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.”]