicted, which is an act commanded by an act of penitence as virtue, of this can those three things be parts.

19. And similarly the three penalties, which are concomitant with the three acts, can be posited as parts of the fourth part, which is ‘to be punished’. And this in the following way: commutative justice has regard universally to equality in exchange, and this is not an equality of the thing but rather an equality according to right reason. And in this way, therefore, penitence or punitive justice in itself, which is a certain commutative justice in punishment, has regard to the penalty equal to, or commensurate with, the fault, and this according to the right reason of the law according to which it is avenging justice.

20. Now that law, according to which penitence as virtue is avenging, dictates that guilt must be ordered both through a penalty intrinsic to sadness and through a double extrinsic penalty (namely of shame and bodily affliction or labor), as is gathered from the diverse Scriptures [d.14 nn.37, 163-166] that contain that law; therefore, the penalty, or the being punished, which responds to the fault, is integrated from three penalties.

21. And likewise, the proximate cause of the penalty must be what is integrated from the causes proper to these penalties.

22. Now the cause proper to interior sadness is detestation of the sin committed, or displeasure about the sin. And this includes two partial causes, namely consideration of the sin committed, and the willing-against of it, and among these the more principal cause is the willing-against; also, when posited, it necessarily posits the other, but not conversely.

23. The act, then, which is the proximate proper cause of sadness, is called contrition; the second act, which is the proximate cause of blushing or shame, is called confession, where the hidden sin is made manifest to a human being. The third cause proper to the third penalty is some laborious or penal work.

24. Just as, therefore, the perfect penalty, which corresponds to the fault according to avenging justice, has three partial penalties, which are parts of one perfect punishment, in the way in which three restitutions would be parts of one perfect restitution for him who would have suffered loss in such a way - so the three acts, on which the three penalties follow, are parts of one sufficient cause proximate in regard to a fitting penalty.

C. About these Ways of Taking the Term with Respect to Penitence as Sacrament

25. About penitence as a sacrament I say that those three are in no way parts of it because, as was said in distinction 14 [n.195], penitence as a sacrament is ‘absolution by a priest done with certain words etc.’ But no part of this is contrition, which is something spiritual in the soul; nor is it confession, because confession is not anything of the sentence itself of the priest, but an act of the guilty party accusing himself; nor is it satisfaction, but satisfaction follows the sacramental absolution.

26. However these three are required as preparatory to, or following from, the sacrament of penitence, so that it may be worthily received.

For confession is simply required, because the priest does not absolve by his sentence unless the guilty party has first accused himself in that forum [of the sacrament].

Nor even is the absolution useful unless some contrition or attrition precede in the one confessing. Now the reason for this distinction is plain from what was said above [n.9, d.14 n.62]; for it suffices that some displeasure, although unformed, precede, and then he is capable of sacramental absolution, and through it contrition comes to be.

Now satisfaction ought to follow the sacrament of penitence so that the sacrament be effective, and this effectiveness I understand to be in reality or in will - unless the judge could make assessment that the preceding other penalties were sufficient for payment of the whole penalty. Now this judgment of the priest gives absolution in such a way that, however, it still binds: it absolves from the debt of eternal penalty, but it binds for the payment of temporal penalty, unless this already be sufficiently paid. Also, this judgment either does not absolve at all, or at least not efficaciously, if the guilty party is not in himself disposed in the due way; because the sacrament is a sign of interior absolution, and the interior absolution does not accompany the sacrament unless there be a due disposition in the mind of the one who is to be interiorly absolved.