Dist. 18, Part 1, Art. 2, Q. 2
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/4/d/18/q/bon-sent-IV-d18-p1-a2-q2
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### Question II. *Whether the priest can do anything with respect to the penalty.*

Secondly it is asked whether the priest can do anything with respect to the penalty. And that he can is shown:

1. Through the Master in the text, in that chapter: «Priests likewise bind when they impose satisfaction on penitents; but they loose when they remit something of it»: therefore it seems that they remit something of the penalty.

2. Likewise, nothing is to be remitted in the sinner except either the offense or the penalty; but God remits the offense, not the priest: therefore if God alone remits the penalty, it then seems that the priest absolves from nothing: the priest therefore speaks falsely when he says: I absolve you.

3. Likewise, the priest of the new law stands to the priest of the old as the Sacraments of the new law stand to the Sacraments of the old; but the Sacraments of the new law exhibit what those [old ones] demonstrated and signified: therefore the priests of the new law give what those [old ones] prefigured. But those prefigured remission in their acts: therefore it seems that these priests confer it. But [they confer] only the remission of guilt or of penalty; but not of guilt: therefore of penalty.

4. Likewise, one who has sinned with a hidden sin and afterward is contrite before the priest's absolution does not appear bound either to *himself* or to *others*: not to himself, because he sees that he has a good will; not to others, because they see nothing in him but good: therefore it seems that it is of no use to *show him absolved*, indeed that he should not be shown [as such].

**On the contrary:**
1. Jerome: «In remitting or in retaining guilt the priests of the Gospel have the same right which the priests of the Law once had under the Law»; but those showed only the cleansed person, in such a way that they did not cleanse from guilt nor absolve from penalty: therefore likewise these.

2. Likewise, if he remits the penalty; either *eternal* or *temporal*. Not the eternal; that is established, because it is inseparable from guilt, and besides it is infinite: therefore it cannot be remitted except by a power remitting guilt and by an infinite power: therefore not by the priest. *Moreover*, if God were to remit the guilt without the eternal penalty, then someone would be without guilt and yet liable to eternal death; but no one is free of guilt except through charity: therefore he would have at once both charity and liability to eternal penalty, and thus at once would be worthy of eternal death and of glory, which is impossible: therefore he does not remit guilt without penalty: therefore the priest does not remit the *eternal* penalty.

3. Likewise, he does not remit the *temporal* penalty, since to it he binds; and it is established that he does not bind and loose with respect to the same thing. *If you say* that he absolves from the *purgatorial* penalty, and binds to the *expiatory* or satisfactory; *on the contrary*: purgatorial penalty belongs to another forum: therefore from it the priest cannot absolve.

4. Likewise, if someone should die before the completion of his penance, he will be punished in purgatory; but he ought not to be punished with a penalty from which he has been absolved: therefore from it he was never absolved.

5. Likewise, the Lord, when he remits guilt, remits the whole penalty nor binds to penalty except so far as his justice requires: therefore if anyone remits anything further of that penalty, he prejudices the divine justice; but no one can prejudice the divine justice: therefore no one can remit anything of the temporal penalty to which the sinner is bound.

6. Likewise, if he could remit a part, either he remits more to him who sinned *more*, or more to him who sinned *less*. If [he remits] more or as much to him who [sinned] *less*, then it seems that if someone sinned little, and so little is owed to him by way of penalty, he would relinquish the whole: therefore for a small sin no penalty at all is to be imposed; which is unfitting. If he remits *less* [to him who sinned more]: therefore to him who is less worthy he remits more; but this is unfitting: therefore etc.

7. Likewise, if he remits a part, another priest can remit another part, and so on in turn, and thus the whole is remitted; which is not fitting, as it seems, according to the common forum.

> **Conclusion.** The priest remits some part of the penalty — not the eternal nor the purgatorial, but that penalty to which God binds the sinner after absolution from guilt.

**I respond:** It must be said that, apart from the position which the Master sets forth in the text, by which some have held that he absolves from the eternal penalty — which he also refutes quite effectively — there are here three modes of speaking.

One mode of speaking is that the priest absolves not from the penalty, but from the bond of confession, binding to the penalty of satisfaction. And this position seems to be drawn from the words of Hugh in the book *On the Power of Binding*, where seven bonds are distinguished, namely: *of obduration, of servitude, of captivity, of eternal damnation* or *punishment, of perpetual detestation, of confession,* and *of penal expiation*. From the *first three* God absolves through grace and mercy; from the bond *of obduration* he absolves through preparing grace, which softens the heart to penitence and is grace freely given; from the bond *of servitude* through prevenient grace, which is grace making pleasing and frees from the servitude of sin; from the bond *of captivity* through cooperating grace, which sets a man free and looses him for good works. From the *fourth* bond, namely *of eternal damnation*, he looses by binding to the *fifth*, namely to the bond *of perpetual detestation*. From the *sixth*, however, he looses through his minister by binding to the *seventh*. For the priest looses the confessing sinner, that he be not bound to *confess*, but binds him to the bond *of satisfaction*. — But that does not suffice, because the priest in absolving does not say: I absolve you from confession, but from sins. From those, therefore, he absolves either with respect to the *penalty* or with respect to the *guilt*: therefore one must say more.

And therefore there is a second mode of speaking: that the priest absolves not only from this bond, but also from the *purgatorial* penalty, binding to the *satisfactory* penalty; but he does not loose any part of the penalty by relaxing it, but only by commuting it, and this under condition, if he fulfills the satisfaction enjoined. And if that satisfaction be condign, he absolves from the *whole*; if not, he absolves from *so much*; and therefore, if the sinner should die before the completion of condign satisfaction, he must be punished in purgatory. — But neither does that suffice as yet, because this sinner after the divine absolution is not bound to the purgatorial penalty any more than to another. — And this is clear, because he can be so contrite that God remits the whole, and he will straightway fly forth: therefore there is no need that he commute it. And *again*, if he does nothing but commute and binds to the condign [penalty], then the penitent reaps no fruit from it, and to no purpose does he say: I absolve you from all sins. — All of which are great unfitting consequences; there are others too, which are omitted for brevity's sake.

And therefore there is a third mode of speaking, more consonant with reason and the piety of faith: that the priest by absolving remits some part of the penalty by the power of the keys. — And this we can understand thus: that since *all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth*, therefore in justification, which is a work of mercy, mercy so remits the guilt as not to overstep the rule of justice; for this reason it still keeps [the man] obligated to the penalty. But that penalty, by reason of the rigor of the divine justice, is disproportionate to our powers and unknown to our cognition; and for it he must make satisfaction to God. The divine mercy has therefore further provided us a way and has appointed the priest as arbiter, to whom it has given the power of arbitrating and assessing the penalty and of making it known to us, and of remitting part of the penalty by virtue of Christ's passion, so that the divine justice may not exact payment for that part from him, but may be content with the penalty of Christ's passion. How great that part is, it is not for us to determine, but for God. And then the Sacrament of penance will be not only burdensome but also fruitful.

Holding therefore to this opinion, it must be conceded that the priest remits some part of the penalty, as the arguments show — not the eternal, as the others show, nor the purgatorial, but in general that penalty by which God binds the sinner after absolution from guilt; and for it he is never punished in purgatory or elsewhere. But for the other part, from which he is not absolved, either he will be punished here sufficiently, or the Lord will exact it in purgatory.

**To the arguments:**
*To 1.* To that, then, which is objected concerning Jerome, it must be said that there is a *showing* by mere demonstration, as he shows who points to something with the finger; and there is a *showing* by a certain exhibiting, as a craftsman shows a begun image when he completes it. I say therefore that Jerome means that the priest of the Gospel, with respect to absolution from guilt, absolves only by *showing*, namely by demonstrating [the man] absolved; but he absolves from the penalty; and this is true, provided that *showing* be understood not only as *manifesting* to the senses, but also as perfecting and exhibiting.

*To 2, 3, 4.* To that which is objected concerning purgatorial and eternal penalty, it must be said that it is to be conceded, but in different respects:

because from the *eternal* he in no way looses; from the *purgatorial* he absolves not *per se*, but *per accidens*, because, when in the penitent the debt of temporal penalty is diminished by the power of the keys, he is not punished so sharply in purgatory as if he had not been absolved.

*To 5.* To that which is objected, that this prejudices the divine justice; it must be said that it is false. For just as in baptism, through the merit and the payment of Christ's passion, the sinner is loosed from the whole penalty, so in penance, through the virtue of the same passion of Christ, he is loosed from a part of the penalty, in such a way that justice is in no way prejudiced, but rather that of the Psalm is verified: *Mercy and truth have met each other*; for mercy by overpaying satisfies the price of justice.

*To 6.* To that which is asked, whether he remits a part, or a greater [part] to him who [sinned] more, etc.; it must be said that mercy considers not merit but misery; and therefore the divine mercy, which here succors the wretched, considering in them not merit but misery, succors through the merit of Christ and remits an equal part to all — not, I say, according to *absolute* comparison, but *proportional* — as if to him who owes a hundred he remits ten; and to him who owes ten he remits one. And therefore he who sinned more, while he repents, is bound to great acts of thanksgiving, and this will appear better when it is shown how in every work of the Lord there is mercy and truth.

*To 7.* To that which is objected, that if everyone remits a part, then it seems that the whole would sometimes be remitted; it must be said that the first priest, to whom one confesses, if he is ready, remits the whole of those very sins which by the power of the keys ought to be remitted; and therefore another does not remit. It is good, nevertheless, to confess to another, both for the sake of instruction, and for the sake of greater certitude, and for the sake of his intercession, and for the sake of the merit of shame and of stricter satisfaction and humiliation.