28. Is The Power To Sin From God?
PART VIII
Sin
28. IS THE POWER TO SIN FROM GOD?
(Ordinatio II, dist. 44) In connection with the forty.fourth distinction [of Bk. II] I ask: "Is the power to sin from God?"
[Arguments Pro and Can} According to Anselm in Freedom of Choice, ch. I : "To be able to sin is not liberty or any part of liberty"; therefore, insofar as free choice is from God, it is not the power to sin. But the ability to sin is not from God for any reason other than that free choice comes from God.
Therefore, the ability or power to sin is in no way from God.
To the contrary: the Master cites authorities in the text affirming that the ability to sin is from God.
[Body of the Question} I reply: The power to sin either expresses the immediate order of potentiality to the act of sinning or else refers to the foundation of such a potentiality, by virtue of which the one having such is said to be able to sin.
If it be taken in the first sense, then the order is either to the act that is the basis for sin or else to the deformity that is present in the sinful act. If the first is meant, then this order is from God, just as are both members of the ordered pair, and God has power also over that act which underlies or is the basis for sin, and not just the created will, according to one opinion. If the second is meant, then there is no such ordering to sin, even as the term [Le., the deformity or lack of goodness] is nothing, and hence is not from God.
If one is speaking of the basis or foundation of this order, however, I say that something positive lies at the root of this order in both senses
Sin [Le., something positive underlies both the act that is the basis of sin and the deformity itself]. For as is the case of passive or receptive potencies, where the same subject can either have something or be deprived of it, so too where the subject is a power that is free to act deficiently. Such a power is the immediate basis or source of its opposite states by either acting or being deficient. By acting it is a power for righteousness, by being deficient it is a power to sin. And this absolute entity [1. e., the will] is the proper power for both in the respective way that there can be a power for both [righteousness and sin], namely, by the power being either effective or defective. And in this sense the power to sin is from God, Le., God is the source of that nature which enables its possessor to commit sin by using its powers not effectively but defectively, of which deficient usage, however, this positive entity is the proximate ground.
And if one objects that the will is always deficient inasmuch as it is created from nothing and not because of anything positive that it contains, I answer: To be defectible in the sense of being able to return to nothingness is a consequence of every creature coming from nothing.
But to be defectible in this sense of being able to sin is a property peculiar to this nature and is a consequence of its being the specific sort of nature that it is, namely, with a principle of action that can function in opposite ways, acting properly or defectively.
[Reply to the Initial Arguments} To Anselm I say that liberty is a pure perfection. Hence he assumes it to be in God. Liberty in us is limited, but it can be considered according to its formal nature without that limitation, and then it is not a limited perfection but a pure perfection. For example, wisdom is a pure perfection, and according to its nature, considered absolutely, it is also found in us; but not only is it in us, but it exists there only with limitations, and hence our wisdom includes two things, one of which is pure perfection; the other [Le., perfection qua limited or finite] is not pure perfection as such, but it includes pure perfection as part of what it is. And so I say that although the species of will that is in us includes that liberty which is pure perfection, it not only includes that, but also includes it as limited, which limitation is not pure perfection. The ability to sin does not pertain to it by reason of its pure perfection, nor is this the proximate foundation of this order to being actually deficient. Rather it is the second [i. e., the limitation of this perfection].
We can explain Anselm, then, in this way: the capacity to sin does not pertain to liberty as a pure perfection, nor does his argument that this capacity is not in God prove anything more. But if we are talking