On Justification and Its Formal Cause

Important Clarifications

There are two distinct effects of sin, the stain of sin and the obligation to punishment. The stain of sin is some sort of privation that reduces to the genus of quality. The obligation to punishment is a certain relation of the subject to deserved penalties for one’s sin. The remote foundation for the obligation to punishment is the act of sin demeriting and the proximate foundation is the very stain of sin that orders away from God as an effect of the act of sin. Further, the obligation to punish can in a way be said to abide in God insofar as there is a relation of reason of God towards the punishment of evil creatures by His justice. This last aspect is what theologians refer to as God’s extrinsic ordination to eternal punishment, which, in reality, is simply the divine justice itself terminating in the sinner.

The formal cause of something is that which inheres in a thing, actualizing, specifying, and giving entity by its presence. The formal effects are what the form gives to the thing in which it inheres, whether, properly, a) primarily and positively, b) secondarily and privatively, or, improperly, c) consequently and concomitantly. While the first two are proper and per se formal effects, as Ramirez teaches, the last is only improperly a formal effect; it is in the line of efficient cause (effectus quasi effectivi proprie dicti), proceeding from a formal effect per accidens and consequently, in the line of efficient causality (as demeriting). The first takes place in those qualities that begin to reside in the subject (as light illuminates a body). The second takes place in the expulsion of whatever is contrary to the form (as light drives out darkness). The third takes place when something isn’t formally expelled, yet, as a result of some aspect of the form, the reality is dissolved (as when the soul is severed from the body by the corruption of the body).

It is Roman Catholic dogma that the only formal cause required for justification is sanctifying grace. Hence, anything in the line of formal effect in justification must either be grace or be one of the formal effects of grace. This is against the Protestant doctrine that places the personal justice of Christ imputed to us as a formal cause in justification.

Sanctifying grace is a certain supernatural quality that is infused into the soul. Its primary and positive effects are the sanctification of the soul, an adoptive sonship, and right to eternal life. Its secondary and privative effect principally includes the removal of the stain of sin since the stain of sin is a privation of right rectitude, which is exactly what is given by sanctifying grace. Hence, one of the formal effects of sanctifying grace is the “remission of sins” whereby the privation is removed as light drives away darkness and heat drives away cold. Now, as we saw above, the proximate foundation for the obligation to punishment is the order that results from the stain of sin against the order of justice. Hence, the obligation is removed as to its foundation, i.e., consequently and concomitantly, yet not as one of sanctifying grace’s formal effects. The reason for this is that a formal cause and its formal effects change the intrinsic character of the subject in which it inheres. Yet, as a relation, the formal character of the obligation to punishment is found in something relative (respectus), not in something absolute. Hence, the removal of the obligation to punishment is not, properly speaking, a formal effect of sanctifying grace, although it can be described as an effect that is consequent and concomitant to the infusion of sanctifying grace insofar as that quality in which it has its foundation is removed.

Yet, there is more as well. There is a difficulty that is present here in the very order of justice. For, justice ordains that certain acts ought to be punished with proportionate punishments. This rule is upheld ultimately in the eternal law and the very justice of God ordaining it to punishment. Hence, there is a relation of reason on the part of God towards the punishment of the unjust. Now, while the foundation for the obligation to punishment may have been dissolved on the part of the one who is justified, on the part of the penal order and the judge who upholds it, there has not been an adequate satisfaction of the punishment due to such a crime and the judge has not been propitiated as to the punishment he wills to inflict by justice on the one sinning. Hence, while the dissolution of the foundation can explain the removal in the penal order on the part of the one who sins and is justified, yet it does not explain it on the part of the penal order itself (which requires satisfaction) or on the part of the judge who upholds the penal order (which requires propitiation). This is not to say that these other two aspects are not necessarily connected with the removal of the obligation to punishment on the part of the subject, yet it is to say that it does not adequately explain it on its own. Other things are needed. The right to punish is foregone by God by his merciful forgiveness of sins (condonatio). The penal order is satisfied by the voluntary satisfaction of Christ suffering which is imputed to us.

This condonatio must be an objectively conditional decree of God rather than an objectively absolute decree (i.e., “if a man has sanctifying grace and its formal effects along with the satisfaction of Chirst is applied to x, then the punishment will not occur”), which is not purely arbitrary, but based on the real dissolution of the foundation for the obligation to punishment in man from sanctifying grace and the satisfaction of Christ for sins, along with the various inconveniences that would follow from such ordination to eternal punishment from one with sanctifying grace and its primary formal effects.

It would be quite crude to think of this process as we would the appeasing of a wrathful man. The man enraged by an offense receives some beloved object and this quells his wrath, turning him peaceful. Yet, quite the opposite happens on the case of God. The denomination of God as punisher-of-Peter and as not-punisher-of-Peter are each extrinsic and arise from some condition on the part of the object which forms the basis of the relation of reason. God has eternally willed, as an act of justice and mercy, to not punish such-and-such a man if the proper conditions are met on the part of the object (i.e., satisfaction, propitiation, and remission). This is an eternal decree of God; for a man to pass from punished to not-punished does not change anything on the part of God (who is immutable), rather it is some change on the part of the object. It is here that we say that there is a change of extrinsic denomination. To give an analogy, before the creation of the world, God was not ‘Creator’ since ‘Creator’ assumes ‘creation.’ Yet, when creation comes to be, God is now know as ‘Creator’ due to the dual foundation of the eternal act of his immutable will willing creation in time and the actual coming into being of creation in time. There is no change on the part of God, but a change of extrinsic denomination. In a similar manner, God-as-propitiated is an extrinsic denomination as well, based on the dual foundation of his eternal will to accept propitiation (willing not to punish in such a case) and the actual existence of propitiation.

Objection. Doesn’t this make additional formal causes?

It is here that terminological imprecision has tortured the minds of men. Remember this principle from above: the formal cause is that which informs the thing. Not everything can be a formal cause or properly has a formal cause.

First, God has no formal cause. The extinction of the extrinsic order of punishment by God’s merciful forgiveness has no formal cause. What would it be? Who could assert that there is some sort of informing form that actualizes God? Rather, the merciful forgiveness of God is really identical with the simple, eternal, and uncreated act of God. This is simply infallibly connected with the infusion of grace, but does not offer a distinct formal cause. There are many other reasons why such a juridical act would be absurdly labeled as a distinct formal cause, but this is the easiest to see.

Second, the transient act of satisfaction itself cannot be a formal cause. The transient act is only formal in its terminus; a transient act is not form, it produces form in another. Hence, we can either consider it as terminating in God (i.e., ascending to God to impetrate forgiveness) or as terminating in the creature (i.e., descending to us as meritorious cause of grace). In the former case, we can give the same as the first argument. In the latter case, it reduces to our consideration of sanctifying grace above.

Neither of these two aspects to our redemption can be a formal cause for the much simpler reason that they do not inhere and inform some subject, actualizing and specifying that subject. To describe them as a formal cause is a sharp abuse of language.

Hence, when we consider each of the formal effects of justification in the sanctification of man, the expulsion of guilt, and the removal of the foundation for the obligation to punishment, the sole formal cause of these effects is sanctifying grace. Other realities concomitant with or consequent to such an infusion are not additional formal causes, nor can they be in each case that they have been brought forward. Rather, as Catholic theologians teach, such are only properly in the line of efficient cause, not in the line of formal cause.