Chapter VIII: Sins in Turning Away from God and Turning to Created Things, § 28.
CHAPTER VIII: ON SINS IN TURNING AWAY FROM GOD
AND TURNING TO CREATED THINGS
§ 28. The third division of actual sins comes next: some sins consist in turning away from God; some, in turning to created things. But, you say, all sin is a turning away from the highest good. How, then, will such a division of sins have a place? We respond from Scotus (Sent., 2, dist. 37):
The turning away from the ultimate end can be understood in two ways: formally and according to power. Formally, when in turning away one has the ultimate end as the object positively or privatively: positively, that is, that the will does not want the end with a positive act, and this not wanting is hating God; privatively, that is, that he does not want the ultimate end when he ought to want the ultimate end, and such not wanting is omitting the command “You shall love the Lord, your God” [Deut. 6:5]. It is understood according to power when something necessary to achieve the ultimate end is avoided. This potential turning away is common to every mortal sin.
§ 29. Whoever turns to created things because of an inordinate love turns away from God by the same action. Nevertheless, formally turning away from God is distinguished from turning to created things, for the former is considered with regard to the goal from which one begins, while the latter is considered with regard to the goal to which one heads. Jer. 2:13: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and they have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns which can hold no water.” Ecclus. 10:[13]: “The beginning of pride is sin,” namely, through a turning away from God, for it is explained in this way in the verse immediately preceding: “The beginning of pride is man’s turning away from God and a turning away of the heart from its Creator.” Again, 1 Tim. 6:10: “The root of all evils is avarice,” that is, through an inordinate turning to created things.
Lombard (Sent., 2, dist. 42, letter K): “It is understood that both are said correctly” (namely, that pride is the beginning of all sin and that avarice is the beginning of all sin) “if it is understood that the categories of individual sins and not individuals of the categories are included in both statements. Indeed, there is no category of sin which at some time does not proceed from pride. There is also no category which at some time does not descend from greed. For there are some people who become prideful from avarice and some who become avaricious because of pride.”
Bonaventure (Sent., 2, dist. 42, art. 3, q. 2) treats this question: “Whether sin is able to be divided into aversion and conversion, as if by various differences.” He decides it in this way:
Aversion is understood in two ways: first, when it means a disordering concerning the act of conversion and, second, when it means an act distinct from conversion. In the first way, conversion is not numbered with aversion, nor do they cause different sins. In fact, in essence those two are included in every mortal sin. For the conversion is not fault except that it is inordinate, and it is not inordinate except that a person is turned away from God to whom he ought to be clinging as the ultimate end. Taken in the second way, aversion constitutes a different category of sin, for in this way turning away is holding in hatred, also because aversion is often taken into sin. So, since it means a disordering away from God as from the end, so also it means an inordinate movement against God. For thus it is that conversion and aversion are better established in regard to sin like constituent differences rather than as dividing differences.1
1 Differences divide a category (genus) and constitute a subcategory (species). For example, the difference “rational” divides the category “animal” into “human” and “brute.” In so doing, the difference establishes each of these as its own subcategory, different from the other. Here Bonaventure is saying that “sin” is part of what constitutes the subcategories of “conversion” and “aversion,” but “sin” is not what divides the two subcategories from each other.