Dist. 27, Art. 1, Q. 4
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/3/d/27/q/bon-sent-III-d27-a1-q4
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### Question IV. *Whether the habit of charity can be unformed, or is always formed.*

Fourthly, it is asked whether the habit of charity can be unformed, or is always formed. And that it is always formed seems [to be the case]:

1. *First*, through Augustine, in the book *On True Innocence*: « The love of God and of neighbor is the proper and special virtue of the pious and of the saints, since the other virtues can be common to the good and to the wicked »; but the other virtues are not common to the good and to the wicked except because they can be unformed: if therefore charity cannot in this way be common, it seems that it can in no way be unformed.

2. *Likewise*, Hugh: « No wicked person can have charity »; but if it could be unformed, some wicked person could have it: it is therefore impossible that the habit of charity be unformed.

3. *Likewise*, it is impossible that a form become unformed; but charity is the form of the virtues, according to what is said upon that passage in Romans 1: *The justice of God* etc.; the Gloss: « This is an unformed quality of the mind, because it does not have charity as its companion, which is the form of all the virtues »: therefore etc.

4. *Likewise*, it belongs to the virtue of charity to love God for his own sake and above all things; but no one can have this act who has in himself mortal sin, since in every mortal sin something is loved against God: if therefore that virtue alone can be unformed whose act can be found in a sinner, as is clear concerning faith; it seems that charity can in no way be unformed.

5. *Likewise*, just as infidelity is repugnant to faith, so lust and lustful love is repugnant to charity; but it is impossible that the habit of faith, whether unformed or formed, stand together with error and infidelity: therefore it is impossible that the habit of charity, whether unformed or formed, stand together with lust. But every sin is lust, or is from lust, according to what Augustine says: therefore it is impossible that the habit of charity, whether unformed or formed, be found in a sinner; therefore it is not found except in a just man. But in him it does not have being unformed, but is always formed: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**

1. When someone sins, who has believed in God and loved [him], just as belief remains in him, so a certain love remains in him; but that love or affection is not less noble than that belief: therefore if that belief obtains the name of virtue, by parity of reasoning it seems that that love also [does]. But it does not obtain the account and name of any virtue other than charity: therefore charity can be unformed.

2. *Likewise*, either someone can love God unformedly, or [he can]not. If not: then since a man knows that he loves God, the man will know that he has charity and is in grace, which among many is unfitting. If he can; but as the acts are, so are the habits: therefore if the act of loving can be unformed, it seems that the habit also [can].

3. *Likewise*, from formed faith arise love and fear, both formed: therefore since from unformed faith servile fear can arise, which is unformed fear, which also has the account of a gift; it seems that from it can arise love, which also has the account of a virtue: there returns therefore the same as before, namely that the love of unformed charity can be.

4. *Likewise*, charity is a gratuitous virtue; it is established that this gratuitous difference adds above the virtue: therefore if the prior can remain without the posterior, it seems that, when charity ceases to be gratuitous, the virtue can still remain: therefore it can be unformed.

5. *Likewise*, to a man falling into sin something is left in the rational and irascible power, by which he is made apt to rise again, as faith and hope: therefore by parity of reasoning something is left in the concupiscible power, indeed by a much stronger [reasoning], since it has more need; but it is established that that is not less noble than that which is in the other powers, since it has being informed by a nobler virtue: if therefore the others after the fall into sin possess unformed faith and hope, it seems that it too after sin has unformed charity.

### Conclusion.

> Charity can never be unformed; yet in adducing reasons the doctors do not agree.

**I respond:** It must be said that according to the common opinion the habit of charity is always formed and never has being unformed. — And its very name indicates this; for it is named by the name of grace. If therefore that virtue is said to be unformed which is deprived of grace, to call charity unformed is nothing other than to say that the gratuitous is deprived of grace; which is false and unintelligible, because there is in it an implication of opposites. And therefore it is commonly said that charity cannot be unformed.

— But although the doctors commonly agree in this, yet in the reason why they say it there is a difference among them.

For some wished to say that charity therefore cannot be unformed because it is the uncreated gift itself, namely the Holy Spirit himself. And of this opinion was the Master of the Sentences. — But this opinion is commonly not held nor is to be held, as was shown in the first book.

Others indeed wished to say that charity cannot be unformed because it is a merely gratuitous habit, having nothing beyond grace that makes [one] pleasing except only a relation and ordering to the act and the end. The other virtues, however, which have substrate habits, can be unformed; but charity alone is the one which adds nothing absolute: and therefore it alone is the one which cannot become unformed. — But although this seems sufficiently probable, it is nevertheless not a little open to objection. For it is difficult to maintain, when the authorities and reasons are weighed, that charity does not add beyond grace some habit which makes the concupiscible power apt to love, as was shown in the preceding problem.

And therefore there is yet a third way of rendering the reason why charity cannot be unformed, as the other virtues [can]; for this is because charity, not only insofar as it is *gratuitous*, but also insofar as it is *right affection* or with respect to the *substrate habit*, is repugnant to every sin, just as faith is specially repugnant to the sin opposed to it. Hence just as faith is simply taken away by error and infidelity, and hope by despair, so that no quality nor unformed virtue remains, so the habit of charity is to be taken away by *every* fault; and therefore it never remains unformed.

That, moreover, *every* sin has opposition with charity by reason of the *substrate habit* is manifest thus. For just as the habit of faith itself makes the soul apt to believe all that is to be believed and to assent to the First Truth for its own sake and above

omnia: so also the habit of charity makes [it] apt to love all that is to be loved and to cleave to the First Goodness for its own sake and above all things. And therefore, just as error concerning any article has opposition with the habit of faith, so lustful love concerning the things that are to be loved has opposition with charity itself by reason of the substrate habit. Since therefore every sin consists in a disordered love of some created good and in a certain lust, which has opposition with right love, just as error with right belief; hence it is that every sin simply excludes charity. And therefore, just as unformed faith cannot be found in the unbelieving and in heretics; so unformed charity cannot be found in any men who are sinners and wicked; and in those alone can unformed virtue be found: hence it is that charity can in no way be unformed, because according to its whole self it is opposed to fault generally, which is not to be found in any other virtue. — And if you ask the reason for this, Augustine teaches in the fourteenth book *On the City of God*, where he says that « every affection arises from love »; therefore nothing can make crooked any affections of the soul without its being in some way, either principally or by consequence, opposed to love itself and to the habit rectifying that affection. — The reasons showing that charity cannot be unformed are therefore to be conceded.

1. *To that* indeed which is first objected, that in a sinner belief and love toward God remain; it must be said that although both remain, yet not uniformly, because *belief* has the account of a virtue, but *love* does not. And the reason for this is: that for some habit to obtain the name and account of a virtue, it is necessary that it have some *perfection* and a certain *vigor* with respect to the act and the object; this, however, belief has in the sinful man. For the sinner himself assents to the First Truth for its own sake and above all things and believes all that is to be believed, according as they are to be believed. But there is no sinner who loves God for his own sake and above all things and loves all that is to be loved, according as they are to be loved; and therefore that love which is in the sinner does not so have the account of a virtue nor obtain the name of charity, according as belief has the account of a virtue and obtains the name of faith.

2. *To that* which is objected, that it happens to love unformedly; it must be said that it is true; but just as to *believe* some article unformedly, when the other articles are disbelieved, according as some heretics do, is not an act of unformed virtue, because faith is not a virtue in them; so to *love* God in a sinner is not an act of virtue; for there is lacking there the perfection of virtue, because such a one does not love all that is to be loved: there is also lacking *vigor*, because by that act he does not overcome nor exclude the lustful love opposed to it; just as it is concerning him who believes one article without another, who through that belief neither believes *perfectly*, because he does not believe all things, nor believes *vigorously*, because he does not overcome the error.

3. *To that* which is objected, that from unformed faith unformed love ought to be generated, as also [unformed] fear; it must be said that it is not similar, for the reason that love is of greater perfection than fear, and the soul is more rectified in loving rightly than in fearing rightly: and this, because love is the principle of all the affections, as was said above. And therefore from this it does not follow that, although faith generates unformed fear, it can generate the love of charity.

4. *To that* which is objected, that charity is a gratuitous virtue, and *being gratuitous* constrains that which is *being a virtue*; it must be said that although *being gratuitous* be less than *being a virtue*; nothing nevertheless prevents some difference from so adhering to the genus with respect to the species, that, this being removed, there is removed by consequence what pertains to the essence of the genus; just as it is clear that man is a rational animal, and if he ceases to be rational, he ceases to be an animal. In this way it can be understood also in charity, that the *gratuitous* so adheres to the virtue that, when it ceases to be gratuitous, it ceases to be a virtue. But the reason why it adheres more in charity than in another virtue has been touched on above.

5. *To that* which is objected, that, a man falling into sin, help ought to remain to the concupiscible power just as to the other powers of the soul; it must be said that some help remains to it ac-

cording to the common course. For many sin who have an affection of love and piety toward God and good men; nevertheless that which remains to them does not obtain the name of a theological virtue, according to that which remains in the other powers. And the reason for this is that it is more easily corrupted and disordered than the other powers. Hence as long as sin is in the soul, the virtue rectifying its affections cannot be in it. For although a sinner, remaining a sinner, can be right in believing, yet he cannot be right in loving.