A. The Common Response

1. Exposition of It

86. As to this question, the opinion is with probability held [Bonaventure, Richard of Middleton, Innocent V, Cassiodorus et al.] that in every divine work mercy is found along with justice, according to Psalm 24.10, “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.”

87. The reason for this is that an artisan, when voluntarily producing an effect conformably to his own rule, is just, for ‘justice renders to each what is due’ [Cicero, Nature of the Gods 3.15, Justin Institutes I tit.1 ch.10]; what is most due to an artifact is that it agree with its rule; but God is such an artisan for every creature.

88. Likewise mercy exists in coming to the aid of present need to stop it, and of impending future need to prevent it; but God, when producing each creature thus and so, is coming to the aid of what is in need; therefore etc.

89. In favor of the presence of these two [justice and mercy] together, there is the following sort of congruity: The more that several virtues incline toward some one and the same work, the more is that work perfect, just as, by opposition, the more a work is blamable, the more is it against the inclination or rectitude of the several virtues. Every work of God, as it is his, is most perfect; therefore it comes from every virtue that can come together in the same work. But mercy and justice can come together in the same work, as is plain from the solution of questions 1-3 of this distinction [nn.29-36, 40-45, 56-57, 64-66].

2. Weighing of It

90. But the first reason [n.87], which proceeds from the idea of justice and mercy, takes the works of them very generally; for if justice consists properly in returning what is due, and if nothing is due to an artifact save according to the will of the artisan, it follows that in the production of the artifact there will be no justice strictly speaking; but God is such an artisan with respect to the creature. Therefore, what is taken in the phrase ‘it is due to an artifact to be conformed to its rule’ must be denied when ‘due’ is taken strictly, because God is not in debt to this artifact. But if the phrase is taken to mean that this is required in an artifact for it to be duly fashioned, from this no justice in the producer follows, if he only give freely to the artifact that it be so conformed, without any previous exigency on the part of the artifact - as is the case here.

91. And the reason about mercy [n.88] overly extends mercy to the alleviation or exclusion of any defect whatever, although mercy is only properly for alleviating or supplying defects that belong to misery, and not everything defective is capable of misery.

92. The congruence too about the coming together of several virtues involves a doubt, because it is not certain that in the divine will there can be any idea of any virtue -not only of a virtue non-distinct in reality (this is certain), but of one not distinct formally either, for the will, because it is infinite, suffices for all rectitude of act more than any superadded virtue however distinct in reality or in idea. But if a virtue that is distinct formally from the will be granted there, as wisdom or some intellectual virtue in the intellect, it is not clear that the coming together of several virtues for the same work is required for the highest perfection of the work.

93. Let it be, too, that these reasonings [nn.87-89] prove the conclusion generally about God’s positive works (because manifest rectitude is there, and even exclusion of need), yet, because some evil is inflicted in the punishment of the bad (such that the one punished becomes needier after punishment than before), it does not seem that these reasons equally prove the conclusion in this issue at hand.