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.