On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 6
BASIC WRITINGS
to be something, as in the case of pain and sorrow.13 In any event, I think I have shown adequately in On the Fall of the Devil14 that justice is rectitude of will preserved for its own sake, that injustice is nothing other than the absence of justice that ought to be present and that injustice has no being,that all being is from God, and that nothing is from God but what is good. But I dealt more fully with justice in On Truth.15
Chapter 6 That nonetheless, when God punishes on account of sin, he does not punish on account of nothing Certain people, when they hear that sin is nothing, are accustomed to say,"If sin is nothing, why does God punish human beings on account of sin, since no one ought to be punished on account of nothing?" This is a trivial question, but since they do not understand what they are asking, I should offer them a brief reply.
Even though the absence of justice is equally nothing both where justice ought to be and where it ought not to be, it is still right for God to punish sinners, not on account of nothing but on account of something. For, as I said in the aforementioned book,16 God requires of them, against their wills, the honor that is due to himself, which they refused to offer him spontaneously; and he deals with them separately from the just, according to a fitting order, so that there will be nothing out of order in his kingdom. But he does not punish creatures in which justice ought not to be on account of their lacking justice, that is, on account of nothing, because he does not require justice of them, and the fitting order of the whole universe does not demand it.And so when God punishes on account of sin, which is the absence of the justice that is owed—an absence that is nothing—it is not the case that he is punishing on account of nothing at all; and it is true that God does not punish on account of nothing unless there is something on account of which he ought to punish.
13 See On the Fall of the Devil, Chapter 26.
14 Chapters 9–11, 15, 16, 19, and 26.
15 Chapters 12 and following.
16 See Cur Deus Homo, Book 1, Chapters 12 and 14.