Chapter I: The Punishments of Sin

— I. Notions. Punishment is properly defined: an evil contrary to the will and inflicted because of fault.

In this definition, evil is taken with respect to the one suffering, so that it is: the corruption of one's own delectable good; the will to which it is contrary can be elicited or innate: as when there is taken away from one ignorant of it a good whose loss he would grieve over if he knew its worth. Thus many now do not at all grieve over sanctifying grace lost.

And because the evil is then less contrary to the will, in expiation by punishments voluntarily undertaken, indeed patiently tolerated, the notion of punishment is contained only in a diminished way: as happens to the souls of purgatory. (S. Th. 1, 2, q. 87 art. 6, c. and 4 Sent. d. 21, q. 1 art. 1, 4.)

Observe, however, that in the present economy every evil of a rational creature has the notion either of fault or of punishment, so that without fault no evil would have been for him.

II. Divisions. One punishment is concomitant, which sin brings with itself with greater or less necessity; another is inflicted, which has an extrinsic cause.

One is medicinal: unto a remedy of the salvation of the delinquent or of others; another is vindicative: unto the pure vindication of violated order. Every punishment as denounced, and all punishments inflicted in this temporal life, are medicinal; while the punishments of the future life are vindicative.

III. The guilt of punishment is the obligation of sustaining punishment. It is distinguished from the guilt of fault by the very term, since the guilt of fault is terminated to habitual fault, the guilt of punishment to punishment itself. The proximate title of punishment is the guilt of fault; the remote title is actual fault. Wherefore the guilt of punishment is placed as it were intermediate between fault and punishment, yet in such a way that it approaches more to fault than to punishment. Wherefore God cannot effect the guilt of punishment. (Suarez, ad 1am 2ae, Tr. V, d. 7, s. 1, n. 4.)

— IV. The punishments of sin. By sin man perverts the threefold order to which he is subject: the order of reason, the order of human law, the order of divine law. Therefore he commits the guilt of a threefold punishment, so that he is punished by himself, by other men, and by God.

1. He is punished by himself, through concomitant punishments. Personal sin of perfect reason, or mortal sin, has as companions: disorder in the man himself, or the privation of due rectitude, because he is turned away from the last end; then, at least of itself, anxieties of the passions and remorse of conscience.

For privation of rectitude, although, because of its connection with the chosen or intended enjoyment of a changeable good, it is voluntary simply, nevertheless is not voluntary except accidentally, and is involuntary in a qualified sense. And since it manifestly has the notion of evil, it possesses the notion of true punishment.

Furthermore, sin diminishes the natural inclination to honorable things, and thus diminishes the mode, species, and order which are in the very nature of the sinner; and insofar as it takes away grace and virtue, it removes the mode, species, and order which are in grace and virtue (1, 2, q. 85 art. 4). By this reason sin disfigures the sinner.

It also corrupts nature as it is a principle of acting. For, because of the divine help withdrawn and the vicious habits left from acts, the inclination to good is diminished, and the wounds which original sin has branded into nature are increased: infirmity, ignorance, malice, concupiscence ¹.

Finally, by sinning mortally, man undergoes the yoke of a twofold servitude. By one kind of servitude he is given over to sin: from which servitude, of itself perpetual, Christ has freed us. For, while we are in the way, through his merits we have abundance for rising from sin, so that our servitude is no longer except less properly so called, and in a certain way voluntary. By the other kind of servitude, we suffer the necessity of bearing the consequences of sin: the propensity to sinning arisen from the habit of sin, incentives of temptations, the obligation of penal expiation, besides other harms in physical powers, in facility of talent, in reputation.

2. He is punished by men, who deny honor and esteem of probity to the sinner; and most of all by the legislator and judge, who, considering the transient act of sin with its exterior consequences, enact punishments by which provision is made for the exterior order of the community.

3. He is punished by God, who, as institutor and ruler of the universal order, punishes as long as that order is to be restored in some part by punishment.

Moreover, punishment inflicted by God is divided into punishment of loss and punishment of sense. In both, however, regard to God, regard to the subject, and regard to the fault are to be attended to. With regard to God, the punishment of loss is every punishment which God inflicts formally by not acting; the punishment of sense is that which he inflicts either by acting, or by willing or permitting the effects of withdrawal by which he withdraws himself either as the infinite Good or as benefactor. With regard to the subject, the punishment of loss formally consists in privation alone, while the punishment of sense designates a positive torment, which nevertheless can proceed from the privation itself. Finally, with regard to the fault to be punished, theologians, with St. Thomas, assign the punishment of loss to aversion from God, the punishment of sense to conversion toward the creature. But then the same theologians are accustomed to call the very affliction which follows privation, no longer by the name punishment of sense, but by the name punishment of loss.

In children who die with original sin alone, privation of beatitude is had without any positive affliction even of soul.

In souls, on the contrary, which are detained in purgatory, the delay of the possession of God is most afflictive, although it does not simply put on the notion of loss, since those souls know that they possess, in habitual grace, the root of eternal glory.

¹ Cf. Trid., s. VI, c. 1.

— Why punishment is eternal. Mortal sin, and therefore the guilt of punishment, is indeed, considered in itself, indelible.

Yet because through God, that is, through God's pardon, even mortal sin can be taken away and the principle of charity restored; and because it seems to pertain to the liberal goodness of God that he not deny grace to the man doing what is in him, the sanction of eternal punishment, whose tremendous mystery is not to be denied, would be repugnant to our sense, unless this final consideration were added: that after this life the human will is no longer mobile, but will adhere by perpetual obstinacy to the evil from which, at least at the end of the present life, it has not withdrawn. Whence the Angelic Doctor does not hesitate to write: "For there would not be perpetual punishment of the souls which are damned if they could change their will for the better, because it would be unjust that, from the time when they had a good will, they should be punished perpetually." (Contra Gentiles, l. 4). Concerning that immobility of the pure spirit and of the separated soul, let the metaphysicians be approached.

— Corollary. The same privation of sanctifying grace is, considered in itself, punishment, insofar as God formally deprives man of grace, not indeed by acting, but by now no longer infusing grace. This punishment is inflicted, insofar as it has God as author, and it is concomitant, insofar as in it there is contained the intrinsic disorder in man which accompanies every sin. It is also fault, insofar as it is an imputable aversion from God, who is to be loved supremely in himself by charity; and it is stain, insofar as it is a detriment of brightness proceeding from spiritual contact, through affection, with an object morally evil.

— I. Punishment, or an evil contrary to the will and inflicted because of fault, is one kind concomitant, which sin brings with itself, and thus seems to be inflicted on the sinner by the sinner himself; another kind is inflicted through an exterior cause, either unto a remedy of the salvation of the delinquent or of others, and then it is medicinal; or unto the pure vindication of violated order, and it is vindicative. The guilt of punishment is the obligation of undergoing punishment, which proximately arises from the guilt of fault, remotely from the actual fault itself.

II. Man sinning perverts the order of reason, and therefore he is punished by himself through concomitant punishments: disorder in himself, anxieties of the passions, remorse of conscience, the taking away of supernatural comeliness, the diminishment of natural comeliness, the diminishment of inclinations to good, the worsened wounds of original sin, the accepted servitude of sin (which, without Christ, would be perpetual), and the necessity of suffering the consequences of sin. He perverts the order of human society, and therefore he is punished by men by lesser esteem, and especially by public power, so that provision may be made for the exterior order of the community. He perverts the order of divine law, and therefore he is punished by God, by punishment of loss and punishment of sense: which are understood in various ways, with regard to God, with regard to the subject, and with regard to the fault.

III. Because God can restore the principle of order, and because it is fitting for God not to deny grace to the man doing what is in him, the true cause of eternal punishments is in the immobile will of the separated soul.

Corollary. The same privation of sanctifying grace is, considered in itself, concomitant punishment, inflicted punishment, habitual fault, and stain.