II. Replies to the preliminary arguments
ORDINATIO II, D. , Q. UN.
But as for an act falling under (3) and (a)—namely, an act that is referred only habitually and negatively, one that is not referred either actually or virtually—it is not quite clear whether such an act (i) is meritorious or, if it is not, whether (ii) it is a venial sin (clearly it is not a mortal sin) or (iii) if such an act is indifferent. If one accepts either (i) or (ii), it evidently follows that a human being who is continuously in a state of grace is continuously either meriting or sinning mortally (or at least venially), since he is continuously eliciting many such acts that are not referred either actually or virtually.
It seems probable, then, that such acts should be identified as indifferent, since they do not have enough of the aspect of badness that characterizes venial sin, since it is possible for them not to be sufficiently disordered to count as sin. For human beings are not obligated—either by necessary obligation, against which there is mortal sin, or by lesser obligation, against which there is venial sin—always to refer all their acts to God actually or virtually, because God has not imposed that obligation on us. Nor do those acts seem to have enough of the aspect of goodness to be meritorious, since any referring short of virtual referring is evidently not enough for merit, and that sort of referring is not present in this case.
So there are many indifferent acts, not merely according to the being that they have in a species of nature, but also according to their moral being; and they are indifferent to meritorious goodness and demeritorious badness, since one individual act can be good and another bad.
And many individual elicited acts are indifferent, since they are neither good nor bad.
And this is true not only of acts that are not human acts, which is not what we're talking about here (such as stroking one's beard, picking up a stick, and suchlike acts, which proceed from imagination alone and not from any impetus on the part of free choice), but also of freely elicited acts.
II. Replies to the preliminary arguments
Replies to the arguments:
To the first argument [n. 2] I say that good and bad are not privatively opposed with respect to an act, and that is the case both for moral goodness and badness and for meritorious goodness and demeritorious badness. For an act is not bad solely in virtue of lacking this or that sort of goodness, but because it lacks the goodness that it ought to have; and not every act ought to have this or that sort of goodness.
To the second argument [n. 3] I say that a similar habit is generated from similar acts, and thus an entirely similar habit that inclines immovably to entirely similar acts can be generated from many indifferent acts. And yet it does not incline to them either as good or as bad, just as the habit in itself is neither good nor bad and is not generated from good or bad acts. The "absurd" conclusion of this argument is not absurd at all; indeed, one should concede that the conclusion is true.
Ordinatio II, d. 42, q. un.
"Are the capital sins distinct?"
1 Concerning distinction 42 one could ask about the distinction of the seven capital sins, but the answer to this question is evident from distinction 6 of this Book, where we investigated the sin of the angel.1 For a will conjoined to a sensory appetite is apt to tend toward things that delight the sensory appetite, and to tend especially toward those things that are especially delightful and desirable to a more excellent appetite,2 just as an intellect conjoined [to sense] is apt to understand sensibles, and to understand in a prior way those things that are sensible in a prior way.
2 Therefore, our will, because it is conjoined with a sensory appetite, is apt to tend toward things that delight the sensory appetite, and the carnal capital sins can be assigned on the basis of those delightful things, whereas spiritual capital sins can be assigned on the basis of what is delightful to the will in itself, not through the sensory appetite. Now the sin of avarice clearly can concern only what is desirable because it is useful, which is ordered to what is desirable in its own right in one of the other ways we have discussed, that is, to either pleasure or honor.
3 But in terms of the formal character of sins, this sevenfold division is not adequate.
Rather, a per se distinction of sins would have to be based on deficiency3 or on the commandments they violate (thus, there would be ten capital sins corresponding to the ten primary commandments) or on the virtues they oppose. This was explained in distinction 6, as I mentioned above.
1 Cf. Scotus, Ordinatio II d. 6 n. 73.
2 "a more excellent appetite" is puzzling: the claim should surely be that a will conjoined to a sensory appetite tends especially toward those things that are especially delightful to the sensory appetite, for that claim is a natural extension of what is said in the first part of the sentence and also is properly parallel to what comes next. A more excellent appetite (more excellent, presumably, than the sensory appetite) would be intellectual appetite as such or the will itself (as free), and it simply doesn't make sense for Scotus to be arguing here that a will conjoined to a sensory appetite tends especially toward things that are delightful to an intellectual appetite or to the will as free. Q alone adds "sensory" here, but like all the other MSS it also has "more excellent." One could perhaps take "a more excellent sensory appetite" as meaning something like "sensory appetite as directed to its most desirable/excellent objects," and then the argument would make sense.
3 "deficiency" (carentia): presumably he means that one could distinguish formally different sins on the basis of the formally different deficiencies in virtue of which they are sins.