Sentences, Books I–II

Chapter 1 (249).

1. Since will is among the things a human being naturally possesses, why is it called sin, when no other natural thing is sin? Here a sufficiently necessary question arises from the foregoing. For above it was said that will is naturally in a human being, like understanding and memory. But whatever is natural to a human being, however much it is corrupted, nevertheless does not cease to be good, because a defect cannot wholly consume the goodness in which God made it. For example, understanding or reason, intelligence and memory, although they are darkened and corrupted by defects and sins, are nevertheless good and are not called sins, as Augustine clearly shows concerning reason, which is the image of God in which we were made, in Book XV of On the Trinity: “This,” he says, “is the image in which human beings were created, by which they rule over the other animals. This creature, the most excellent among created things, when it is justified by God, is changed from a deformed form into a beautiful form. For even amid vices nature was good.” This image is reason or understanding. Since will is therefore among natural things, why is it not always good itself, even if it is sometimes subject to defects? ¹

2. Response according to some. Those who say that everything that exists is good insofar as it exists easily respond that will itself is good insofar as it exists or insofar as it is will, as we stated above; but insofar as it is disordered, it is evil and sin.

3. Where they can reasonably be questioned. If will is sin insofar as it is disordered, why then are understanding, reason, intelligence, and things of this kind not sins when they are disordered? They are disordered just as will, when they do not tend toward the right end and their acts are transgressions. — To this they say that by the name will sometimes a power is signified, namely the natural power of willing, and sometimes the act of that power. The power itself, naturally implanted in the soul, is never sin, just as the power of remembering or understanding is not; but the act of this power, which is also called will, is sin when it is disordered.

Chapter 2 (250).

1. Why the act of will is sin if the acts of other powers are not sins. It is still asked why the act of this natural power is sin if the acts of other powers are not sins, namely the power of remembering, whose act is remembering, and the power of understanding, whose act is understanding. — Response. They also say in response that the act of will is of a different kind from the act of memory or understanding. This act is directed toward acquiring or avoiding something, and it cannot concern evils without being evil. For willing evils is evil, but understanding or remembering evils is not evil. — They also say that the acts of memory and understanding can sometimes be evil. Some of them nevertheless assert, not improperly, that these acts too can sometimes be evil. A person sometimes remembers evil in order to do it, and seeks to understand the truth in order to attack it. — This is how the foregoing question is solved by those who teach that everything is good insofar as it exists.

2. Response according to some. Those who say that evil wills are sins and in no way good respond more briefly, saying that the act of will is not among natural things, but the power itself and the power of willing, which is always good and exists in everyone, even in infants in whom its act does not yet exist.

²

Chapter 3. Cf. S. J. Schupp, The Doctrine of Grace of Peter Lombard, 204ff. — No. 1. Lombard’s Gloss on Romans 7:15 (PL 191, 1423 A). See a separate series of notes.

Chapter 3 (251).

1. How the statement “even a human being who is a slave of sin naturally wills good” should be understood. It is also commonly asked how what Ambrose says, explaining the Apostle’s statement, should be understood: For I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil that I do not want. He says that “a human being subject to sin does what he does not want, because he naturally wills good, but this will always lacks effect unless God’s grace helps and frees him.” If a human being is subject to sin, he does indeed will and do evil because he is sin’s slave; and, as Augustine said above, he willingly does what sin wills. How, then, does he naturally will good?

2. Whether by the same will a human being naturally wills good and willingly serves sin, or not. Is the will the same—that is, the movement the same—by which he willingly serves sin and by which he naturally wills good? If it is not the same will, which of these is freed from slavery to sin when the human being is justified? For, as we discussed above, God’s grace frees and helps the human will; it prepares the human will to be helped and helps it once prepared. But which will is this? Is it the one that naturally wills good, or the one that willingly serves sin, if there are indeed two wills?

3. He first develops the question according to those who say there are two movements. The question proposed is profound, and different people determine it by different explanations. Some say there are two movements: one by which a person naturally wills good. Why naturally? And why is it called natural? Because such was the movement of human nature in its first condition, in which we were created without defect; this is properly called nature. For the human being was created upright in will. — Gennadius. Hence it is written in Ecclesiastical Dogmas: “Hold most firmly that the first human beings were created good and upright, with free choice, by which they could, if they wished, sin by their own will; and that they sinned not by necessity but by their own will.” It is therefore rightly said that a human being naturally wills good, because he was created in a good and upright will. For the higher spark of reason, which, as Jerome says, could not be extinguished even in Cain, always wills good and hates evil. — They say, however, that there is another movement of the mind by which the mind, having abandoned the law above, subjects itself to sins and takes pleasure in them. This movement, as they say, dominates and reigns in a human being before grace is present, and suppresses the other movement. Both nevertheless proceed from free choice. When grace comes, the evil movement is struck down, and the other, naturally good movement is freed and helped to will good effectively. Before grace, although a human being naturally wills good, one must not therefore grant absolutely that he has a good will, but rather that he has an evil one.

1 Cf. above, Dist. 26, chap. 2, no. 1 (p. 471). 2 This response begins above, chap. 1, no. 2. 3 Concerning these, above, Dist. 37, chap. 1 (p. 543ff.).

4. According to others, the will is said to be one. Others say that there is one will, that is, one movement, by which a human being naturally wills good and through defect wills evil and takes pleasure in it; insofar as he wills good he is naturally good, and insofar as he wills evil he is evil.

³ qua BCOPX, corrected in O. 16 sunt] sint MNTW, corrected in T. 17–18 Rubric omitted in MRVW. 20 naturalis] naturaliter BCOPR. 21 naturae humanae transposed in OPV.]

⁴

⁵