Is imperfect contrition good?
Is imperfect contrition good?
§ 96. The tenth question is “whether imperfect contrition—or attrition, which arises from slavish fear—is good.” Servile fear [servilis timor] means the fear by which a sinner flees from God, when He threatens and punishes, in such a way that he is forewarned of committing sins and grieves over those he has committed solely for the sake of escaping punishment. Bellarmine (ch. 17) tries to prove that this fear is good and useful and is stirred up by God.
We respond. The terrors which rise in the conscience from the threats of the Law and the perception of punishments are the beginning of conversion, and in this respect they can be called good and useful. (Augustine, on 1 John, tract. 9, says, “The fear of punishment induces love in the same way that the needle of a tailor introduces the thread.”) Therefore they are useful—or, rather, become useful—through accident [per accidens], namely, as faith and love are added [accedente] through God’s grace. Augustine therefore adds: “The needle first goes in, but if it does not exit, the thread does not follow after. In this way fear enters first, but it does not remain, since perfect love casts out fear [1 John 4:18].” Nevertheless these very terrors do not complete conversion, nor are they useful by their nature in and of themselves. Rather, faith must be added. Through this, the conscience is again lifted up, lest the person be carried off into despair by fears and terrors. Therefore when faith is added, servile fear becomes filial fear, which is pleasing to God, which begins to hate and detest sin out of its love of God and His righteousness. It is in this that the daily repentance of the reborn consists. If servile fear, which arises from free choice merely because of the fear of punishment, is alone, it makes a person a hypocrite and thus cannot appease God, because the person flees from God because of it and accompanies Him with a tacit hatred inwardly in his heart. Augustine (Ad Bonif., bk. 1, ch. 9): “It is one thing to do good because of a will to do good; it is another to have an inclination to do evil if one could do so with impunity. And so the one who sins not out of intent but out of fear certainly sins internally in the will itself.” [Augustine again] (Ad Bonif., bk. 3, ch. 4): “He who does something out of a carnal fear of punishment undoubtedly does it reluctantly. He does not act in the heart in this, for he prefers not to act at all. Consequently, he is guilty within in the very will where God Himself, who has commanded him, searches.” [Augustine again] (Letter 144 ad Anast.): “The one who, out of fear of punishment, does not sin thinks foolishly that he has overcome sin. For even though he does not outwardly perform the business of desire, nevertheless the foe is the wicked desire within.”
When Luther declares that contrition rising out of servile fear and separated from faith makes a person a hypocrite and a greater sinner, he is saying nothing else but what the apostle says: “Sin through the commandment became sin above measure” (Rom. 7:13); “[Sin] brought forth in man every kind of covetousness” (v. 8); “Through the Law [sin] revived” (v. 9); etc. Meanwhile, Luther does not simply and absolutely disapprove of servile fear or attrition (as Bishop Roffensis admits, Adv. Lutherum, art. 5); rather, he is doing battle against the sophists who claim that a penitent goes from being attrite to being contrite by virtue of the absolution and in this way is justified. Why does Bellarmine accuse Luther with this charge when Gregorius de Valentia (In Thom., vol. 4, disp. 7, q. 2, point 3) clearly writes: “We assert that if someone grieves over his sins in order to avert punishments and the very great evil of that, surely he will be evil since this sprang from his perverse self-love”?