Human Acts
6. Voluntariness
1. We have seen that a human act is a free will act. It is any thought, word, deed, desire, or omission which comes from a man by his free, knowing, and deliberate choice. The Latin noun voluntas means the will, and the adjective which means pertaining to the will is voluntarius. From these Latin words we have the terms voluntary and voluntariness. A voluntary act is an act which proceeds from free will acting in the light of knowledge; such an act has voluntariness. Since every human act is a free will act, every human act is voluntary; every human act is performed with voluntariness.
2. Animals less than man are incapable of acting with true voluntariness, for they lack intellect and free will. Animals have sense knowledge, and can make sense judgment a guide for their action. But their acts never have a free and responsible voluntariness.
3. Voluntariness appears in every human act, even in human acts of omission, that is, in man's willful failure to act when he should act, or at least could act.
4. Violence, or force applied from outside, cannot directly affect the human will. The will has two kinds of acts: elicited acts which it completes within itself, such as loving, desiring, intending; and commanded acts which are completed, on command of the will, by other powers of human nature, such as studying, deliberate walking, speaking. Now, violence cannot directly affect elicited acts, but it can hamper or prevent commanded acts. A man securely tied may will to walk, but he cannot walk. Or a man may choose to read or study and have his will hampered by fading light, or thwarted by a person who takes away his book.
5. An act which is opposed to the will is involuntary. Acts done from violence are therefore involuntary acts; they are not human acts because they are not chosen, but are opposed, by the will.
6. When fear is the motive of an act, the act remains a human act, and is voluntary. But, since such an act would not be done were it not for the stress of fear, there is something involuntary about it. The captain of a vessel who throws valuable cargo overboard to lighten ship in a storm does what he chooses to do; his act is, in itself or simply, a voluntary act. But the same act is in a way an involuntary act inasmuch as it would not be done were it not for fear of disaster; there is in the act an element of involuntariness. Hence we say that an act done out of fear (not merely done in fear or with fear) is simply voluntary, and, in some respects, involuntary.
7. Concupiscence is strong tendency or desire in the sensitive appetites. When the will permits the influence of concupiscence to rise out of the sentient order into the intellective order, this influence can strongly affect the will and its acts. Inasmuch as concupiscence makes the will act more intense, it is said to increase voluntariness; inasmuch as it hurries and hampers free and deliberate choice, concupiscence lessens voluntariness.
8. Ignorance affects the voluntariness of human acts. (a) Antecedent ignorance, which is ignorance blamelessly present before the will-act, destroys voluntariness. (b) Consequent ignorance, which is present by the will's choice or deliberate fault, does not destroy voluntariness, but regularly lessens it. (c) Concomitant ignorance, which accompanies the will-act without influencing it, renders the will-act nonvoluntary.
7. Circumstances of Human Acts
1. Conditions which are outside the essence of a human act and yet touch it or bear upon it, are called circumstances of the human act. Circumstances are accidentals of a human act.
2. Circumstances influence human acts (a) in point of their measuring up to their end; (b) in point of morality; (c) in point of merit and demerit. Therefore, theologians who study human conduct in its reference to God, cannot ignore circumstances, but must discuss, weigh, and judge them, to establish prudent rules for human living.
3. A convenient list of the circumstances of human acts is given by Aristotle (Ethic. iii), and is slightly emended by Cicero. This listing is a series of seven questions to be asked by one who wishes to know all the circumstances of a human act. The questions are: who, what, where, by what aids, why, how, when? Following the suggestion of these questions, we may list circumstances in this manner: (1) circumstance of person, (2) circumstance of quality of the act, (3) circumstance of place, (4) circumstance of helps or influences, (5) circumstance of intention, (6) circumstance of mode or manner, (7) circumstance of time.
4. The most notable of the circumstances are those of intention and quality of the act. The intention of the agent (doer, performer of the act) touches the essential character of a free will-act; quality of the act respects the act itself as a deed done. No other circumstances are so intimately bound up with human acts as these two.
8. Volition and Its Object
1. The will is the intellective or rational appetite. It is the tendency of the soul to go after and possess what the intellect proposes as good or desirable. The will always and necessarily tends towards what is intellectually apprehended as good, even if this should not be truly good in itself.
2. Volition is the actual exercise of the act of willing. Volition is the willing of an end or a good. It is primarily a willing of an end; secondarily it is the willing of means to gain an end. An end (or good) is desirable for its own sake; a means is desirable inasmuch as it leads to an end or makes possible the attaining of an end.
3. The will is not moved to volition by means as such, but only inasmuch as they lead on to an end desired. To act effectively, the will must consent to the use of means necessary to attain the end desired. Hence it is said: "He who wills the end, wills the means."
9. What Moves the Will
1. The will goes after what the intellect, by its practical judgment, presents to the will as a good, as an end, as something to be gone after. By its practical judgment the intellect moves the will.
2. When the sensitive appetites are permitted by the will to rise out of their proper bodily order and to exercise an influence on reason (intellect and will), they serve to move the will. The urgency of sensitive appetency invades the intellective order and tends to warp the practical judgment of the intellect and through its warped judgment to influence or move the will. Thus a man who acts under stress of anger may deem fitting (that is, good, desirable) words and deeds that would not be judged fitting if he were calm.
3. But, in last analysis, it is the will which moves itself to its act. For any influence that moves the will has to be accepted by the will before it is effective.
4. Among things that can be admitted by the will as influences or movers are exterior things. Exterior objects may exercise an appeal through the senses and then through the intellect; the intellect may ponder and take counsel with itself, and finally reach the practical judgment (to do or not do to) which it presents to the will. A person who has seen articles displayed for sale, and has felt their appeal, knows that their attractiveness (in themselves or in view of use, pleasure, or profit they will bring) is a factor in the will's decision to purchase them. Thus is the will moved by exterior objects.
5. Those who think the will is necessitated in its acts by the stars, and that man is thus the plaything of fate, are quite mistaken. The will is a spiritual power and cannot be directly influenced by exterior objects, but only indirectly inasmuch as their appeal is accepted by the will from the intellect judging on sense findings. A man, looking at the stars, may be impressed by the beauty and power which they manifest, and may be led to a will-act of adoration of the stars' creator. But the stars have no direct influence on the will; much less have they power to control the will.
6. The will moves itself because God made it so. And only God can directly move the will as an exterior principle of its movement. God moves the free will directly and naturally, without destroying its freedom.
10. How the Will is Moved
1. The will is the intellective appetite for good, and its natural and necessary drive is towards what is intellectually grasped as good. The will tends towards good in universal, and, in its individual acts, it tends towards good in particular.
2. The good is always the object of the will. But, in particular choices, the particular good envisioned as object does not compel or force the will's act. To say that, in general, the will necessarily chooses good, is merely to say that the will is the will; that is its definition: the intellective power which appetizes good. But to say that the will must necessarily choose this good or that good is never true. Somewhat similarly, we say that a man, to sustain life, must eat food; but to say that a man must eat this or that item of food placed before him, is not true. The will is free and not necessitated in its particular choices, yet each choice is a choice of something as good, that is, as satisfying, as desirable. Now, the will is not a knowing power; the intellect must show it its object and make practical judgment that this object is to be gone after. The will necessarily follows the ultimate practical judgment of intellect in its particular choices, but it is the will which decides in each case whether the judgment shall be ultimate. Thus, though the will necessarily follows the intellect, it is not necessitated by the intellect. In following the ultimate practical judgment of intellect, the will is like the driver of a car who necessarily follows his headlights, but is not necessitated by his headlights. The driver decides upon which precise road the headlights are to shine, and yet he cannot take that freely chosen road except by following the headlights into it. The will must follow the ultimate practical judgment of intellect, but the will decides which judgment shall be ultimate.
3. We have seen that the lower or sensitive appetites may send their influence up into the intellective area, and, when this influence is admitted there, it may work upon the mind's practical judgment and so affect the act of the will. But as long as a man remains sane, this influence is never a compelling influence. For example, no matter how angry a man may be (short of a frenzy that robs him of responsibility and makes him momentarily insane), he can turn the intellect upon motives for restraint and self-control, and so may banish the anger, refusing to be led by it into violence of word or deed.
4. Nor does God move the will to act of necessity in particular choices. God moves all things that move; he moves them to act according to the nature that he gave them. God moves contingent things to act contingently; God moves man's free will to act freely. Under God's movement the will necessarily acts, but it does not act necessarily in the sense that it has no true choice of its object.
11. Fruition or Enjoyment
1. The will tends to attain good, and to repose in it with delight or enjoyment when it is attained. This delight or enjoyment of the will in good attained is called fruition.
2. Every cognitional appetite (that is, appetency stirred by knowing) can find fulfillment and fruition. Among earthly creatures, only men and animals have cognitional appetency. Men have sentient appetency and intellectual appetency; animals have sentient appetency. Nonliving things have only natural and nonsentient appetency, that is, a nonknowing tendency to hold on to their being and their proper activities. Natural appetency leads to no fruition or enjoyment.
3. Just as every particular choice of good is made, consciously or not, as an expression of man's necessary quest of his ultimate good, so all human fruition or enjoyment has a reference to the supreme and perfectly enjoyable good. During life on earth a person may have many joys, but none of these can perfectly fill up the appetite for enjoyment. Man wants full enjoyment, endlessly possessed. Only in heaven, in possession of his ultimate good, can man have this fruition.
4. Fruition or enjoyment is found in the good possessed. But even in the intention to lay hold of good, and in the quest for good, there is an imperfect fruition.
12. Intention
1. Intention is an elicited act of the will, by which the will purposes to go after an object.
2. Thus intention is the determining of an end; it is the setting up of a choice. The end intended may be the object of immediate choice, or it may be something that is to be attained by the use of means; effective intention must take in necessary means as well as the end which is to be attained by them. A means to an end is itself an end until it is attained.
3. Intention can therefore be directed to one object in itself directly, or as the goal of a series of means. And an intention may be singular, having only one thing in view, or it may be plural, having several nonconflicting things in view. Thus a man may, in giving alms, intend simply to relieve poverty. Or he may have several intentions in his almsgiving: to relieve the poor; to practice self-denial; to do penance; to please God; to show good example; to win grace for his soul.
4. There is a difference between the will-acts of wish and intention. A man may wish for something without intending to make use of means to achieve it. Thus a man who is much overweight may wish to be thinner without intending to endure the hardship of a reducing diet.
5. Man alone, among earthly creatures, can form a true intention. Animals, plants, and minerals, and man in his bodily being, act with "the intention of nature," whether the activity be exercised with or without sentient knowledge. Intention in its true meaning is a free will-act, and belongs only to a being of the rational order.
13. Election or Choice of Means
1. The will chooses the end and the means to the end in its particular acts. The intellect judges means as to suitability, but the choice or election of means is an act of the will.
2. Since choice or election is an operation of the rational appetite called the will, it cannot be exercised by nonrational animals. Animals make sense judgments and act on them by instinct, which is an interior sensing power, an inner sense. But animals cannot know means as such, nor choose means in the light of understanding, for they do not possess understanding.
3. Man's last end or ultimate good is not subject to choice; man tends to it by necessity. Man's choice is limited to the field of means. Yet each means is chosen as a good or an end, but not as ultimate end. In choosing a particular end or good, the human will is actually choosing a means to the ultimate end.
4. The field of choice of means, the arena of human freedom, is the field of human acts. No man, according to Aristotle, chooses anything but what he can do himself.
5. And thus choice is limited to the realm of things humanly possible. Aristotle says (Ethic. iii): "There is no choice among impossibilities."
6. Choice, by its very nature, is free. A necessitated choice is not a choice at all. The compelling attraction of the last end of man, that is, the supreme good, removes it from the field of choice; man must will the last end for he cannot will unfulfillment. But no particular good or end is so perfect as to compel the will to tend to it. In every particular thing, the intellect can discern points or phases of attractiveness and of unattractiveness. Sin is evil, but it offers the sinner an apparent and ready satisfaction, that is, it is seen in the light of something good or desirable. And virtue is entirely attractive, yet it can be regarded as undesirable in so far as it exacts effort and is to be attained only by sustained and tedious labor. Thus in a particular choice, the will may go either way. This is what is meant by freedom of choice.
14. Counsel
1. Counsel is the studious inquiry of the mind into the object proposed for choice. The mind thinks things over, and offers its recommendations to the will. The mind or intellect thus takes counsel within itself, and offers its advice or counsel to the will. To illustrate: a man suffering a malady ponders his suitable course of action; he asks himself whether he had not better go at once to a hospital for surgery; he considers expense, and dependents, and his job and whether he could retain it through a long absence; he considers the possibility of deferring radical treatment and of getting on for a time with palliative medicines; he considers danger both in the surgery and in delay in undergoing surgery. These and other matters are pondered by the mind before the will decides. And this pondering and judging is counsel.
2. Counsel, like choice, has to do with means. It is the mind's judgment on the suitability of means to an end.
3. St. Gregory of Nyssa says that we take counsel about things that are within the range of what we can do. Counsel looks on to the act of free choice. It concerns doing, not being; it looks to action, not to facts or truths; it weighs facts and truths with a view to action.
4. Counsel is not concerned with trifles; man does not truly take counsel about slight or insignificant action, but about things of weight and importance. Nor is there any place for counsel about a thing to be done if the thing belongs to the established order of science or art, for science and art have their changeless principles. Counsel has place in the more notable instances of free human conduct, and seeks to know the best mode of procedure.
5. Counsel is a kind of analysis of a situation. It takes into view an end intended, and judges what is here and now to be done as steps or means to that end.
6. And counsel does not result in a diffuse or general recommendation, nor a recommendation of countless steps towards an end. Counsel is definite and precise in its judgments and recommendations.
15. Consent
1. Consent is the will-act of accepting the means (chosen under counsel) to attain an end.
2. Consent, like all will-acts, is found in man alone among earthly creatures.
3. Like choice, consent is a will-act that concerns the means to an end, not the end itself.
4. Consent is the final decision of the enlightened and counseled will to take up the means required for attaining an end. Sometimes consent is called an act of reason. Now, reason is, strictly speaking, the thinking mind, the intellect using discursive thought. But reason is a term often used for the whole intellective equipment of man, that is for intellect and will. Consent is, in itself, an act proper to the will. But since the will gives consent to the judgment of the thinking mind which counsels it, consent is often called an act of reason. Here reason means the intellectually enlightened and counseled will.
16. Use
1. Use is an act by which the will applies itself and other powers to the carrying out of an intention by means chosen and consented to. First of all, use is the will's applying of itself to its operation. When the will uses subordinate powers to carry out its commanded acts, these powers are employed as instruments for the will's use; the will remains the principal cause of the act. Use, primarily, is use of will.
2. Since use presupposes intention, counsel, consent, and election, it is an act that belongs to the rational or intellectual order, and therefore it is not found in nonrational animals.
3. Use applies the will to means for achieving an end. Hence use refers to means. When the last end is attained, use will have no further service to render.
4. In the sequence of will-acts, use regularly follows choice; means are chosen, and then the will uses them. There is one exception to this sequence, for use precedes choice in the applying of the intellect to study and counsel before choice of means is made.
17. Commanded Acts of the Will
1. Will acts such as intention, consent, and election, are acts elicited by the will; these acts are begun and completed in the will itself. Other acts, carried out by the intellect or the sentient and bodily powers, are commanded by the will. Thus, in considering will-acts, we distinguish elicited acts and commanded acts. Command is an order of reason (the counseled will) for the carrying out of an intention.
2. Command is a product of reason, and therefore it is not found in animals less perfect than man.
3. Command as direction or advice belongs to the counseling intellect; as an executive order, command is in the will; it precedes use.
4. In the will, the commanded act and the command are really one; the human act here considered is that of the commanding will, and is one act.
5. Intellect may be said to command will in so far as it counsels the will, and also in so far as the will-act always follows upon the ultimate practical judgment of the intellect. And the will commands the intellect by applying it to its operation, by fixing its attention now on this, and now on that, object.
6. Therefore we may say that will commands reason, understanding reason to mean the thinking mind, the intellect using discursive thought. But when by reason we mean the intellect and will working together, we rather say that reason commands itself.
7. Reason (intellect and will together) governs the sensitive appetites, not by a direct and despotic rule, but by a politic influence. Sometimes, however, sensitive appetites are aroused by conditions of the body which are not subject to reason. And sometimes the sensitive appetites are so suddenly aroused that they elude, at least momentarily, the control of reason. But, in the main, reason can control the sensitive appetites, both concupiscible and irascible.
8. But reason has no control over the vegetal or plant functions of a man: "No man, by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit."
9. Movements of bodily members which exercise sentient life are normally (barring injury or crippling disease) under control of reason. Movements of external members which exercise vegetal action, such as growth, are not subject to reason.
18. Moral Good and Evil in Human Acts
1. Human acts that measure up to what sound reason sees they ought to be, are good acts. Human acts that fall short of what they ought to be are, to the extent of their failure to measure up, evil acts.
2. The object, when we speak of human acts, is the human act itself and whatever it necessarily involves. Now, the object is the primary determinant of the moral good or evil of a human act.
3. If the object, the act itself considered as a deed done, does not manifest the good or evil of the act, then we look to the secondary determinants of morality, that is, to the circumstances of the human act as performed. To be morally good, a human act must be what it ought to be in itself and in its circumstances. Hence object and circumstances are determinants of the morality of a human act.
4. In determining the moral character of a human act by circumstances, the circumstance of end of the agent is most important. This circumstance most often ceases to be merely a circumstance, and enters into the object itself. The end intended by the author of a human act is so important a determinant of the morality of his act that we give it special mention; therefore we usually list the determinants of the morality of human acts in this way: object, end, circumstances.
5. Good acts are specifically different from evil acts. Acts are specified by their objects, that is, by what they are in themselves, and there is an essential difference between an act in accord with right reason and an act not in such accord. Hence, by their objects, good acts and evil acts are specifically different.
6. Acts are also specified by their ends. On this score also good acts are specifically different from evil acts.
7. The specific difference between a good act and an evil act on the basis of end or intention is a more general or diffuse difference than that which is based on the objects of the acts. For an act which is one in itself may be done for several nonconflicting purposes; that is, it may have several ends.
8. Some human acts, considered in themselves abstractly, as in their definitions, are neither morally good nor morally bad; they are indifferent acts. Thus talking, singing, reading, pondering a subject, are (not as humanly done, but as defined in a dictionary) indifferent acts. Such acts have in themselves no necessary agreement, and no necessary disagreement with right reason.
9. But every individual human act as performed, as humanly done, is necessarily either in accord with right reason or out of line with it. Individual human acts are not acts in abstract definition, but acts in concrete performance. And such acts must be considered, not in themselves only or as objects; they must be considered in the purpose for which they are done, and in the circumstances in which they are performed. And they will thus be seen to be either morally good or morally evil, but never indifferent. To illustrate: Talking is, in itself, an indifferent act. But talking which is done in moderation to make oneself agreeable, to console, to give good advice, to impart truth prudently, to encourage virtue, to divert people from unfriendly argument, or for other good purpose, is a morally good act. And talking which is done immoderately, or to irritate, to deceive, to prod people into a quarrel, in the wrong place or at the wrong time, in the wrong fashion, or to the wrong persons, is a morally evil act. Hence we have a true saying: Human acts are sometimes morally indifferent in their kind, but they are never morally indifferent as individual acts performed. If human acts do not have definite moral character in their objects, they have it in their end or their circumstances.
10. Thus it appears that circumstances sometimes specify an act in its moral character. Now, circumstances as such are accidentals of a human act, and accidentals cannot specify an essence. Only when a circumstance is taken into the essence of an act as a principal condition can it specify the act. Circumstances are really more than circumstances when they are absorbed, so to speak, into the act itself to give it moral character.
11. A circumstance may affect a human act in two ways. For (a) either it leaves the act unchanged in its kind, and merely intensifies it, that is, makes it better or worse; or (b) it changes the nature of the act, or, more precisely, it introduces a new element into the act. A man who is deliberately angry for an hour does something worse than if he were deliberately angry for five minutes; here the circumstance of manner makes the more enduring act worse than the less enduring, but does not make it different. But a man who steals money from a church is guilty of theft and also of sacrilege; the circumstance of place changes the nature of simple theft into sacrilegious theft. The two types of circumstances which affect the moral character of human acts are called, respectively, (a) aggravating circumstances, and (b) circumstances which change the nature of the act.
19. Morality in Acts of the Will
1. A human act takes its morality (its character as good or evil) primarily from the act itself as object, and secondarily from those circumstances that enter the act and affect it essentially.
2. As we have seen, circumstances that affect the moral character of an act have to be more than mere circumstances or accidentals; they must somehow amalgamate essentially with the act itself. Hence, in last analysis, the act itself as object is the only determinant or specifier of morality in will-acts.
3. The intellect by its counsel and practical judgment proposes the object to the will, not only as a simple act to be done, but with its moral implications. Hence there is a dependence of will on intellect respecting the moral character of a human act.
4. Human reason (the thinking mind) becomes aware, early in life, of an order in the world. The order which reason recognizes in things is the order put there by God as eternal law. Inasmuch as this order requires right moral conduct, and is known naturally (without revelation) by sound human reason, it is called the natural law. The natural law is the eternal law as knowable in this world by right reason. When the will conforms to the natural law, it conforms to the eternal law, and thus conforms to God, and its acts are morally good. Hence the morality of will-acts depends on God, the eternal law.
5. Reason-the thinking mind-is man's only natural guide in moral matters. The judgment of reason on the morality of a proposed act is conscience. When the will acts in conformity with this conscience-judgment the act is morally good; when the will acts in contradiction to conscience the act is morally evil. Man is obliged to act in conformity with his conscience, even when reason is mistaken and the conscience judgment is false.
6. However, if error in the conscience-judgment is a man's own fault-as the result of culpable ignorance, willful negligence to learn what should be learned-the will which follows the erroneous conscience is an evil will, and the act of that will is an evil act to the extent of the fault involved in judgment.
7. We have already seen that the end of the agent, that is, the intention of the doer, enters into the essence of a human act, becoming part and parcel with the act as object, and so bears directly on the goodness or evil of the act.
8. But the degree of good or evil in the intention is not a measure of good or evil in the will itself. For an evil will may sometimes act with good intention, as, for example, when a person tells a deliberate lie to prevent friction or quarreling. And sometimes a good will is less good or noble than its intention, as, for instance, when a person prays carelessly for a great and holy purpose. Intention, therefore, while it is a determinant of morality in an act, is not a measure of the moral quality of the will which elicits the intention.
9. For a human act to be good, it must be in conformity with the sovereign good-it must conform to the will of God.
10. To be in conformity with the divine will, a human will must, in all its acts, will what God wills-it must will the accomplishment of universal good,
20. Good and Evil in External Acts
1. Moral good and moral evil are primarily in the will. Human acts performed externally under command of the will, take their morality, first and foremost, from the will itself.
2. Yet there are some external acts which are evil in themselves because, by their very nature, they are out of line with right reason; the will cannot make these acts good. Such external acts are, for example, murders, injuries inflicted, impure conduct. The moral character of an external human act is not, therefore, wholly determined by the will of the person who performs the act.
3. When an external act takes its moral character from the will of the person who performs it, the goodness or evil of the act is one with the goodness or evil of the will. But when the act has intrinsic goodness or evil, there is a difference between the moral quality of the act and the moral quality of the will which commands it. True, these moralities coalesce, but they are not the same thing. A group of people praying vocally are all performing the same intrinsically good act. But each member of the group brings his own degree of devotion to the act of praying vocally. The external act is the same for all, but it is not equally good in all by that goodness which the act has from individual wills.
4. The external act adds something to the internal act of will. For the external act is the perfecting of the internal act. A man who intends to do a good deed, but fails to carry out the intention, has less good in his conduct than another who has the same good intention and fulfills it by performing the external good deed.
5. The consequences of an external act do not of themselves affect the goodness or evil of the act. Of course, such consequences as are foreseen, or should be foreseen because they follow naturally from the act, are part and parcel of the act itself, and are willed by the fact that the act is willed. But consequences unforeseen, and unconnected with the act by any natural or necessary bond, cannot work back upon the act and make it better or worse after it has been performed.
6. One and the same external act cannot be both morally good and morally evil. In the physical order an action may be good and also bad, as, for example, the taking of a medicine which is a relief for pain but harmful to the heart. In the moral order this cannot be. If a person steps out to commit a crime, and, on the way, decides not to commit it, we have one physical act of walking, but two acts of the will. The walking, as a human act, is morally bad up to the point of the person's change of intention; then it becomes another walking altogether, and is a morally good act. Here we have two acts, not one.
21. Consequences of Good and Evil Acts
1. Since the eternal law is the ultimate norm of good or evil in human acts, it follows that moral evil is sinful, and moral goodness is righteous.
2. It also follows that morally good acts are praiseworthy, and morally evil acts are blameworthy.
3. The praise or blame due to human acts by reason of their moral goodness or badness is not a mere matter of words or opinions, but of retribution according to the demands of justice. That is, human acts have merit or demerit according to their goodness or evil.
4. The merit and demerit of human acts are not a matter of human justice merely, but of divine justice; human acts have merit or demerit in the sight of God.