John Kilcullen
From: Sincerity and Truth: Essays on Arnauld, Bayle and Toleration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
The reader may wish to know something of Antoine Arnauld and his times. His life was full of conflict, with the Jesuits, with the king of France and, though he was a zealous Catholic, with the pope.[Note 1] The son of a wealthy lawyer, he never had to work for his living at anything he did not choose to do. As a priest he never seems to have had any pastoral or teaching responsibilities except those he chose to assume. By choice he was an almost full-time controversialist, whose extant writings fill some forty large volumes. Day by day he went into his study, sharpened his pen and attacked someone---or defended someone, or refuted an answer, or answered a pretended refutation, or wrote a Premier Écrit pour la defense de la seconde lettre. His writings are mostly in the style of some of the less well-known works of Hobbes and Locke, or of certain writings Marx and Engels left to the criticism of the mice.
To sympathise with the work of such an author one must have some interest in the controversies to which he devoted his life. In the Catholic Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was much disagreement over questions of grace and freewill, especially between followers of the Spanish Jesuit Luis Molina (1536-1600) and those who considered themselves genuine followers of St Augustine. Controversy was especially acute in the University of Louvain in the Spanish Netherlands, and during Arnauld's lifetime (largely as a result of his own writings in defence of the Louvain theologian Cornelius Jansen) it spread into France, where those who called themselves followers of Augustine were usually called Jansenists.[Note 2] In the Protestant Netherlands there was a similar disagreement between followers of Jacob Arminius (who like the Jesuits emphasized freewill) and followers of Calvin (who followed Augustine).[Note 3] The Jansenists were accused by their Catholic opponents of being virtually Calvinists, which partly accounts for the zeal with which they attacked the Calvinists when they were not fighting the Jesuits. All these debates about grace and freewill were continuous with the controversies which arose when Luther and Calvin accused Catholics of Pelagianism, and indeed with medieval controversies in which Catholics had made the same accusation against one another.[Note 4] All parties were eager or anxious readers of Augustine's writings against Pelagius.[Note 5] Pelagius had taught that anyone who wishes can live a good life (meaning this as an encouragement to the good life). Augustine had answered that no one can live a good life, or even wish to do so, without special help from God, which he does not always give; his help is a grace---that is, it cannot be earned or deserved, but is given only to those whom God chooses from eternity (predestines) to receive it.
In Arnauld's time Christians of all varieties agreed that human beings cannot avoid evil and do good without grace, and all held some version of the doctrine of predestination. The controversies between Molinists and Jansenists, Arminians and Calvinists, were about the extent of God's help and its relation to human free choice. Neither Molinists nor Jansenists meant to deny either freewill or the need for grace, but each side accused the other of denying one or the other by implication. The Jesuits taught that God gives everyone grace sufficient for salvation, so that if we are not saved that is because we have chosen not to use God's help.[Note 6] The Augustinians replied that since right choice is a good act, it also must be the effect of God's help; if we need help to do good, then we need help for the good act of choice. So both the good deed and the will to do it require God's help: "It is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish' (Phil. 2:13). This may seem to imply that those who receive all necessary grace cannot fail to do good, whether they want to or not. The Augustinians replied that indeed they will infallibly do good, but not "whether they want to or not' because the first effect of grace is willingness to do good. But then if grace works infallibly those who in fact do not do good must get less than the grace they need. If no one needs or deserves help more or less than anyone else, how is it fair that some get less grace than others, and less than they need? This is the question that led the Jesuits to the doctrine of sufficient grace, that everyone gets all the grace needed for salvation. The Augustinians insisted that the question is inappropriate: God is fair, but we cannot demand to be shown how. Since experience shows that people are not equally good God must give grace unequally, and we must suppose that he has good reasons; but his reasons must remain incomprehensible to us.
Although these controversies were carried on with constant reference to the bible, it is worth noticing that the difficulties do not arise only from scripture texts. Questions of predestination, free will and grace arise for anyone who holds (a) that God's assistance is necessary for doing good, and (b) that choice of good is itself a good deed. On these premisses the only consistent way of avoiding Augustine's conclusions is to postulate also (c) sufficient grace for all, and (d) salvation for all. Kant's religion of pure reason seems to include all four points.[Note 7]
Their critics accused the Jesuits of being generally too ready to water down Christianity to make it acceptable to the powerful and worldly people they wanted to influence. The doctrine of sufficient grace seemed meant for people unwilling to be entirely dependent on God, inclined to believe that salvation must be within their own power of choice. Jesuit casuistry seemed to relax the demands of morality, countenancing acts which are really sins.[Note 8] In their pastoral practice they seemed to grant absolution without proper evidence of repentance, and to allow people whose repentance was not genuine to receive holy communion. In his Frequent Communion Arnauld suggested that absolution and the reception of communion should be delayed until repentance was proved by the beginning of a better way of life, but the Jesuits were reluctant to refuse absolution or impose difficult conditions, especially since some of their penitents were kings and nobles whose exclusion from the sacraments might harm the cause of religion, and they took the view that frequent communion was needed to help establish a better way of life.[Note 9] In their Chinese missions the Jesuits were accused by Dominicans and Franciscans of being too ready to compromise with Chinese religion, morality and customs,[Note 10] and Arnauld and his allies publicised in France the controversies that broke out in China.
Motives were of course mixed. The Jesuits enjoyed their influence, the Jansenists enjoyed the excitement and importance of the fight against it. Doctrinal conflicts got entangled with others. There was rivalry between the secular clergy and the Jesuits, and between the new Jesuit order and the older "mendicant' orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans. In the universities many feared that the Jesuits would take the students and the jobs. Similar fears had motivated opposition to the mendicants when they were new orders, in the thirteenth century. Like the Jesuits, the mendicants had been close to the papacy, and the pope had invoked his "plenitude of power' to force the French bishops and the University of Paris to make room for them. This provoked or reinforced an attitude later called Gallicanism, the determination to limit the pope's right to intervene in French church affairs.[Note 11] Since the Great Schism, when there were several rival popes, Paris University had been a stronghold of "conciliarist' theory, which held the subordination of the pope (at least in certain circumstances) to an ecumenical council.[Note 12] The French kings were friendly to such theories, having had many disagreements with the popes. Gallicanism was at its height in Arnauld's lifetime, and the Jansenists allied themselves with it against the Jesuits. In the next century the alliance brought about the expulsion of the Jesuits from France,[Note 13] but in Arnauld's time the political position of the Jansenists was always precarious, for two reasons. First, they were a section of "the devout', who sometimes criticised the extravagant lives of king and court and their indifference to the suffering of the common people, and criticised French foreign policy, which sought to balance the power of the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs by aiding Dutch and German Protestants; the "devout' party sometimes reminded the government of the Catholic League, which had been a vehicle of Spanish influence in France during the wars of religion in the second half of the previous century. Second, the Jansenists were accused of heresy, of being virtual Calvinists and of defying the authority of pope and bishops. When it suited the king or his ministers to be more devout than the devout, or more Catholic than the pope, they took action against the Jansenist and Calvinist heretics.
Antoine Arnauld was born in 1612, the twentieth child of a lawyer who had represented the University of Paris in 1594 in its attempts to prevent the establishment of the Jesuit order in France. His sister became abbess and reformer of the Cistercian convent of Port-Royal.[Note 14] Eventually his mother, six of his sisters and five of his nieces became members of this convent. For many years he mostly lived in houses belonging to Port-Royal, with other gentlemen (including Pascal) not members of the order but living a religious life without vows. The convent's spiritual director was for a time Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbéof Saint-Cyran, who became also Arnauld's spiritual guide. Saint-Cyran had studied in Louvain and was friendly with Cornelius Jansen. Jansen had been active in his university's attempts to prevent the Jesuits from teaching students registered for Louvain degrees, but his main quarrel with the Jesuits was theological. In 1640 he published a book entitled Augustinus, intended to restate Augustine's doctrine of grace and to show that the Jesuit doctrine was Pelagian.[Note 15] By then Saint-Cyran was being held in prison on the orders of Cardinal Richelieu, the king's minister, perhaps because he was suspected of being the French translator of a pamphlet Jansen had published criticising France's Protestant alliances, perhaps because it was thought that his teaching on the kind of repentance required for absolution might trouble the king's conscience and strengthen the influence of the devout. When Richelieu died Saint-Cyran was released from prison but died soon after.
In 1641 Arnauld graduated as a Doctor of Theology from the Sorbonne, the theology faculty of the University of Paris. It was in this year that he wrote his penetrating objections to Descartes's Meditations.[Note 16] His main projects in these early years were a book and other writings on frequent communion, in which he supported Saint-Cyran's view that absolution and communion should be delayed until genuine repentance was evident,[Note 17] others criticising the laxity of Jesuit moral theology[Note 18] and others defending Jansen's Augustinus.[Note 19] For reasons presumably connected with those for which he had imprisoned Saint-Cyran, Cardinal Richelieu had encouraged a well-known preacher to preach a series of sermons against Jansen's book.
From 1649 there was controversy over five propositions put forward by Jansen's critics as a summary of the contentious points in his doctrine.[Note 20] In 1653 the pope condemned these propositions, and Arnauld and his friends accepted that they were, under some interpretation, heretical. But they denied the assertion made by some French bishops (at the suggestion of Richelieu's successor as the king's minister, Cardinal Mazarin)[Note 21] that the Five Propositions were Jansen's. According to Arnauld only one was in Jansen's book, and in a non-heretical sense, and the others were not there at all. Prompted by Mazarin, the national Assembly of the Clergy demanded that all the clergy subscribe to a "formulary' condemning the Five Propositions as heretical in the sense which they had in Jansen's book.[Note 22] In 1657 the pope himself asserted that the propositions were in Jansen's book and had been condemned in Jansen's sense. Arnauld was willing to sign the formulary as it related to the "question of right' (whether the propositions were heretical) but not as it related to the "question of fact' (whether the propositions were in fact in Jansen's book in the sense condemned). He argued that the pope's doctrinal authority did not extend to questions of fact not an original part of Christian revelation.[Note 23] In reaction to one of Arnauld's pamphlets on this matter the Sorbonne struck Arnauld's name off the list of its Doctors; Pascal's Provincial Letters were begun in an effort to ward off this action.[Note 24]
The controversy over the Five Propositions and the formulary went on for years, and Arnauld wrote much on the subject.[Note 25] The authorities would not accept subscription restricted to the question of right; they insisted on subscription "pure and simple'. The nuns of Port-Royal were bullied, and those who would not sign were dispersed to other convents, put under surveillance and denied the sacraments. Arnauld went into hiding. In 1667 a new pope agreed that the Church authorities should acquiesce tacitly in signature of the formulary with the explanation that it did not relate to the question of fact, provided the explanation remained secret. This shabby compromise was the "peace of Clement IX'. The nuns of Port-Royal regained their liberty and Arnauld came out of hiding. For the next few years he left the enemies of Jansen mostly alone, and wrote against the Calvinists: on the Perpetuity of Faith in the Eucharist (arguing that the Catholic doctrine can be traced back to the early church), and on The Overturning of Christian Morality by the Calvinists.[Note 26]
From this time Arnauld seems to have been on reasonably good terms with the pope, but after a while he came into conflict again with the government. Louis XIV clashed with certain bishops and then with the pope over the régale, the practice under which royal officials took charge of the revenues of vacant episcopal sees. The reputed Jansenism of the bishops protesting against this practice, the new rapport between the Jansenists and the papacy, and the king's wish to demonstrate his zeal against heresy at a time of conflict with the pope and at a time when French foreign policy was again troubling devout Catholics, led to a renewed attack on both Port-Royal and the Calvinists. In 1679 Louis XIV put the convent under various restrictions and forbade Arnauld to go near it. Arnauld left for the low countries, where he changed residence frequently, presumably as a precaution against arrest.[Note 27] He continued to produce a stream of books and pamphlets. To this time belongs the controversy over philosophic sin which is the subject of the following essay, controversies with the Calvinists over political matters,[Note 28] a philosophical correspondence with the young Leibniz, and controversy with Malebranche in the journal edited by Bayle.[Note 29] He died in Brussels in 1694, at the age of 82. \***\ Since the eighteenth century liberal and enlightened men and women have often put a higher value upon sincerity than on actually being right. The earliest exponent of this attitude seems to have been Pierre Bayle; as he said in his Philosophical Commentary (1686-7), "it is enough to consult sincerely and in good faith the lights God has given us.'[Note 30] This implies that a well-meant but objectively wrong act may not only be excused but even deserve praise and reward: "An action done in consequence of a false persuasion is as good as if it had been done in consequence of a true persuasion.'[Note 31] Bayle's premisses include propositions about invincible ignorance taught at the time in some scholastic courses in moral philosophy.[Note 32] Some Jesuits taught (or were alleged to teach) that we cannot sin without knowing that we are sinning, which implies that if we act according to our consciences we do not sin; and that if we realise that the act is morally wrong but do not think of it as an offence against God's infinite goodness then it is a merely "philosophic' or moral sin which cannot deserve eternal punishment. This is not the ethic of sincerity, since there is no suggestion that a well-meant wrong act may deserve praise, but it is a step in that direction.
The battle over philosophic sin was an episode in Arnauld's life-long war with the Jesuits. In 1689 he denounced as heresy a thesis defended in a Jesuit college that some sins may be merely philosophic; his ulterior purpose was to discredit the underlying principle that no one can sin without knowing it. The Jesuits replied that they had never taught such things, at least not in any heretical sense, and Arnauld tried to show that they had. Rome condemned the thesis[Note 33] but not the underlying principle,[Note 34] and shortly afterwards also condemned propositions held by Arnauld and other Jansenists, including the proposition that invincible ignorance is not always an excuse.[Note 35]
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In this essay I will examine what Arnauld wrote about philosophic sin, and also about another Jesuit heresy which he denounced and Rome condemned at the same time, concerning the love of God.[Note 36] From what Arnauld maintains about the love of God it follows that all the actions of mere philosophers are theological sins, since all sins are theological and all the actions of infidels, even their best, are sins---one of the Jansenist propositions which Rome also condemned.[Note 37] My aim is primarily historical, to understand what was said; but I will also notice some things that should or might have been said, since criticism helps understanding, and since the point of the history of thought is to stimulate thought.[Note 38]
The theory Arnauld attacked ran as follows.[Note 39] There is a distinction between formal and material sins, and among formal sins between the philosophic and the theological. A "formal' sin is a sin in the proper sense of the term. A "material sin is almost a sin: it would be one, except that it lacks some feature essential to sin in the strict sense. Only acts which deserve blame and punishment are sins in the proper sense. Now according to the Jesuits---and according to Arnauld this is their basic mistake---an act does not deserve blame and punishment unless we do it knowing that it is wrong. If it is wrong, but we do not at the time know that it is, then it is a merely material sin. There are two sorts of wrongness. An act may be wrong as being against natural morality, or it may be wrong as being against God's will. Since obedience to God's will is a precept of natural morality, and since God wills that we obey natural morality, an act wrong in either way will be wrong in both ways. But since formal sin requires that the person doing the act know that it is wrong, and since we may know that the act is wrong in one way without knowing that it is wrong in both, we can commit one species of formal sin without also committing the other. If we do something knowing that it is against God's will it is a theological sin; if we do it knowing that it is against natural morality but not that it is against God's will, it is a philosophic sin.[Note 40]
On this theory only theological sin deserves damnation; in fact, the purpose of constructing the concept of theological sin is to define the kind of sin that incurs damnation. Sin deserves eternal punishment only if it expresses or implies contempt toward God: only God is infinitely worthy of respect, only contempt toward a being infinitely worthy of respect is infinitely worthy of punishment, and eternal punishment is infinite in duration.[Note 41] And only acts done knowingly against God's wishes show contempt of God. The notion of contempt, and the purpose of defining damnable sin, guide the specification of the kind of knowledge required to make sin theological. First, we must know or believe (even mistakenly) that the rule being broken was made by God. To disobey a rule God made without knowing he made it does not show contempt toward God,[Note 42] but to disobey a rule believing God made it, though in fact he did not, does show contempt. Second, we must think of God as infinitely worthy of respect. If we think of him as an evil tyrant, or as like a human being only immortal, then---assuming that the evil of contempt is greater the more goodness the offender can see in the person offended---the contempt shown in disobeying him is not great enough to deserve eternal punishment. The sin must be against a person of infinite worth known as such, or known as the highest and infinite good, or under some similar description.[Note 43] Third, we must know that God will in fact be offended, and offended gravely.[Note 44] If we believe as the Epicureans did that the gods do not care what we do, or that God is easygoing, that he does not mind the occasional sin, then the contempt shown by the act is not great enough to justify eternal punishment. Fourth, we must act with full attention to all these thoughts. The scholastics distinguished actual from habitual knowledge: if we are not actually thinking of something but could if the need arose, then our knowledge of it is habitual. Habitual knowledge that the act is against God's will is not enough for theological sin, since the act would not then imply actual contempt of God. Actual knowledge or advertence can have degrees, and lower degrees of advertence imply less contempt.[Note 45] To sum up: to be a theological sin deserving of eternal punishment, an act must be done with full attention to the thought, "this is against the will of God, who is infinitely worthy of respect, and it will gravely offend him', or something equivalent. An atheist cannot have such a thought, and a Christian or other theist may not actually think it. An atheist or a Christian not actually thinking of God commits a merely philosophic sin which does not deserve damnation, no matter how wrong the act.
To do something because it is against God's will is direct contempt; to do it for some good reason, although believing or suspecting that it is against God's will, is contempt by implication, since in that case God's will is taken too lightly. To take direct contempt as necessary to the nature of sin is the position of the fictional Jesuit of Pascal's satire: "To show you we do not permit everything, know that for example we never suffer anyone to have the formal intention of sinning for the sole purpose of sinning, and that if anyone insists on not having any other end in evil than evil itself, we break with him.'[Note 46] But the theory Arnauld attacks assumes that it is possible to offend God by not taking his wishes seriously enough, as outweighing otherwise good reasons. In view of his infinite worth God's will ought to be taken with absolute seriousness, as outweighing any reason to the contrary. So whatever may be the reasons for doing the act, whether it is done precisely because it will offend God or for some other reason, the conditions stated above are enough to make it a theological sin.
The analysis of sin as contempt against God goes back to Peter Abelard and Anselm and perhaps beyond. Anselm argued that because sin offends God's infinite honour it requires an infinite reparation which can be paid only by God become man. Abelard argued that although sin cannot harm God he avenges the contempt: "Our sin is contempt of the creator,' and "all who offer equal contempt to him are later punished with equal punishment.' According to Thomas Aquinas evil acts deserve blame and punishment because they do not serve God's honour, and ignorance extenuates because "there is less contempt and consequently less sin'. According to Bonaventure "sin is measured according to the amount of wilfulness and contempt'.[Note 47] The theory of philosophic sin carries this analysis through with apparent consistency.
Despite the notoriety Arnauld gave it, the Jesuits (if it is indeed their theory) were not primarily interested in philosophic sin. Their concern was to give a more restrictive definition of the sort of sin that deserves eternal punishment; philosophic sin is merely another category of sin not to be confused with damnable sin. If they had analysed it as they did theological sin perhaps they would have said this: an act is a philosophic sin, deserving moral blame and (finite) punishment, if it is done with full actual knowledge (or with full attention to the belief, true or false) that the act is immoral.
Arnauld begins the first Denunciation by remarking on the novelty of this doctrine. To live in forgetfulness of God is the way to damnation, Christians have always thought, not a guarantee against it.[Note 48] He relates this "Philosophism' (to use the term he later coined for it) to another Jesuit novelty, sufficient grace,[Note 49] meaning the doctrine that God gives everyone (atheists and pagans included) enough grace on every occasion to keep his commandments and avoid sin. The doctrine of sufficient grace is meant to answer the complaint sinners could reasonably make if God punishes with damnation all who fail to keep his commandments, though they cannot be kept without grace which he does not always give. The answer is that he does always give it. But, Arnauld remarks, against this there is an objection from experience. If God always gives the grace needed to avoid sin, why do we see so much sin? One answer is that God helps those who do their best with their natural powers and the help already given: there is so much sin because people do not do their best. But this answer has been criticised as semi-Pelagian. So now, Arnauld says, instead of trying to vindicate God's justice against the complaints of sinners, the Jesuits are protecting sinners against God's justice by claiming that no one can be damned except for theological sin narrowly defined.[Note 50] There is a lot of sin, but not much of it is damnable; God gives to all sufficient grace to avoid damnation.
Some readers took this to mean that philosophism is a further stage in the development of the doctrine of sufficient grace. Arnauld rejects this interpretation indignantly, suspecting perhaps that it is an attempt to deflect his attack from the principle he regards as the source of the new heresy, namely that no one can sin without knowing the wrongness of the act. He insists that philosophism rests on that principle, and even claims that philosophism and the doctrine of sufficient grace are logically incompatible.[Note 51] But his logic is at fault. There is no inconsistency between the statements that God inflicts damnation only for theological sin and that he gives enough grace to avoid sin (however sin is defined). The proponents of sufficient grace meant that God gives enough grace to avoid damnable sin, and distinguished that from merely material sin even before the distinction between philosophic and theological sin was invented.[Note 52] If they had meant that God gives enough grace to avoid even material sin they might have had to abandon the doctrine because of the objection from experience, and might have put philosophism in its place, but even then the two doctrines would have been logically compatible---the doctrine of sufficient grace would have been abandoned not as incompatible with philosophism but as incompatible with experience. But since they meant damnable sin, and distinguished that from material sin, they already had an answer to the objection from experience, an answer which philosophism strengthens by asserting that even some formal sins are not damnable. Since in our experience formal sin, and in particular theological sin, seldom or never happens, it is quite possible to believe that enough grace to avoid damnable sin is always given. Philosophism thus complements the doctrine of sufficient grace by strengthening the answer to an objection against it, and the latter complements the former by vindicating God's justice in the occasional (or at least possible) cases in which God damns someone for theological sin. Philosophism rests on its own principle and is logically independent of the doctrine of sufficient grace, but the two are mutually consistent and complementary.
The principle which led to philosophism was developed by Jesuit theologians over a long time. They laid down that only a voluntary act can be sinful, and that an act is not voluntary and culpable unless we know not only what we are doing but also that it is evil; for example, for an idolater to sin in sacrificing his child to Moloch he must know not only that he is sacrificing his child to Moloch, but also that such an act is evil.[Note 53] The Jesuits claim that this conception of the voluntary is Aristotle's, but Arnauld shows that Aristotle holds that, although not to know what one is doing may make the act involuntary and excuse it, not to know that such an act is evil---that is, ignorance of moral principle---is no excuse.[Note 54] Elsewhere Aristotle distinguishes weakness of will from hardened vice, and says that the weak are less wicked because they know better---the opposite of what the Jesuits would say.[Note 55]
Arnauld argues that St Augustine would also reject the Jesuits' principle. Augustine says that those who sin through ignorance do not will to sin, but they will the wrong act, and for sin that is enough.[Note 56] And (to anticipate one of the later Denunciations) Thomas Aquinas would also reject it. A Jesuit writer quotes words of St Thomas as meaning that we commit merely philosophic sin if we turn toward a created good without turning away from God.[Note 57] But, Arnauld points out, St Thomas's statement is conditional, and leaves the question open whether the condition is ever realised. Elsewhere St Thomas says that in serious sin the two turnings necessarily go together,[Note 58] whatever we intend;[Note 59] that is, in willing a gravely sinful act for the sake of some creature we do turn from God even if we do not intend to turn away. So St Thomas, as Arnauld interprets him, agrees with Augustine that one can sin against God without willing to do so, by willing something else. This implies a rejection of the idea that the essence of sin is contempt.[Note 60] Some sins relate directly to God, such as hatred and murmuring against God, and in these the sin consists in contempt, but this is not true of all sorts of sins.[Note 61]
The principle underlying the thesis that sins committed without thought of God do not deserve damnation (namely, that a sin is not voluntary unless we know that it is a sin) is thus contradicted by Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas. Arnauld shows also that the thesis itself directly conflicts with scripture. With reference to those who simply do not know God he quotes or refers to the following:[Note 62] Ps. 78/79:6 ("Pour out your anger on the people who have not known you'; cf. Jer. 10:25); Eph. 4:17 ("they are far from the life of God because of the ignorance they are in'); Eph. 5:6 ("It is for these things that the anger of God has come upon the unbelievers'); 1 Thess. 4:4 ("not in following the promptings of concupiscence with the pagans, who do not know God'); Rom. 2:12 ("those who have sinned without the law will perish without the law'); Jn. 5:28 ("those who have done evil deeds. . . will rise to their condemnation'); Mt. 25:32, 33, 46 (those on the left "will go to eternal punishment'); Apoc./Rev. 21:8 ("As for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolater and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone'; cf. 20:15). The passages about judgment day envisage only two categories of people, the just and the damned; so if philosophic sinners are not damned they must be among the just called to eternal life, although they may be murderers, fornicators etc. According to Apoc. 21:8 such sinners are sent to the lake that burns with fire, without any exception in favour of atheists.
As for those who know God but sin without thinking of him, Arnauld remarks that forgetfulness of God is one of the greatest sources of disorder in the lives of people in modern times. Too many are badly educated, without any sentiment of piety, without thought of God in the sins they commit to satisfy ambition, avarice, lust or some other dominant passion, negligent of their salvation, led like beasts only by what strikes the senses. We can see how to judge such lives from what scripture says of those Israelites who forgot God, for example from passages in the Psalms which characterise the wicked as forgetful of God (e.g. "The memory of God is banished from all their thoughts', Ps. 9:10). There is no hint that this forgetfulness is a protection against God's anger---quite the opposite: "Listen, you who forget God, lest he drag you off to punishment' (Ps. 49:22). Consider the story of Susanna and the elders (Vg. Dan. 13): "Their minds were perverted and they turned away their eyes so as not to see heaven and not to remember God's judgments'; yet scripture regards them as notable sinners. In Mt. 25:41-6 Jesus says that eternal punishment will be inflicted for sins of omission ("I was hungry and you gave me no food' etc.); but worldly people commit sins of omission without thinking of God or thinking that he obliges them to almsgiving and the like, being preoccupied with their own good and thinking only of enriching themselves; philosophists would have to say that God cannot justly inflict eternal punishment for such sins.[Note 63]
Scripture shows that people may sin even when they do what they think pleases God and therefore what they do not think offends him. Jesus foretold that the Jews will think they serve God in persecuting the disciples (Jn. 16:2), for which, according to Paul, God's anger has come upon them "to the end' (1 Thess. 2:16---although other translations say "at last'). Speaking of the town which will not listen to his disciples Jesus says that on judgment day "Sodom and Gomorrah will be treated less rigorously than that town' (Mt. 10:15). Speaking of himself, Paul says that he has been a persecutor of the Church, and that he did this out of religious zeal (1 Tim. 1:12, Gal. 1:13-14, Acts 26:9). The Jesuits would have to say that Saul persecuting the Church and heretics waging wars of religion are only philosophic sinners.[Note 64]
After pointing out these conflicts with passages from scripture, Augustine and Aristotle, Arnauld applies the doctrine to some examples from which he expects that any well-instructed Christian will see its impiety. Suppose a libertine is converted by some extraordinary grace and makes a general confession of the sins of his past life: in his childhood no one taught him to know and serve God, he fell in with bad companions who led him into debauchery, drunkenness and the like, he developed habits of swearing and blaspheming, he made love to married women, he took cruel vengeance for anything he took as an affront, he cheated tradesmen, there was no evil he would not have done if he had got the chance. His bad habits made him so blind and obdurate that he never felt the slightest remorse; he was wholly occupied in satisfying his passions and never thought of God.[Note 65] The Jesuits would have to say that because he never thought of God all these were only philosophic sins which he need not confess.
The last section of the first Denunciation, which answers answers to criticisms of philosophic sin made earlier by others, will be dealt with more conveniently below together with the other Denunciations, which answer answers to the first. But before leaving the first let us notice some weaknesses in Arnauld's arguments so far. Philosophic or moral sin is a species of formal sin, and formal sin deserves blame and punishment---finite punishment, in the case of philosophic sin. Now it is possible to think of moral wrongdoing as the concern of every member of the moral community, so that (if it is to be blamed and punished) any member, including God, may and should blame it and punish it (finitely), without taking it as an offence against him- or herself personally.[Note 66] So perhaps God physically destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as a finite punishment, but did not sentence their inhabitants to hell eternally. If Arnauld's scripture passages are reconsidered with such a possibility in mind it will be found that most are simply irrelevant to the real point at issue, namely whether philosophic sin deserves to be punished eternally. There are two passages which do refer explicitly to eternal punishment, Mt. 25 and Rev. 20-1. To these there are two possible answers. First, for those who have heard these passages, at least while they have them in mind, there is no possibility of merely philosophic sin, so reference to this possibility was unnecessary.[Note 67] Second, although Rev. 20-1 says that the devil will be punished eternally in the lake of fire, it does not say that each sinner sent to join him will be kept there eternally.[Note 68]
The passages quoted to show that acts thought pleasing to God may really be sins requiring apology and forgiveness do not imply that such acts deserve blame or punishment, and the doctrine of philosophic sin does not imply that they do not require apology and forgiveness. When one person apologises and the other forgives there need be no implication on either side that the act deserved blame. If we do something wrong in ignorance, not to regret it when the error is discovered shows that we would have done the same even if we had known; regret shows that the act is against the general disposition of our will.[Note 69] Apology expresses and forgiveness acknowledges the apologiser's general disposition, leaving it an open question whether the act deserves blame. As a moral virtue goodwill means a settled resolution to do what is right, without concern for praise or blame except as an index of right and wrong. This is an important point: a person of goodwill seeks not to avoid blame, nor even to avoid deserving blame, but to do what is objectively right; failure in this purpose, even if not blameworthy, will cause regret. The appropriate religious expression of this is to ask forgiveness of God. The doctrine of philosophic sin does not mean that an act is not wrong unless one thought so at the time, but that unless one thought so it is not a sin deserving blame or punishment. Its advocates can therefore say, without inconsistency, that a person who ignorantly does what is objectively wrong does not deserve blame but should ask God's forgiveness when the mistake is discovered.[Note 70] The same considerations apply to the example of the penitent libertine: the proponents of the doctrine of philosophic sin need not say he has nothing to confess; if they do, it will not be because they think that his sins are merely philosophic, but because they think that the sole purpose of confession is to ward off blame and punishment.
As for Aristotle's opinion that some sorts of ignorance excuse but not ignorance of moral principle, let us ask why he thought so. In a passage which Arnauld does not consider, Aristotle says that we punish a person for not knowing what he should know and could know if he took care. But Aristotle imagines an objection: what if he is simply a careless sort of person? Can he be blamed for being the sort of person he is, or is that a matter of innate temperament? Perhaps one must be born with an eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and choose what is truly good; and then no one will be responsible for moral blindness or for the carelessness and other vices which result from it. Aristotle answers that if we are not responsible for our vices then we can claim no credit for our virtues either, and that in fact we do seem to be causes or at least co-causes of our own characters.[Note 71] This passage suggests a possible reason why he thought that ignorance of moral principle is no excuse: perhaps he thought that moral principles are among the things a person should know and could know with care, and that we are always to blame for carelessness and blindness in such matters. But if we disagree, Arnauld's objection from Aristotle will lose its force. Since no amount of care gives knowledge of the true God unless he reveals himself, it would seem implausible to equate ignorance of God with ignorance of moral principle, so that even invincible ignorance of God would be no excuse; but as we will see later, that is Arnauld's position.
To sin while actually thinking, "this will offend God who is infinitely worthy of respect' must be a rare event. According to Arnauld the Jesuits turned to the doctrine of philosophic sin because the doctrine of sufficient grace lay open to the objection that despite this sufficient grace almost everyone sins and incurs damnation. The new doctrine seems to go to the other extreme and saves almost everyone. In most of the remaining Denunciations Arnauld's main concern is to block attempts to show that it leaves plenty of room for damnation after all.
In reply to the First Denunciation and to earlier critics the Jesuits of Louvain made the following points. (1) If a philosophic sin is serious it is mortal and will be punished in hell---though perhaps not eternally, since the eternity of sensible punishment corresponds to an infinite malice, which philosophic sin lacks. (2) For theological sin full advertence to the infinite goodness of God is not required; habitual, obscure or general knowledge is enough. (3) Since God gives everyone, even those who have not heard the gospel, sufficient grace to attain such knowledge, they cannot be ignorant, except for a short time,[Note 72] without being at fault in resisting grace, which makes their sins theological. From (2) and (3) it follows (4) that the supposition of merely philosophic sin is a bit metaphysical: it rarely happens.[Note 73] The Jesuits of Paris said (5) that it is quite metaphysical: merely philosophic sin has never happened and never will. According to them, (6) "none of our writers has ever taught this doctrine', that is, that it does happen; the Jesuits who wrote about philosophic sin were arguing conditionally on a false supposition, that if there were any such thing as merely philosophic sin it would not deserve eternal punishment.[Note 74] As a Jesuit professor of Anvers put it, (7) "philosophic' and "theological' sin are merely two formalities (distinguishable aspects) of every sin, not two kinds of sin capable of existing apart.[Note 75]
Arnauld replied to these points as follows. To say (point 1) that philosophic sin may be mortal and deserve to be punished in hell, but not eternally, is out of harmony with the rest of the theory, which is an attempt to define the sin that deserves eternal punishment; in any case it does not remove the objection since it is a merely verbal concession.[Note 76] The question is not whether the punishment is called hell but whether it is eternal. The restriction to sensible punishment suggests that the other element of the punishment, namely the pain of loss, might be eternal, which is a sop to those who say that all serious sin deserves eternal punishment; but this restriction is arbitrary. The reason given why eternal sensible punishment would be unjust, namely that infinite punishment is due only to infinite malice, applies equally to the pain of loss of God. In fact it applies more strongly, since that pain would be infinite not only in duration but also by reason of the good lost.[Note 77]
Point 2 is another concession out of harmony with the rest of the theory, which assumes that punishment is due to contempt and that contempt requires awareness: how can obscure, habitual or general knowledge be enough? And the concession goes either not far enough or too far. Consider the Americans before they heard the gospel. Their beliefs about their own gods cannot count as even obscure and general knowledge of the true God, enough to make the malice of their sins infinite, since their gods are finite.[Note 78] On the other hand, if it is enough to have general and implicit knowledge of God under the concept of the good, at which every human action aims (that is, good in general, not precisely infinite good),[Note 79] then merely philosophic sin is not rare (point 4) but impossible. The claim (point 6) that this is exactly what was meant will be dealt with below.
Point 3 assumes the theory of sufficient grace.[Note 80] Consider the Americans again. Since most of them had no human means of knowing the true God,[Note 81] point 3 must mean that God gave each of them a direct revelation of himself. This must have taken the form of thoughts in their minds "loud' enough to hear.[Note 82] God can reveal himself this way, but there is no reason to suppose that he gives and must give such thoughts to everyone to whom preachers are not sent; in fact the normal means by which God reveals himself is outward preaching.[Note 83] The supposition that the Americans have all had such thoughts is refuted by experience: no missionary reports meeting Americans who had already heard in their own thoughts anything of the true God; missionaries do not claim to be reminding them of what they have already thought of, and would be laughed at if they did.[Note 84] If God gives all the Americans grace sufficient for knowledge which none of them has, then the grace must be ill- adapted to their state, and given merely to make their ignorance culpable and their sins theological and damnable. This hardly makes God seem more amiable.[Note 85]
But even if the Americans' ignorance is their own fault, that is irrelevant to the distinction between philosophic and theological sin. If the sinner does not know God then, even if this is his fault, his sins are merely philosophic, according to the definitions originally given.[Note 86] Perhaps the definition could be changed to make fault relevant; philosophic sin might be defined as sin done in non-culpable ignorance of God. This is another concession out of harmony with the basic ideas of the theory,[Note 87] and it leads to an anomaly. The fault would be itself a merely philosophic sin, since when the sinner first resists the grace which would give him knowledge of God he is not yet at fault in not knowing, and resists in non-culpable ignorance: but because of this philosophic sin, other sins which would otherwise have been also merely philosophic count as theological sins of infinite malice.[Note 88]
Since points 2 and 3 fail, it does not follow (point 4) that merely philosophic sin is rare; the many sins of the Americans must have been, on Jesuit principles, merely philosophic and exempt from the punishment of hell. But whether such sins have been few or many is a side-issue. The essential point is that, if there is no sin without knowledge of the malice of the act, then merely philosophic sin is not just "metaphysically' but "effectively' possible: it can really happen (whether often or only sometimes) that someone may voluntarily do a gravely immoral act knowing that it is such and yet not incur eternal punishment. According to Arnauld this is heresy no matter how seldom such sins are supposed to happen, and its originating principle is the proposition that there is no sin without knowledge of the malice of the act.[Note 89]
If it were true (points 5 and 7) that philosophical and theological sin are distinguishable but not separable aspects of every sin, Arnauld would have no complaint, as he said before the Jesuits of Paris and Anvers entered the controversy.[Note 90] But it is not true. Since there are two kinds of wrongness, and since they can be known separately, then---if there is no sin without knowledge of the wrongness of the act---it must follow that the two kinds of sin can exist separately and that there can be a merely philosophic sin.[Note 91] To escape this conclusion it might be said that God makes sure that, at the point of decision, no one ever is ignorant of himself or of the divine law;[Note 92] this is the theory earlier rejected (see above, point 3) that God speaks directly to those to whom preachers are not sent. Or it might be suggested that those ignorant of God and his law will also be ignorant of natural morality; but missionaries tell of people ignorant of God who know of at least some moral laws.[Note 93] If this suggestion were true, then it would follow from the principle that sin requires knowledge of the wrongness of the act that the Americans and others ignorant of God commit only material sins exempt from blame altogether, which Arnauld thinks is even more shocking than the idea that their sins are only philosophic.[Note 94]
Against the claim (point 6) that no Jesuit writer ever taught that purely philosophic sin can really happen, that they were arguing hypothetically on a false supposition, Arnauld shows that the words of many of them cannot reasonably be taken that way. One says explicitly: Peccatum pure philosophicum possibile est.[Note 95] If they had thought that every philosophic sin is also theological, they would not have said that philosophic sin is committed by those who do not know or think of God (whether through their own fault or not): if every sin belongs to both species, then philosophic sin is not committed by a restricted class of persons.[Note 96]
Further, the possibility of merely philosophic sin is a legitimate inference[Note 97] from common Jesuit doctrines of invincible ignorance and probabilism. The treatment of invincible ignorance in a book published in 1670 by an English Jesuit, Fr Terrill, is a thoroughgoing development of the principle behind the theory of philosophic sin, namely that formal sin requires full awareness of the wrongness of the act.[Note 98] According to Fr Terrill, ignorance which is inculpable (or involuntary or invincible) always excuses sin so that it is not formally sin and is not imputable or punishable. Ignorance is inculpable unless we actually have the thought that there is or might be something more to know, and also the thought that we have a duty to find out.[Note 99] Whether such thoughts occur is outside our power; if the ignorance is culpable it is because the thoughts have occurred but we have neglected to act on them; its continuance ceases to be culpable when they go or the opportunity for acting on them passes.[Note 100] Culpable ignorance is no excuse, but an act resulting from it is a sin only "in its cause': there is no new formal, imputable sin in addition to the sin of neglecting to dispel one's ignorance, and no additional punishment is due.[Note 101] Inadvertence is a species of ignorance and therefore subject to the same principles.[Note 102]
Arnauld rejects this theory of ignorance as excuse, as we will see in section 4. What matters here is that those who hold it cannot deny that merely philosophic sin is possible. Assuming that the loophole provided by the doctrine of sufficient grace is by now closed, and that the Jesuits will not want to say that the Americans commit only material sins, he argues that, on a theory of invincible ignorance which sets such strict requirements for the culpability of ignorance and inadvertence, the Americans will generally be blameless in not knowing or thinking of God and his law, and their sins in so far as they are theological will therefore be excused; if they do wrong knowing that the act is against natural law (which Arnauld thinks the Jesuits must admit is possible), this will be an instance of merely philosophic sin.[Note 103]
Probabilism can be seen as an application of the doctrine of inculpable ignorance. The probabilist principle is that a wrong act is excused if the agent knows that some reputable casuist says that such acts are permissible; the casuist's authority makes the mistake inculpable. The notion of inculpable ignorance gets stretched a long way: the act is excused even if, suspecting that it is wrong but wanting to do it, we have deliberately gone looking for an authority who permits it, and even if we knew that this authority might be mistaken and that other authorities said that the act is wrong. If such studied ignorance counts as inculpable then, Arnauld asks, can the Americans be blamed for their ignorance of God and his law?[Note 104]
It seems to me that Arnauld gets the better of this contest. He shows that the principle that sin requires knowledge of the wrongness of the act does imply the possibility of merely philosophic sin. Even if no Jesuit had drawn out the implication (and Arnauld shows that some had) he had the right to point it out and to press them either to own philosophism or disown the principle; instead they said irrelevantly that merely philosophic sin hardly ever happens because no one can for long be involuntarily ignorant of God---which, as Arnauld had shown, is in any case false.[Note 105] But there is something to be said for the Jesuits. Arnauld seeks to discredit their principle by drawing out an implication he expected would shock Christian consciences, namely that there might be serious violations of morality which could not justly be punished in hell forever. Some seventeenth century Christians did find this implication shocking, but it seems not to be of the essence of Christianity to find it so. The Jesuits, on the other hand, were moved by an idea which does seem essential to Christianity and to any other religion worth taking seriously, indeed to any religion that is not an influence for evil, namely that God is just. "Can anyone be persuaded that a God so just and good punishes a man eternally for having done what he believed in conscience he ought to do---has there ever been such a tyranny?. . . that he has already condemned us to the eternal flames for things we did not know displease him---is that like a fair master?'[Note 106] Let us see how Arnauld himself answers such questions.
According to Arnauld, the Jesuits were misled by merely human ideas of justice, "although God has said so positively that his thoughts are not like our thoughts, and that his ways are as far from those of men as heaven is from earth'.[Note 107] But he himself tries to show the justice of God's ways in humanly intelligible terms. His arguments are mostly Augustine's, using texts already collected for the same purpose in Jansen's Augustinus.[Note 108] Translating Augustine into scholastic terminology, Jansen argued that invincible ignorance does not always (as most scholastics seem to suppose[Note 109]) excuse sin: invincible ignorance of fact or of positive law (including positive divine law) excuses,[Note 110] but ignorance, even invincible, of natural law never does.[Note 111] Invincible ignorance of a part of natural law (total ignorance is not possible[Note 112]) is not itself a sin,[Note 113] but it does not excuse the sins which result from it.[Note 114] Punishment in such cases is deserved not for not knowing, but for not doing what we do not know we ought to do. Such "sins of ignorance',[Note 115] and also sins of weakness, are unavoidable[Note 116] but still imputable and punishable.[Note 117]
Augustine gave various definitions of sin, one of which is "anything uttered, done or desired against God's law'.[Note 118] Sin is something not merely physical and external; it depends upon what we think we are doing. But it does not depend upon whether we think that what we think we are doing is against God's law. An act which results in a person's death is not against God's law "Thou shalt not kill' unless we think we are killing someone, but then it may be a sin even if we do not think that killing someone is wrong. It is a sin if, as the act it was intended to be, it is in fact against God's law, even if it was not intended as a violation of God's law or as a sin.[Note 119] To avoid sin, therefore, it is necessary[Note 120] to know God's law and to make our decisions in obedience to it. Sin will be unavoidable if we either (a) cannot know God's law or (b) cannot will obedience to it.[Note 121] A sin which is unavoidable for either of these reasons still satisfies the present definition of sin, and satisfies it fully (so the sin is formal, not material): the act is still a voluntary act against God's law, and therefore imputable and justly punishable.[Note 122]
An act cannot be a sin unless it is intentional and therefore voluntary. But how can a sin be both voluntary and unavoidable? The assumption that an act is voluntary only if it is avoidable led to the doctrines of philosophic sin and sufficient grace[Note 123] as attempts to meet respectively points (a) and (b) above. Proponents of these doctrines argued that there can be no voluntary (which they took to imply avoidable) sin unless the sinner (a) knows that the act is against God's law, and (b) is able (having been given any grace necessary) to choose to obey. If either knowledge or power of right choice is lacking, obedience to God's commands is impossible. It would be unjust of God to punish us for not doing the impossible. Unavoidable sin is therefore not punishable; it is merely material sin.
Arnauld answers that even after Adam's sin, and even if the necessary grace has not been given, we can always obey God's commands if we choose, and this conditional possibility (even if the condition is not realisable) is enough for freedom and moral responsibility.[Note 124] To keep the commandments is within everyone's power because all they require is the will;[Note 125] that is (I assume he means), the commandments make allowance for external obstacles, so that a commandment requiring an external act is satisfied by genuine willingness to do it if we can. But although we can satisfy the commandments if we will, God's grace is needed to give the will.[Note 126] Without grace sin is inevitable and obedience impossible because we cannot bring ourselves to be willing to obey, and for no other reason. Impossibility of this sort is no excuse; it is clearly just to punish those who are disobedient only because they are unwilling to obey. If this kind of impossibility were an excuse then the greater the willingness to do the wicked act the less would be the responsibility for it, which seems absurd.[Note 127] Rather, as St Thomas says, the greater the willingness the greater the sin. The arrogant man's inability to bear insult, the miser's inability to give alms, and other vices, do not excuse. In such cases, as St Bernard says, "the will renders it inexcusable, and the necessity incorrigible'.[Note 128]
Our willingness to sin is one of the effects and penalties of Adam's sin, and our ignorance is another. God could not justly have created Adam originally with a defective nature,[Note 129] lacking effective power to attain the end appropriate to an intelligent being, namely the vision of God; so in his original state Adam must have had knowledge and effective possibility of right choice sufficient to keep the commandments, avoid sin and attain his last end.[Note 130] But although he had natural power and grace sufficient to avoid sin, Adam did sin, and as a just punishment suffered an impairment of knowledge and will[Note 131] which makes further justly punishable sins unavoidable.[Note 132] Adam's fault is ours too, and we share the punishment. We cannot ourselves repair the impairment inflicted as punishment---only God can; but since the punishment is just he is not bound to do so, and when he does it is a grace. God gives grace to some but not to others;[Note 133] the latter have no right to complain, since grace is not due to any;[Note 134] to prefer one to another is not unjust except in distributing something to which all are entitled, and entitled equally, and no one is entitled to grace.[Note 135] God is not bound in justice to repair, or give special help to overcome, impairments which he has justly inflicted as punishment for sin. So although God could not justly have created Adam originally with these defects, since the defects are man's fault God can now justly leave them unremedied. But the impairment of human powers as just punishment for sin does not impair God's rights. The fall was not God's fault; he can still justly command what he created Adam originally quite able to do, and he can still justly punish failure to obey.[Note 136] Without grace failure is now unavoidable, so there are unavoidable sins which God may justly punish.
Consider again the doctrines intended to meet points (a) and (b) (see above). The argument that an act may be voluntary and free even if we cannot will differently, supplemented by the argument that inability to will obedience to God may be a just penalty for a sin which was effectively avoidable, explains why the doctrine of sufficient grace must be rejected---that is, why it cannot be held that God must in justice give grace to all.[Note 137] The same reasoning also refutes the theory of philosophic sin. Sins of ignorance are done willingly (by will of the act, not of the sin), and ignorance is a penalty for sin. God could not justly have created Adam originally without sufficient power to know the natural law, that is, the law which a creature of Adam's nature must obey to attain the end appropriate to that nature. If we cannot now avoid ignorance of natural law that is a punishment, and such ignorance therefore does not impair God's right to our obedience. So ignorance of natural law, even if it is now sometimes unavoidable, is never an excuse. Whether we call such ignorance invincible is a verbal question:[Note 138] in view of the various senses of "possible' (see above, and Appendix), we may say that knowledge of natural law is always possible in the sense required to justify punishment, and that ignorance of natural law is therefore never invincible in the sense in which invincible ignorance excuses; or, since knowledge may not now be effectively possible without grace which may not be given, we may say that ignorance of natural law is now sometimes in another sense invincible but not an excuse. If we follow the second usage, which is closer to common ideas, we must deny that invincible ignorance always excuses, since invincible ignorance of natural law does not. Either way ignorance of natural law, even when it is now unavoidable, does not excuse sin: when effectively avoidable it is itself a sin of negligence or self-deception, and otherwise it is a just punishment for Adam's sin.[Note 139] Perhaps inconsistently,[Note 140] Augustine and Arnauld concede that for sins of unavoidable ignorance the burning may be milder; but it will still be eternal.[Note 141]
Ignorance and weakness of will can be remedied only by faith and strengthening grace. God has the power and the right (though no obligation) to give these gifts to anyone in any way; he could have given knowledge and strength of right choice to the Americans before the coming of the missionaries, as proponents of sufficient grace theories think he was obliged to do. That was possible in the sense that God has the power and the right; but it was not effectively possible, because in giving grace God has chosen to follow a certain order (what God does "ordinarily', ex lege ordinaria), a set of self-imposed rules, some of which we can learn from scripture and from experience.[Note 142] In accordance with these rules God does not give faith except to those who hear the gospel preached by human messengers; he does not give strength of right choice sufficient for salvation except to those who have received faith, and even to them he does not give grace to avoid sin altogether. Thus there is (ordinarily) no salvation for those who live when or where the gospel is not preached. There is no injustice in this, since faith and strengthening grace are free gifts not due in justice to anyone, and everyone could without injustice have been damned.[Note 143]
Augustine is Arnauld's main guide in all these matters, but Thomas Aquinas is also important. The references to St Thomas may be partly ad hominem, since the Jesuits were sworn to follow St Thomas,[Note 144] but Arnauld's respect seems genuine. He wrote several detailed studies of St Thomas apparently to sort out his own thoughts and not for publication,[Note 145] and his writings for publication include some extended analyses.[Note 146] Some have read St Thomas as moving toward a liberal position on freedom of conscience but unfortunately not always drawing the conclusions which his principles imply.[Note 147] But Arnauld's Augustinian reading may be historically correct. When St Thomas says that ignorance excuses unless knowledge is possible, he may well mean "possible with grace' or "possible but for original sin' (which is what Arnauld's account of possibility in the sense relevant to blame amounts to).[Note 148] Whether anyone can be invincibly ignorant of natural law will then be not an empirical question[Note 149] but a theological one, and St Thomas's negative answer may be exactly what he means. From that it will follow, as he says, that those who are mistaken about morality cannot avoid sin:[Note 150] they must sin either by disobeying conscience, or by violating the moral law---for which obedience to erroneous conscience is no excuse.[Note 151]
As a justification for punishing sins of ignorance and weakness Arnauld's theory is in my judgement unsuccessful. Questions of justice at least as acute as those it was meant to answer arise again from several of its premisses, namely that Adam's sin is also the sin of each of his descendants,[Note 152] that sin can rightly be punished by impairment of the knowledge and will needed to act rightly,[Note 153] and that sins resulting from this punishment can deserve more punishment. This is Christianity at its ugliest. What must we think of a father who punishes one child for another's fault[Note 154] by leaving him ignorant of what he ought to do, and then punishes him again for not doing it, but accepts the sufferings of another innocent person (himself!) as a reason for forgiving some of his children, but not others no more guilty? God has good reasons incomprehensible to us, Arnauld says:[Note 155] he might as well have said so at the beginning and left it at that.[Note 156]
It is not mere coincidence that the two heresies, the theory of philosophic sin and the heresy about love of God,[Note 157] were attacked by Arnauld and condemned by Rome together, since they are logically connected. According to Arnauld the commandment to love God as worthy of love above all things is the first commandment of natural law,[Note 158] and as we saw in the last section he holds that even invincible ignorance of natural law is no excuse. Therefore, if we violate this commandment because we do not know God or do not think of him the sin is not thereby excused. It might be objected that ignorance of fact does excuse, and that God's existence is not integral to natural law but a fact external to it. Arnauld's answer is that it is not external to the law, because the first commandment of natural law refers to God. Anyone who does not know or think of God must violate this commandment because it requires that each action be done consciously and explicitly out of love of God. Forgetfulness of God is itself the sin. Thus anyone who satisfied the conditions for committing a merely philosophic sin would also in the same act commit the sin of not loving God, without excuse. Since this sin is against God, and not just against natural morality, no act can be a merely philosophic sin.
Why must each act be done out of a love of God which is conscious and explicit? According to Arnauld, following St Thomas, God is somehow the last end of every creature, including sticks and stones, but rational creatures seek God in the way appropriate to their nature, by conscious and voluntary action.[Note 159] Some voluntary actions are not free, are therefore not subject to moral evaluation, and do not come under the commandments of the natural law.[Note 160] What the first commandment requires of us is conscious and free voluntary action. There is a sense in which every free choice of every human being, even the wicked who hate God, is a seeking of God above all things, because it is a seeking of happiness which is in fact to be found only in God. But this is not enough to satisfy the commandment, because the desire for happiness is not free but necessary (even when the particular act it motivates is free), and because it is consistent with wickedness, even with explicit hatred of God.[Note 161] Those who make themselves---their existence, pleasure, power etc.---or some other created good their last end do not act formally[Note 162] for love of God, even though the happiness they seek can be found only in God. The good and the wicked are distinguished in part by what they identify as the object they seek.[Note 163] To satisfy the first commandment, therefore, Arnauld holds that we must consciously and by free choice make God the end of every action.
Certain Jesuit writers, characteristically concerned to present the good life as something feasible, had suggested various less demanding interpretations of the commandment, what might be called "constructive love' theories. They amount to this: that to obey this commandment it is enough to keep the other commandments.[Note 164] Some Jesuits said, for example, that it is enough to have "effective' as distinct from "affective' love, doing what one who felt affection would do but not necessarily feeling the affection. Arnauld replies that this makes the commandment figurative, to act as if one loved God: he insists that love must be taken in its proper sense, as itself the motive of actions, an orientation of will of which feeling is a natural manifestation (though feeling may run pretty dry at times).[Note 165] Others said that it is enough to love God "habitually'. Arnauld replies that "habitual' love would be consistent with total inactivity, a life spent asleep; the commandments require acts, not habits.[Note 166] Others said that it is enough to love God "implicitly' or "interpretatively' or "constructively', by doing acts which could fittingly be done out of love of God---that is, acts which violate no (other) commandment of natural law. But it is not "implicit' love to do what could have been done for love but is not. Arnauld introduces another term, "virtual' love. He concedes what gives these less exacting theories their plausibility, that it is not possible to be all the time conscious of God, since in carrying out some tasks---even those undertaken for love of God---our attention must become absorbed in the task; it is enough if we begin the act explicitly for love of God, which will then be its "virtual' motive even when our attention is absorbed. A doctor, for example, is still acting for the patient's health if that was the purpose with which he began the treatment, though he cannot keep thinking of the purpose. So what this commandment requires, according to Arnauld, is that we begin each act out of conscious love of God, although as the act goes on the consciousness may cease.[Note 167] (Perhaps this is too exacting. Doctors aim at the patients' health even without thinking of that purpose at the beginning of each treatment, or at first meeting each patient, or at the beginning of each day, though perhaps they have to think of it explicitly sometimes.)
Most pagans do not know God and therefore can never act explicitly for love of God.[Note 168] They have gods, and they desire happiness, and it may be true that behind these is the true God; but to act out of love of a pagan god or for happiness is not formally to love God.[Note 169] By natural reason some pagan philosophers did know something of the true God,[Note 170] but knowledge is not enough: to act out of love of God a person must be made willing by grace (as we saw in the last section), and grace was not given to even the best of the pagan philosophers.[Note 171] In giving grace God follows a certain order, and the first manifestation of grace is humility.[Note 172] Arnauld is sure that the philosophers did not receive grace to love God above all things because they lacked humility and believed they were self-sufficient; their knowledge led to pride and made them worse.[Note 173] Seneca examined his conscience every night and presumptuously forgave himself;[Note 174] Cicero said that while wealth, honours, health and other goods of fortune are gifts of God, virtue and goodness are our own achievement.[Note 175] While affecting to despise human opinion the pagan philosophers acted to their own applause.[Note 176] Their apparent virtues were effects of pride and were therefore really vices.[Note 177] To the question "Can a philosopher who has never heard of Jesus Christ, do with the help of grace a genuinely good act?' the answer is that he could if grace were given, but since to those who have never heard of Christ it ordinarily is not, he cannot.[Note 178]
It follows that every act of a mere philosopher or other pagan is a sin[Note 179]---and a theological sin, since no sin, especially one against the commandment to love God, can be merely philosophic. Arnauld makes a distinction between acts good secundum officium, which satisfy all the other commandments of natural law, and those good also secundum finem, which also satisfy this first commandment. This corresponds to the familiar distinction between doing the right thing and doing it for the right reason.[Note 180] The first commandment prescribes the right reason, namely love of God above all things. To be simply good an act must be good not only secundum officium but also secundum finem, whereas a defect in either respect is enough to make the act bad and a sin: bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu.[Note 181] If an act comes under several commandments (and every individual act comes under the first, at least[Note 182]) it must satisfy them all. Every act, even the most wicked, is in some way good; what makes an act bad is that it does not have all the goodness that it ought to have,[Note 183] and lack of some morally necessary goodness is the kind of badness we call sin.[Note 184] Even the best and most apparently virtuous of the acts of the pagan philosophers were therefore sins because they lacked the morally necessary motive, love of God. Failure to refer an otherwise good act to God is a venial sin[Note 185] which the philosophers committed in even their best acts. They were not damned for these venial sins but for other grave sins they were not given grace to avoid.[Note 186]
According to Arnauld, anyone who fails to act out of love of God above all things must make some creature (usually himself) his end: everyone must have a last end, and if not God then a creature; so sin against the first commandment substitutes for our true end something unfit to be a last end.[Note 187] Conversely, anyone who sins seriously against any of the other commandments sins also against the first, by turning away from God toward some creature.[Note 188] These points suggest another conception of sin, as being not a violation of law so much as a turning from one goal to another. There are hints that the second conception underlies the first, that the laws are directions for arriving at the goal, so that the first commandment gives point to the others.[Note 189]
It seems to me that Arnauld is too hard on philosophers and pagans. It is not true that since everyone must have some last end those who do not know the true God must make some creature their end. We need not definitely make any one thing our last end; we can try to keep our lives open to a range of possibilities. Arnauld acknowledges that it is not sinful to make a created good the proximate end of an action: the sin is to rest there as if in the last end.[Note 190] But it is possible to take a step without meaning to rest there, not being sure where it will lead but believing that it is worth taking whatever the goal turns out to be; many things are worth doing on any of the likely views of the meaning of life. Why not say that acts chosen with a view to a range of possible ends are good secundum finem? Arnauld would probably answer that not to know what the last end is, or whether there is one, is the ignorance which is a punishment for sin and no excuse; but this is the theory criticised above at the end of section 4. As for the pride and self-sufficiency of the philosophers, the passages quoted from Cicero and Seneca do not show that every philosopher must lack humility, or even that they did. Some philosophers, such as Kant, have acknowledged that for living well supernatural help may be needed,[Note 191] and may have prayed for it, at least hypothetically. For Arnauld to claim to know the laws of order God sets himself well enough to infer that the philosophers cannot have received any grace because they seem to him to lack humility[Note 192] is itself presumptuous.
Arnauld's ethical theory and the theories he attacks are mirror images. The theories he attacks make contempt essential to committing sin, and will not accept that contempt can be "constructive'---the sinner must be explicitly conscious of the relation of the act to God. His own theory makes love of God essential to avoiding sin, and will not accept that love can be "constructive'---we must explicitly refer the act to God, at least at its beginning. Kant's ethical theory, a century later, in some ways like the Jesuits',[Note 193] is on this point like Arnauld's with respect for the moral law in place of love of God.[Note 194] A middle position worth considering is this: perhaps, as Arnauld held, an act cannot be simply good if it is wrong, even if the agent does not know that it is; and perhaps, as the "constructive love' theorists held, a right act may be (up to a point) morally good simply because it has been chosen as the kind of act it is, even without reference to a determinate further, or last, end. That is, an act may be good or bad because of the sort of act is it, apart from any thought the doer may have about the rightness or wrongness of the act or its place in any larger scheme of life. And perhaps people are good or bad because of the kinds of actions they are disposed to choose, apart from thought about the rightness or wrongness of their acts and about the meaning of life; though reflecting occasionally on these things is among the things people ought to do.
According to Arnauld, then, sincerity is not enough. It is necessary also to be right about moral principles and to know and love the true God. It is not enough to follow conscience: if our conscience is mistaken, not only is the act wrong objectively, it may also deserve blame and punishment. Ignorance of God and his law is no excuse because it is always due to sin, our own or Adam's. Merely philosophic sin is therefore impossible: one who sins in ignorance of God and his law still offends God and, if the violation is serious, deserves eternal punishment. This moral theory is not original: Arnauld got it almost wholly from Jansen, who got it mostly from Augustine. Arnauld's polemic against philosophic sin is philosophically interesting because of the questions it raises about the relevance of the agent's intention and other thoughts to the moral value of the act, and it is historically interesting as showing what Bayle and other advocates of toleration were up against.[Note 195] Arnauld's moral theory now seems pretty remote. Today most of us are merely philosophic sinners. Like Seneca we forgive ourselves each day our daily trespasses and muddle on, without fear of an eternal burning, even a mild one.
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Note 1. For biography see Bayle, DHC, arts. "Arnauld' and "Arnauld, Antoine, docteur de Sorbonne' (vol. 2, pp. 389ff. and 400ff.), Carreyre, "Arnauld, Antoine' (Baudrillart, vol. 4, cols. 447-84). For an account of the conflicts in the Catholic Church in France in Arnauld's lifetime see Whiteman, especially pp. 130-42. On the Jansenist movement see Sedgwick, Abercrombie, and Rex, Pascal.
Note 2. On controversies among Catholics over grace see Abercrombie, and Miel, ch. 1.
Note 3. See A. W. Harrison. Arminius seems to have been influenced by criticism of Calvin by the Jesuit Bellarmine (Harrison, p. 123). In turn Jansen "followed closely the proceedings of the Synod of Dort' (Sedgwick, p. 48). At the Synod of Dort (1618-19) the Calvinists rejected the five propositions of the Arminian Remonstrance, which were, briefly: (1) God's decree of Predestination is in general terms---namely to save anyone who, through grace, believes and obeys; (2) Christ died for the forgiveness and redemption of all men (not only for the elect), though only those who believe actually obtain these benefits; (3) no one can do anything truly good without God's grace; (4) grace is not irresistible; (5) it is not certain that those who once have true faith can never fall away. (But it seems to me that something equivalent to Calvinist predestination will follow from (3), if God gives grace only to some and if he has decreed from eternity what graces he will give.) For the Arminian articles and the Synod of Dort see Schaff, Creeds, vol. 2, pp. 545ff.
Note 4. See Oberman, Forerunners, pp. 123-40. Pelagius had no defenders or admitted followers. The accusation of virtual Pelagianism was made so often because no one wanted to be a Pelagian.
Note 5. Arnauld translated Augustine's De correptione et gratia, and seems to have regarded this as the best presentation of Augustine's doctrine. For an English translation see Schaff (ed.), Select Library, vol. 5, pp. 468ff.
Note 6. Some Jesuits reconciled this with predestination by saying that "predestination' means that God foresees that some will not use his help. Others said that God gives to those not predestined to salvation such help as he foresees they will not use. See Miel, pp. 51-2.
Note 7. See below, nn. 191 and 193.
Note 8. See Pascal, Provincial Letters, which also describe the controversy over sufficient grace.
Note 9. For a sympathetic account of the Jesuit attitude see Rex, Pascal, pp. 14ff.
Note 10. See Rowbotham, chs. 9 and 10, and Arnauld's Oeuvres, vol. 32, pp. 213ff.
Note 11. See Douie and Schleyer, and the article "Gallicanism' in New Catholic Encyclopaedia. On Arnauld's Gallicanism see Sedgwick, pp. 156ff.
Note 12. On Conciliarism in the University of Paris see Skinner, vol. 2, pp. 42-7.
Note 14. On Port-Royal see Sedgwick, pp. 14ff.
Note 15. For a summary of the book see Abercrombie, pp. 126- 53.
Note 16. The "fourth objections' (Descartes, vol. 2, pp. 79ff).
Note 17. See his Oeuvres, vols. 27 and 28.
Note 20. They were, in brief, (1) that obedience to God's commands is sometimes impossible; (2) that grace is irresistible; (3) that while moral liberty is inconsistent with constraint it is not inconsistent with other kinds of necessity; (4) that it is semi-Pelagian to say that we can choose whether to accept or refuse grace; (5) that it is semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died for all mankind. See Sedgwick, p. 68.
Note 21. See Sedgwick, pp. 65-71, and Rex, Pascal, pp. 41-2.
Note 22. Sedgwick, p. 73. The Assembly of the Clergy normally did not deal with doctrinal questions. It met every five years mainly to grant a "donation' to the government in return for tax exemption.
Note 23. See Arnauld, Oeuvres, vol. 10, pp. 705ff. Some matters of fact, e.g. that Jesus rose from the dead, are part of Christian revelation, but not that certain statements are in a certain recent book.
Note 24. On the circumstances of the Provincial Letters see Cognet's introduction to his edition, and Rex, Pascal.
Note 25. See his Oeuvres, vols. 19-22.
Note 26. Ibid., vols. 12-15, contain Arnauld's anti-Calvinist writings.
Note 27. In 1703 two of Arnauld's companions were arrested and returned to France. One escaped, the other was imprisoned for seven years until he signed the formulary, and died soon after release. See Sedgwick, p. 189.
Note 28. Arnauld was critical of the persecution of French Calvinists (Orcibal, Louis XIV, p. 73). Nevertheless, he wrote an Apology for the Catholics (Oeuvres, vol. 14), defending "new converts' against Calvinist accusations of insincerity and restating St Augustine's opinion that coercion in religious matters may sometimes do good. When William of Orange invaded England and drove out his wife's father, the Catholic James II, Arnauld wrote A True Portrait of William Henry of Nassau, New Absalom, New Herod, New Cromwell, New Nero (Oeuvres, vol. 37).
Note 29. Ibid., vols. 38-40. See Leibniz, Correspondence, Church, ch. 6, and Lennon, "Commentary', pp. 793-809.
Note 31. Ibid., p. 428. Benjamin Hoadly wrote, "the favour of God. . . equally follows every equal degree of sincerity'; William Law replied, "then. . . he that burns the Christian, if he be but in earnest, has the same title to a reward for it, as he that is burned for believing in Christ' (both quoted Sykes, pp. 142, 147).
Note 32. Bayle refers to the courses in scholastic philosophy, CP, pp. 524, 536. For a short time Bayle studied philosophy at the Jesuit college at Toulouse. Pierre Jurieu saw that Bayle's theory was like the Jesuits', and that it went further: "Clearly the author of the Critique générale must have learnt his abominable moral theory during the three years he spent with the Jesuits of Toulouse. . . Whoever compares what has been said about the philosophic sin of the Jesuits and the effects of good intention according to them will see a perfect resemblance between the doctrine of the pupil and that of his masters. Except that the disciple goes further than his masters. For I know of no Jesuit who has dared to say that a man who commits a parricide with a good intention does an act which is praiseworthy' (Jurieu, p. 6).
Note 33. Denzinger, p. 479, no. 2291. The editor, Fr A. Schonmetzer, SJ, notes that the Jesuit whose thesis occasioned the condemnation did not mean it in the sense into which his Jansenist accusers twisted it, and refers the reader to H. Beylard, SJ, "Le péchéphilosophique'. Fr Beylard repeats what the Jesuits claimed they had meant after Arnauld attacked them, without reference to what Arnauld then said to justify his interpretation (see below, sect. 3). It is ironic that the Jesuits have treated this condemnation just as the Jansenists treated the condemnation of the five propositions attributed to Jansen, by denying that their authors meant their words in the sense condemned. The teacher (the pope) is treated with profound respect, but rivalry prevents the pupils' admitting they ever need to be corrected.
Note 34. Arnauld, letter to Pelisson, in Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 370.
Note 35. Denzinger, p. 480, no. 2302.
Note 36. Ibid., p. 479, no. 2290; and Commandment.
Note 37. Denzinger, p. 481, no. 2308.
Note 38. The modern discussions of philosophic sin known to me are by Deman, Beylard and Ceyssens. Laporte's book is a general study I have found useful.
Note 39. Arnauld's clearest brief account of the theory is in a letter to Pelisson, Oeuvres, vol. 3, pp. 367-70. Arnauld began by attacking a thesis presented in the Jesuit college of Dijon in 1686; as the controversy went on he collected more material until in the end he had extracts from some twenty-five writers going back to 1660. (For earlier material see Ceyssens, p. 390.) The term "philosophic sin' seems to have been used first in 1670 (see Denunciation 1, p. 49). Extracts from Jesuit writers directly relating to philosophic sin will be found in his Denunciations, pp. 3-4, 40-1, 48-53, 78, 307, 367-85 (all written before the controversy broke out), and pp. 5-6, 301-2 (written during the controversy, and perhaps a modification to avoid the attack). Note that the exposition of pp. 14-17 (quoted again pp. 70-9), although it is put into the mouth of a Jesuit, is Arnauld's own, based (he claims) on notes dictated by the professor of Dijon; see pp. 239-41. (In its first occurrence this exposition is not in quotation marks, in its second it is because it is a quotation of the first.) A Jesuit spokesman claimed that the Dijon professor's notes show that he taught the opposite of what Arnauld attributed to him (Beylard, pp. 675-6). The notes were never published.
Note 40. Another Jesuit, Fr Duffy, recognising only one kind of "malice' (wrongness), namely violation of the law of God, classes all sins which are not theological as material. Arnauld regards this as another heresy deriving from the same principle, that sin requires knowledge of the wrongness of the act (Denunciation 2, pp. 152-7).
Note 41. On arguments to show that sin deserves eternal punishment see M. M. Adams. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.87 aa. 3-5.
Note 42. "For a legislator to be personally and formally offended by one who breaks his law, the latter must have some knowledge of this legislator' (Jesuit thesis quoted Denunciation 5, p. 318).
Note 43. Cf: "an offence against a person of infinite dignity known as such (cognitae qua talis)', "against God under the description (sub ratione) of highest and infinite good' (Jesuit writers quoted Denunciation 2, pp. 49, 51).
Note 44. "Just as a human act is never evil without knowledge of its badness, so it is never an offence against God if it is not recognised to be an offence against God'; "a sin committed by someone invincibly ignorant of, or not adverting to, the fact that God exists, or that he is offended by sin, is not mortal'; "if it were possible to prove ignorance of the penalty imposed by the law, it could not be inflicted on a man who could not have done the action had he known it was forbidden under such a penalty' (Jesuit writers quoted Denunciation 1, p. 16, Denunciation 2, p. 78, and Denunciation 5, p. 382).
Note 45. Denunciation 5, pp. 351(34-5), 369(18-21), 376(7-15).
Note 46. Pascal, Provinciales, p. 116. The point of the joke is that Thomists (as the Jesuits were supposed to be) held that no one can possibly choose an evil except as an apparent good; see Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.8 a.1.
Note 47. Anselm, Cur deus homo, I.11 (see also I.21); Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 5-7, 45; Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.21 a.4, q.76 a.4; Bonaventure, In 2 Sent., d.22 a.2 q.3, d.42 a.1 q.1. Cf. Bayle, CP, pp. 422-5; L'Encyclopédie, vol. 3, p. 903.
Note 48. Denunciation 1, p. 4(28-38); cf. Pascal, Provinciales, pp. 59-60.
Note 49. Arnauld uses the term "sufficient grace' sometimes for the grace that God is said to give all mankind, sometimes for the doctrine that he gives it. Similarly he uses "philosophic sin' sometimes for the sin which is said to be merely philosophic, sometimes for the doctrine that such sins are possible; in the last Denunciation (p. 298) he introduced the term "philosophism' for the doctrine.
Note 50. Denunciation 1, pp. 6-9.
Note 51. Denunciation 4, pp. 250-6. The claim of incompatibility is in the words of another writer which Arnauld quotes with apparent approval, p. 252(23-5).
Note 52. In some of his earlier writing against sufficient grace Arnauld did not take the distinction between formal and material sin seriously enough. For example, against Fr Lemoine's theory that no one sins without an inspiration of grace to pray for strength to resist the temptation, Arnauld argued at length that it is absurd to suppose that atheists, Epicureans, etc. think of praying whenever they sin---did Caligula think of praying whenever he gave way to his passions? See Apology, bk. 8, esp. pp. 918-20. Lemoine meant that if they do not think of praying then they do not really and formally (and damnably) sin: if Caligula did not think of praying he did not sin.
Note 53. Denunciation 1, p. 9(20-32). Cf. Denunciation 2, p. 71(11-23).
Note 54. Denunciation 1, pp. 9(36)-10(18). Cf. Pascal, Provinciales, pp. 68-70. See Aristotle, EN, III.1, esp. 1110 b27-33. A position like Aristotle's is adopted by Govier, "Conscientiousness', pp. 249-51, and Goldstick, p. 248.
Note 55. Denunciation 1, pp. 10-11. See Aristotle, EN, VII.8. Aristotle says that the weak are more curable, and that they are better because the first principle (reason) is preserved. But that they are more curable, and for that reason better, need not imply, as Arnauld assumes, that their acts are better.
Note 56. "Those who sin through ignorance do their action only because they will it, though they sin without willing to sin. Thus a sin even of ignorance can be committed only by the will of the sinner, though by a will of the act and not of the sin (voluntate facti, non peccati). All the same, it is a sin, because for that it is enough to do what one is obliged not to do' (Denunciation 1, p. 11, a free translation of Augustine, Retractations, I.15 (PL, vol. 32, col. 609)). Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.76 a.1 ad 3, quoted Excuse, pp. 668-9.
Note 57. "Écrit des Jésuites', appended to Denunciation 2, p. 163. "If the turning toward a created and temporal good could be without a turning away from God, this turning would be disordered but not a mortal sin' (Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 2-2, q.20 a.3). See also Denunciation 2, p. 73(11-13). On Augustine on sin as "turning' see Burnaby, pp. 184-6.
Note 58. Denunciation 2, p. 73. Arnauld refers to the following as places where St Thomas says that in serious sin the two turnings go together: Summa, 1-2, q.72 a.5, q.73 a.3 ad 2 and q.77 a.6 ad 1; 2-2, q.10 a.3 and q.39 a.1 ad 1; 3, q.86 a.4. In venial sin there is a turning towards creatures without a turning away from God; Denunciation 2, p. 81(40). See Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.72 a.5. Arnauld assumes that the seriousness of a sin depends on the objective importance of the law broken and not on the state of mind in which it is broken, which begs the question: perhaps a sin is serious precisely when it is done with the thought of God that makes it theological.
Note 59. Denunciation 2, p. 82; cf. p. 106, and Denunciation 5, pp. 346-7. Arnauld quotes St Thomas: "The seriousness of a sin is from the turning away, which follows from the turning toward per accidens, that is apart from the intention of the sinner' (Summa, 1-2, q.77 a.6 ad 1); and see Boyle. St Thomas's words are not to the point: if someone takes something because he wants to use it, knowing that it belongs to someone else who does not want him to use it, what he intends is not the offence but the use; yet his knowing that the owner objects may well be what causes the offence. That the offence may be apart from the sinner's intention therefore does not imply that it does not require the sort of thought of God that makes it a theological sin.
Note 61. Denunciation 2, pp. 82(19-21), 83(4-6). Arnauld agrees with the Jesuits that sin deserves eternal punishment only because it is against God, but denies that to be "against' God the sin must express or imply contempt; see Denunciation 2, p. 81(15-20).
Note 62. Denunciation 1, pp. 17-21. I will quote only what seem to me the most relevant words; Arnauld quotes more extensively and adds comments. For parallels see Pascal, Provinciales, pp. 63ff.
Note 63. Denunciation 1, pp. 21-4.
Note 65. Ibid., pp. 29-32. Arnauld later gave a real-life example, Denunciation 5, pp. 309-15.
Note 66. According to one Jesuit, God detests philosophic sin as something intrinsically bad, not as something against himself (Denunciation 5, p. 381(29-32)).
Note 67. In saying that fornicators and the like will not possess the kingdom of heaven (1 Cor. 6:9), "the Apostle assumes that those who commit such crimes know that God has forbidden them; and in fact the Corinthians to whom he speaks know it well' (Jesuit writer quoted Denunciation 5, p. 376; cf. p. 372(3- 9)).
Note 68. Cf. "The fire prepared for the wicked is an everlasting fire; but it cannot be thence inferred that he who shall be cast into that fire. . . shall endure. . . so as to be eternally burnt' (Hobbes, p. 490; cf. pp. 646-9). According to one Jesuit writer, philosophic sinners may go to eternal punishment, "but very likely they will not suffer the fire of the eternal flames for ever' (Denunciation 2, p. 80 ("eternal flames' reads "infernal flames' on p. 167)). Arnauld comments that if the scripture text can be interpreted thus for philosophic sinners so it can for all sinners, which is to revive the ideas of Origen (Denunciation 2, pp. 85(12-8), 95(31)). Origen suggested that after punishment even the devil might repent and be reconciled with God. Augustine rejected Origen's suggestion (De civitate dei, XXI.23). On the revival of Origen's ideas, see Walker.
Note 69. "The man who has done something owing to ignorance, and feels not the least vexation at his action, has not acted voluntarily, since he did not know what he was doing, nor yet involuntarily, since he is not pained. Of people, then, who act by reason of ignorance, he who regrets is thought an involuntary agent' (Aristotle, EN, III.1 (trans. W. D. Ross)).
Note 70. Cf. Bayle, DHC, art. "Ruffi', rem. A, vol. 12, pp. 649-50.
Note 71. Aristotle, EN, III.5.
Note 72. "For a short time' is the translation provided by the Jesuit author for the original tantisper. But as Ceyssens points out, p. 392, this translation would require paulisper. The original is obscure; it may mean that ignorance is inculpable as long as grace sufficient to dispel it is not given.
Note 73. For points 1-4 see "Écrit des Jésuites' appended to Denunciation 2, pp. 160ff., esp. pp. 167-8.
Note 74. Denunciation 3, pp. 208, 232; and Denunciation 4, p. 267.
Note 75. Denunciation 5, p. 301.
Note 76. Denunciation 2, pp. 76(23)-77(14), 81(1-6), 85(1-7).
Note 78. Ibid., pp. 98(25)-99(25).
Note 79. Ibid., pp. 99(26)-100(28).
Note 83. Ibid., pp. 125-30, 139(32)-140(7), 146(1-14) See also Infidels, passim.
Note 84. Denunciation 2, pp. 130(31)-131(21), 133(12-35).
Note 85. Ibid., pp. 134-6. Cf. Bayle, DHC, art. "Lugo', rem. G, vol. 9, p. 537; and see above, n.6.
Note 86. Denunciation 2, pp. 87-9, 143.
Note 89. Denunciation 3, p. 234(16-21); Denunciation 4, p. 268(2-11). On the definition of the heresy and its principle, see Denunciation 4, pp. 250-6, and Denunciation 5, pp. 349-55.
Note 90. Denunciation 2, p. 159(13-23).
Note 91. Denunciation 4, pp. 273(34)-274(7); cf. Arnauld's letter to Pelisson, Oeuvres, vol. 3, pp. 367-70. Beylard, pp. 689-93, refers to various Jesuit writers who argued that there are two kinds of malice, against morality and against God. Arnauld did not dispute this, nor did he dispute that it is possible to know that an act is against morality without knowing that it is against God. His contention is that the first kind of malice is never found without the second, and that sin does not require knowledge of the malice of the act; thus, even when the sinner does not know that his act is against God, there is no purely philosophic sin.
Note 92. Denunciation 4, p. 272(19-24); Denunciation 5, p. 331(1-13).
Note 93. Denunciation 4, pp. 274-5.
Note 94. Ibid., pp. 276(37-40), 296(4-5); cf. Denunciation 2, pp. 153-4, and Denunciation 5, pp. 314-313 (misprint for 315).
Note 95. Denunciation 5, p. 379 (but possible in what sense?); cf. pp. 380(31-5), 381(11-20), 368(19-33), 372(20-6).
Note 96. Denunciation 2, p. 302.
Note 97. By itself this would not show that they hold it, since people never grasp all the implications of their own views. But to show that philosophism is connected logically with other parts of their ethical system may help to confirm Arnauld's interpretation of what they say explicitly about it.
Note 98. Denunciation 4, pp. 278-96. Arnauld gives a similar analysis of the remarks on ignorance of the Jesuits of Paris and of Anvers; see Denunciation 4, pp. 269-72, and Denunciation 5, pp. 316-17, 323.
Note 99. Denunciation 4, p. 285.
Note 101. Ibid., pp. 290-91. This means, as Arnauld points out (p. 293), that someone ignorant through negligence that murder is wrong who commits six thousand murders will be liable to blame and punishment not as a murderer but only as one who neglected to inform himself of his duties---blame and punishment to which he would have been liable even if he had not actually committed any murder. The Jesuit General in 1690, Fr Gonzalez, criticised Terrill and others who explain sins of ignorance as if the whole sin were in the negligence; the resulting sin is imputed, he says, because the negligence was culpable, but what is imputed is that sin and not merely the negligence (Ceyssens, pp. 409-10, 425). Bayle held that if someone sins in culpable ignorance he deserves punishment for the sin which caused the ignorance, but not for the sin which results from it (CP, p. 508 (ch. 3)). According to Thomas Aquinas there are in such cases two punishable sins, but the punishment for the resulting sin may be greatly reduced because it is done in ignorance, even though the ignorance is culpable (Summa, 1-2, q.76 a.4 ad 2). See also St Bonaventure, In 2 Sent., d.22 a.2 q.3 ad 5; and Taylor, Ductor dubitantium, pp. 137-9.
Note 102. Denunciation 4, p. 269(31), Denunciation 5, pp. 323-4. Arnauld argues that inadvertence is not a species of ignorance in Ignorance, p. 646. If it is regarded as a species of ignorance, culpable only if one thinks of overcoming it but neglects to do so, then inadvertence can never be culpable, since to think of adverting to something is to advert to it (Denunciation 5, p. 324).
Note 103. Denunciation 4, pp. 272-3, 282-3, 294-6; Denunciation 5, pp. 316-19.
Note 104. Denunciation 5, pp. 357-65.
Note 105. See Beylard, pp. 694 and 696-7, and Deman, cols. 270-1. Arnauld had already argued against the claim that no one can for long be ignorant of God without personal fault; see above, answer to point 3. The reason why, according to Arnauld, no sin can be merely philosophic is not that ignorance of God not due to some personal fault does not happen, but that it does not excuse; see below, sect. 4.
Note 106. The Jesuits of Paris, quoted Denunciation 4, pp. 270- 1.
Note 107. Denunciation 1, p. 7. On the discrepancy between human ideas of justice and God's, see also Ignorance, pp. 652(3-5), 653(16ff.), 657(6-7), and Jansen, vol. 2, col. 299. For criticism see Baird, pp. 48ff.
Note 108. References to Augustinus are (unless otherwise noted) to vol. 2, by column and letter; the letters run down the middle of each page. On the topic of sect. 4 see Alflatt.
Note 109. Augustinus, 287B. "Scholastic' in seventeenth-century writers did not always mean medieval; it was sometimes used to refer to contemporary university or college teachers.
Note 110. Ibid., 311B. On the distinction between natural law and divine positive law see Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 2-2, q.57 a.2 ad 3.
Note 111. Augustinus, 306B, 310B. For this the Jansenists could claim the authority of Gratian, 1, q.4, c.12 (vol. 1, col. 422); see Denunciation 1, p. 39, and Denunciation 4, p. 257.
Note 112. Augustinus, 310A (ch. 6), 312A.
Note 113. Ibid., 312B; cf. Jansen, pp. 279-80. Such ignorance is not a sin, but it is "not without sin', namely the sin which causes it. See Augustinus, p. 279(29), Denunciation 1, p. 34(7-8) and a letter in Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 308(28).
Note 114. Augustinus, chs. 3 and 4, 291ff. Arnauld points out that a passage in which St Thomas might seem to say that invincible ignorance always excuses sin, namely Summa, 1-2, q.76 a.2, is really about another question, whether ignorance is itself a sin. The passage is therefore consistent with Jansen's position. See Excuse, p. 669(30-7).
Note 115. The expression "sins of ignorance' means not sinful ignorance but sins done because of ignorance. See Augustinus, 298B, Arnauld, Ignorance, p. 664(33-4), Chéné, pp. 769-71.
Note 116. Augustinus, 292B (ch. 3), 297BC, 299A-301A.
Note 118. Augustine, Contra faustum, XXII.27 (PL, vol. 42, col. 413). Jansen does not argue explicitly from this definition, but he assumes something like it.
Note 120. But not sufficient, as we will see in sect. 5. It is necessary also to choose out of love of God.
Note 121. "Ignorance, therefore, and weakness are the vices which impede the will from doing good or abstaining from evil' (Augustine, De peccatorum meritis, II.xvii.26; quoted Augustinus, 294BC, and Jansen, p. 283). Augustine often mentions the same two causes (or passion or concupiscence as the second); see e.g. Enchiridion, xxii.81.
Note 122. In certain works written before the Pelagian controversy Augustine made---or seemed to make---avoidability essential to sin. For example, in one place he defined sin as "the will to keep or seek what justice forbids, from which one is free to abstain', and inferred that if someone has no power to abstain we cannot consider the sin his, and that it is the height of injustice to hold anyone guilty for not doing what he could not do (De duabus animabus, xi.15 and xii.17 (PL, vol. 42, col. 105, 107)). Elsewhere he wrote, "Sin is so voluntary an evil that it cannot be sin if it is not voluntary' (De vera religione, xiv.27). Later he explained that these remarks "refer only to the sin which is not a penalty for sin. . . Original sin in infants is not improperly called voluntary because it is inherited from man's first evil will' (Retractations, I.13, and cf. I.15 (PL, vol. 32, cols. 603-4, 610)). See Augustinus, 300AB, 302BC.
Note 123. Arnauld, Denunciation 1, pp. 7(19-27), 9(1)-10(4), Apology, p. 584(18-20).
Note 124. Compare Mill: "this feeling, of our being able to modify our own character if we wish, is itself the feeling of moral freedom', even though the formation of the wish depends on external influences (Logic, vol. 2, p. 841). For more recent examples of similar theories, and criticism, see Campbell, pp. 122ff.
Note 125. Jansen, p. 234(17-23), Apology, p. 583(22-3). Cf. Hobbes, p. 215.
Note 126. Jansen, p. 234(11-6, 24), Apology, p. 586(13-6, 27, 30-1). Cf. Pascal, the third and fourth of the "Écrits sur la gra\AX\ce'. The first of the Five Propositions attributed to Jansen is that God's commands are sometimes impossible. The Jansenists held that we can always keep the commandments if we wish, but that we cannot wish it without grace, which is not always given, not even to the just.
Note 127. Perhaps it seems absurd only because we do not usually consider the possibility that willingness may be necessitated.
Note 128. Denunciation 2, pp. 119, 123-4. The reference to Thomas Aquinas is to Summa, 2-2, q.156 a.3. For more detail on what Arnauld thought about necessity, see below, Appendix.
Note 129. Necessity, p. 220(39). According to Augustine acts resulting from defects of original nature would not be sins (De libero arbitrio, III.xviii.51, quoted Augustinus, 303); Jansen argues that then the blame would fall on God, which is unthinkable; so originally Adam's nature cannot have been defective (Augustinus, 857ff). Ignorance excuses if it is of a kind to which Adam was subject before the fall (Augustinus, 302D-303A).
Note 130. The claim that originally Adam must have been able to attain the vision of God was involved in controversy; see de Lubac, ch. 6. These three propositions cannot logically be held together: (1) that the vision of God was Adam's natural end; (2) that the vision of God cannot be attained by the unaided natural powers of any creature; and (3) that the end natural to a being must be attainable by its unaided natural powers. Proposition 2 was held generally. Some held 2 and 3, which entails rejection of 1; if God meant Adam to attain the vision of himself this was from the outset an end above his nature and any divine help toward it was gratuitous. Others, including Thomas Aquinas, Baius and Jansen, held 1 and 2 and not 3; on their premisses, Adam even before the fall needed divine help to attain his natural end (see Jansen, pp. 167-8). Thomas Aquinas held that this help was always gratuitous. Baius and Jansen held that before the fall it was owed in justice, because if as God created him Adam needed help to attain his natural end then God could not justly withhold that help.
Note 131. Denunciation 2, p. 103(28-9). On ignorance as punishment, see Denunciation 1, p. 34(7-10). On weakness of will as punishment, see Ignorance, p. 652(18-21). Augustine: "Man has no power to be good, either not seeing what he ought to be, or seeing it but not being strong enough to be what he sees he ought to be. Who can doubt that this is a punishment?' (De libero arbitrio, III.xviii.51, quoted Augustinus, 303). Augustine: "It is a most just punishment for sin that each one loses what he was unwilling to use rightly when he could have done so, if he had wished, without any difficulty' (De libero arbitrio, III.xviii.52, quoted Augustinus, 304A). It seems to me that this may be true of something scarce which can be transferred to someone who can use it, but not of dispositions needed to act rightly.
Note 132. Augustine; "You are much mistaken if you think there is no necessity of sinning, or if you do not understand that this necessity is the penalty of a sin committed without necessity' (Opus imperfectum contra Julianum, I.105 (PL, vol. 45, col. 1118), quoted Denunciation 1, p. 34, Augustinus, 300, Jansen, p. 288 etc.). Augustine: "He becomes blinded, and necessarily offends more. . . . This darkening was already their penalty. . . and by this very penalty. . . they fell into worse sins still' (De natura et gratia, xxii.24, quoted in part (see the whole chapter) in Augustinus, 313). This necessity is no excuse (Augustinus, 301BC).
Note 133. Arnauld denies that after Adam's sin God gives grace to all, which some reject (Jansen, p. 284). See Arnauld's comments on the maxim "God will not deny grace to those who do what is in them': "What is in them', if it disposes them to grace, is already due to grace; it is Pelagian to say that grace can be earned as a matter of justice by the effort of natural powers not aided by grace (Denunciation 1, p. 8, Necessity, pp. 226-7, Love, pp. 683-4). On this maxim see Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.109 a.6, 1-2, q.112 a.3, and Oberman, Harvest, pp. 131-3, 44.
Note 134. Necessity, pp. 221(15-22), 272-3, Jansen, p. 155(14-8), Ignorance, p. 654. Augustine: "The whole mass owes the penalty, and if the due penalty of damnation were given to all, undoubtedly that would not be unjust. Those freed from it by grace are called, not vessels of their own merits, but \OD\vessels of mercy\CD\' (De natura et gratia, v.5). Cf. Wendel, pp. 281-2.
Note 135. Necessity, pp. 224-5. To me it seems unfair, or in some way wrong, when there is no scarcity and no reason for any preference, to give to one and not to another, even if neither is entitled.
Note 136. Apology, p. 613, Denunciation 2, p. 122(34-6), Ignorance, p. 657(25-6).
Note 137. But the Jansenist theodicy made crucial use of something like the Jesuits' doctrine of sufficient grace: what the Jesuits said to vindicate God's justice in punishing sinners the Jansenists said to vindicate God's justice in punishing Adam (and his descendants), namely that Adam was able to avoid the first sin. According to Arnauld, following Jansen, it is fundamental to Augustine's whole doctrine to distinguish between the grace of God the creator, given to Adam before he sinned, and the grace of Christ the saviour, given to some and not others after the fall (see Jansen, pp. 167-75, 196-201). Of the grace of God the creator the doctrine of sufficient grace is true: the Jesuits' mistake is not to realise how much difference the fall makes (compare Arnauld's remark (Necessity, p. 220(25-9)) that the proponents of the doctrine of sufficient grace argue like pagan philosophers ignorant of the fall). The grace of God the creator was not irresistible, it made right choice effectively possible but left sin effectively possible also, and it was given (or would have been given if the fall had not taken place) to all mankind equally (Jansen, pp. 154(33-7)). Like the Jesuits Arnauld offers this doctrine as part of a vindication of God's justice (see Necessity, pp. 220-1), and his preferences among theological theories reflect ideas of justice. Thus he prefers Jansen's theory to Calvin's because, given the sufficiency of the grace of God the creator, Adam's sin was not a predestined but an effectively free act. He prefers it to the theories of many Catholics because according to Jansen the decrees of election and reprobation did not "precede' God's foreknowledge of Adam's sin: election is God's decision to give in Christ the grace that will infallibly save some from the punishment justly due to all once Adam sinned, and reprobation is the decision to leave others to the punishment now due to all (see Jansen, pp. 151-6). On these matters see the first and second of Pascal's "Écrits sur la gra\AX\ce', especially pp. 948-54, 964-70; and cf. pp. 979-81.
Note 138. Denunciations, pp. 155-6, 238(19-21), 281-2 and Difficulties, pp. 375-7 (cf. Bayle, DHC, art. "Rimini', rem. A, vol. 12, pp. 531-3). The ambiguity of the term enables Arnauld to discount the papal condemnation of the thesis that "though there is an invincible ignorance of the law of nature' it does not excuse: ignorance of natural law does not excuse, but (in one sense of the term) it is not invincible. See above, n. 35.
Note 139. Denunciation 1, pp. 34-5, and Ignorance, pp. 657-8. Augustine: "Ignorance is a sin in those not willing to learn, and the penalty for sin in those not able; there is therefore no legitimate excuse in one case or the other' (Epistola CXCIV.vi.27 (PL, vol. 33, col. 883), quoted Denunciation 1, p. 35, Necessity, p. 276, Jansen, p. 281, and Ignorance, p. 653).
Note 140. Or perhaps consistently: they may think that ignorance does not extenuate but knowledge aggravates; see Num. 15:28-31. Jansen makes a similar point using a distinction between simple sin and "prevarication' (a term not then restricted to violations of the duty of truthfulness); see Augustinus, 307C-308C; cf. Augustine, Enchiridion, xxii.81.
Note 141. Denunciation 2, pp. 128-9, Ignorance, p. 662, Necessity, pp. 270-1. In these places Arnauld quotes Augustine: the ignorance of one who does not know, though not unwilling to know, ignorant simply because he has not heard, "does not excuse him so as not to burn in the everlasting fire, but perhaps so as to burn more mildly (ut mitius ardeat)' (De gratia et libero arbitrio, iii.5). Augustine and Arnauld quote Lk. 12:47-8: the servant who did not know, and did what deserves a beating, shall be beaten lightly.
Note 142. Denunciation 2, pp. 125-8, 139(34)-140(10), 146(11-14). It is possible conditionally (it could have happened if God had not decided otherwise), but it is not absolutely or effectively possible---it cannot actually happen, given what God has decided (Examen, pp. 387(28)-388(33), 396(25)-397(10)). For a similar distinction in terms of God's absolute and "ordinate' power see Oberman, Harvest, pp. 36-8, 473.
Note 143. Examen, pp. 393-5, Necessity, pp. 269-78. Arnauld quotes Augustine De peccatorum meritis et remissione, I.xxii.31 (those who live where they cannot hear the gospel preached), De natura et gratia, iv.4 (those who cannot hear because of infancy) etc., and Rom. 10:13-17. Those who do not hear will not be damned for not believing (see above, n. 113), but for the other sins which, not having faith and grace, they cannot avoid; Necessity, p. 271(10-13).
Note 144. Cf. Denunciation 2, p. 124(5-8), and Denunciation 5, p. 347(10-11).
Note 145. Disquisition, Love, Excuse.
Note 146. E.g. Dissertation, pp. 47-67, Difficulties, pp. 330ff.
Note 147. See D'Arcy, e.g. pp. 113-21.
Note 148. St Thomas says that ignorance is culpable if one can and should know (Summa, 1-2, q.6 a.8). What if one does not realize that one can and should know? This question, with the assumption that ignorance cannot be culpable unless it is due to negligence or self-deception, leads to Terrill's theory; see above, p. 000 and cf. D'Arcy, p. 127. The assumption is not true, if "can know' is understood to mean to "can with grace': then ignorance of what one can and should know is culpable even if one never realized that one could and should find out.
Note 149. "St Thomas was the last person to push a priori argument in the face of facts. He was handicapped by not having very much information about the moral values of peoples beyond the borders of Christendom' (D'Arcy, p. 138).
Note 150. Thomas Aquinas, In 2 Sent., d.39 q.3 a.3 c and ad 5; De veritate, q.17 a.4 ad 3 and ad 8; cf. St Bonaventure, In 2 Sent., d.39 a.1 q.3 c and ad a. This position was commonplace in the seventeenth century; see e.g. the Anglican moralists Ames, p. 13, Perkins, p. 42, Taylor, Ductor, vol. 9, pp. 132-7, and William Sanderson as quoted in the editor's introduction to Locke, Two Tracts, p. 45.
Note 151. Summa, 1-2, q.19 a.6; cf. Denunciation 2, p. 151(21).
Note 152. This proposition had been attacked in Augustine's time by Julian of Eclanum. For Augustine's answer see Thonnard, pp. 393ff. See also Baird, ch. 5.
Note 153. Contrast the view of Plato and other Greek writers that punishment is wrong unless it makes people better. This seems to be what led Origen to the conclusion that hell is not necessarily eternal. See the editors' notes to Origen, vol. 2, pp. 169, 223. See also Daniélou, pp. 276-88.
Note 154. And what must we think of a parent who does not do what can be done to prevent the fault in the first place? See Bayle, DHC, art. "Origène', rem. E(I) and art. "Pauliciens', rem. E, vol. 11, pp. 256, 485.
Note 155. Necessity, p. 274(7), Ignorance, p. 651(15-21); cf. Augustinus, 295A.
Note 156. See Bayle, DHC, art. "Arminius', rem. E, vol. 2, pp. 387-9 and art. "Pauliciens', rem. M, vol. 11, pp. 504-5.
Note 157. See above, n. 36. Arnauld had attacked the Jesuits on this subject before; see Dissertation.
Note 158. Denunciation 1, p. 33(34), Denunciation 2, p. 73(3-4), Jansen, pp. 309ff., Infidels, p. 383. Cf. Mt. 22:37, 1 Cor. 10:31, Col. 3:17. Arnauld says that this is a commandment of natural (not of divine positive) law (Difficulties, p. 339(8)); and that it is a commandment, not just a counsel (Dissertation, p. 29(18ff.)).
Note 159. Jansen, p. 318(28-37); cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.1 a.2.
Note 160. See below, Appendix, n. 4.
Note 161. Love, pp. 679-83, 686-9. On the necessary desire for happiness and the free acts it motivates, see below, Appendix.
Note 162. Love, pp. 681(6), 687(29-39), 688(12).
Note 163. "Non faciunt bonos vel malos mores nisi boni vel mali amores' (Augustine, Epistola CLV.iv.13 (PL, vol. 33, col. 672); quoted Jansen, p. 307).
Note 164. Dissertation, p. 23(13), Jansen, p. 318(14-17), Commandment, p. 404(31). For a very demanding interpretation of the first commandment, requiring willingness to suffer eternal damnation if that should be God's will, see Burnaby, pp. 272- 93.
Note 165. Dissertation, pp. 17, 20, 25-7, 37.
Note 166. Ibid., p. 51(18ff.), Jansen, p. 319(30-33). Cf. Aristotle, EN, I.8, 1099 a1-2.
Note 167. Dissertation, pp. 65-7, Jansen, p. 319.
Note 168. Denunciation 2, p. 146(1-3), Jansen, pp. 318(5-6), 321(23-4), Difficulties, p. 332(20, 38).
Note 169. See texts referred to above, n. 162.
Note 170. Only a few, notably the Platonists: Denunciation 2, p. 109; cf. Augustine, De civitate dei, VIII.4-12.
Note 171. When they knew God they did not glorify him, Rom. 1:21. See Jansen, p. 322(18-20), and Difficulties, p. 341(31-40).
Note 172. Examen, p. 391(21), Necessity, p. 114.
Note 173. Necessity, pp. 89-134; Jansen, p. 323-9. Arnauld argues (Examen, p. 391(22, 39-40)) that there is no reason to think that philosophy makes anyone humble, which he apparently takes to mean that philosophers cannot be humble. Philosophers of course know better.
Note 174. Necessity, p. 108. The reference is probably to Seneca, De ira, III.xxxvi.3-4.
Note 175. Jansen, p. 327. The reference is to Cicero, De natura deorum, III.xxxvi.86-7.
Note 176. Necessity, p. 125. Arnauld quotes Augustine: "They scorn the judgements of others, as if despising glory, . . . and please themselves: but their virtue, if they have any, is in another way subjected to the praise of man, for he who pleases himself is a man' (De civitate dei, V.20). But satisfying their own judgement is not the same as seeking their own praise.
Note 177. Jansen, p. 326, repeated in Difficulties, p. 342; cf. Augustine, De civitate dei, V.13.
Note 178. See Examen, i.e. "Examination of this proposition: A philosopher who has not yet heard anyone speak of Jesus Christ, but knows God, can, with the help of a grace given through the mercy of Jesus Christ, do an action truly good and virtuous, before having any knowledge of Jesus Christ.'
Note 179. Jansen, pp. 303(17-8), 321(29-30), Infidels, p. 381(6-7), Apology, pp. 64-5; etc. Cf. Augustinus, 541ff. Luther also held that the acts of infidels are sins, and Rome condemned the proposition (Denzinger, p. 431, no. 1925). The Jansenist proposition was also condemned (ibid., p. 481, no. 2308). For Arnauld's comment on the condemnation see Difficulties, pp. 324, 327-46.
Note 180. Infidels, p. 381(10-11), Denunciation 2, p. 144(39-40). On the distinction between secundum officium and secundum finem see Augustine, Contra Julianum, IV.iii.21 (PL, vol. 44, col. 749).
Note 181. Infidels, p. 381, Difficulties, pp. 331, 334(40). This maxim was the reason given by those who held that a person whose conscience is in error about moral principles cannot avoid sin. See above, n. 150. St Bonaventure puts it this way: "It is easier to destroy than to build. Goodness requires the concourse of many circumstances, evil the lack of any one' (In 2 Sent., d.40 a.1 q.1 ad 4).
Note 182. Considered in their species (i.e. as a type) some acts are morally indifferent, neither required nor forbidden; but no individual act is morally indifferent, because it will be good or bad at least by being ordered or not ordered to the last end. See Difficulties, pp. 331(25-8), 336(37)-339(5) (misprint for 337(5)); cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 1-2, q.18 a.9. A relation to the last end is intrinsic to an individual act (Difficulties, p. 336).
Note 183. Difficulties, pp. 330(38), 334.
Note 184. "Malum in genere moris is what we call sin' (Infidels, p. 381; cf. Difficulties, p. 331(38)). This is the most general definition. For others see next paragraph, and above, sect. 4, and n. 122.
Note 185. Dissertation, p. 41(22-7), Jansen, p. 304(39), Infidels, p. 383(14). It is not clear how the sin against the first and greatest commandment can be venial. However, Arnauld distances himself from the view of St Thomas that a violation of any of the commandments is mortal (Dissertation, p. 49(27-31)).
Note 187. Dissertation, p. 42(28-31), Jansen, pp. 306-8, 313-15, Difficulties, pp. 339(30)-341(3), 343(1-7).
Note 189. Denunciation 2, p. 73(4-5). See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, III.116.
Note 190. Jansen, p. 308(11-23), Difficulties, p. 343(8-23, 35- 7).
Note 191. Reason "says that whoever, with a disposition genuinely devoted to duty, does as much as lies in his power'---see above, n. 133---"to satisfy his obligation (at least in a continual approximation to complete harmony with the law), may hope that what is not in his power will be supplied by the supreme Wisdom in some way or other (which can make permanent the disposition to this unceasing approximation)' (Kant, Religion, p. 159). This is a "hope' which reason merely permits.
Note 193. Like the writers Arnauld attacked, Kant does not envisage infinite punishments, he admits the possibility of something like sufficient grace, and he says that God cannot command "pathological' but only "practical' love (cf. "affective' and "effective' love, above). On the first point see Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 638-40 (in so far as we are unworthy we "limit our share' of happiness). On the second, see above, n. 191. On the third, see Groundwork, p. 67.
Note 194. See Kant, Groundwork, pp. 65-9 (where he seems to argue that an act has no moral worth unless it can have had no other motive than devotion to duty; but the most his examples prove is that only then can we know that the act was done for duty's sake). See also Kant, Justice, pp. 18-21.
Note 195. Bayle seems to
have followed the philosophic sin controversy closely. He says
that "many people think' (1) that the doctrine of philosophic sin
is a correct inference from the theory that liberty of
indifference is a precondition of merit and demerit, and (2) that
although it is supported by the light of reason it is inconsistent
with what scripture teaches about sin (CPD, pp. 394-5). Compare
CPD, pp. 324, 326-7, RQP, p. 782. See also DHC, art. "Rimini',
rem. A, vol. 12, pp. 531-3, art. "Lugo', rem. G, vol. 9, p. 537
(natural ideas clearly imply that an action is not morally good or
bad unless one knows whether it is good or bad).
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