Whether the formal constitutive of the sin of commission consists in something positive, or privative?

Because concerning this question theologians have been most divided, even Thomists, that I may satisfy all, I shall briefly set forth the principal points of each opinion, with the responses of the adverse party.

There is proposed the opinion placing the formal constitutive of sin of commission in something privative ?

1° According to Scripture, the holy Fathers, especially St. Thomas, sin is nothing, it is aversion from God, it is lack or privation of due perfection and rectitude. Ergo.

2° Sin is essentially evil, nay supreme evil. Yet evil is essentially privation; for every being, qua being, is good. Ergo.

3° and chiefly. If moral malice or the formal constitutive of sin were something positive, God would be cause of sin, etc. The consequent is more than false and expressly condemned in Concil. Trid., sess. VI, can. 61 ¹. Ergo. — Prob. sequelae maj. God ought to be cause of every real positive, otherwise he would not be first and most universal cause, which requires that every real positive, under every real and positive formality, be from him who is the fountain of all being. Ergo. ¹ « If anyone shall say that it is not in man's power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil, as well as the works that are good, God works — not permissively only, but properly and of himself — so that his own working is not less the treason of Judas than the calling of Paul; let him be anathema. »

Responses of the adverse party

They observe 1° that evil is twofold: absolute and simply evil, which includes no goodness or entity, as privation of coldness in hot water; respective evil and secundum quid, which includes some entity and goodness, and thus is evil to one, while it can be good to another, as heat in water. In the act of sin both evils are found: the respective evil and secundum quid, namely a positive tendency toward an object dissonant from the rules of morals; and the absolute evil and simply, namely the privation of rectitude connoted and caused by the positive act, or accompanying it and founded in it.

They observe 2° that privation can be considered in two ways: in fieri and in facto esse. In fieri it is something positive, in facto esse it is nothing. It appears in death, which in fieri is something positive, namely disease or a lethal wound; in facto esse, mere privation of life. So in the act of sin: privation of rectitude in fieri is something positive, namely the tendency of the act toward an object dissonant from the rules of morals; in facto esse, a mere privation resulting from this tendency.

They observe 3° that there are two kinds of aversion: one privative, the other contrary; that in every sin there is aversion from God, not only privative but also, at least virtually and interpretatively, contrary, inasmuch as man by sinning not only withdraws from God, but virtually and interpretatively at least rises up against him, transgressing his law, denying him obedience and casting him off as friend and last end. These things observed,

They answer to the first, with St. Thomas, q. 2 de Malo, a. 1, ad 4, that sin is called nothing, not on account of its formal self, but on account of the mode or privation following or accompanying it.

Aversion is said on account of the same connoted privation, or aversion is taken not only privatively but also contrarily.

Privation of due perfection or rectitude is said because it founds and involves it, or we speak of sin as it is evil simply, not as it is moral and respective evil. Sometimes also the holy Fathers speak of habitual sin.

To the second they answer, that sin is evil, not simply and absolutely, but moral and respective, which does not consist in bare privation.

To the third, they deny the consequent. To the proof they distinguish. God is cause of every real positive under the character of entity, I concede; under the character of deformity, I deny. Or in other terms, he is cause of every real positive materially, I concede; formally, I deny. That is, God is cause of every real positive simply and absolutely, not as founding and connoting a consecutive or adjunct privation. But the formal constitutive of sin is real positive, not as effectible, but as defectible; not materially and absolutely, but formally, as founding privation: whence it does not follow that God is cause of sin.

They answer 2° by retorting the argument, and say, the adverse opinion labors under the same difficulty. For thus they argue: The foundation of the privation in which the adverse opinion places the formal constitutive of sin, reduplicatively as such, is something real positive; for negation or privation cannot be the foundation of another negation or privation, else to this prior negation another negation ought to be assigned as foundation, and so on to infinity. Ergo, if God necessarily causes every real positive in sin, he causes its foundation as such. — They subjoin: He truly and properly causes sin who causes its foundation as such, especially since formal sin, in this opinion, is privation. Now privation is not caused directly and per se, but results from the positing of the foundation, nor can it otherwise be caused; because, since it is nothing, it cannot of itself and directly terminate influx.

§ II.

There is proposed the opinion placing the formal constitutive of sin of commission in something positive, with the responses of the adverse party.

1° Scripture explains sin through conversion toward an evil object. Jerem., II, 13: My people have done two evils: they have forsaken the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. And Osee, IX, 10: They became abominable as those things which they loved.

2° St. Thomas, 1ª 2ª, q. 18, where he begins to treat ex professo of human acts in the order of morals, teaches, art. 5, ad 2, and q. 72, a. 1, c, and art. 9, ad 1; likewise q. 79, a. 2, ad 3, that the constitutive difference of a sinful act, qua such and as it is subdivided against moral good, is not a privation but something positive, namely a positive tendency of the act toward an object dissonant from reason; but that privation has reference to it only consequently.

And 1ª p., q. 48, a. 1, ad 2, and q. 1 de Malo, a. 1, c, says that evil simply differs in this from moral evil, that evil simply consists in privation, but moral evil in something positive to which privation is joined. Whence q. 2 de Malo, a. 11, ad 13: « Sin, he says, is not pure privation, as darkness, but is something positive. » And 2ª 2ª, q. 6, a. 2, ad 2: « Deformity [of sin] imports not only privation of due form, but also a contrary disposition, »

3° That is the formal constitutive of sin from which sin has that whereby it is first moral evil. Yet sin of commission has first that whereby it is moral evil through the positive and vital tendency toward an evil object. Ergo. — And 1° that thence it has being moral evil is proved, because that tendency proceeds freely from the will as subject to the rules of morals, and regards a moral object, namely one dissonant from the rules of morals. Ergo it pertains to the moral line, and contracts from that object some moral species, not goodness, not indifference. Ergo formal malice. 2° That from that tendency it has first that whereby it is moral evil is proved. That tendency morally evil precedes the act's privation of rectitude; for the act of sin lacks rectitude because it tends toward an evil object, since every motion tending from one term to another first per se regards the term to which, whence follows aversion or withdrawal from the term from which. Ergo.

And granted that privation would not follow but precede or at least accompany the act, as some will, nevertheless the argument would stand, because it cannot be but that the moral tendency of the act toward a moral object does not contract moral species, since every act is specified by its object.

4° Formal morality taken generically consists in something positive, namely in real transcendental order toward an object subjected to the rules of morals, and it is divided into three species: goodness, malice and indifference, as we said in the treatise on Human Acts. Yet a positive genus cannot be contracted through privation, but only through positive difference. Ergo the constitutive difference of moral malice, like that of goodness, is positive.

Responses of the adverse party

To the first it is answered that Scripture explains sin, now privatively, now positively, so that the privative is formal and the positive material. But others urge that this answer is not only gratuitous but also false, both because God complains no less of the positive than of the privative, and because only formal sin is abominable: here however the abomination is something positive, namely love.

To the second it is answered, that St. Thomas speaks of sin materially and considered in physical being, not formally and in the order of morals, or for formal malice; or, as others say, of sin of commission as it is commission, not as it is sinful. But true, say others, St. Thomas, 1ª 2ª, from q. 8 to 18 had already treated human acts in physical being; from q. 18 inclusive onward however he treats the goodness and malice of human acts. Ergo at least the texts cited from 2ª 2ª are badly expounded concerning the specification and constitution of sin as regards the material of sin. Moreover there and elsewhere the holy Doctor speaks in the same manner of the constitution of formal moral good. Ergo.

To the third it is answered, that this tendency does not terminate at the object reduplicatively as morally evil, or as deformed against the rules of morals, but only materially and speculatively; for it regards it formally as a certain good useful or delightful, since no one intending evil acts. Whence it follows that that tendency has from the object only that it be materially and fundamentally evil, and not formally.

To the fourth it is answered that morality in common is not a univocal genus to goodness and malice, but analogous, importing two diverse characters, one positive, the other negative. But others urge against that positive tendency of the act toward an evil object, which is a true positive species in the moral line, not good, not indifferent. Ergo evil. Ergo it stands under the genus of the same character.