De causa Dei: Book II, Chapter 19
Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium (1344). English translation: Wroot Press, CC BY-NC 4.0; machine-learning use permitted with attribution (https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/rights/).
Source: Henry Savile's edition, London 1618, 538B–540A; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/2/19/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[538B–538C]
CHAPTER 19. He raises an objection and replies.

But perhaps someone will object against these claims. Augustine says in On the Perfection of Human Righteousness 5 that sin is an act, not a thing. The Hypognosticon 19 says the same: "Evil is not a nature, but an act that, in the truest sense, comes about through a defect of good."[n1] And in the Sentences of Prosper, proposition 176: "Evil has no substance, because what does not have God as its author is not; and so the vice of corruption is nothing other than the disordered desire or action of the will." Augustine also says in On True Religion 37 that to act and to suffer is not a substance.

To the first, it must be said that, in Augustine's manner of speaking, "thing" is taken in two ways, generally and specially. Generally, it is convertible with the word "being" or "something" in its most general commonness, that is, as common to every being, whether true or fictive, imagined, or understood in any way whatever, as the Philosopher speaks in Peri hermeneias 2, 5, and in Metaphysics 6, and in many other places,[n2] and as Anselm plainly does in On the Fall of the Devil 11. In this sense "thing" is derived from reri (to reckon),[n3] and so it is common to whatever exists or does not exist, about which one can reckon. Hence in this sense it also includes pure privation, of which sin is one kind. Specially, however, "thing" is derived from ratitas or ratum (fixity, the fixed), and in this sense it includes only

[538D–538E]
what exists fixedly, whether it exists fixedly through itself, as substance does, or through another, as accidents do through substance; and in this sense it is common to the ten categories only. More specially still, "thing" is derived from what is fixed and permanent, whose being is not in flux or in becoming; and most specially of all, "thing" is derived from what exists fixedly through itself, as substance alone does. Now, speaking in the first or second sense, an act is a thing; speaking in the third or fourth, it is not; and the words of Augustine bear witness to this sense. "We reply," he says, "that sin is indeed said to be an act, not a thing. So too in the body, lameness is by the same reasoning an act and not a thing, since the thing is the foot itself, or the body, or the man; but the very defect by which the man limps is neither foot, nor body, nor man. Let him therefore ask what name he should give to that same defect: whether he wants to call it a thing, or an act, or rather the evil quality of a thing by which the act exists as deformed. So also in the inner man, the mind is a thing, plunder is an act, and avarice is a vice, that is, the quality according to which the mind is evil even when it does nothing." See how here he wishes nothing but substance to be called by the name of "thing"; indeed he distinguishes quality from thing, indicating that it ought not to be called a thing. See also another witness, Thomas, On Evil, question 19,[n4] who understands and explains this same authority, when it is raised as an objection against him, in the same way. Hence he says: "To the third it must be said that 'being' and 'thing' are said without qualification of substance, but of accidents only with qualification; and according to this Augustine says: 'An act is not a thing.'" Alternatively, too,[n5] without departing from the mind of Augustine, it can be said that Augustine says this not according to the truth, nor according to his own opinion, but according to the manner of speaking of Caelestius himself, against whom he is arguing there, and of those like him, against whom he argues in the same way in the book On Nature and Grace cited above. His words recited above show this well enough: "We reply," he says, "that sin

[539A–539B]
is indeed said to be an act, not a thing." He does not reply that sin is an act and not a thing, nor that he himself says it is so, but that it is said to be so, that is, according to the well-known and common manner of speaking of certain people; and he adds, "but in the body also, lameness is by the same reasoning an act and not a thing": yet he himself does not approve that reasoning. And below: "Let him therefore ask what name he should give to that same defect: whether he wants to call it a thing, or an act, or rather the evil quality of a thing." See how Augustine uses names according to the imposition and manner of speaking of Caelestius. Hence also below in the same chapter, 25, when a testimony of Scripture about Job has been cited by Caelestius ("There was a man abstaining from every evil thing"), by which he wished to show that a man can live here without sin, Augustine adds: "I wonder that he dared to put forward this testimony, in which it is said 'abstaining from every evil thing,' when he wants this understood as 'from every sin,' though he said above that sin is an evil act, not a thing. Let him remember, then, that even if it is an act, it can be called a thing." The same Augustine, in On Nature and Grace 19, recites from one Caelestian, against whom he is arguing there, in this way: "Before all else I think we must ask," he says, that is, the Caelestian, "what sin is: a substance? or something altogether lacking substance? It is a name by which is expressed not a thing, not an existing being, not some body, but an act wrongly done." Then he adds, the same Caelestian, "I believe it is so." And in chapter 20, Augustine, replying according to his own opinion, says that sin is not a substance, and yet it vitiates human nature. And in chapter 65 the Caelestian cites from John, bishop of Constantinople,[n6] that sin is not a substance but a malignant act; and Augustine adds, "Who denies this?" So when Augustine denies that the act of sin is a thing, by "thing" he means a thing fixed in itself, that is, substance, according to the well-known manner of speaking of others rather than his own. Therefore in On the Perfection of Righteousness 25, having rejected that manner of speaking, he says according to his own opinion that an act is a thing; many other authorities of his cited in the preceding chapter say the same. The authorities of Holy Scripture also testify to this very point most copiously. Hence Gen 34 says that the sons of Jacob were very angry because Shechem, by forcing Dinah their sister,

[539C–539D]
had done a foul thing in Israel, and, in violating the daughter of Jacob, had perpetrated an unlawful thing. And in Gen 38 it is said that the Lord struck down Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground, because he did a detestable thing; and in Gen 44: "You have done a most wicked thing," namely by stealing. And in Num 11 it is said that the murmuring of the people and their desire for meat seemed to Moses an intolerable thing. And in Judges 19: "Never was such a thing done in Israel?" And in Psalm 100 [101]: "I did not set an unjust thing before my eyes." And in 1 Kgs [1 Sam] 2: Eli said to his sons, "Why do you do things of this kind, which I hear, the worst things, from the whole people?", that is, plunder and fornication, or adultery. And below, in chapter 24, holy David says, "May God be merciful to me, that I not do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to put forth my hand against him." And in 3 Kgs [1 Kgs] 20: "But this thing I cannot do," namely to give what he had. And in Proverbs 12: "He does things worthy of confusion." And in Daniel 13: "No shameful thing was found in her," namely adultery. And in Hebrews 6 the Apostle calls the promise, or pledge, of God and his oath two things: "by two immovable things," he says, "in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have the strongest consolation."[n7] Thus the reply is clear to the objections which say that an act is not a thing.

As to the other statements, which say that evil is not a nature or a substance but an act or an action, it must be said that "evil" is taken in two ways, as the 26th of the first teaches:[n8] for malice itself, which is a pure privation, and for the subject of that privation. An evil act likewise can be taken in two ways: in one way for the very substance, or essence, of the act; in the other way, figuratively and tropically, for its malice or deformity. For that is how the Parisian article speaks, and the other authorities cited in the preceding chapter. Hence Augustine says in City of God 12, 8, that an evil will is not an affection but a defection. And in On Free Choice 2, last chapter, he says that the movement of aversion of the will, which is sin, is defective and a defect, and therefore is not from God. And in Against Julian 1, at the end: "What," he says, "is malice but the lack of good? For things are not evil unless they are deprived of goods, since the lack of good is the root of malice; and from this let him understand that the tree is evil, and the will evil, because it is a falling away from the highest good." And Bernard, On Free Choice 10:

[539E]
"To will evil," he says, "is a defect of the will." Augustine also, in Against Julian 6, 19, expounding the saying of certain Philosophers, namely that lust is a certain part of the soul, speaks thus: "Those Philosophers seem to me to have called by the name 'lust' the vicious part of the soul, the part in which is the vice that is called lust, just as a house is called by the name 'house' for those who are in the house; and this trope is a certain rhetorical colour, which in the last book of Tully's New Rhetoric is called denominatio[n9] and is set down there, at 33, among the colours, and it is a quite frequent manner of speaking in Holy Scripture. Hence the Apostle says in Ephesians 5: "You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord." And Zechariah 8: "As you were a curse among the nations, house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you, and you will be a blessing among the nations, house of Judah and house of Israel." And Deuteronomy 17: "You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or a sheep in which there is a blemish, or any vice at all, [n10] because that is an abomination to the Lord your God." And Proverbs 3: "Every mocker is an abomination to the Lord."

[540A]
And Proverbs 11: "A deceitful scale is an abomination with God." And 15: "Evil thoughts are an abomination of the Lord." And 16: "Every arrogant person is an abomination of the Lord." And Isaiah 1: "Incense is an abomination to me." And below, in 41, he says plainly to the purpose: "Behold, you are from nothing, and your work from that which is not; an abomination is he who chose you." And many similar things occur very often in Scripture. Evil in the first sense, therefore, is act in the second sense, and evil in the second sense is act in the first sense.[n11] That saying of Augustine in On True Religion, that to act and to suffer is not a substance, is true to the letter and to the mind: for he understands that it is not substance properly so called, because it does not subsist through itself, or, more commonly, that it is not a permanent essence but one that consists always in becoming, or in flux. For this reason it cannot be proved from this that to act, or an act, or an action, has no essence and is nothing.

NOTES

1. Hypognosticon (Hypomnesticon) is pseudo-Augustinian, not by Augustine; Bradwardine and Savile cite it under his name. The Prosper cited just after is the compiler of the Sentences drawn from Augustine.
2. "Philos. 2. peri hermenias 5. et 6. Metaphys.": the Latin gives only these bare numerals, and the grouping is ambiguous. Following rule 4 I keep them without expansion: Peri hermeneias "2, 5" and Metaphysics "6".
3. The argument depends on two etymologies of res: from reri ("to reckon, think"), which makes res anything that can be thought; and from ratus (hence ratitas, ratum, "fixed, established"), which makes it what exists "fixedly" (rate). Hence "fixed in itself" (per se ratam) below means substance. The pun cannot be kept in English; the senses are four: (1) anything thinkable; (2) what exists fixedly, in substance or accident; (3) what is fixed and permanent, not in flux; (4) substance alone.
4. Thomas's De malo has only sixteen questions, so "question 19" cannot be right as a reference to that work. The number is translated as printed and the passage is not identified.
5. "nec recedendo": the nec does not construe naturally, since the sentence is affirmative ("it can be said that Augustine says this not according to the truth…"). I take it as "and, too," continuing the preceding explanation, and render accordingly.
6. John of Constantinople is John Chrysostom, whom Caelestius and the Caelestians (and Augustine in De natura et gratia) cite as a witness.
7. The keyed margins are grouped under single markers (539C·2, 539C·4), and the markers do not stand level with their citations in the print (for example 539C·1 falls at Gen 38, while the margin entry "Num." belongs beside Num 11). They are reproduced exactly as given.
8. "sicut docet 26um. primi" is left unexpanded, as given (rule 4); it presumably refers to a numbered section of Book I, but I have not resolved it.
9. The Rhetorica ad Herennium, which the Middle Ages attributed to Cicero ("Tully") and called the "new Rhetoric" (as against the De inventione, the "old"); book 4 treats the figures. Denominatio is what we call metonymy, the substitution of the container for the contents ("house" for its occupants) or of an attribute for the thing named.
10. The marker is printed in the keyed Latin as 540E·1, but page 540 has no section E; the "Parab." margin stands at the top of 540A beside the first line. The marker is kept as given. The sentence runs over the page turn (catchword quam / quam vitij).
11. Evil "in the first sense" is malice itself, a pure privation; this is "act in the second sense", namely the figurative use of "act" for its malice or deformity. Evil "in the second sense", the subject of the privation, is "act in the first sense", namely the substance or essence of the act.