ARTICLE VII

In the Seventh Article We Ask: ARE WE OBLIGED TO CONFORM OUR WILL TO THE DIVINE WILL?

Difficulties:

It seems that we are not, for

1. No one is held to the impossible. But it is impossible for us to conform our will to the divine will, since the divine will is unknown to us. Therefore we are not held to the conformity mentioned.

2. Whoever does not do that to which he is obliged sins. If, then, we are obliged to conform our will to the divine will, we sin in not conforming it. But whoever sins mortally does not conform his will to the divine in the matter in which he sins. By that very fact, therefore, he sins. He sins, however, by some other specific sin, such as stealing or fornicating. Hence whoever sins commits two sins. But this seems to be absurd.

3. The answer was given that the commandment about the conformity of our will to the divine, being affirmative, does not bind to constant compliance though it constantly binds. Thus it is not necessary that whenever conformity is lacking there is sin.--On the contrary, although a person not observing an affirmative commandment does not sin at every moment in which he is not observing it, yet he does sin whenever he acts contrary to it. Thus a person sins whenever he dishonors his parents, although he does not always sin when he is not actually honoring them. But he who sins mortally acts contrary to the conformity in question. It is therefore by this fact that he sins.

4. Whoever does not observe that to which he is obliged is a transgressor. But one who sins venially does not conform his will to the divine will. If he is obliged to conform to it, he will be a transgressor and so will sin mortally.

5. The answer was given that he is not obliged at that moment in which he is sinning venially, because affirmative commandments do not oblige us to comply always.--On the contrary, whoever does not comply with an affirmative commandment at the place and time at which it binds, is adjudged a transgressor. But it seems that no other time for conforming our will to the divine will can be determined upon than that at which the will passes into act. Hence, whenever the will passes into act, unless it is conformed to the divine will, there seems to be a sin; and so when a person sins venially, the sin seems to be mortal.

6. No one is held to the impossible. But the obstinate cannot conform their will to the divine. They are therefore not held to this conformity. And so neither are others; otherwise the obstinate would draw an advantage from their obstinacy.

7. Since God wills from charity whatever He wills, being charity Himself, if we are obliged to conform our will to God's, we are obliged to have charity. But a person who does not have charity cannot obtain it unless he carefully prepares himself for it. One not having charity is therefore obliged to prepare himself continuously to have it. Thus at every instant at which he does not have charity he sins, since his not having it comes from a lack of preparation.

8. Since the form of an act consists especially in the manner of acting, if we are held to conformity with the divine will, we must will a thing in the same manner in which God wills it. Now a person can imitate the manner of the divine will after a fashion both by natural love and by gratuitous love. The conformity of which we speak, however, cannot be taken with reference to natural love, because even infidels and sinners conform their will to God's in this manner as long as the natural love of good is alive within them. Similarly it cannot be taken with reference to gratuitous love, that is, charity. In that case we should be obliged to will from charity whatever we will. But this is contrary to the opinion of many, who say that the manner does not fall within the scope of the commandment. It therefore seems that we are not obliged to conform our will to the divine will.

9. Commenting on the words of the Psalm (32:1): "Praise becometh the upright," the Gloss says: "The distance between God's will and man's is just as great as that between God and man." But God is so distant from man that man cannot be conformed to Him. Since man is infinitely distant from God, there cannot be any proportion between him and God. Then neither can man's will be conformed to God's.

10. Those things are said to be conformed which agree in some one form. Consequently, if our will can be conformed to the divine, there must be some one form in which the two wills agree. Then there would be something simpler than the divine will. But that is impossible.

11. Conformity is a reciprocal relation. In such relations each one of the extremes is referred to the other by the same relation. Thus a friend is said to be a friend to his friend, and a brother, a brother to his brother. If, then, our will can conform to the divine will, and as a result we are held to the conformity in question, the divine will can conform to ours. But that seems unacceptable.

12. Things that we are able to do or not do fall within the scope of commandments, and we are held to them. But we cannot help but conform our will to God's, because, as Anselm says, whoever departs from God's will in some particular fulfills the divine will in another, just as the more distant something that is within a spherical body gets from one part of the circumference, the more it draws near to some other part. We are therefore not bound to the conformity in question as we are bound to the matters which fall under a commandment.

To the Contrary:

1'. Regarding the words of the Psalm (32:1): "Praise becometh the upright," the Gloss says: "The upright are those who direct their hearts according to the will of God." But everyone is obliged to be upright. Hence everyone is obliged to the above-mentioned conformity.

2'. Every being should conform to its rule. But the divine will is the rule of ours, since correctness of will is found first in God. Our will should therefore conform to the divine will.

REPLY:

Everyone is obliged to conform his will to God's. The reason for this can be taken from the fact that in every genus there is some one thing which is primary and is the measure of all the other things which are in that genus, for in it the nature of the genus is most perfectly found. This is verified of the nature of color, for example, in whiteness, which is called the measure of all colors because the extent to which each color shares in the nature of the genus is known from its nearness to whiteness or its remoteness from it, as is said in the Metaphysics. In this way God Himself is the measure of all beings, as can be gathered from the words of the Commentator.

Every being has the act of existing in the proportion in which it approaches God by likeness. But according as it is found to be unlike Him, it approximates non-existence. And the same must be said of all the attributes which are found both in God and in creatures. Hence His intellect is the measure of all knowledge; His goodness, of all goodness; and, to speak more to the point, His good will, of every good will. Every good will is therefore good by reason of its being conformed to the divine good will. Accordingly, since everyone is obliged to have a good will, he is likewise obliged to have a will conformed to the divine will.

But it should be noted that this conformity can be taken in many senses. We are speaking here of will in the sense of the volitional act. Our conformity to God on the part of the will as a faculty is natural, belonging to the image. It accordingly does not fall under any commandment. But the act of the divine will has not only this characteristic, that it is an act of will, but at the same time this also, that it is the cause of all things that are acts. The act of our will can therefore conform to the divine will either as an effect to its cause or as a will to a will.

Now the conformity of an effect to its cause is found in a different way among natural and among voluntary causes. In the case of natural causes the conformity is to be found according to a likeness in nature. For example, man begets a man, and fire begets fire. But in the case of voluntary causes the effect is said to conform to the cause by reason of the fact that the cause is fulfilled in the effect. Thus a product of art is likened to its cause, not because it is of the same nature as the art which is in the mind of the artist, but because the form of the art is fulfilled in the product. It is in this way that an effect of the will is conformed to the will when what the will disposes comes about. And so an act of our will conforms to the divine will by reason of the fact that we will what God wants us to will.

The conformity of one will to another in its act, however, can be taken in two ways: (1) according to the form of a species, as man is like man, and (2) according to an added form, as a wise man is like a wise man.

One will is like another in species, I say, when the two have in common the same object; for from the object the act draws its species. But in the object of the will two aspects are to be taken into account: one which is, as it were, material--the thing willed; another which is, as it were, formal--the reason for willing, which is the end. It is like the case of the object of sight, in which color is in effect material, and light is formal, because by light the color is made actually visible. Thus on the part of the object two sorts of conformity can be found. One derives from the thing willed. A man, for instance, wills something that God wills. This conformity is, in a sense, based upon the material cause; for the object is, as it were, the matter of the act. It is accordingly the least among the types of conformity. The other sort of conformity derives from the reason for willing or the end. This is had when someone wills something for the same reason for which God wills it. Conformity of this kind is based upon the final cause.

A form added to an act, however, is the mode which it gets from the habit which elicits it. It is in this way that our will is said to be conformed to the divine when a person wills something from charity just as God does. This is, in a sense, based upon the formal cause.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. The will of God cannot be fully known to us. Hence, neither can we fully conform our will to His. But we can conform it in proportion to the knowledge which we have, and we are held to this.

2. A man does not commit two sins in one act, since the essence of sin is an act. There can, however, be two deformities of sin in one act. This is the case when there is joined to the act of some particular sin a circumstance which transmits to it the deformity of another sin. When a man steals the goods of another in order to spend them upon harlots, for instance, the act of theft takes on the deformity of lust from the circumstance of the reason why.

When, however, there is found in the act of some sin, over and above the specific deformity of that sin, some element of deformity which is common to every sin, by that fact neither the sin nor the deformity of the sin is doubled. For such things as are to be found in all sins in common are, as it were, the essential principles of sin as such; and they are included in the deformity of any specific sin just as the principles of a genus are included in the formal character of the species. Not being distinct from the specific deformity of the sin, they do not add to it numerically. Such things are turning away from God, not obeying the divine law, and others, among which must be accounted the lack of conformity of which we are speaking. Hence it is not necessary that such a defect should double the sin or the deformity of the sin.

3. Although one who acts contrary to conformity sins by this very fact, yet by reason of what is generic he does not add anything numerically to what is specific.

4. Although one who sins venially does not in this act conform his will to the divine, yet he does conform it habitually. Nor is he obliged always to go into act, but only according to the place and time. He is, however, obliged never to do anything contrary. But one who sins venially does not act contrary to the conformity in question but rather beyond its scope. Hence it does not follow that he sins mortally.

5. The commandment about the conformity of will does not bind every time our will passes into act but just when we are obliged to think about the state of our salvation, as when we are obliged to confess or receive the sacraments or do something of the sort.

6. A person is said to be obstinate in two senses: (1) This is said absolutely, when he has a will irreversibly adhering to evil. In this sense those who are in hell are obstinate, but not anyone in this life. Those who are in hell are still held to the conformity of which we are treating. Although they cannot attain it, nevertheless they were themselves the cause of their own impotence. They accordingly sin in not conforming their wills, although it happens that they do not incur demerit because they are not wayfarers. (2) A person is said to be obstinate in a certain respect, when, namely, he has a will adhering to evil which is not altogether irreversible but reversible only with great difficulty. It is in this sense that some are said to be obstinate in this life. These are able to conform their will to God's. Hence in not conforming they not only sin but also incur demerit.

7. Everyone is obliged, as far as depends upon him, to have charity; and whoever does not sins by a sin of omission. Still he does not necessarily sin at every moment in which he does not have it, but at the time at which he was bound to have it, as when it was incumbent upon him to do something which cannot be done without charity, such as to receive the sacraments.

8. We are said to be obliged to something in two ways: (1) We are obliged in such a way that, if we do not do it, we incur a penalty. And this is the proper sense of being obliged. According to the more common opinion we are not obliged in this way to do anything from charity; but we are so obliged to do something from natural love, and without at least this whatever is done is badly done. By natural love I mean not only that which is implanted in us by nature and is common to all, as all desire happiness, but also that to which a person can attain by natural principles. It is found in actions that are good by reason of their genus, and also in the political virtues. (2) We are said to be obliged to something because without it we are unable to attain our end, beatitude. In this way we are obliged to do something from charity, without which nothing that merits eternal life can be done. It is accordingly clear how the mode of charity in one way falls within the scope of commandment and in another does not.

9. Man is conformed to God since he is made to God's image and likeness. It is true that, because man is infinitely distant from God, there cannot be a proportion between him and God in the proper sense of proportion as found among quantities, consisting of a certain measure of two quantities compared to each other. Nevertheless, in the sense in which the term proportion is transferred to signify any relationship of one thing to another (as we say that there is a likeness of proportions in this instance: the pilot is to his ship as the ruler to the commonwealth), nothing prevents our saying that there is a proportion of man to God, since man stands in a certain relationship to Him inasmuch as he is made by God and subject to Him.

Or the answer could be given that, although there cannot be between the finite and the infinite a proportion properly so called, yet there can be a proportionality or the likeness of two proportions. We say that four is proportioned to two because it is the double; but we say that four is proportionable to six because four is to two as six is to three. In the same way, although the finite and the infinite cannot be proportioned, they can be proportionable, because the finite is equal to the finite just as the infinite is to the infinite. In this way there is a likeness of the creature to God, because the creature stands to the things which are its own as God does to those which belong to Him.

10. The creature is not said to be conformed to God as to one who shares in the same form in which it shares, but because God is substantially the very form in which the creature participates by a sort of imitation. It is as if fire were likened to a separate subsistent heat.

11. Although likeness and conformity are reciprocal relations, these terms do not always designate indifferently the reference of either one of the related members to the other. It is only when the form on which the likeness or conformity is based is in each of the extremes in the same way, as whiteness is in two men. In that case either one can aptly be said to have the form of the other; and this is what is meant when something is said to be like another. But when the form is in one principally and in the other in a secondary way, reciprocity of the likeness is not had. Thus we say that the statue of Hercules is like Hercules, but not the other way about; for it cannot be said that Hercules has the form of the statue, but only that the statue has the form of Hercules. In this way creatures are said to be similar and conformed to God but not God to creatures. But since conformation is a motion toward conformity, it does not imply a reciprocal relation but presupposes one of the related members and denotes that something else is moving toward conformity with it. Succeeding things are conformed to preceding, but not conversely.

12. The statement of Anselm is to be understood as meaning, not that man always does the will of God as far as he can, but that the divine will is always fulfilled in his regard whether he wills it or not.