Dist. 34, Art. 2, Q. 3
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/2/d/34/q/bon-sent-II-d34-a2-q3
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### QUESTION III.
### *Whether evil is in the good as some habit, or whether it is pure privation.*

Whether evil is in the good as some habit, or whether it is pure privation. And that it is not there as a habit and some power, but as a pure privation, it seems:

1. First, by that [text] of John, first [chapter]: *Without him was made nothing*; the Gloss: « Nothing, that is, sin »: therefore sin is nothing.

2. Likewise, Augustine: « Evil is not any nature, but a defect concerning a nature took the name of evil »: therefore evil is not any power, but a defect and privation.

3. Likewise, Anselm *On the Virginal Conception*, chapter five: « Injustice is wholly nothing, just as blindness. For blindness is nothing other than the absence of sight where it ought to be, which is no more a something in the eye, where sight ought to be, than in wood, where it ought not to be ».

4. Likewise, this same thing seems [to follow] by *reason*: « The good and being are convertible »: therefore of whatever being is predicated, the good is also predicated. If therefore sin or malice were a being, malice, insofar as it is such, would have something of goodness: if therefore it does not have anything of goodness, it does not then have anything of entity.

5. Likewise, every being proceeds from the highest being, nor is there any essence which is not in the power of God to produce it; but God cannot sin nor commit fault: therefore sin, insofar as it is such, does not have anything of entity: therefore it is nothing, and a pure privation.

6. Likewise, everything that is a being has some form; but everything that has some form has beauty; but sin does not have beauty, since it is a deformity of the soul: therefore it has nothing of entity: therefore it states pure privation.

**On the contrary:**

*To the opposite.*

1. Augustine: « Sin is something said, or done, or desired against the law of God »; but everything said, or done, is something: therefore sin or evil is something, therefore not a pure privation.

2. Likewise, virtue and vice are contraries; but « contraries are in the same genus »; and whatever are under the same genus, each of them is something and not a pure privation: therefore vice is something: therefore evil or sin is not wholly nothing.

3. Likewise, whether it be taken concretely or abstractly, it is true to say that sin is in something; and everything that is in something is a being, just as everything that reads is reading, and everything that loves is loving; and everything that is a being is something and is not a pure privation: therefore sin or evil, whether it be taken concretely or abstractly, is not wholly nothing.

4. Likewise, nothing that is a pure privation is intensified and remitted; but evil or sin is intensified and remitted, because one sin is greater than another, and one malice is greater than another: therefore sin or malice is not a pure privation.

5. Likewise, everything ordained presupposes being; but the evil of fault, insofar as it is evil, is ordained to the evil of punishment: if therefore, insofar as it is evil, it is ordained in punishment; it seems that, insofar as it is evil, it has some being.

6. Likewise, either sin is *something*, insofar as it is sin, or *nothing*. If *something*, I have my thesis; if *nothing*, and yet God punishes the human for sin: therefore God punishes the human for nothing. But he who punishes another for nothing punishes unjustly: therefore if God punishes the human for fault, it seems that in punishing he acts unjustly.

### Conclusion.

> Evil, although in the concrete it belongs to something as its opposite and as its subject, yet in the abstract is nothing but the privation of the good.

**I respond:** It must be said that evil or sin can be taken in two ways: in one way abstractly, in another way concretely. — But insofar as evil is said concretely, it thus concerns that which it deforms, whether some action or some substance; and thus a bad thing is called evil, such as a bad action, or a bad soul. And in this way evil is something and has the being of nature. But if sometimes the bad thing itself or the sinner is said to be nothing, this is said as to the well-being, which indeed is ordered being. Whence when humans are said to become nothing when they sin, this is not said because they are deprived of all being, but because they are deprived of ordered being, which indeed is complete being, and of which Boethius says, that « being is that which retains order and preserves nature ».

It happens again to speak of evil or sin abstractly; and in this way evil or sin in the direct [predication] or formal predication is not something, but nothing, because it is not a being nor a good, but the privation of the good. But although malice or sin is nothing in the direct [predication], yet in the oblique it belongs to something: both to something as its opposite, and to something as its subject. — To something as its opposite, namely the good; for evil is the privation of the good; and because it is thus the privation of the good, yet so that it is not an utter annihilation of the good, it so privates the good that it leaves the good. Whence it so privates the good of grace that it leaves the good of nature; it so privates the act that it leaves the aptitude; it so privates the good as to its effect that nevertheless it leaves the obligation in the subject; and therefore evil taken abstractly, formally speaking, is a privation: and therefore it is nothing. — It also belongs to some being as its subject, because it is in some being; for it is not an utter privation or annihilation.

— And because according to this way the authorities and reasons adduced for the first part show that evil or sin is nothing, therefore they are to be granted.

1. To that which is first objected to the contrary, that sin is something said, or done, etc.; it must be said that there sin or evil is taken concretely, insofar as it concerns the underlying action; and in this way it is something, nor does this conflict, but is consonant with the things which have been said.

2. To that which is objected, that virtue and vice are contraries; it must be said that vice, insofar as it is contrary to virtue, such as lust to chastity, not only states a privation, but also states some underlying habit, by which someone is rendered prone to perpetrating that kind of sin; and taking vice in this way, vice is not wholly nothing. Taking vice in another way, insofar as it is the privation of the good only, thus it is not contrary to virtue according to the thing, but rather is opposed as privation and habit. — But if it be said somewhere that in this way vice is contrary to virtue; the contrary is taken in the broad sense for any opposition and incompatibility. Or this is said because, even if according to truth vice is opposed to virtue as a privation, yet virtue and vice have in a certain way the law of contraries in this, that they mutually expel one another, and from one there is a return to the other; in which condition the opposites, as privation and habit, are distinguished from those which are opposed as contraries. And to that extent Augustine says in the *Enchiridion*, that in this the rule of the dialecticians fails, calling the good and evil contraries; and this for the aforesaid reason. Nevertheless it must be said that evil is in the same genus with the good, but this not properly and according to the right ordering, but this is by a certain reduction. And from this it does not follow that evil is something. For privations are reduced to the same genus with their habits, and yet they themselves, formally speaking, are nothing.

3. To that which is objected, that evil is in something, therefore it is; it must be said that this does not follow; for, as the Philosopher says, « certain things are beings, certain are of beings »; and although privations can be called of beings, yet they are not called beings. But when I say that malice is in something, I say that it is

of a being; but when I say that malice is a being, I attribute entity to it in itself; and the first being is being in a certain respect, the second is being simply; and therefore there is there a sophism of [what is true] in a certain respect and [what is true] simply.

But if it be asked about this [proposition]: malice is — whether it is to be granted, or not; it must be said that this word *is*, as the Philosopher wills, can be predicated in two ways. Sometimes it is taken as a composition intermediate between two extremes, and thus it is called the third adjacent, as when it is said: the human is white. But sometimes it is so predicated that the thing imported by it is the attribute or one of the extremes. When therefore it is thus said: malice is; if this word *is* is taken as a predicate, just as other verbs are taken, such as *reads* and the like; then the statement is false. For the sense is: malice is, that is, malice is a being, that is, some essence; for this word *is* signifies the essence or substance of each thing. In another way it can be understood to be predicated or taken in such a statement as a copula, and it is a sentence in a certain way defective; and then the sense is: malice is, that is, malice is in something, so that malice itself is understood rather as inhering in another than as standing under another, as when it is said *evil*, and it is understood that something is evil. And taking it in this way it does not hold: malice is: therefore it is a being.

4. To that which is objected, that pure privation is neither intensified nor remitted; it must be said that if pure privation is so called, this is a privation positing nothing either in the direct or in the oblique; in this way it is true to say that it does not admit more and less, just as a chimera is nothing, and a goat-stag is nothing, nor is the one more nothing than the other. In another way it is called pure privation, because it posits nothing in the direct, but does posit in the oblique; and in this way malice could be called pure privation; but of this it is not true that it does not admit more and less. For it can admit more and less by reason of that being which it regards as if in the oblique. Whence that is called a greater privation in which there is the corruption of a greater good, and in which less of the good is left; but the lesser, in which less of the good is corrupted and more is left. And thus it is clear that from this it does not follow that sin, speaking abstractly, is some positing.

5. To that which is objected, that ordered being presupposes being; it must be said that it is true that in those things which are ordered through themselves, the ordered presupposes being; but in those things which are ordered through accident, it does not presuppose being in itself, but by reason of that in which or through which they are ordered. And in this way evil is said to be ordered, not because it is ordered in itself, since it is the privation of mode, species, and order, but because it has orderability in punishment by reason of the punishable thing itself. But this is better determined in the first book, distinction forty-six.

6. To that which is objected, that if sin is nothing, that God punishes the human for nothing; it must be said that, as was touched on before, even if sin is nothing in the direct, nevertheless in the oblique it belongs to some being as its opposite, and to something as its subject, concerning which it leaves an obligation with respect to the good privated. I say therefore that sin is the merit of punishment, not only by reason of the privation, but by reason of the obligation left over and the good privated; whence the human is not worthy of being punished only because he lacks the good, but because he lacks [it] and ought to have [it]. And although that lack is nothing, yet the obligation of having something is something; and therefore from this it does not follow that God punishes the human for nothing, although sin is nothing. But this is plain, if one considers it in a sensible example, namely when a king imprisons a servant because he did not render the tribute, or when some creditor imprisons someone because he did not pay him the money lent; for the privation is not by itself, but together with the debt, in the cause.