CHAPTER VII
should be despised. And the function of the will is to choose or not to choose in accordance with what reason apprehends. Indeed, it is to this end that reason and will are given in the highest degree to rational creatures. Where fore the choice of the will to desert uprightness is not compelled by any neces sity, even though the choice is made under pain of death. For even though it is necessary for the person to relinquish either his life or his uprightness, there is no necessity which determines which one he should either keep or for sake. Indeed, in such a case the will alone determines which one he keeps; and no one acts by necessity when he acts solely through the choice of his will.
It is obvious that a person who is under no necessity of forsaking uprightness of will does not lack the ability to keep uprightness, that is, does not lack freedom. For this ability is always free. And freedom, as I have said, is the ability to keep uprightness of will for its own sake. Because rational nature possesses this freedom it is said to have both free choice and free will.
CHAPTER VII
We have still another question to consider. Since God is believed to know or foreknow all things, does His knowledge derive from the things He knows, or do the things derive their existence from His knowledge? If God derives His knowledge from things, it follows that they are prior to His knowledge and thus are not from Him, for they could not come from God without also coming from His knowledge. But if, on the other hand, everything that exists receives its being from the knowledge of God, then God is the author and creator of evil, and is unjust in punishing evil creatures. This belief, however, we do not accept.
The issue can easily be resolved if we first recognize that the good which is justice is really something positive--whereas the evil which is injustice
i • -T
altogether lacks existence. I have shown this most clearly in the treatise on The Fall of Satan and the treatise entitled On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin. Injustice is neither a quality nor an action nor a being, but merely the absence of due justice; and injustice is located only in the will, where justice ought to be. Now each rational nature and every action of that nature is called just or unjust according to whether the will is just or unjust.
Certainly, every quality, every action, and anything whatsoever that has being comes from God, who is the source of all justice and from whom comes no in justice. God, then, is the Creator of everything that becomes just or unjust through the will, that is, of everything which becomes a good or an evil work.
But whereas God causes the existence and the goodness of good things. He causes only the existence, and not the evil, of evil things. For anything to be just, or good, is for it to be something positive; but for something to be unjust, or evil, is not for it to be anything positive. If being good, or just, is having justice, which is something positive, then being evil, or unjust, is not having the justice one ought to have. And this not-having is not something positive; for while justice is something, injustice, as I have said, is nothing.
Now there is another kind of good, which we call 'benefit* (commodum); and we call the corresponding evil 'disadvantage* (incommodum). This evil is in some cases nothing, as with blindness; but sometimes it is something positive, as in the case of pain. When this evil is something positive, we do not deny that God causes it, because He is 'the One who makes peace and creates evil.*
(Isaiah 45:7) For He creates hardships and uses them to train and purify the just, and to punish the unjust. We may be sure, however, that the evil according to which a man is called unjust, namely injustice, is never something positive. Nor is it anything positive for a thing to be unjust. Now even as
j. . ■> ii.
••• .-y;; r> t.. .
;i.r. > \ 0 ' : . or,. ..
• •• , '"";r
God. does not cause injustice, neither does He cause anything to be unjust. But He does cause all actions and all movements, in that He causes the things from which, out of which, by which, and in which they come to be. Every creature possesses only such power to will or to do anything as God has given. Willing-which is sometimes just, sometimes unjust--is nothing other than using the will and the ability to will which God gives. Thus, willing, insofar as it is, is something good and is from God. Now, when the ability to will is used rightly, it is something good and just; but when it is not used rightly, then in this respect (and only in this respect) is it something evil and unjust. Existing rightly is something positive and is from God, whereas not existing rightly is not something positive and is not from God. When a person uses a sword, for instance, or uses language, or the power of speaking, it is the same sword or language or power whether he uses it correctly or incorrectly. The same is true of the will. As with reason, which we use for reasoning, so the will is not one thing when we use it correctly and something different when we use it incorrectly.
A substance or an action is said to be just or unjust according to the will.
But what the will essentially is, is neither more nor less when it is just than when it is unjust. Thus, God causes both the essential being and the goodness of all good wills and all good works. And He causes the essential being of all evil wills and evil works, but He does not cause their being evil. For just as a thing's being is from God alone, so its rightness is from Him alone.
Injustice, which is the absence of the uprightness we are discussing, is located only in the will of rational creatures, who ought always to have justice.
But why does a rational creature not have that which he ought always to have, and how does God cause good things solely by His goodness and evil things solely through the fault of man or Satan? And how does man do good through free choice
ii..