Whether Sin Can Be Pardoned Without Penance?
Objection 1: It would seem that sin can be pardoned without Penance.
For the power of God is no less with regard to adults than with
regard to children. But He pardons the sins of children without
Penance. Therefore He also pardons adults without penance.
Obj. 2: Further, God did not bind His power to the sacraments. But
Penance is a sacrament. Therefore by God's power sin can be pardoned
without Penance.
Obj. 3: Further, God's mercy is greater than man's. Now man sometimes
forgives another for offending him, without his repenting: wherefore
our Lord commanded us (Matt. 5:44): "Love your enemies, do good to
them that hate you." Much more, therefore, does God pardon men for
offending him, without their repenting.
_On the contrary,_ The Lord said (Jer. 18:8): "If that nation . . .
shall repent of their evil" which they have done, "I also will repent
of the evil that I have thought to do them," so that, on the other
hand, if man "do not penance," it seems that God will not pardon him
his sin.
_I answer that,_ It is impossible for a mortal actual sin to be
pardoned without penance, if we speak of penance as a virtue. For, as
sin is an offense against God, He pardons sin in the same way as he
pardons an offense committed against Him. Now an offense is directly
opposed to grace, since one man is said to be offended with another,
because he excludes him from his grace. Now, as stated in the Second
Part (I-II, Q. 110, A. 1), the difference between the grace of God
and the grace of man, is that the latter does not cause, but
presupposes true or apparent goodness in him who is graced, whereas
the grace of God causes goodness in the man who is graced, because
the good-will of God, which is denoted by the word "grace," is the
cause of all created good. Hence it is possible for a man to pardon
an offense, for which he is offended with someone, without any change
in the latter's will; but it is impossible that God pardon a man for
an offense, without his will being changed. Now the offense of mortal
sin is due to man's will being turned away from God, through being
turned to some mutable good. Consequently, for the pardon of this
offense against God, it is necessary for man's will to be so changed
as to turn to God and to renounce having turned to something else in
the aforesaid manner, together with a purpose of amendment; all of
which belongs to the nature of penance as a virtue. Therefore it is
impossible for a sin to be pardoned anyone without penance as a
virtue.
But the sacrament of Penance, as stated above (Q. 88, A. 3), is
perfected by the priestly office of binding and loosing, without
which God can forgive sins, even as Christ pardoned the adulterous
woman, as related in John 8, and the woman that was a sinner, as
related in Luke vii, whose sins, however, He did not forgive without
the virtue of penance: for as Gregory states (Hom. xxxiii in Evang.),
"He drew inwardly by grace," i.e. by penance, "her whom He received
outwardly by His mercy."
Reply Obj. 1: In children there is none but original sin, which
consists, not in an actual disorder of the will, but in a habitual
disorder of nature, as explained in the Second Part (I-II, Q. 82, A.
1), and so in them the forgiveness of sin is accompanied by a
habitual change resulting from the infusion of grace and virtues, but
not by an actual change. On the other hand, in the case of an adult,
in whom there are actual sins, which consist in an actual disorder of
the will, there is no remission of sins, even in Baptism, without an
actual change of the will, which is the effect of Penance.
Reply Obj. 2: This argument takes Penance as a sacrament.
Reply Obj. 3: God's mercy is more powerful than man's, in that it
moves man's will to repent, which man's mercy cannot do.
_______________________