Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

The sense of the Question is whether sins, monsters, and any defects of created will or of a nature going astray are justly and wisely ordered by Divine Providence to some suitable end; that this may appear more evidently

Note 1. From the Seraphic Bonaventure, in 1. dist. 46. q. 5.:

That just as something is said to be healthy in three ways — either subjectively, as an animal is said to be healthy; or dispositively, as a drink is said to be healthful; or ostensively, as healthy urine: so something is said to be orderable in three ways; either as receptive of order, or as dispositive, or as ostensive. As receptive, nothing is orderable except what is a being and some nature; and thus evil is not orderable except per accidens, namely by reason of the good. As dispositive, evil is orderable, but not as a positing disposition, but as a privative one. For order is twofold, namely of nature and of justice. The order of nature is instituted, the order of justice is acquired; but evil deprives the order of a particular nature and, by depriving it, falls into the order of justice, because it offends: whence the ground of ordering, as a disposition in the order of justice, is merit or demerit. As ostensive: evil is orderable and ordered, because it manifests the order of goods by contrast: opposites, however, placed side by side, shine forth more.

Note 2. From the same, q. 6.:

Evil contributes something to the adornment of the universe by accident, not indeed per se, but per accidens. For the adornment of the universe, he says, is partly substantial, that is, as regards being: partly accidental, that is, as regards well-being: as regards the first, evils contribute nothing to adornment, neither per se nor per accidens: but as regards some accidental adornment, well-ordered evils do contribute; not because they are evils, but because they are well ordered: and so per accidens, just as they are ordered per accidens; with that adornment set aside, the universe would still be seemly and perfect, although it would not have this adornment. Evils contribute to this adornment not by reason of themselves but by reason of the subject which is ordered to punishment for the manifestation of divine justice; or by reason of the opposite, because adornment shines more brightly from the presence of evil, just as opposites placed side by side shine forth more, as is commonly said; or by reason of the good elicited, for God made many goods and they were made, which would not have been made unless sin had furnished the occasion, such as those things which were done in our reparation: yet without all these the universe would be complete.

Note 3. From our Alexander of Hales, 1. p. q. 38. art.:

Something cooperates toward the good in three ways. In the first way, as what is per se ordered to the good, like virtue and grace; in another way, as what makes one move more quickly toward the good, like poverty and firmness; in a third way, as a receding opposite contributes to the intensity of its opposite, like the vehemence of cold and of heat, as the cold of snow receding contributes to heat: in this way a receding sin induces the vehemence of sorrow and a greater ardor for doing good, but this is ex consequenti.

These things presupposed, let it be:

First conclusion. — Every sin, even under the formal notion of sin, is subject to divine Providence and is ordered by it to a suitable end. This is common among the distinguished Princes of Theology, for the praised Alexander and Saint Bonaventure plainly affirm that evil is under divine Providence, not as made by it, but inasmuch as it is ordered by it: and Saint Thomas, in 1. distinct. 39. quaest. 2. art. 2., says that evils lie under divine Providence as foreseen and ordered.

Proof 1. By all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which the sins of men are referred to divine counsel, decree, command, impulse, and precept. Thus in lib. 2. Regum, cap. 16, the Lord commanded Semei to curse David: and in cap. 24: Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he stirred up David among them, saying: Go, number Israel. This was the greatest crime of pride. The same thing is evident from countless texts of Sacred Scripture, but most of all from Acts, ch. 2, where the greatest of all sins, namely deicide and the killing of Christ the Lord, is traced back to God's ordering in these words: Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have crucified and slain by the hands of wicked men. And more clearly in cap. 4: There assembled together in this city against your holy child Jesus, whom you have anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do what your hand and your counsel decreed to be done: but it is most certain that God is not the author of sin: therefore it is necessary that those sins be traced back to him only insofar as they are permitted and ordered by him to some good end, and thus be subject to his divine Providence, so that they come to be only when he permits them to be, and neither otherwise, nor elsewhere, nor longer than his divine Providence has judged the permission of sin to be expedient.

Proof 2. By the authority of the holy Fathers, who with one voice affirm that God destines all evils whatsoever to a suitable end; thus Saint Clement of Alexandria, lib. 1. Stromatum, says that it is the greatest argument of divine Providence not to allow vice to remain unprofitable and useless: Thus Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 8., exclaims: O most wise providence, which converts even evil set before it into an occasion of salvation! For just as the evil will of those brothers of Joseph who pursued him with hatred took occasion for his own administration, and by permitting them out of hatred to sell their brother, took occasion of bringing it about that he should reign: which he also confirms with these words of Psalm. 118: For all things serve you. Thus Basil, homil. 9.: The most provident dispenser of human affairs, God, he says, uses the malice of the demon for our exercise, just as the physician uses the venom of the viper.

But above all others Saint Augustine expends this argument elegantly no less than subtly, in many places, bringing forward various reasons and recounting the various utilities which God draws from the permission of evil; thus on these words of Ps. 7, He has bent his bow and prepared it, and in it he has prepared vessels of death, he says:

It may be asked what the vessels of death are, whether perhaps the heretics; for they too, from the same bow, that is, from the same Scriptures, leap upon souls not to be set aflame with Charity, but to be destroyed with poisons, which does not happen except according to their merits. Therefore this disposition too is to be attributed to divine Providence; not because it makes sinners, but because it orders them once they have sinned; for living by an evil desire through sin, they are wickedly compelled to understand, so that this itself is the punishment of sin; and yet by their death the Faithful of the Catholic Church are roused from sleep as by certain thorns, so that they advance to the understanding of the divine Scriptures;

And in serm. 90., cap. 5., De Diversis: Unless God in earlier ages kept sinners by his patience, whence would so many of the faithful be born today? Other evil men are kept so that good men may be born from them... what! what is more wicked than the devil, and from his wickedness how many good things has God made? The blood of the Redeemer would not be shed for our salvation except through the wickedness of the deserter. And in the preceding c. 4. he had said: As evil men make bad use of good creatures, so the good Creator makes good use of evil men.

Proof by reason. God permits sin precisely insofar as he foresees some good to arise from it, and the permission of such a sin is ordered to the attainment of that good; but to permit sin in this way is to order it by Providence to a suitable end: therefore sin is truly ordered by divine Providence. The major is proved by several texts of Sacred Scripture, most of all by Genesis 45., where it is said that God therefore permitted the selling of Joseph by his brothers, so that, made ruler of Egypt, he might serve their salvation; for Joseph, addressing his brothers, says: Let it not seem hard to you that you sold me into these regions; for God sent me before you into Egypt for your salvation: and a little later: Not by your counsel, but by the will of God, I was sent here, etc. By which he openly confesses that his being sold by his brothers (which was truly a great sin) was ordered by the divine will for this reason, that it might provide for the salvation both of his father and of his brothers. Then, unless God permitted sin with the intention and will of attaining some good, that permission could not be a fruit, nor an effect, of predestination: but this is against the opinion of the holy Fathers, especially Saint Augustine, who in many places affirms that the permission of sin sometimes conduces to the predestination of the Elect; thus, weighing those words of Paul, Rom. 8., All things work together for good to those who, according to his purpose, are called Saints, he adds: even sin; for the predestined, from a fall, rise again more humble, more cautious, and more fervent. Finally, that mode of willing is to be attributed to God which is more fitting to his Wisdom, Goodness, and Omnipotence; but it is more fitting to God to will the permission of sin for the sake of some good arising from it, than merely to permit it because he is not bound to hinder it and ought to do no violence to free causes: therefore the permission of sin for the sake of some good emerging from it is more fitting to God.

You will say 1. From Saint Augustine, lib. De natura boni, cap. 4., Evil is the privation of mode, species, and order: but no privation shares in the notion of that of which it is a privation: therefore if evil, from its formal notion, is the privation of order, it cannot be ordered by divine Providence.

I distinguish the major. Saint Bonaventure, in 1. dist. 46. q. 5., concedes that evil is the privation of the order concerning a particular nature; denies that it is the privation of the order concerning the disposition of universal Providence: for, as Boethius says, Order embraces all things, so that if anyone departs from the assigned notion of his order, it is necessary that he fall back into another class. Or as our Alexander of Hales says, q. 38. n. 2. art. 1.: It must be said that there is an order of particular and universal nature, that is, an order of nature or of providence; but evil is the privation of the particular order, that is, of the order of nature: not of the universal order, that is, of the order of Providence.

You will say 2. What is nothing is not orderable, for to be ordered presupposes being: but sin, from its formal notion, is a non-being and nothing: therefore it is not orderable.

I distinguish the major. What is nothing is not orderable per se and in itself, I concede: per accidens and with respect to another, I deny. And with the minor likewise distinguished, the consequence is to be denied.

You will say 3. What is orderable falls under the power of the one ordering; but sin is not subject to the power of God, because God cannot produce sin: therefore neither can he order it.

I distinguish the major. The Seraphic Bonaventure, ibid.: the orderable is subject to the power of the one ordering as producing, or as providing, he concedes; as producing only, he denies. He likewise distinguishes the minor: sin is not subject to the producing power of God, he concedes; to the ordering power, he denies.

You will say 4. From the cited Saint Augustine, Everything ordered, inasmuch as it is such, is good; but in no way can sin be good: therefore neither can it have the notion of the orderable.

The Master of the Sentences answers, dist. 46. That the acceptation of good is fourfold: for, he says, there is something which is good in itself and for him to whom it is done, but is not good for the one doing it, as when alms are given for vainglory; secondly, there is something good in itself and for the one doing it, but not for him to whom it is done, as when the Gospel is preached from the motive of charity to a man hardened and resisting; thirdly, there is something good in itself and for the one doing it and for him to whom it is done, as when the Gospel is preached from the motive of charity to a believing man; fourthly, finally, there is something which is in itself not good, and harms and damns the one doing it unless he repents, like sin, yet it profits another and serves for some good.

I distinguish the minor. That sin can in no way be good, neither for the one doing it nor for him against whom it is done, of itself and per se, I concede: occasionally, per accidens, and by reason of its ordering to a good, I deny.

Second conclusion. — Every defect of morals and of nature is ordered by divine Providence to the beauty and adornment of the universe, at least per accidens. This is the more common view among Theologians, and it is defended by Alexander of Hales, quaest. 40., membro 3: St. Bonaventure, dist. 46., q. 6.; and St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, cap. 61., where he says:

There are many goods in things which would have no place unless evils existed; just as there would be no patience of the just if there were no malice of the persecutors, nor would there be a place for vindicative Justice if there were no offenses. In natural things too, there would be no generation of one thing unless there were corruption of another: if, therefore, evil were totally excluded from the universe of things by divine Providence, the multitude of goods would also have to be diminished.

Proof. First of all by the authority of St. Ambrose, lib. 3. Exameron, c. 9., who, when he had objected to himself:

Why, along with useful things, are even lethal and pernicious things generated? with the wheat, hemlock? why is something noxious found among the foodstuffs of life? and unless it has been cut away, it is accustomed to harm health; among the other nutrients of life hellebore is also found; aconites too frequently deceive and delude the one who gathers them.

He answers:

Each of them is generated purely in the earth, and has a certain special purpose, by which, to the extent of its share, it completes the beauty of the whole creation; some therefore are born for food, some for drink, some for another use: nothing is empty: the earth germinates nothing in vain. What you think useless is useful to others; indeed, it is often useful to you yourself for another use: what does not help as food suggests medicine: and often the very things that are harmful to you supply harmless pasture to birds or wild beasts. Finally, starlings feed on hemlock, and it does them no harm, because by the balance of their own body they escape the poison of the lethal juice... Moreover, experts say that hellebore is even food for quails, because by a certain natural temperament of their body they avoid the force of the harmful food.

St. Augustine lucidly develops this truth in lib. 11. De Civit. c. 18.¹ where he shows that the beauty of the universe, through God's ordination, appears more luminous from the opposition of contraries:

For neither, he says, would God create anyone — I do not say of the angels, but even of men — whom He had foreknown would be evil, unless He equally knew to what uses of the good He might turn them; and thus He would adorn the order of the ages as a most beautiful poem, even out of certain quasi-antitheses as it were.

Having adduced, moreover, several examples of opposites from St. Paul, he adds: Just as, therefore, these contraries set against contraries give beauty to speech: so, by a certain eloquence not of words but of things, the beauty of the age is composed out of the opposition of contraries. This is most openly set down in the book of Ecclesiasticus in this manner; against evil there is good, and against death there is life; so also against a just man there is a sinner, and so look upon all the works of the Most High, two and two, and one against one: as if Ecclesiasticus were saying that divine Providence and the beauty of the world shine forth most of all from the combination of contraries and the concordant discord of adversaries: just as the charm of a painting arises from the pleasing commixture and tempering of shadow and light and of diverse colors: and just as music more sweetly delights the ears from the consonance of dissonant voices.

The Stoics object in Lactantius, lib. 1. De Ira Dei, cap. 13.:

What utility, pray, can be found in mice, in cockroaches, in serpents, which are troublesome and pernicious to man? Does some medicine lie hidden in these? If there is one, it will be found sometime: namely, against evils.... They say that a viper, burnt and reduced to ashes, heals the bite of the same beast. How much better had it been for it not to exist at all, than for a remedy against itself to be sought from it?

Lactantius answers in the same place. That God for this reason created many things harmful to man, so that man might have room to exercise the wisdom implanted in him by God:

He set before him, he says, good and evil, because He gave him wisdom, whose whole rationale consists in discerning evils and goods; for no one can choose the better things and know what is good, unless he knows at the same time to reject and avoid what is evil.... Therefore, just as innumerable goods were given to man which he might enjoy; so also evils which he might beware. For if there were no evil and no danger; nothing, in short, that could harm man, all the matter of wisdom is removed, nor will it be necessary for man: for if only goods are set before one's view, what need is there of thought, understanding, knowledge, reason.... You see, therefore, that wisdom is needed all the more on account of evils, and unless they had been set before us, we would not be a rational animal.

They object 2. Epicurus in the same place:

God, he says, either wills to take away evils and cannot: or can and does not will: or neither wills nor can: or both wills and can. If He wills and cannot, He is weak, which does not befit God: if He can and does not will, He is envious, which is likewise alien to God: if He neither wills nor can, He is both envious and weak, and therefore not God: if He wills and can, which alone befits God: whence then are evils, or why does He not take them away?

Lactantius answers in the same place. This argument indeed presses most of the Philosophers so much that some of them confess that God cares for nothing; but it is easily dissolved:

For God, he says, can do whatever He wills, and yet there is in Him no weakness or envy; He can therefore take away evils, but He does not will it, nor is He on that account envious; for He does not take them away for this reason, because He likewise bestowed wisdom (as I have taught) at the same time, and there is more of good and delight in wisdom than of annoyance in evils. For wisdom makes us know even God, and through that knowledge to attain immortality, which is the highest good. And so, unless we first acknowledge evil, we shall not be able to acknowledge good either; but Epicurus did not see this, nor anyone else: if evils are taken away, wisdom is likewise taken away, nor would any traces of virtue remain in man, whose whole rationale consists in enduring and overcoming the bitterness of evils.

You will ask. Would the world be more perfect, if there were in it no defects of nature and of morals?

St. Bonaventure denies it, in 1. dist. 46. q. 6. art. 1. and with him several other Princes of Theology. He brings forward the reason: Because God made many good things, and they were made, which would not have been made unless sin had furnished the occasion, such as those things which were done in our reparation: yet without all these the universe would be complete. And when he had asked whether the present beauty of the Universe surpasses the beauty of the same under the state of innocence, if it had persevered: he concludes that the present adornment excels:

And the reason for this is, he says, because the divine power eliciting good from evil is more powerful than evil: and therefore the good which it elicits thence prevails over the good which evil corrupts; and therefore the Universe is worth more now than it would have been worth then.... There is an example of a sound cup, which is broken and bound back together with a silver or golden thread, because it is better after than before; not by reason of the breaking, but by reason of the binding back.

It is confirmed. from St. Augustine in the Enchiridio cap. 10. and 11.:

From all things, he says, consists the admirable beauty of the Universe, in which even that which is called evil, well ordered and placed in its own position, more eminently commends the good, so that good things please more and are more praiseworthy when they are compared with evils. For neither would God omnipotent (which even the infidels confess, to whom belongs the highest power of things), since He is supremely good, in any way allow there to be anything evil in His works, unless He were so far omnipotent and good as to do good even out of evil.

With these words St. Augustine says that the defects not only of nature, but also of morals, contribute to the adornment of the Universe, so that its beauty may appear the more from this. St. Anselm lucidly develops the very same thing in the Elucidario, where he speaks thus of the evil Angels: Since God foreknew that they would be such, why did He create them? He answers: for the adornment of His work, for just as a painter lays down black color beneath, so that white or red may be more precious: so by the comparison of evils the just become more brilliant.

You will say. From this it only follows that the universe is more excellent according to appearance, but not according to existence, namely insofar as good things shine forth more clearly by the comparison of evils: therefore, simpliciter and according to the truth of the matter, the Universe ought not to be judged more excellent on account of the defects of morals and of nature.

I deny the antecedent. For evils placed next to goods exhibit them as more commendable, not only according to appearance, but also according to existence, for a twofold reason. First, because many goods are gathered from those defects; of which kind are the manifestation of divine Mercy, Justice, Wisdom, etc., as well as the excellent virtues of the Christian Religion, penance, martyrdom, and the exercises of outstanding Charity. Second, because the very appearance itself conduces to existence and to the truth of the matter, insofar as from those defects men strive to attain evangelical perfection, which shines forth most of all in humility and lowliness of mind.

You will say 2. The good of which those defects deprive us is of greater perfection than the good which is acquired on the occasion of those defects: therefore the universe would be more excellent without those defects. The antecedent is proved, since innocence is a greater good than penance.

I deny the antecedent. And to its proof I say that, although innocence considered in itself is a greater good; nevertheless in order to the Universe and to its integrity, sweetness, order, and proportion, a greater good is the collection of many virtues and gifts, which would not exist if such defects had not been present.