Dist. 36, Art. 3, Q. 1
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/36/q/bon-sent-II-d36-a3-q1
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### ARTICLE III.
### *On the comparison of punishment to the equity of divine justice.*

Next there is inquiry concerning the comparison of punishment to the equity of divine justice. And concerning this two things are asked. *First* it is asked, whether any punishment is from God. *Second*, granted that it is, it is asked, whether every punishment is from him.

### QUESTION I.
### *Whether any punishment is from God.*

It is asked, therefore, whether any punishment is from God. And that it is not, it seems.

*To the opposite.*

1. Wisdom, first [chapter]: *God did not make death*: therefore if death, among all punishments, is most manifestative of divine justice, and this is not from God; it seems therefore that no other punishment is from him.

2. Likewise, Augustine on that place of the Psalm: *Lead me, Lord, in your justice*: « When God punishes the wicked, he does not inflict his own evil upon them, but leaves them to their own evils »: therefore it seems that no punishment, according to that which it is, is from God.

3. Likewise, punishment is an evil repugnant to nature; but « the Author of nature does nothing against nature », as Augustine holds: therefore it seems that no punishment is from God.

4. Likewise, every punishment induces the privation of some good, and the privation of good states a defect of the good; but a defect does not have an efficient cause, but a deficient one: if therefore God is the deficient cause of nothing, no defect can be from him: therefore neither any punishment.

5. Likewise, just as the evil of guilt deprives [one] of the good disposition of the will, so the evil of punishment deprives [one] of the good disposition of nature; but nature is from God just as the will is, and the conservation of nature just as the conservation of the will: if therefore the bad disposition of the will is not from God, by like reasoning neither [is] the bad disposition of nature: therefore just as guilt is not from God, so punishment is not from God.

6. Likewise, just as in God there is the highest goodness as regards the rectitude of the will, which is justice, so in God there is the highest goodness as regards the completion and perfection of nature; but God, because he is supremely good and supremely just, cannot do any evil or any injustice or sin: therefore by like reasoning, since he is supremely good by nature, no evil could go forth from him which would be to the harm of nature: therefore just as the evil of guilt does not go out from him, so neither [does] the evil of punishment.

**On the contrary:**

1. Isaiah, forty-fifth [chapter]: *I am the Lord forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil*; but this is not understood of the evil of guilt: therefore it is necessary that it hold true of some evil of punishment.

2. Likewise, more expressly in the canticle, Deuteronomy, thirty-second [chapter]: *I will kill and I will make to live, I will strike and I will heal*; but killing and striking are punishment: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, still more expressly, Ecclesiasticus, eleventh [chapter]: *Good things and evil, life and death, poverty and honor are from God*; but such things are punishments: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, still more expressly from the new Testament, Matthew, twenty-fifth [chapter]: *Go, you cursed, into eternal fire*; but punishment is principally from him who pronounces the sentence, but this is God: therefore etc.

5. Likewise, Augustine in the book *On Free Choice*: « God is the author of the evil which we suffer »; but this is the evil of punishment, as he says in the same place: therefore some punishment is from God.

6. Likewise, just as the act of divine mercy is to spare, so the act of divine justice is to punish: therefore just as the remission and indulgence of sin is from divine mercy, so the punishment of sin is from divine justice: therefore some punishment is from God as from a cause.

### Conclusion.

> Some punishments are from God as the avenger.

**I respond:** It must be said that punishment states more than evil. For evil imports the absence or defect of a good where it ought to be; but punishment imports an order to the very merit of punishment, and together with this it signifies some disposition concerning the punishable [thing] itself. — Since therefore both the order and the disposition of a thing is said to be from God as from a principle; hence it is that it is reasonably granted that punishment is from God, most of all that [punishment] which imports an order founded upon a real disposition. And since it states in some way an order to a preceding guilt, and the preceding guilt is not from the constitution of nature, but rather from the disorder of the will; hence it is that, even if punishment is said to be from God, yet it is not said to be from God doing [it], but from God avenging [it]. — It must therefore be granted that some punishments are from God, as the reasons adduced for this show, for the reason that some punishments are dispositions of the punishable [thing] itself, and dispositions not of any kind whatever, but ordered according to the rigor of divine justice.

1. To that therefore which is objected to the contrary, that God did not make death; the response is now clear, because it is not denied that death is from God as the avenger, but [it is denied] that it was from God as the institutor of nature. For God inflicted it for this reason, because the human deserved it by the merit of guilt.

2. To that indeed which is objected, that God, when he punishes the wicked, does not inflict evil upon them; it must be said that Augustine does not there wish to deny that punishment is inflicted by God, but he wishes to deny this, that that defect which is enclosed in the notion of punishment is caused by God. Whence he does not say: he does not inflict *punishment*, but: he does not inflict *evil*; for evil states the defect itself, as has been said; but punishment does not only state the defection of the good, but also states the disposition of the punishable [thing].

3. To that which is objected, that the Author of nature does nothing against nature; it must be said that if nature is called the natural obedience of the creature, or the natural faculty of judgment, according to which the human is apt for justice — because each of these states an immediate ordering to God — thus God does not act against nature, just as neither does he act against himself. In another way nature is called the power operating according to its accustomed course and whatever good is in the creature from its origin; and in this way God does act against nature, whether through the miracles of [his] power, or through the punishments of avenging justice. And thus he does not act simply against nature, but rather according to nature, whose *operation* is subject to divine power, and whose *ordination* is subject to divine justice. And when God uses a creature, whether for the manifestation of divine power or for the manifestation of justice, he uses it as he ought.

4. To that which is objected, that punishment states privation and defect; it must be said that, generally speaking, punishment does not state *only defect*, but rather there is a certain punishment which states a *true passion* concerning the punishable [thing] itself. Whence just as the action of the eternal fire, by which it acts upon the soul, is *something*; so also the passion which the soul suffers from the fire is *something*. And again, it is *something ordered*, and so it is from God, from whom is all essence and all order. And on account of this that argument fails, because not every punishment states pure defect.

3. To that which is objected, that the evil of punishment deprives [one] of the good disposition of nature, just as the evil of guilt [deprives one] of the disposition of the will; it must be said that it is not alike, because the evil of guilt deprives *inordinately* and *blameworthily*; but the evil of punishment, insofar as it is of this kind, deprives *in an ordered way* and *praiseworthily*. And because that which is praiseworthy is to be attributed to God, but that which is blameworthy is not; hence it is that rightly some evil of punishment is attributed to God, but the evil of guilt is not, as will be seen better below.

5. And through this the response to the last [objection] is clear, which is objected concerning the perfection of goodness as regards the will and nature of God. For I grant well that of each there is the highest perfection, because [it is] one and the same; for in him nature and will are the same. Yet the comparison of the divine will to guilt and punishment, or conversely of punishment and guilt to the divine will, is different, because guilt, on account of its own disorder, places disorder concerning the *one sinning*; but punishment does not connote disorder concerning the *one punishing* and ordering.