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.