Aquinas on How God Causes the Act of Sin Without Causing Sin Itself

The Thomist 73 (2009): 455-96 AQUINAS ON HOW GOD CAUSES THE ACT OF SIN WITHOUT CAUSING SIN ITSELF W. MATIHEWS GRANT University of St. Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS MAINTAINS that, although God is neither directly nor indirectly the cause of sin,1 still God does cause the act of sin. Having demonstrated the existence of a single unmoved source of all motion and cause of all being apart from itself, and having identified this being with God, he notes that it simply follows that the act of sin, insofar as it is a movement and a being, has God as cause. Thus, when Aquinas asks "Whether the act of sin is from God?" he derives his answer as an inevitable consequence from his prior conclusions in natural theology: The act of sin is a movement of the free will. Now the will of God is the cause of every movement, as Augustine declares (De Trin. iii. 4, 9). Therefore, God's will is the cause of the act of sin. The act of sin is both a being and an act; and in both respects it is from God. Because every being, whatever the mode of its being, must be derived from the First Being, as Dionysius declares (Div. Nam. 5). Again every action is caused by something existing in act, since nothing produces an action save insofar as it is in act; and every being in act is reduced to the First Act, viz. God, as to its cause, Who is act by His Essence. Therefore, God is the cause of every action insofar as it is an action.2 1 STh I-II, q. 79, a. 1. 2 STh I-II, q. 79, a. 2, s.c. and corp. Translations from the Summa Theologiae are from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1981). Although in these passages Aquinas appeals to the authority ofAugustine and Dionysius in support of the key premises, anyone familiar with 455 456 W. MATTHEWS GRANT Within the context of Aquinas's overall metaphysics, consistency requires one to conclude that God causes the act of sin.3 A problem remains, however, regarding how God could cause the act of sin without causing sin itself. Aquinas attempts to solve this problem by arguing that a sin is not just an act, but an act with a defect, and that it is the defect that renders the act sinful. To cause a sin, therefore, one must cause both the act and the defect.4 But, while the creature causes both,5 God does not cause the defect, but only the act: God is the cause of every action, insofar as it is an action. But sin denotes a being and an action with a defect: and this defect is from a created cause, viz., the free will, as falling away from the order of the First Agent, viz., God. Consequently, this defect is not reduced to God as its cause, but to the free will. . . . Accordingly, God is the cause of the act of sin: and yet He is not the cause of sin, because He does not cause the act to have a defect.6 Although God causes the act of sin, he does not cause the sin itself, since he does not cause the defect that renders the act sinful. The cause of the sin itself, therefore, is the creature, who causes both the act and the defect. In what follows, I explicate and defend Aquinas's solution by addressing two objections to which it may appear vulnerable. The objections will serve a heuristic purpose, enabling us better to understand Aquinas's solution by seeing how it escapes the objections. The first objection is set out as a dilemma, and resolved in section I; its resolution gives rise to a second objection, set out in section IL There I argue that the best-known the Prima Pars knows that Aquinas thinks he has also established these premises through philosophical argument. 3 For Aquinas, all creaturely acts proceed wholly from two causes, God the primary cause, and the creaturely secondary cause. See...