Article — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Fourth Article. On The Morality Of The External Act
a. External acts here are not called only the acts which are performed by external organs, but all acts of other powers which are commanded by the will. Now concerning these acts two things are asked: a. whether they have a morality of their own distinct from the morality of the internal act; and b. whether they increase the goodness or malice of the internal act, whether, for example, theft or the bestowal of alms adds anything to the morality of the internal act of the will by which someone efficaciously wills to steal or to give alms.
b. The Scotists solve this question in one way, who attribute to external acts a proper morality in themselves, but the Thomists in another, who deny proper morality to the same acts. The theologians of other schools, by almost common consent, accede to the Thomists.1
1 Cf. Suarez, De bonitate et malitia actuum humanorum, disp. 10. Frins II, n. 332 ff.
78. External acts do not have their own morality. 1. External acts do not have a goodness or malice of their own distinct from the morality of the internal act. For only those acts are properly called moral which are free in themselves; for liberty is the foundation and condition of morality. Therefore, because external acts are not free in themselves, they cannot be moral in themselves. Nevertheless they are and are called morally good or evil from the goodness or malice of the internal act by which they are commanded; for they are moral insofar as they are free, and they are free insofar as they are commanded by a free will; therefore they are moral by a denomination taken from the elicited acts of the will.
Therefore, because external acts participate their goodness or malice from the internal act, there is one moral goodness or malice of both acts. The external act perfects and completes the morality of the internal act by which it is commanded; therefore the internal and external act constitute one act in number, morally good or evil, completed and consummated in its species.
- From these things it now follows that the external act per se, or other things being equal, does not superadd a special goodness or malice to the internal act; for the whole goodness or malice of the external act is had from the internal act; therefore it cannot add anything to the internal act. Hence also the omission of the external act per se detracts nothing from the morality of the internal act: for if the will, perfectly disposed for execution, does not place the external act only because it cannot place it, the omission of the external act is involuntary with respect to the will; but what is involuntary cannot detract anything from morality.
a. Therefore a serious and efficacious will of doing something, when the deed itself is not completed for this reason, that it cannot be completed, is praised in Sacred Scripture equally as if it had been done.1 Therefore those err greatly who think that they have committed less sin because they did not complete it in deed, provided that they had the efficacious purpose of the will of completing the sin when opportunity was given.2
b. But if it is affirmed that a good will and the desire of executing something are pleasing to God per se equally as if the thing had been done in deed, this does not hold: a. of an inefficacious desire, for example of executing whatever missionaries carry out in the whole world. The merit of a desire of this kind depends upon the disposition of the one who elicits it. Nor does it hold: b. of the desire, even efficacious, of those external actions to which by the institution of God a peculiar efficacy belongs, such as the sacraments or martyrdom. But it holds only of the truly efficacious will of exercising some external act which nevertheless, because of an external impediment, has not in fact been done per accidens.
- Nevertheless it is not denied that an external act per accidens increases the goodness or malice (and therefore also the merit or demerit) of the internal act, and this in three ways: namely insofar as the external work brings it about that the internal act of the will becomes more intense and more lasting, or that it is repeated more often, or insofar as through the external act there is added good or evil example, edification or scandal of the neighbor.
That external acts are of the highest importance in moral matters is clear from those arguments by which the Scotists try to demonstrate that morality belongs to external acts per se, distinct from internal acts; namely: a. external acts are the object of precept; thus evil desires and evil acts are prohibited by distinct precepts in the Decalogue; but diversity of precepts is a sign of diverse malice. b. Not only in the sacraments, but also in indulgences and in martyrdom, the efficacy which these acts have from the work worked is annexed to external acts. c. In confession not only internal acts, but also external acts must be declared.
To a. Diversity of precepts would be a sign of diverse malice if, with the external act, the internal act also were not prohibited simultaneously; but by the sixth and seventh precept the external act is prohibited together with the internal. Then in the ninth and tenth precept the internal act is again prohibited, lest the uneducated think that the internal evil act is not evil unless external execution is added.
To b. We must confess external acts from the will of Christ instituting the sacrament of penance, because we are commanded to confess not only the formal malices of sins, but the sins themselves. But sins are not completely declared unless the external act also is accused, when external execution is added to the internal purpose.
1 Gen. 22:16.
2 Matt. 5:28.