Thirty Fourth to Thirty Seventh Distinctions

Question One. Whether Sin comes from Good as from a Cause

1. Concerning the thirty fourth distinction I aska, as to the cause of sin, whether sin is from good as from a cause.

a. a[Interpolation] About the thirty fourth distinction, where the Master deals with actual sin and first with its original cause, the question is asked:

2. That it is not:

Because in Matthew 7.18 it is said: “A good tree cannot bring forth good fruit;” and the gloss there on it [“There is no intermediate between the cause of good being good and the cause of evil evil”].

3. Further, “every agent makes the effect like itself” (On Generation and Corruption 1.7.324a9-11), at least in the case of the most remote effects; likeness in what is most remote is in what is most common; so at least in the case of the most common perfections the effect is like the cause, and     therefore in goodness too. Sin, then, is not from good as a cause but from evil.

4. Further, whatever is from good as from the efficient cause is directed to good as end; sin is not directed to good as end, because it turns from the end; therefore etc     . Proof of the minor: Aristotle Metaphysics 5.2.1013b9-11 and Physics 2.3.195a8-11, “the efficient and final causes are mutually causes of each other.”

5. Further, what is bad in nature is not in the effect from the efficient cause as cause; for a deformed effect or a morally bad effect is never produced save by a cause that is imperfect; therefore here too.

6. Further, there is some first evil (as I will prove [n.8]), so every other evil comes from it. This consequence is proved about good stated elsewhere [1 d.2 n.43], and by the Philosopher Metaphysics 2.1.993b23-30 about that being most such through which all other things are such [1 d.8 n.79, d.3 n.108].

7. And in addition: if nothing good comes from the first evil, then the evil too that comes from the first evil does not come from any good. The proof of this consequence is that the same thing does not come from diverse causes that are not ordered to each other.

8. The proof of the first proposition [n.6] is that either there is some supreme evil, and then the intended conclusion is gained because this supreme is first; or there is not, and then for every evil a worse evil can be taken ad infinitum; but it is unacceptable for there to be an infinite regress in things that are permanent (Metaphysics 2.2.994a1-11), and this was made clear in 1 d.2 nn.43, 46, 52-53; therefore there can be a single intensively infinite evil, and thus the conclusion.

9. The opposite is maintained by the Master in the text, and he adduces Augustine On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.28 n.48 [“The cause and first origin of sin is some good thing, because before the first sin there was nothing bad from which it might arise. For since it had an origin and cause, it had it either from good or from evil; but there was no evil before;     therefore evil is from good, etc     .”].

Question Two. Whether Sin is per se a Corruption of Good

10. Next, about the thirty fifth distinction,a the question is raised whether sin is per se a corruption of good.

a. a[Interpolation] About the thirty fifth distinction, where the Master deals with the whatness of sin...

11. That it is not:

Augustine Against Faustus 22.27 (and it is in the Master’s text), “Sin is a word or deed or desire against the law of God;” each of these is something positive;     therefore etc     .

12. Further, that by whose distinction sins are distinguished belongs per se to the idea of sin; but sins are distinguished by the distinction of something positive, namely by the turning toward some changeable good or the like; therefore turning toward created good in general is turning toward sin itself in general.

13. Further, I ask what good is evil a corruption of? Not of that in which it is, because an accident does not corrupt its subject since it naturally presupposes its subject, and what naturally presupposes something does not corrupt that something. Nor of some other good, because according to Augustine City of God 12.6, “evil corrupts the good which it harms;” but it only harms what it is in;     therefore etc     .

14. The opposite is maintained by Augustine on the verse of John 1 ‘Without him was not anything made that was made’, where Augustine says, “Sin is nothing.” And Anselm proves this of express purpose in On the Virginal Conception ch.5 and On the Fall of the Devil ch.15; look at him there carefully. [“Injustice is altogether nothing, like blindness. For blindness is nothing other than the absence of sight where sight ought to be, and this does not exist more in the eye where sight ought to be than in a piece of wood where sight ought not to be... By this reasoning we understand that evil is nothing. For, as injustice is nothing other than absence of due justice, so evil is nothing other than absence of due good. But no real being.is nothing, nor is being evil a being something for anything. For evil to any real being is nothing other than its lacking a good it ought to have; but to lack a good that should be present is not to be anything; so being evil is not a being something for any real being. This I have said in brief about evil (which is always indubitably nothing), the evil that is injustice. But that injustice is nothing other than absence of due justice and has no real being.I think I have sufficiently shown in.” On the Fall of the Devil ch.15: “Therefore just as the absence of justice and the not possessing of justice have no real being, so injustice and being unjust have no existence, and therefore they are not anything but are nothing. Injustice then and being unjust are nothing.”]

Question Three. Whether Sin is a Punishment for Sin

15. About the thirty sixth distinction I aska whether sin is a punishment for sin.

a. a[Interpolation] About this thirty sixth distinction, where the Master turns to show that sometimes punishment and guilt are the same thing, the question is asked:

16. That it is not:

Augustine Retractions 1.26, “Every punishment is just, everything just is from God,     therefore every punishment is from God” [more precisely: “The punishment of the bad, therefore , which is from God, is bad indeed for the bad; but it is among the good works of God, since it is just for the bad to be punished”]; but no guilt is from God, therefore no guilt is a punishment of sin.

17. Further, every sin is voluntary, according to Augustine On True Religion ch.4; punishment is involuntary (Anselm, On the Virginal Conception ch.4); therefore etc     .a

a. a[Interpolation] And every punishment saddens.

18. Further, punishment does not exceed guilt, because God always punishes less than is deserved; sometimes a subsequent sin is greater than a preceding one. Likewise too, since there is an end to sins, the last sin is not punished by any sin; so it is not punished in the way any preceding one is; and yet the last sin can be greater than the preceding; therefore it is punished by a lesser punishment, which is unacceptable.

19. To the opposite is the Master in the text [2 d.36 chs.1, 3], and he brings forward many authorities [from Scripture and from Augustine and Gregory] .

Question Four. Whether Sin can be from God

20. Next, about the thirty seventh distinction I ask whether sin can be from God.a

a. a[Interpolation] About the thirty seventh distinction, where the Master records the opinion of those who deny that bad acts - insofar as they are acts - are good and are from God, two questions are asked: first, whether sin can be from God; second, whether the will is the total cause of its act [n.96]. Argument about the first:

21. That it can:

“Anything of which the cause is an inferior cause also has a superior cause;” “whatever too is cause of the cause is a cause of the thing caused” [Book On Causes prop.1, Bacon Questions on the Book on Causes ad loc.]; the created will, which is an inferior cause in respect of God and of which God is cause, is itself cause of sin; therefore God is cause of sin too.

22. If it be said that the will is not the cause of sin insofar as it is from God but insofar as it is from nothing - on the contrary: God acts more along with a higher active created cause than with a lower one; nature is a lower cause than will. But God acts along with nature in such a way that nothing exists in nature that God does not act along with in nature; therefore he acts along with the will in such a way that nothing is willed that he does not act along with in willing.

23. Further to the principal argument [n.21]: the act that is the substrate of sin in the will is from God, so the sin is too.

24. Proof of the antecedent: first because the act is a being that does not exist from itself (for then it would be God); therefore it exists from another, and so from God; second, because giving alms, preaching Christ, performing miracles, generating a son are works of the same idea in being of nature, whether they are done morally well or badly; therefore they have a cause of the same idea as concerns their being of nature; but God is the cause of these acts when they are morally good; so he is also cause when they are morally bad.

25. The antecedent [n.23] is also proved by the saying in Isaiah 10.15 about Sennacherib, “Shall the axe boast itself?”, where the Gloss says, “Just as instruments can do nothing of themselves, so Sennacherib was able to do nothing against the Jews;” therefore Sennacherib was the instrument of God in the act he did [sc. conquering Israel], and yet he sinned mortally as is plain from ibid. 14.24-25. That act, then, which was the substrate of mortal sin, was caused by God.

26. The proof of the consequence [n.23] is that a created will is not cause of sin other than by being cause of the act that is the substrate of the deformity of the sin, because, according to Dionysius Divine Names ch.4, “No one does anything at all by looking to evil.”

27. Further again to the principal argument: God can remove his upholding of grace and then grace will not be present - indeed, whenever grace is not present, it is annihilated; ‘annihilation’ belongs only to God’; therefore by the action of God alone can the soul be without grace. Therefore, in the same way, God can be the per se cause of sin, because the idea of evil seems no more present in sin than in privation of grace.

28. Further, God is the cause of punishment;     therefore he is cause of sin. The proof of the consequence is that punishment is a per se evil just as guilt is - indeed, it seems more to be a per se evil, because it is opposed to the good of nature while guilt is opposed to the good of morals; the good of nature is a prior good to the good of morals. The antecedent [sc. God is cause of punishment] is plain from Augustine Retractions 1.25, “Every punishment is just etc     .” [n.16].

29. To the opposite is Augustine on John 1, ‘Without him was not anything made’, when he says, “Sin was not made through the Word.”

30. Further, there is proof that God cannot be cause of an act that is the substrate of sin:

Because then he would act against his own prohibition; for he prohibited Adam from eating [of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Genesis 2.17] - nor was there anything disordered in that act save that it was prohibited; therefore if God had caused that positive act [sc. of eating by Adam], he would have done it immediately against his own prohibition, which seems to have been a thing of duplicity.

31. Further, whatever God makes he makes for the sake of himself: “The most high has made all things for himself” [Proverbs 16.4]; but he makes with the most perfect charity, because he himself is charity [1 John 4.8]; therefore such an act is most orderly, both from the end and from the operative principle. So if the act is disorderly from a sinning created will, then the same act seems to be orderly and disorderly, which seems impossible.

32. Further, free choice does not err when in its acting it agrees with its rule; its rule in acting is the divine will; therefore if God wills that some free choice will sinfully, then that free choice does not sin when it sins.

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].

II. To the First and Fourth Questions

A. To the First Question

1. Sin is from Good

71. To the other question, which was asked first [n.1], about the cause of sin, I say that sin, in the way in which it can have a cause, is from good.

72. The proof is that nothing is a ‘first evil’, otherwise it would lack the supreme perfection belonging to it; but that to which supreme perfection belongs is the supreme good in nature; therefore the supreme evil would be the supreme good in nature.

73. And upon this heresy [sc. there is a first, supreme evil] there follow many other unacceptable things, and not only against the faith but also against philosophy, because the heresy destroys itself and involves a contradiction; for a first evil would be a necessary existence and without partner and independent, if it were posited to be as equally a supreme first as the first good; being a necessary existence and without partner only belong to the most perfect entity.

74. So     therefore , in the way that evil has a cause, it can have no cause but good, speaking of the first created good.

75. This is plain from Augustine City of God 12.6, “He [who consents to the tempter] seems to have made for himself an evil will etc     .” Here Augustine seems to maintain that one’s own will is the cause of falling [sc. into sin], by its immoderate use of some created good - that is, a good that is in the power of the very will, so that just as the will itself can of itself use and not use, so it can enjoy immoderately and not enjoy immoderately some good agreeable to it; and thus this ‘first sin’ is immediately and first from the will alone.

2. How Sin is from Good as from its Cause

a. Opinions of Others

76. But about the way of positing good as cause there are diverse statements.

One way is that good is a per accidens cause of evil, and this can be understood in two ways: that the accidentality is either on the part of the cause or on the part of the effect. On the part of the cause in the way the Philosopher speaks of a cause per accidens in Metaphysics 5.2.1013b34-14a1 and Physics 2.3.195a32-35, as Polycleitus is cause per accidens of a statue; on the part of the effect in the way said in Physics 2.5.197a32-35 and Metaphysics 5.30.1025a14-30, that chance and fortune are causes per accidens, where it is not anything accidentally conjoined with a per se cause that is called a per accidens cause, but something accidently conjoined with a per se effect that is called a per accidens effect of the same cause whose intent is the per se effect.

77. [First opinion] - In the first way [n.76] it is said [Richard of Middleton] that the will is cause of sin not as it is will but as it is fallible; and this is further reduced to the fact that the will is from nothing.

And this seems proved by Augustine above [n.75], where he seems to say that “let him ask why he made the will evil, and he will find that the evil will does not begin from the fact it was a made nature, but from the fact it was a nature made from nothing.”

78. [Second opinion] - In another way accidentality is posited on the part of the effect [n.76], namely [Richard of Middleton] that the will per se intends what is positive in the effect, and with this is deformity per accidens conjoined; but the will does not per se intend the deformity (like in fortuitous happeningsa), as is plain from Dionysius Divine Names ch.4, “No one acts looking toward evil” (and many like things there, [n.27]).

And a similar authority is found in the Philosopher “Each chooses such things as appear to him” (Ethics 3.6.1113a23-24), and for this reason does the virtuous man choose good things, and the things that seem good to him are simply good.

a. a[Interpolation] and in a natural agent that per se intends to generate something like itself, as fire generates fire, but per accidens it intends the corruption that is the bad of the contrary [e.g. the corruption of water].

79. [Rejection of the first and second opinion] - Against the first way [n.77] the argument is as follows:

Is fallibility in the will a per se cause of sin or a per accidens cause [n.76]? If per accidens then it is posited in vain [sc. because the will is already by itself supposed to be a per accidens cause of sin, n.78]. If per se, and if fallibility is in the will from God as from the per se efficient cause, and if whatever is per se from a cause insofar as it causes is per se from the cause of that cause, then sin would be per se from God (proof of this assumption: for although fallibility follows nature because ‘nature is from nothing’, yet it is not an efficient cause from nothing, because the term ‘from which’ does not give by efficient causality any property of itself to the thing produced; therefore fallibility has a nature from God himself as from the efficient cause itselfa).

a. a[Interpolation] for what is cause of the subject is cause of the proper accident or of the consequent natural property.

80. If it be said that a fallible will is a per accidens cause of sin but a closer per accidens cause absolutely than the will is (in the way that, according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.2.1014a4-6, there is an order in per accidens causes; for Polycleitus is closer with respect to the statue than white is) - against this:

First, because a created will seems to be convertibly a cause with respect to sin, though a contingent one; but fallibility, which belongs to something insofar as it is from nothing, is not convertible; therefore the will as such is more properly a cause with respect to sin than fallible will is.

81. There is a confirmation of the reason, because the same thing under the same idea is the proper subject of the privation and of the opposed positive state, and even in a free cause - which has power for opposites - the same thing under the same idea is cause of opposites, although of one per se and of the other contingently and per accidens, or of both contingently; but the will, as will, is the proper subject and cause of good volition; therefore of bad volition too.a

a. a[Interpolation] Or the argument is as follows: a cause that, under the same idea on its own part, is contingent with respect to two things, is a contingent cause with respect to each; but a created will is a contingent cause of willing well just as of willing badly. But this will, insofar as it is this will, is a contingent cause of willing well; therefore it is as such a cause of willing badly.

82. There is again a confirmation of the reason [n.80], because if the will sins insofar as it is fallible, and if insofar as it is fallible it cannot will well, so that the fallibility is the per se reason or the proximate reason for sinning (though per accidens), then insofar as it is fallible it cannot will well, and so, if it sins, it does not sin, because “no one sins as to something he cannot avoid” [dd.30-32 n.3].

83. Further, one cannot posit [Thomas Aquinas] ‘an actual defect’ to be a per accidens cause, because then there would be a defect of the will before the first defect of the will; so the defect is only potential; but it is not a defect of an idea different from the actual defect that will be present, because a potential defect is not the proximate per accidens cause with respect to an actual defect of a different idea; so the actual defect will be the same defect as the potential defect with respect to its per accidens potential cause.

84. A response [Richard of Middleton]: the cause of sin is not a potential defect but ‘a potentiality for being defective’, and these are not the same, just as neither is whiteness in potency the same as the potentiality in a surface for whiteness. - On the contrary: this ‘potentiality’ in the will is either active or passive. Not passive, because the will insofar as it is passive does not work as cause for evil but as subject. If the potentiality is active, and this is only its created liberty, then the intended conclusion returns, that such liberty, proper to the will, would be the per accidens cause of sin; but to say that this will is the per accidens cause of sin amounts to saying that the liberty of it is the per accidens proximate reason for sin.

85. The argument against the second way [n.78] is as follows, that then sin would seem to be by chance, but what is by chance is not sin.

86. Further, if the will only sins per accidens ‘because it wills precisely the positive thing on which the deformity follows’, and if God per se wills that positive thing on which the deformity follows, then it no more follows that the created will sins than that the divine will does.

87. [Third opinion] - In a third way it is posited [Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales, William of Auxerre] that sin does not have an efficient but a deficient cause, and so it has the will as deficient not as efficient cause.

88. This is confirmed by the authority of Augustine City of God 12.7, “Let no one seek for an efficient cause of an evil will, for there is no efficient cause but a deficient cause, no effect but a defect; for to fall away from what is supreme to what is lesser is to begin to have an evil will. Further, to wish to find causes for these defections, since they are not efficient causes, is the same as if one wanted to see darkness or hear silence;” and at the end of the chapter, “They do evil insofar as they are deficient; and what do they do but vain things that have deficient causes?” And again ibid. ch.9 at the beginning, “Nothing makes the will such save the defection whereby God is deserted, of which defection too the cause is deficient.”

89. [Rejection of the third opinion] - Against this, that then [sc. if the created will is a deficient cause of sin] it follows that God is the cause of sin just as the created will is; for this ‘being defective’ is a ‘not effecting’, as the Philosopher says Metaphysics 5.2.1013b13-16, that “just as the presence of the sailor is the cause of the safety of the ship, so his absence is the cause of its running into danger, and both are in the same genus of cause;” thus therefore, not to effect the rightness that ought to be effected is as it were to cause sin effectively or defectively; but this belongs to God just as it does to the created will.

90. I give a double proof:

First, because God does not necessarily give rectitude to an act, for he causes necessarily nothing other than himself; therefore he is able not to give, and so he can be a defective cause with respect to sin, that is, by not effecting the positive reality that had excluded the sin.

91. Second, because he would naturally cause this rectitude - were it present -before the created will did (for a naturally prior cause causes naturally first); therefore when the rectitude is not present, God fails to cause it before the created will fails to cause it, and thus the created will defects because God defects, that is, God fails to cause by causing something.

92. Hereby [n.91] is excluded a certain response [Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure] that could be given to the first reason [n.90], that ‘God does not defect when he does not cause unless the created will deserved it first’; for this response proves that the non-causing on the part of God is not first [sc. which is contrary to the conclusion of n.91].

93. And if it be said, according to Anselm On the Fall of the Devil ch.3, that although God did not give when the angel did not accept, yet it is not the case that ‘the reason the angel did not accept was because God did not give’, but the reverse; so here.

On the contrary: I take the time when the will sins, and I divide it into two instants of nature, a and b; at a God is compared to the will as prior cause; at b the will is compared to him as posterior cause. Then I ask: either God causes rightness at a [or he does not; if he does] it follows that [at b] the will is right - otherwise, if the will causes at b the sin opposite to the rightness, the sin would be in the will simultaneously, and consequently the sin and the rightness opposite to it would be in the will simultaneously. Therefore one has to say that God does not cause the rightness, and consequently that the will at b does not cause it; for this [sc. the will not causing at b] naturally pre-requires that God at a does not cause it.

94. Besides, in the case of precise causes, if the negation is the cause of negation, the affirmation is also the cause of affirmation; God’s causing rightness is the precise cause of the will’s causing rightness in its own order of causing; therefore negation there is cause of negation.The form of this hypothetical syllogism appears fallacious, because it affirms the antecedent of the conditional by first affirming the consequent. The syllogism can be made valid if the conditional is understood to be a bi-conditional (‘if and only if’), as the term ‘precise cause’ seems to require, and as the example form Aristotle also seems to require. For the absence of one feature (breathing) could only be caused by the absence of another feature (not being an animal, or not having lungs) if the latter feature were the precise and only cause of the former feature. For if some other feature could also cause the former, then the absence of the latter feature alone could not explain the absence of the former. ⁴⁵ - The major is plain from the Philosopher Posterior Analytics 1.13.78b14-18, about having lungs and breathing [“For the cause is not stated in this case: ‘Why does a wall not breath? Because it is not an animal’; for if this is the cause of not breathing, then animal must be the cause of breathing - because if negation is the cause of not-being, then affirmation is the cause of being”].

b. Possible Solution

95. From these three ways together [nn.77, 78, 87], provided they are well understood, a solution can be collected about the way in which a created will causes sin.

Question Five. Whether the Created Will is the Total and Immediate Cause with Respect to its Willing, such that God does not Have, with Respect to that Willing, any Immediate Efficient Causality but only a Mediate One

96. Because this solution, however, and the solution to the fourth question (namely whether God is the cause of sin [n.20]) depend on knowledge of the activity of a created will with respect to its own act, therefore I ask (without arguments) whether the created will is the total and immediate cause with respect to its willing, such that God does not have, with respect to that willing, any immediate efficient causality but only a mediate one.

α. Opinion of Others

97. To this question one could say [Peter OliviSumma IIa q.116: “Some say that the essence of all actions, both natural and vicious, are as immediately from God as are the essences that he creates... But others say that the actions of created agents, at least those that are bad, are not at all immediately from God, because he does not make them except by the fact he makes and holds and conserves in being all active and passive causes, or all causes cooperating and concurring in any way to the production of such actions. Because therefore this second way seems to me it should be altogether held, for I do not see that God could otherwise appear altogether guiltless in the case of our guilt and vices, for this reason - without prejudice to any better opinion - I will subjoin the things that seem capable of being adduced for this side. That therefore the aforesaid actions are from God not in the first way but in the second is proved thus: first, that they are totally and immediately from second causes; second, that they are from free will; third, that they are vicious; fourth, that they are culpable, or that the agent or recipient is guilty because of them.” ⁴⁶ and others] that the will is the total and immediate cause with respect to its own volition.

98. [Proof by reason] - This is proved by reason:

First, because otherwise the will would not be free; second, because otherwise it could cause nothing contingently; third, because otherwise it could not sin; fourth, because otherwise it could have altogether no action; fifth, from comparison of it with other created causes.

99. In the first way [n.98] the proof is twofold:

First as follows: no power has perfectly in its control [power] an effect that cannot be caused by it immediately or that cannot be caused by any cause whose causation is not in the control of that power; but the causation of God is not in the control of a created will (as is plain), just as the virtue of a higher agent is not in the control of any lower agent; therefore if God is necessarily immediately concurrent - as immediate cause - in respect of a created volition, the created will does not have the volition fully in its control. The assumed major premise is plain, because what has an effect perfectly in its control either has from itself alone power over the effect, or the causation of any concurring cause is in its control, namely as to the causing or not causing by that concurring cause; there is an example about the intellect which, if it concurs in causing a volition (according to the third opinion in 2 d.25 [not in the Ordinatio but the Lectura, where it is Scotus’ own opinion]), yet does not cause it save with the will’s causing, so that the intellect’s causing is in the power of the will.

100. The second argument according to this way is as follows: what is determined to something by another does not have that something perfectly in its control; the created will is determined to this something - ex hypothesi - by the divine will;     therefore etc     .

The proof of the minor is that either one of the wills determines the other or vice versa (and our will does not determine the divine will, because the temporal is not the cause of the eternal), or neither will determines the other, and then neither of them will be a moved mover, and there would be no essential order between them; rather, if the divine will does not determine our will (as the second reason argues [n.101]), the divine will could will something that, because of the disagreement of our will, would not come about.

101. Further, from the second way [n.98] the argument is as follows: a thing is not contingent because of its relation to some cause if a higher cause is determined to the thing’s coming about, and if the determination of this higher cause is necessarily followed by the determination of all the lower causes. An example: if my will were now determined to the affirmative option about writing tomorrow, and if my will were not subject to impediment or change, then my writing tomorrow would not be contingent (now, however, it is contingent to either option because of its relation to my hand), for as the will is determined now to one option, so there are contained virtually in it all the lower causes for the same effect, and simply so (because, if a thing by whose determination the effect would be determined is determined, the happening of the effect is not simply indeterminate as to either side - at any rate its existence is not contingent because of the power of a lower cause). But if the divine will is the immediate cause of my willing, there is now some cause determinate with respect to my willing, because God’s will is eternally determined to one of the contradictories, and the determination of this divine cause is necessarily followed by the determination of my will with respect to the same willing (otherwise ‘God willing this’ and ‘this not going to happen’ would stand together); therefore this willing is not contingent to either side because of the power of my will.

102. From the third way [n.98] the argument is as follows: if God is the immediate cause of volition, it is clear he will be a cause prior to the will; therefore he will have an influence on the effect prior in nature to my will. I take then this moment of nature wherein God causes a willing, insofar as it is prior to the moment in which the will acts for the willing; either God in that moment immediately causes perfect rightness in the willing, and consequently in the second moment the will does not sin, because it does not cause in the effect the opposite of what the first cause causes; or in that first moment God does not cause rightness in the willing, and then it follows that in the second moment the will does not sin, because it then has no power to will rightly (for in the second moment it only has power for what the prior cause produces in the first moment); but the will does not sin by not having a right willing if it cannot have a right willing;     therefore etc     .

103. From the fourth way [n.98] the argument is: if God is the cause of the volition, he will be the total cause of it, because he will cause it by willing it (but he is, by his willing, the total cause of a more perfect creature, namely an angel, or of anything created from nothing; and if he was the cause of it by willing it, he would be the total cause of it); but nothing else along with the total cause of something can, in any genus of cause, co-cause that something along with it; so the will would have no causality with respect to its own volition.

104. From the fifth way [n.98] the argument is: if any [creature] is the total active cause with respect to its effect, this must be conceded most of all about the will, because the will is supreme among active causes; but some [creature] can be the total cause with respect to its effect.

105. I prove [the minor] in two ways:

First, because this [sc. being total active cause] is not repugnant to creatures. For though there is something that is the total efficient cause of heat, this does not posit in that something any infinity or perfection repugnant to a creature; for if the thing is a univocal cause, it need not excel the effect in perfection, and if it is an equivocal cause, it need not excel the effect infinitely but in some determinate degree.

106. There is a second proof of the minor, for that thing is total cause of something which, if it existed while everything else was per impossibile removed, would perfectly cause the effect; but a subject, if it existed while everything else was removed, would cause its proper accident; therefore the subject is the total cause with respect to its proper accident.

107. From this minor, proved in two ways [nn.105, 106], the conclusion is drawn that the will can be the total cause with respect to its volition; and further, since nothing else beside the total cause causes in the same genus of cause (otherwise the same thing would be caused twice, or would be caused by something without which it would not be able not to be), then God will not immediately cause this volition.

108. [Proof from authorities] The intended conclusion [n.97] is proved by authorities:

First from Ecclesiasticus 15.14-18, where it is said that God “made man from the beginning and left him in the hand of his own counsel. And gave him his commandments and precepts: ‘If you wish to keep the commandments, they will keep you’. For he has put before you fire and water; stretch out your hand to what you want. In front of man is good and bad, life and death; what has pleased him will be given him.”

109. Augustine too, City of God 7.30, says, “God so administers the things he has made that he permits them to make their own motions.”

110. Anselm too, On Concord 1.7, “God has made all actions and all movements, because he himself made the things by which and in which and from which they come to be; and no thing has any power of willing or doing but he himself gives it.”

111. The same again, 2.3, “God does not do the things he predestines, by compelling or resisting the will, but by giving power to its being.”

112. To this effect also is the Commentator [Averroes] Metaphysics 9 com.7 (on the remark, “So it is possible for something to have power”): “The moderns posit that one agent, namely God, causes all things without intermediary. And it happens that no being has naturally its own action; and since beings do not have their own actions, they will not have their own essences (for actions are not distinguished save by diverse essences). And this opinion is very far from the nature of man, etc.” a

a. a[Interpolation] These two reasons [from Averroes] seem to make the opinion [n.97] more compelling than those that are put for the opinion [nn.98-107].

β. The Response to the Fourth Question that Falls out from the Aforesaid Opinion of Others

113. If this way [n.97] were true, one could easily assign in accord with it how God is not the cause of sin [n.20]; for, whether speaking about the material or the formal element in sin, the whole would be from the created will as from the total cause, and so would in no way be from God save mediately, because God produced the will such that it could will in this way or in that.

γ. Instances against the Opinion of Others and Solutions to them

114. But it is objected against this way [n.97] that it would not save God’s being the cause of merit, since merit is as free as sin.

115. Likewise, it would not save the essential order of causes, because, according to the first proposition in On Causes, “Every primary cause has a greater influence on what it causes than does a second universal cause;” but, according to this way, the primary cause would have no influence on the effect save that it produced the other cause of it [sc. the will as cause of the willing this way or that, n.113].

116. To the first of these [n.114] it can be said that God is in some way cause of merit (in a way that he is not cause of sin), because he causes grace (or charity) immediately in the soul, which inclines it by way of nature toward meriting; and whenever a form active by way of nature is from some agent, the action of the form is also from that agent. From this too would be plain how the effects of certain causes would be from God differently from how the effects of the will are, because those determinate causes have received from God an inclination - even a necessitating inclination - to their effects; not so the will.

117. To the second [n.115] it might be said that, although sometimes the order of principal and less principal causes, neither of which moves the other (the way the object and the cognitive power are disposed with respect to the act of knowing, 1 d.3 n.498) -that although this order is such that the principal cause moves the less principal one either to second act or to first act (but so that the two are partial causes and make together with each other one total cause, as hand and stick do with respect to the motion of a ball [1 d.3 n.496], or as sun and father do with respect to a son) - nevertheless, in the case of causes that are total with respect to their immediate effects, there can also be an essential order, such that the second cause is total and immediate with respect to its effect just as the first cause is with respect to its own effect; and although the second cause is second and depends essentially on the first as regards its causation just as also regards its being, yet not in such a way that there is some immediate dependence of its effect on it and on a prior cause.

118. And when the proposition [from On Causes, n.115] says that “the first cause causes more” - this is true, because the first causes the second. An example of this can be posited in the case of essentially ordered causes, by the different way of causing; for if several material elements are posited in order in a composite thing with respect to the ultimate form, the first material element is not material with respect to the ultimate form (such that any part of it is perfected by the ultimate form), but only the ultimate material element is; for every prior material element is perfected by some prior form, which constitutes it as material with respect to a later form.

δ. Rejection of the Opinion

119. Against this opinion [n.97] the argument is twofold: first, because therefrom it follows that God does not naturally foreknow the future; second, that he is not omnipotent.

120. The proof of the first consequence is that God only has knowledge of future contingents if he knows with certitude the determination of his will with respect to things for which he has an immutable and irresistible will; but if the created will is the total cause with respect to its willing, and it is contingently disposed to its willing, then, however much the divine will is posited to be determinate as to one side of the things that depend on the created will, the created will is going to be able to will differently, and thus no certitude follows from knowledge of the determination of the divine will.

121. The proof of the second consequence [n.119] is threefold:

First, because everything that an omnipotent being wills happens; but if God wills my volition to be, and this is in the power of my will as a cause contingently disposed toward it, then my will can, of itself, be determined indifferently to one side or the other, and so that to which the divine will has determined my will is able not to come about.

122. Second, because, if my will is determined of itself to one side, the divine will cannot impede it without violating it (for, from the fact my will is determined to one side, it cannot be impeded unless it is violated); but violation of the will involves a contradiction; therefore God cannot impede my will.

123. Third, because an omnipotent will produces the willed thing into existence for the time when that will wants it to exist (for there is no other act of the divine will with respect to an angel or any other creature by which such creature is produced into existence); but if my will is the total cause of this volition, the divine will in no way produces that volition into existence.a

a. a[Interpolation] Note that the force of these arguments [nn.119-123] rests on three propositions, a, b, c - a: the fact of the action of the first cause being required for the causing of the second cause takes away freedom from the second cause; b: the fact of the determination of the first cause being followed also by the second in its acting takes away contingency from the action of the second cause. Again, on behalf of a: the cited fact takes away freedom most of all if the first cause determines the second; again, on behalf of b: the fact that the action of the first cause naturally precedes the action of the second takes away sin too from the second cause. The other proposition, c - which stands opposed to the reasons [nn.98-107] and the authorities [nn.108-112] - is that God is omnipotent and omniscient.

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].

B. To the Fourth Question

129. But now it remains to see how a defectible will is a deficient cause with respect to sin otherwise than the divine will is, or rather that it is the cause and the divine will is not the cause - and this as to the solution of the fourth question [n.20].

1. The Opinion of Others

130. Here it is said and held [Lombard 2 d.37 ch.2 n.4, and references] that the divine will cannot be the cause of sin.

131. For which three reasons of theirs can be set down.

The first is of the following sort - Augustine 83 Questions q.3, “A man becomes worse without any wise man being responsible; for this guilt in a man is so great that in no wise man may it happen; but God is more excelling than a wise man;” therefore a man becomes worse without God being responsible, as Augustine maintains in q.4.

132. Again in the same book q.21 Augustine says, “One who is for every being the cause that it exists, is not cause of not-being for anything to make it not exist, because what comes from him is, insofar as it is, good. Now God is cause of all good; God therefore is not cause of not-being for anything; therefore neither is he cause of sin for anything, because sin is formally not-being.”

133. The third reason is from Anselm On Free Choice ch.8, “Teacher: ‘[God] can reduce to nothing all the substance he has made from nothing - but he cannot separate rightness from a will that has rightness... Now no will is just save one that wills what God wills it to will. Therefore to keep rightness of will for the sake of rightness itself is - for anyone who keeps it - to will what God wills him to will. If God separates this rightness from anyone’s will, he does it either willingly or unwillingly.’ Student: ‘He cannot do it unwillingly.’ Teacher: ‘So if he takes the aforesaid rightness away from anyone’s will, he wills what he does.’ Student: ‘Without doubt he wills.’ Teacher: ‘Certainly, then, whosever will he wills to remove the same rightness from, he does not will him to keep rightness for the sake of rightness.’ Student: ‘It so follows.’ Teacher: ‘But it was already set down that to keep rightness of will in this way is - for anyone who keeps it - to will what God wills him to will. Therefore if God takes the oft stated rightness away from anyone, he does not will him to will what he wills him to will.’

Student: ‘Nothing is more logical, and nothing is more impossible.’ Teacher: ‘Therefore nothing is more impossible than for God to take away rightness of will.’”

2. Objections to the Reasons for the Opinion of Others

134. Objections to these reasons [nn.131-33]:

First against the first [n.131], because a wise man is bound to keep the precept of God, and therefore a wise man cannot make another to be worse unless he sins and so becomes non-wise. For it is not in a wise man’s power freely to cooperate or not cooperate in another’s acting well; because if it was in his power, he would be able not to cooperate while remaining wise, and thus he could make another to be worse - that is, by his not causing goodness in the other’s act, the other would not act well. But it is in God’s power freely to cooperate or not cooperate in a created will’s acting well; therefore, with his will remaining right, God is able not to cooperate with a created will, and the created will thus will commit sin.

135. The reason is confirmed by the fact that, just as God naturally acts for the right action before the created will does (provided the action be right), so the divine will, it would seem, fails to act before the created will fails to act.

136. The argument against the second reason [n.132] is as follows, that a cause that is only necessary (or natural) with respect to some entity is not a cause of not-being, because such a cause acts according to the utmost of its power, and so it cannot not do what it is of a nature to do; but God is not this sort of cause of being for creatures as regard any being with respect to which he can be the principle of acting (where the lack of this ultimate being is evil); therefore God can, by failing to act, be the cause of evil.

137. Further, how can God be more the cause of punishment than of guilt, since punishment, just like guilt, is formally evil? For it is as simply evil not to enjoy God -both with respect to the good that it takes away and with respect to the nature that it harms - as it is not to love God, while a wayfarer, by a meritorious act; and yet this is conceded to be a punishment from God, according to Augustine Retractions 1.25.

138. Further, the privation of grace is as much an evil in itself and in the nature that is deprived as is the privation of the rightness of justice; but God can be the immediate cause of this privation; indeed he is the cause of it whenever grace is annihilated; he alone can annihilate something, and especially something that he himself immediately preserves. So, just as by refraining from action (that is by not preserving grace) he can be the cause of the non-being of grace, so he can by not acting be the cause of the lack of rightness in an elicited act.

139. Against the third reason [n.133]: it seems to have as conclusion that man cannot sin, and this result is false; therefore the reason is not conclusive.

140. Proof that the result does follow from the reason: I am able to sin at [time] a; therefore God can will me not to be right at a. For this follows in the case of non-modal propositions: ‘if I sin at a, then God does not will me to be right at a’, because from the opposite the opposite follows: ‘if he wills me to be right at a, I am right at a’ and so I do not sin; but if he does not will me to be right at a, he does not will me to will at a what he wills me to will at a (for this, according to the reason [n.133], is what it is to be right, ‘to will what God wills me to will’); therefore God is able not to will me to will at a what he wills me to will at a - which is impossible.

140. But if it be said that the reason [n.133] concludes that God, by ordained power [as opposed to absolute power], cannot take away rightness from the will without an act of the willa - on the contrary: this reason does show absolutely that the result of the reason is that my will cannot sin; in like manner, if the reason were to prove that [God can take away rightness] without an act of my will, it would prove it about God as to his absolute power. For the conclusion aims to infer a contradiction: hence is added the words ‘nothing is more impossible’ [n.133], or at any rate, if the contradiction does not follow, nothing is as equally impossible; nor is it possible for the absolute power of God either; for God contingently wills anything other than himself, and he contingently preserves it, because he is able not to preserve it.

a. a[Interpolation] Response: Thomas, Bonaventure: a better use of that which second perfection uses is a more perfect good of an angel than is first perfection.

3. Scotus’ own Opinion and Solution of the Objections

142. As to the solution of these objections [nn.134-141] and the solution of the principal question [sc. the fourth, n.20], I say that when two partial causes come together for an effect common to both of them, there can be a defect in the producing of the effect because of a defect of either concurring cause; an example: an act of willing (according to the third opinion of d.25 [not in the Ordinatio; see Lectura 2 d.25 n.69]) requires the coming together of intellect and free will, and there can be a defect in this act from a defect of the will although a defect in knowledge does not precede.

143. So therefore, if an act of willing of a created will require the coming together of the created will and the divine will, there can be a defect in this act of willing from a defect of the former cause; and this because that cause could give rightness to the act, and is bound to give it, and yet does not give it; but the latter cause, although it is not bound to give the rightness, yet it would give it, as far as depends on itself, if the created will cooperated. For, universally, whatever God has given antecedently he would give consequently (as far as depends on himself) provided there were no impediment; but by giving free will, he has antecedently given right acts, which are in the power of the will; and therefore, as far as concerns his own part, he has given rightness to every act of the will - and he would give it consequently to the will if the will itself were, on its own part, to do rightly any elicited act.

144. There is a defect, then, in the effect of the two causes, not because of a defect in the higher cause, but because of one in the lower cause; not because the higher cause causes rightness in fact and the inferior one causes wrongness, but because the higher cause - as far as depends on itself - would cause rightness if the lower cause were, according to its own causality, to cause it. And therefore, the fact that rightness is not caused is because the second cause - as far as belongs to itself - does not cause it.a

a. a[Interpolation] On the contrary: the prior cause is determined first to causing rightness or not. Response: let it be that it is determined to causing rightness when the second cause determines itself to not acting rightly. It is also truly the case that what is necessary [sc. God giving rightness] is sometimes voluntary [sc. the created will choosing not to give rightness].

145. And if objection is made (as it was made [n.93]) about the two instants of nature, that in the first instant God would give rightness to the act - I reply:

I say that the priority that includes, without contradiction, ‘able to exist in the absence of each other’ is not an order in causes as causes cause a common effect but as they cause simultaneously. For just as, when speaking of diverse kinds of cause, the matter does not act as matter prior in time to the efficient cause acting on it (as if a thing could without contradiction have acted as matter and not have been acted on, or conversely), but only prior in nature, that is, the one causes more perfectly before the other causes - so although, in the same kind of cause, ordered diverse causes have an order according to causing more or less perfectly, yet they do not have a priority of nature that would mean ‘being able to be in the absence of the other’ in respect of some third thing; rather, just as the matter acts as matter and the efficient cause acts on it in one instant of nature, so two ordered efficient causes cause the common effect in one instant of nature, so that neither then causes without the other. But that a non-right effect is caused, this is not then because of the prior cause (which, as far as depends on itself, would cause rightly if the second would), but because of a defect of the second cause, which has it in its power to cause or not to cause along with the first cause - and if it does not cause along with the first cause the way it is bound to do, there is no rectitude in the effect common to both of them.

146. From this comes response to the objections.

To the first [n.134] that not only is the wise man wise because he is bound by the precept not to destroy his neighbor, and so he cannot be one to make his neighbor worse, but from the wise man’s perfection it also follows that, while he remains wise, he cannot be the first reason for his neighbor falling, and to this extent Augustine’s reason [n.131] does hold; for God is “more excelling than any efficient cause” - that is, his will is simply more perfect, because it is not the first reason for the failing of anyone whom it can act along with.

147. To the second [n.136] the reply is that although God does not necessarily cause the entity belonging to this act, yet he has so disposed things that, whatever he gave antecedently, he gives consequently - as far as concerns his own part [n.136].

148. But then a doubt arises about the principal question. For although the point is saved that sin is not ascribed to God as cause but to the created will [nn.142-145], yet it is not shown that God cannot be the first cause of the failing of the created will; for from the fact that he causes rightness freely and prior to the created will doing so, it seems still to be the case that he could first fail to cause rightness before the created will fails to cause it [nn.91, 135] - and thus he can be the first reason for failure, although this is not because of that law of his which God gave (‘whatever he gave antecedently he gives consequently’) [n.147].

149. I reply. That God cannot in himself sin is plain from the fact that neither can he be turned away from himself formally, because he cannot fail to love himself supremely and in ordered way and with all the required circumstances (otherwise either he could love himself in disordered way or he could change, both of which are impossible); nor even can he be turned virtually from himself, because nothing other than himself is a necessary thing for him to love [n.147]; for anything other than himself, because it is willed by him and willed thus (as for this time, and from this, and so), is willed in ordered way.

150. But why cannot God be the first reason for failing in a created will?

I reply: if God freely does not cause the rightness that should exist in the act of a created will - and this because of his own will’s freedom and not because of a defect in the created will not voluntarily cooperating - then there is no cause of sin in the created will, because there is no lack of due justice; for justice is not due from the created will save insofar as this will has the power to act rightly, such that no removal is presupposed of a prior cause, whose removal would make the will not able to act rightly. If God then were the first cause not making rightness, the non-right act would not be sin.

151. To the other objection, about punishment [n.137], the answer will be plain in the third [nn.185-88] of these four questions [nn.1, 10, 15, 20].

152. To the next objection [n.138], about grace, the answer is plain from what has been said [n.150], because if God, by immediately withdrawing his support, were to annihilate grace without a defect by the will in its operating, the lack of grace would not be a sin, because it would not be a lack of due justice; for the will is not debtor for the justice save as the will has it in its power to preserve justice, namely so as not to corrupt it by demerit. So, although privation of grace is a greater evil than privation of actual justice, yet the privation of grace can come from God’s not acting, that is, from his not preserving it - but not first from his not acting, but from his not acting for this reason, that the will demerited, and because of this demeriting God removes the maintenance of his preservation from the grace; however, as to the actual rectitude, if there is a first sin, there is no sin or demerit preceding it whereby God could withdraw himself so that the rectitude, as far as concerns God’s part, is not present. Therefore, the privation of grace is now a sin insofar as it is a privation of due justice, which the will has deprived itself of by demerit, although the annihilation of the grace is from God’s not causing grace; but if the privation of grace were not because of some prior wrongness in the will, it would not be sin.

153. As to the objection to the reasoning of Anselm [nn.139-40], it could be said that the reasoning does not involve a contradiction, because it equivocates over the term ‘willing’ - for ‘being right’ includes the will’s willing what God wills it to will [n.140]; so God wills with signifying will and antecedently, not with well-pleased will and consequently - because at the instant at which the created will sins, God does not, by consequent will or will of being well pleased, will the created will to will this. So when the inference is drawn that God ‘does not will me to will what he wills me to will’ [n.140], there is no contradiction, because will of being well pleased and consequently is denied but signifying will and antecedently is affirmed; for otherwise (as was argued) it does absolutely seem that the created will could not sin, which is false, and that God cannot by his absolute power take away rightness without demerit of the will, and thus that he cannot by his absolute power make rightness without merit of the created will, both of which are false.

154. However it is possible, by expounding Anselm’s argument there [n.139], to say that his reason proves that God cannot by a positive act take rightness away from the will, because then he would take it away willingly, and so he willingly wills, by will of being well pleased, that I do not will what, by antecedent will, he wills that I will; but this result, although it does not involve a contradiction, is nevertheless false: whatever he wills by antecedent will he wills also by will of being well pleased and consequently (as far as concerns himself), provided no impediment in the created will is put in the way [n.143]. But if rightness is removed without act of mine then I am not putting any impediment in the way; so, in the case posited, God’s ‘willing by will of being well pleased that I do not will what he wills by antecedent will that I will’ is false, even though it does not include a contradiction; and then Anselm’s reason proves no more than that without demerit of the created will God cannot by his ordained power take rightness away from the will [n.141]; but it does not prove this of God’s absolute power - nor even does it prove that God cannot take rightness away negatively, and that because of the demerit of the created will.

C. To the Principal Arguments of the First Question

155. To the principal arguments of the first question [nn.2-8].

The savior [n.2] understands by ‘tree’ the internal act and by ‘fruit’ the external act, and he rebukes the hypocrites (that is, the Pharisees) by warning them to conform internal acts to external ones and external acts to internal ones, namely so that they may appear as they are and conversely.

156. To the second [n.3]: when there is an efficient cause, there is a likeness in the case of equivocal causes - though a remote one. Here the cause [sc. the will] with respect to sin is a deficient and not an efficient cause.

157. To the next [n.4]This reply is placed after n.161 in the mss., following the parallel positioning in the Lectura and not the changed position in the Ordinatio. Further, the fourth argument in the Ordinatio [n.5] is not here responded to, and neither it nor its response is found in the Lectura. ⁴⁷ I say that what comes from the deficiency and not from the efficiency of an efficient cause is not directed to a due end.

158. To the next [n.6] I say that no evil is from evil.

159. As to the proof [sc. that there is some first evil, n.8], I say that ‘evil’ can be understood in one way through privation of parts of the same nature, and in another way through privation of perfections that befit such a nature.

160. In the first way there is an infinite regress in the case of parts of the same proportion according as the infinite is divided into the infinite by proportion and quantity; for in this way one part after another could be taken away from some nature and could be thus taken away continually according to parts of the same proportion - and so infinitely; but according to parts of the same quantity there is a stop, not at evil but at nothing - in the way in which there is a stop in the division of the continuous at nothing, if the divided parts are destroyed.

161. As to the second way, I say that although the thing that is good for someone (whose lack is an evil for him) could be taken away from the substrate nature in two ways according to what has been said [n.160] (namely according to parts either of the same proportion, and thus the process goes on infinitely, or of the same quantity, and thus it stops when there is nothing left), yet there is a further process there [sc. the second, n.159], according to which a perfectible nature can be better and the perfection corresponding to it is better and yet the nature lacks this perfection. And in this way there is a stand at evil, when a supreme good lacks the supreme perfection proper to it; and in this way the supreme devil (or some noblest makeable nature that lacks the perfection proportionate to it) is said to be supremely evil; but there are beside such supreme evil no evils positively, nor evils beside something positive, nor privation beside privation.

D. To the Principal Arguments of the Fourth Question

1. To the Arguments of the First Part

162. To the arguments of the fourth question [nn.21-28].

I say [n.21] that although sin is from the created will, yet it is not from God; for God does not fail first but, as far as concerns his own part, he altogether does not fail, and there is only a defect in the action because of a defecting in the acting of the second cause [nn.44, 145]. Nor even can God fail first such that his defect in the effect is a sin, because, if he himself did not first act, the lack of rightness in the act would not be a debt [n.150].

163. When proof is given about the inferior and superior cause [n.21], I reply that this is true of an efficient cause but not of a deficient cause.

164. When confirmation is given from other things, as from natural causes [n.22], I say that natural causes cannot cause save in accord with the inclination they have received from the higher cause and that they are conformed to; but the will has received freedom so as to be able to act in agreement or disagreement with the higher cause, that is, that - as far as concerns itself - it may cause what the superior cause causes, agreeing or disagreeing with it.

165. As to the second argument [n.23], I concede the antecedent [nn.23-25] and deny the consequence.

166. As to the proof of the consequence [n.26], the response is that sin is imputed to the created will, not merely for the reason that it per accidens causes the defect, but because it is bound (to the extent the act is under its power) to act rightly, and it does not act rightly. The divine will is not bound in this way, and so in itself it cannot sin [n.149]; nor can it even by not causing be first to fail in respect of the rightness due in the act, such that the rightness would then become due when it is not present because of the defect of the created will.

2. To the Arguments of the Second Part

167. To the arguments for the opposite [nn.30-32], which prove that the act substrate to sin is not from God, I reply:

To the first [n.30] I say that God wills many things by well-pleased will that he has prohibited by signifying will, and that he did not will all the things to be done that he prescribed, as he did not will Isaac to be sacrificed, and yet he prescribed it [Genesis 22.2, 12]. Nor did he prescribe the opposite when willing something by well-pleased will, because this is a sign of a duplicitous will - and it is simplicity when there is some end of the precept consonant to right reason, as the announcement was of the precept there to Abram, as is clear: “God tempted Abram” [Genesis 22.1-2, 16-18].

168. To the next [n.31] I say that what is formally an act of my will (namely an act by which my will wills) is not an act of the divine will but an effect of it, because the divine will is always ordered and its act always right - and the act of my will is disordered because it lacks the rightness due, but it is willed by God in ordered fashion as he is cause, being material with respect to his causing the way that in us our act is materially good; therefore it follows that the divine act of willing is simply perfect, because it is elicited by charity and has the best end; and thus the external work of the divine willing (which work is my act of willing) is ordered materially or in a certain respect, but disordered simply, to the extent it is the act by which my will simply wills.

169. To the last argument [n.32] I say that the divine will is not the rule of the created will in respect of rightness as to the thing willed (so that the will, when agreeing with the divine will and in the thing willed, would be right), but the divine will needs to be the rule for the created will to the extent it wills the created will to will thus and so -and that too when the divine will is willing with signifying and antecedent will, not with well-pleased and consequent will.

III. To the Third Question

A. Solution

170. To the question third in order [n.15] I say that every sin is a punishment, and that one sin can be the punishment of another.

171. [Every sin is a punishment] - First I prove, because punishment is formally the lack of a good suiting the will, that, if in the will we distinguish affection for the just and affection for the good of advantage [d.6 n.40; Anselm On Concord 3.11], it is plain that the taking away of the good of advantage is a punishment; but the good of justice more suits the will than the good of advantage; therefore the taking away of it is per se a punishment.

172. Proof of the minor:

The more perfect something perfectible is, and consequently the more perfect the perfection corresponding to it is, the greater is the fittingness of them and the worse the privation of them; but the will as it has the affection for justice (that is, as it is free, speaking of innate justice) is simply nobler than the will as it has the affection for advantage - and this belongs to it simply; therefore there is a greater suitability of justice to the will absolutely than of the good of advantage to the will. Therefore the taking away of justice is a punishment simply, and a greater punishment than the taking away of any advantage whatever that is different from justice.

173. And herein is well verified what Augustine says in Confessions 1.12 n.19, “You have commanded, Lord, and so it is, that every disordered spirit should be for itself its own punishment;” [Free Choice of the Will 3.15 nn.152-53] “for not even for a moment is the disgrace of guilt without the grace of justice,” namely that the will itself -by depriving itself of justice - does in this deprive itself of the greatest good suitable to it, the lack of which is for it formally a greater punishment than the lack of any good of advantage that is inflicted on it because of the guilt. And hence it is that punishment is said ‘to bring order to guilt’, because, from when God does not will to take the guilt away, the guilty soul cannot be in better or more ordered condition than to be in punishment -which punishment is not as great an evil formally as is the guilt, because it brings order to the nature that remains in guilt.Augustine, On the Nature of Good ch.7, “Therefore are sinners brought to order when undergoing punishment; which order is a punishment for the reason that it does not suit their nature, but is justice for the reason that it suits their guilt;” ch.9, “Nature is in better order when it suffers justly in punishment than when it rejoices without punishment in sin.” ⁴⁸

174. And if the objection is made as to how the same lack of justice can be formally guilt and formally punishment, the Master responds by distinguishing ‘lack’ as it is a privation of good actively or passively; in the first way it is guilt and in the second punishment.

175. This can be explained as follows, that guilt is from the will as will is the active cause, though however a deficient one, and punishment is in the will as will is the subject that is by guilt deprived of the fitting good - and this good was indeed due to the extent that the will according to its primary idea [sc. freedom] could have acted for the rectitude due to it and did not.

176. Guilt exists in the first way [n.175] and is thus voluntary, because it is in the power of the will as in the active cause - just as the prow is said to be in the power of the sailor whereby he could preserve the ship if, when present, he were to work diligently.

177. Punishment exists formally in the second way [n.175], because it is the corruption or privation in the will of the good that is due and most suited for it; and as such it is not formally voluntary [n.17], because the will - as it is subject - does not have the form inhering within it in its power. And this privation of due justice, inhering in the will, is more contrary to the natural inclination of the will than any lack of a non-just advantageous good or than the presence of something disadvantageous.

178. [Whether sin can be the punishment for another sin] - Second I prove [n.171] that, just as the taking away of grace is a punishment for sin (in that, as soon as a defect exists in a will failing to act for due rectitude, God removes his sustaining hand because of the demerit of this defect so that grace is not preserved [n.152]), thus too can God, because of the demerit of one defect of the will, remove himself from it so that in a second act the will does not act for the rectitude that it would act for if no demerit had preceded; and so, because of this removing of himself by God, there will be a lack of rectitude in the second act and this rectitude will still be due, because although giving this rectitude to the act is not now in the will’s power - for it has deprived itself of the divine assistance whereby God was ready to cooperate in rectitude with it - yet it was in the will’s power to give it before (prior to the first sin); and therefore is this failure imputed to the will as sin, just as is also imputed to it that it does not act with grace in the second act after it has lost grace; because, although the will does not then have grace, nor can it then by itself possess grace, yet it has by itself fallen into this powerlessness; for it could have kept grace, and the ability to keep grace was - for this purpose - given to it.

179. But this way [of explaining things] is, as it seems, very difficult, namely that the lack of rectitude in some elicited act could be on the part of God not causing it (that is, his not giving it because of the demerit of some sin); for then, although the will was able before not to demerit (and God would then have assisted it), and although God - as far as his own part is concerned - would have acted for rectitude in the will’s second act if the will had not turned aside in its first act, yet when once the will has sinned, it seems that, if God does not in the second act assist in causing a right act of the will, the sin is not then in the power of the will such that the will would then be able not to be defective; and this seems unacceptable.

180. So one can say in a different way [sc. different from n.178] that, although God - as far as concerns himself - does assist the will in the second act as he also did in the first, and although in any act the first deficient cause (that is, the first cause not acting justly or rightly) is the created will, yet the second defect is a punishment for the first sin insofar as the will deprives itself of the good most suited to it.

181. Nor is there a likeness in the second act between privation of grace and privation of rectitude, because, namely, just as God, on account of the demerit, does not assist in causing grace in the soul, so he does not assist either in causing rightness in the will - for he himself did not give grace antecedently, as he did give rectitude antecedently, and so he is able not to give rectitude consequently.

182. Also, the lack of grace is a single injustice habitual in the soul, not through sin after sin. But in the case of evil acts succeeding each other there is always a new evil, and so there is a need in their case that they all be in the power of the created will; however there is no need that the lack of grace - once grace has been annihilated - be in the power of the will, because this lack is not a new injustice but only a single habitual malice residing in the soul.

B. To the Principal Arguments

183. However, the first argument to the question [n.16] contains the difficulty how sin is a punishment, since every punishment is from God.

184. One response [Bonaventure] is that although what punishment is is not always from God, yet, insofar as punishment brings order to guilt, it is in this way from God, because the order itself is from God.

185. On the contrary: if punishment is not some being that can be from God, then neither is guilt; therefore neither is the relation founded on either extreme from God, and so there is no order there that can be from God.

186. Further, by parity of reasoning guilt could be from God and be an effect of God; for guilt is set in order by punishment as punishment is set in order by guilt, and yet no one allows that punishment is nothing.

187. Therefore one can give a different response [from that in n.184], that a punishment is merely the lack of a good suited to an intellectual nature, just as also is the lack of the vision and enjoyment of God; punishment can in another sense be said to be something positive and yet something unsuited to such a nature, just as excessive heat is something positive and yet is unsuited to flesh.

188. All punishments can in this second sense [n.187] be posited as from God, because they are something positive. And it is about these that the citation from Retractions 1.26 [n.16] must be understood; for it says “among the good works of God,” and good works are those positive things, although they are bad for the punished because they are disagreeable to them.

189. But punishments in the first way [n.187] are not from God as efficient cause (for they cannot have efficient causes), nor from him as deficient cause first but only because of a defect of the created will in some act of sin, God’s will not now acting along with the created will so that it have the good which, as far as depends on himself, he would have cooperated with it for. Such punishment therefore is from God, not by inflicting or effecting it, nor by being first deficient, but by desertion - that is, by deserting the nature that is deficient and leaving it in its defect and in everything consequent to the defect, wherein are included many lackings of perfections suited to such a nature. So the punishment, therefore, that is sin is not from God as efficient cause or as first deficient, but only from him as deserting the will by reason of the will’s first demerit, and the will - deserted by God - falls into a second demerit.

190. To the third argument [n.18; the second argument, n.17, has no response in the Ordinatio] the answer is plain from the same point, that if punishment were inflicted by God it would not be a greater evil but a lesser one - so that the second sin is a punishment that is inflicted by the will sinning and by God only as by his deserting the will.