A. What Remains in a Sinner after Sin has been Committed

1. Preliminaries

17. About the first one needs to know that just as justice is double - habitual, namely charity and grace, and actual, namely the rectitude that is of a nature to be present in an elicited act (and the first is plain; the second is made clear because the act is of a nature to be elicited conformably to its rule, and in this conformity does rectitude consist) - so, since opposites are said in equally many ways, injustice too will be double: habitual, namely the privation of grace in him in whom grace should be present, and actual, namely privation of this rectitude in an act in which it should be present.

18. Also, after the intrinsic and extrinsic act pass away, there remains a certain habitual injustice; but not from this alone is someone said to be a sinner, because someone who had committed two thousand mortal sins and someone who had committed one would be equally sinners intensively and extensively, because the whole of grace in them as to intension, and it alone as to extension, is taken away, both in him who has committed a single less grave sin and in him who has committed two thousand very grave sins; and so the one will not be said to be less a sinner after the act has passed away than the other. The proof of the assumption is that in any mortal sin grace is so taken away that nothing of it remains, and consequently it can, through nothing that follows, become more intense or more extensive, speaking of habitual privation; because this privation deprives only one habit, just as the habit is only of a nature to be present as one.

19. And this reasoning is like the reasoning of Anselm, On Virginal Conception ch.22, that original sin is not of a nature to be more present in one than another, because he in whom there is no justice cannot be deprived of justice [sc. since original sin takes away the whole of justice, it cannot take more away from one than from another, but all are deprived and deprived equally, because deprived fully]. This was discussed in Ord. II dd.30-32 nn.51-56.

20. Now actual injustice cannot remain when the act ceases, because the proximate subject of it is the act, just as it is also of the opposed rectitude. The proof: for the soul cannot be the immediate subject of the rectitude but only of the act in the soul; but still, when the act does not remain, that rectitude does not remain nor the wrongness.

2. Opinion of Others

a. Statement of the Opinion

21. Therefore is it said [Aquinas Sent. IV d.13 nn.27-82] that conviction for a faultThe Latin word ‘culpa’ means both ‘fault’ and ‘guilt’, and is translated in both ways in what follows according to suitability to the context. ² remains in the soul, which is a kind of obligation to the penalty due for that fault; now this obligation is a certain real relation, not founded on the guilty act, but on the essence of the soul, though only with actual guilt preceding, as was often said above on how a relation is founded on action [Ord. IV d.13 nn.27-82].

b. Rejection of the Opinion

22. Against this there is a twofold argument: first that no real relation remains in the soul; second, that if it did remain, the soul would not be called a sinner because of it.

23. The proof of the first is that an intrinsically arising real relation necessarily follows the positing of the extremes; but the relation here does not follow. The fact is plain, because while the soul and God remain the same, or while penalty is disposed in the same way, the soul is not for this reason obligated to penalty in the same way, because it is not so obligated before sin.That is, even if we suppose the listed foundations of the real relation to remain the same (the penalty as always due for such sin, God as always decreeing such penalty for such sin, and the soul as always capable of such sin), yet no relation of obligation in the soul to the penalty follows therefrom, unless an actual sin is supposed as well. ³ But if the relation is an extrinsically arising relation, it is necessary to give it a cause whereby it may arise on the basis of the extremes already posited (as is true of ‘where’ and the other circumstances [cf. Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.1111a3-6]). For a real respect that does not follow the posited extremes cannot exist unless some real action answer to it as to the term. Of this obligation [n.21] neither a real action nor a really acting agent can be given. For not the soul, because in sinning it had only a single disordered action that was related to that act of willing, which was deprived of its due circumstances, and so not to this respect [sc. of obligation] as to its term. Nor can this obligation be said to be the immediate term of divine action, because no soul is said to be a sinner precisely by the fact that it is the immediate term of divine action.

24. The proof of the second [n.21] is through this last point [n.23], because if there were in the soul such an obligation, it could not be imagined to be there save immediately from God, and thus the soul would not formally be a sinner by it, since God is not cause of sin per se but only permissively.

25. This difficulty the Master touches on in d.18, last chapter [Sent. IV d.18 ch.8 n.3-4], and he seems to solve it through this: “Until it repent the soul is polluted, just as it was while a depraved will was in it.” And he gives an example about him who has touched an animal carcass; for after the act ceases he remains unclean just as before [Leviticus 11.31]. And he adds: “Thus does the soul remain polluted just as it was in the act of sin itself, because it is thus by unlikeness far from God; for this unlikeness, which is in the soul by sin and is a distancing of the soul from God, seems to be a stain.”

26. Against this stands the prior deduction [n.23], because this stain, or distancing or unlikeness (with whatever name it be named), cannot be only a lack of the habit of grace, because that lack is totally present in a first sin [sc. therefore further sins would not add a further stain]; nor is it the lack of rectitude in the act, because that is not of a nature to remain unless the stain in the act remains.

27. Again, the stain of supreme hatred for a and supreme love of that very a are repugnant to each other; therefore by one the other is taken away, and consequently the stain of hatred for a could be taken away by extreme love for that very a [sc. while not paying any penalty to remove that stain of the original hatred].

3. Scotus’ own Opinion

28. As to this article [n.16], then, I say that nothing real, absolute or respective, is in anyone by which he may be called a sinner after all act of sinning ceases - and this whether gravely or multiply a sinner, as one is said to be after the act passes away.

29. And if it be said that something left behind by the act remains, it is not formally sin, because it can continue in someone justified, just as a vicious habit, or a disposition for it, remains in someone justified suddenly. The fact is plain because at the beginning he is prone to follow the inclination of the vicious habit, but in fighting against the inclination of it he merits well and acquires for himself a habit to the contrary. Hence great sinners do not, as soon as they are justified, have that peace which the perfect and practiced in virtue do.

30. Also, whatever habit or vicious disposition might, from acts, be left behind, it would cease to be after passage of time unless it were strengthened by frequent acts (just as universally every disposition for a habit ceases to be when the acts perfecting that habit cease to be). But that by which a sinner is, after an act, said to be a sinner does not cease to be through any time however much, although like acts not be added to it; for he is a sinner for ever from when he committed it. So there is not anything absolute or respective there, positive or privative, from the time of the ceasing of the act up to penance, by which he may be called a sinner, but there is only a certain relation of reason, insofar as he is an object of the intellect or will of God. Because, after he has committed the sin, the will of God ordains him to a penalty corresponding to the sin, and the intellect of God foresees this for all time until the penalty due is paid.

31. The proof of this is from Augustine on Psalm 31.1-2, narration 2 n.9, “Blessed are those” [whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered]: ‘To see sins’, he says, belongs to God for assigning to penalty; ‘but to turn his face from sins’, this is for God not to keep for penalty. So Augustine says,     therefore , that sins are not covered over by God such that God not see them, but that he not wish to attend to them, that is, to punish them; therefore , that a sinner remains in guilt after the act passes away is only that he is ordained by God’s will for penalty befitting the sin. But an object of intellect or of will has, as it is understood or willed, only a relation of reason; therefore etc     .

32. This is confirmed by a likeness: let it be that God not consider, in a multiplication of merits, the habit of charity - as is possible if the merits be mild or even if they were intense - yet he who had many merits is, after the exterior or interior acts pass away, more deserving than someone else. Which is nothing other than that he is ordained to a greater glory, by which is not obtained anything real positive or privative intrinsic to him, absolute or respective, but only a relation of reason insofar as he is an object of the divine will and in order to be ordained to greater glory. For there, in the divine acceptance, merits are ordained, or the man is ordained through merits, to such or such a glory. Just as, therefore, this acceptation for transient merits is nothing really save an act of the divine will (and in this there is only a relation of reason as in an object willed), so on the other side the casting off of this man because of transient sins is only a reprobation or repulsion in the divine will, and in the sinner it is only a relation of reason (as of someone cast off or reprobate) for such or such a penalty.

33. This finally is plain from a like obvious case, that if someone offend a great prince with the sort of offense that a great penalty responds to, there is, when that act ceases, nothing in him that, before the act for which he be called an enemy now and not before, was not previously there; but the transient act in him is only in the will of the offended lord himself, and by this fact is it a relation of reason in him, as in a subject or object willed for such sort of penalty.

34. From this a corollary follows, that after the act of sin ceases the offense, stain, and fault is nothing other than this relation of reason, namely ordination to a penalty; and as this is unbecoming to the very soul, it is said to be the ‘stain’ of the soul (just as ‘beauty’ is said of it as the opposite); but as it is formally an obligation for this penalty it is called ‘guilt’; and as it is an act of divine will (which is this whole reality), by which act the soul is ordered to such penalty, it is called ‘offense’. For ‘to be offended’ or ‘to be angry’ is in God nothing other than will to exact vengeance with this penalty; and although God be said figuratively to be angry or offended, yet by taking this idea of ‘to be angry’ for ‘to will to avenge’ (excluding any accompanying passion of this ‘will’), God is formally angry and offended, because he is formally willing to avenge sin committed against his Law.