Single Question. Whether Original Justice in Adam must be Set Down as a Supernatural Gift

1. Concerning the twenty ninth distinction I aska whether original justice in Adam must be set down as a supernatural gift.

a. a[Interpolation] About this twenty ninth distinction, where the Master deals with the grace that our parents had in the state of innocence, there is one question to ask:

2. That it should not:

Original justice is posited because a rectitude excluding all rebellion of the powers and an immortality were possessed in the original state; but both of these can be preserved on the basis of pure nature, because each of the opposites is a punishment, and punishment is not without guilt. That death is a punishment is plain; that rebellion is also is proved by the fact that the fighting of the lower powers against the higher is a punishment.

3. Further, the will in its pure nature is right, because God did not make it crooked. And this rightness is from the origin, therefore it belonged to man originally; and it is justice, because rightness of will is justice. Therefore the will in its pure nature has original justice.

4. Further, if it were only a supernatural gift, then original sin would only be a lack of this supernatural gift; therefore someone who was made in a state of pure nature would be equal with him who by sin had lost original justice, and so they should be equally punished, which seems unacceptable.

5. On the contrary:

Nature remains complete in the sinner (according to Dionysius Divine Names ch.4 [d.7 n.4], “The band of demons is not evil as it accords with nature but as it does not. And all good was given unaltered to them, but they fell away from all the good given. And the angelic gifts given to them we do not at all say were changed, but they are complete and most splendid, although the demons, blocking out the virtues that gaze at good, do not see them,”); and original justice does not remain (as is plain from the effects assigned to original justice [n.2]);     therefore etc     .

I. To the Question

A. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent

6. [Exposition of the Opinion] - It is said here [by Henry, Quodlibet 6 q.11] that besides infused rectitude - if any there was - one must posit in the will a rectitude that is as a quality in a quantity, to which is opposed the naturally inflicted crookedness that the will incurs by sinning; and from this crookedness follows disobedience in the lower powers, because although a right will could of itself be master, yet not one that is thus crooked. An example is given of a rod that is straight and afterwards bent; its straightness is natural to the rod but not such as to belong to the essence of it.

7. This is made clear by the fact that it does not seem possible [otherwise] to save the contention that ‘sin wounds pure nature’: for if sin corrupted only some freely given gift, it would despoil only in things freely given; so in order to posit a wound in nature one must posit some rectitude that is taken away by sin. So if some supernatural gift is posited beside natural rectitude, one must say that natural justice includes both - because if one say that it includes the supernatural gift only, the result would be that, according to that gift, he who is in pure nature and he who is a sinner are equal, as one of the arguments on the opposite side said [n.4].a

a. a[Interpolation] the result would be that both were to be punished equally.

8. [Rejection of the opinion] - It is objected against this that, according to this position, it does not seem possible for the will to sin unless it has a natural rectitude that could be corrupted by sin. Let the will exist then in its essence alone without this addition [sc. without natural rectitude], and it will not be able to sin - which seems absurd, because it can be in agreement with justice, that is, be bound to will in agreement with the dictate of natural law; and the will need not necessarily so will, because it is free; therefore it can sin. Therefore one should not posit such a quality whose opposed crookedness is introduced because of sin.

9. Further, the rebellion of the powers does not seem to exist only by this crookedness, because the will seems to dominate the lower powers through its essential freedom more and better than through this accidental quality, because it is in its essence the supreme power; therefore the accidental quality will not be the whole reason for domination such that the will, if the quality is not present, will not dominate.

10. Further, this natural rectitude has been totally corrupted by mortal sin; therefore, since a second sin is as formally a sin as the first one, the second sin must corrupt natural rectitude in the way the first one did. But the second sin cannot corrupt this rectitude because the rectitude is no longer there; so neither does the first sin formally have its being a sin from its corrupting natural rectitude.

11. Further, one could then know by natural reason that this present state [sc. of corruption] is not natural, because it is manifest now that there is rebellion in the lower powers and, according to you, the rebellion cannot exist unless rectitude of the will is corrupted [n.6]; the consequent is unacceptable, because the most famous philosophers were unable to attain this knowledge.

12. Further, this rebellion seems to exist in man in his pure nature; therefore the rebellion does not exist because of a crookedness that the will incurs by sinning.

Proof of the antecedent:

It is natural for any appetite to be drawn toward its appetible object and, if it is not a free appetite, it is natural for it to be drawn supremely and as much as possible, because, just as such an appetite is ‘drawn’ [sc. and does not ‘draw’]- according to Damascene

Orthodox Faith ch.36 - and therefore its act is not in its power, so neither is the intensity of the act so in its power that it does not act as much as it can; therefore, since the sensitive appetite, existing in its pure nature, has a proper appetible and delightful object, it would have to tend supremely of itself to that object, and the tending would impede the act of reason, because the sensitive powers would still be existing then in the same essence as they are now - and because of this unity [sc. of essence] they will impede themselves mutually in the intensity of their acts, according to Avicenna On the Soul p.4 ch.2. Therefore reason would have to make an effort to impede this supreme delight of the sensitive part, and the inferior power could not be curbed without some sadness or difficulty existing in it, because just as it supremely inclines to delight so it struggles, on its own part, supremely against the opposite. There would then be a rebellion there, because there would be inclination of the inferior part toward enjoyment against the judgment of reason, and a difficulty in restraining this appetite.

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

13. It can therefore be said that if original justice did have this effect, namely to cause perfect tranquility in the soul as to all its powers (so that no lower power would incline against the judgment of a higher; or if it did incline as far as concerned itself, it could yet be ordered and regulated by a higher power without difficulty on the part of the higher, and without sadness on the part of the lower), then, since the soul would not have this when made purely in its natural conditions alone, there is need to posit in it a supernatural gift so that this perfect tranquility may exist in the soul.

14. For the will,a when conjoined to the sensitive appetite, is of a nature to enjoy delight along with that appetite, just as the intellect, when conjoined with the senses, is of a nature to understand sensible things; and if such a will is conjoined with many sensitive appetites, it is of a nature to enjoy delight along with all of them - and thus, not only can it not draw the appetite back from what delights it without any contrary inclination on the part of the appetite and without any difficulty, but neither does it seem able without difficulty to draw itself back from delighting along with the appetite. In order, then, for it to draw itself back with delight, something must become more delightful to it than is the delightful thing of the lower appetite that it jointly delights in together with that appetite; so in order for the will to be able to draw itself back with delight from every disordered delighting along with a lower power, something must of itself be more delightful to the will than any delightful thing of any lower power; and since there is nothing such on the part of the will itself, there must have been something supernatural in the will whereby the end became more delightful to it than anything delightful of any sensitive appetite -and for this reason the will would more delightfully draw itself back from joint delight along with the sensitive appetite than depart from that delightful thing, namely from the end.b If there was then this effect in the first man, namely perfect tranquility, and it was an effect of original justice, that justice was a supernatural gift, because God made it more delightful to the will than any appetible sensible thing, and this could not have come from any natural gift of the will itself.

a. a[Interpolation] From this a second argument can be formed.

b. b[Interpolation] according to which it jointly delighted along with the sensitive appetite.

15. But is it really the case that by this all rebellion is taken away, so that the lower power delightfully draws itself back from its proper delightful object?

I reply:

If the will abstains delightfully from joint delight with a lower power, the whole man delightfully abstains from the delightful object of the lower sensitive appetite; but the whole man does not abstain with sadness if the lower power abstains with sadness; for what belongs to man according to a higher power belongs to him simply, and not for this reason is it denied to him if it does not belong to him according to a lower power.

16. But if it be said, on the part of a lower power, that the lower power on its part delightfully obeys reason, then it seems that something must be placed in the lower power so that it may be thus delightfully drawn to something delightful to the will; for it does not seem that a lower power would from its own nature be delightfully torn away from its own delightful thing; nor even was the lower power from its nature as it is a power lower than the will delightfully torn away in itself from its delightful object, because this essential order remains now and yet there is no such delight now. There would be need, then, to posit in the individual lower appetitive powers individual gifts, so that each of them would, through its gift, be moved by the will, and the will by its gift would move itself delightfully in relation to the lower powers; and if there were several such gifts, that gift was most of all original justice which was in the will.

17. For through that gift the will would prevent certain delights of the sensitive appetite from ever being present in it, as the delight of committing adultery with another’s beautiful wife. The will would have had command over some delights and would have made a good use of them, as the delights of knowing one’s own wife by obeying the divine precept (namely the precept ‘Be fruitful and multiply etc.’ Genesis 1.28), so that those lawful delights, which by occasion, for the time they were present, are to be had, would not have been held by the will as end, but would have been referred to the due end. From some lawful delights too, which are sometimes to be had, the will would sometimes have turned away, as from the delight that was not be had save for a time. And each of these acts, whether preventing delights, or using well delights possessed, or turning away from possessed delights, the will would do delightfully through that supernatural gift whereby it was more delightful to it to adhere to the ultimate end and to all things ordered toward it than to be separated from it by adhering to something delightful not ordered to the end.

18. All these things the will could not have had from pure nature, although it would of itself have some gift to which all these were proper. Nor for this reason would there be delight, although the whole man, to whom the principal power of delighting belonged, would delight. Nor perhaps is it necessary to posit that no sensitive appetite could then have been saddened; for sight could then have seen something foul and hearing could then have heard something foul, and both could have offended the sensitive appetite, just as a fitting sensible object could also have delighted it; but the will then would have used those sadnesses well, and would even have used the sadnesses of the lower appetites delightfully (so that it would not have been saddened immediately by the inferior appetites), just as it would have used the delights of them well, delighting along with them not immoderately.

19. About the other effect attributed to original justice, namely immortality, there is no need to argue, because this immortality - as was said in d.19 [not in the Ordinatio, see Lectura 2 d.19 n.5] - was not an impossibility of dying (even while that state continued), but a possibility of not dying; and this possibility would have been preserved in an act of not dying by means of the many aids that are talked of there, namely eating of the tree of life, the guardianship of the angels, also divine protection and good internal regimen, and the rest of the things there talked of [ibid. nn.10-15].

II. To the Principal Arguments

20. To the first argument [n.2] I say that neither of the above [sc. immortality and lack of rebellion] can be preserved on the basis of pure nature.

21. When the proof is given that their opposites are punishments, I say that they are not but rather natural conditions - just as it is not a punishment but natural for a man to die, and not a punishment but natural that his appetite is drawn to its delightful object; for because man is composed of many organic parts and thus there are many appetites in him, it is natural for each of them to be drawn to its delightful object and natural also for the body to be capable of being used up, unless there are remedies that supply it abundantly so that the using up does not prevail.

22. Against this it is said that these features [sc. rebellion and death] would have been involuntary, therefore they would also have been punishments. I reply and say that although involuntary yet they are not punishments; for death is against the natural inclination of an ox, and yet it is not a punishment for the ox, because there is no punishment save in the will (according to Anselm On the Virginal Conception ch.4, “Only the will is punished, for nothing is a punishment for anything save what is against its will”). But if you mean by ‘involuntary’ that it is against an act of the will, I say that it would not have been an involuntary punishment for someone existing in pure nature; for if the will had not wanted its nature to have had the condition that was natural to it, it would have sinned!

23. To the second [n.3] I say that ‘natural rectitude’ is the liberty innate to the will, which it is necessary for the will to have been made in by God; nor is this rectitude corrupted by sin; and thus original justice, if it is set down as the natural rectitude of the will, will be the will’s very liberty. But this liberty does not have the natural effects that are attributed to original justice [n.18]; and if these effects are attributed to a quality intermediate between nature and infused virtue, there is no necessity to posit that intermediate quality, because all the things with respect to the will that appear unacceptable will be saved without it.

24. To the third [n.4] I say that someone existing in pure nature is not equal to someone who has sinned while existing in justice; not because the latter has some crookedness which the former does not have, but because the latter is in debt for the original justice he received, and the former is not; and so the latter is guilty and the former is not. Even if the vision of God is conferred on neither, yet to one the lack of vision is a punishment and to the other not; for the one who is guilty is deprived of it by his guilt, while the other is deprived of it by the condition of nature.

25. To the fourth [not in the Ordinatio, but in the Lectura and Reportatio, where it is argued that, if original justice was a supernatural gift, it would then have been a sufficient principle for earning merit] I say that even if original justice is a supernatural gift, yet there is no need for it to be a principle of merit; for it is related to grace, which is a principle of merit, as exceeding to exceeded - exceeding indeed because it joined the will more firmly to the ultimate end than grace does. For, according to some [Alexander of Hales, Matthew of Aquasparta, Aquinas], it so joined to the ultimate end that it did not allow for any venial sin along with it, but charity does allow for this [cf. Lectura 2 dd.21-22 nn.9-10]; and according to what was said before [nn.14, 17], it at least so joined the will to the ultimate end that the will found it easier and more delightful to suffer some lower sadness than to rest in any lower delight by departing from the delight of the end; grace does not cause this easiness, since along with it there stands proneness to evil and difficulty in doing good. But grace exceeds in this respect, that it joins to the ultimate end as to a supernatural good and as to attaining such a good supernaturally, by merit; the supernatural gift did not so, but joined to that good only as to something agreeable and delightful.

III. To Certain Statements of Henry of Ghent

26. As to what is touched on in the example about the rod [n.6], the case is not similar; for bodily quantity cannot, as it seems, come to be in anything without some determinate quality of the fourth species [sc. shape]; but essence and spiritual power can come to be without habit [sc. the first species of quality].

27. As for what is touched on about the wounding in nature [n.7], there will be discussion of it below at d.35 [dd.34-37 nn.33, 46, 49], where will be stated which sin is a corruption of good, and of which good, whether of the nature itself in which it is or of something else.a

a. a[Interpolation] About this at the end of that question [sc. d.35].