Punishment

Some punishments, Thomas says ( ST , I-II, 87), are punishments strictly speaking, some are satisfactory, some are medicinal. Punishment strictly speaking is the repression of order that retaliates against an offense committed against the order (art. 1). A violation of man’s own order of reason is punished by remorse of conscience, a punishment inflicted by the man himself; an offense against divine order is punished by God.

The difference between punishment simpliciter and punishment according to satisfaction is the role of the will: “A satisfactory punishment is, in a way, voluntary (art. 7). Punishment avails for satisfaction if the punished person “take upon himself the punishment of his past sin, or bear patiently the punishment which God inflicts on him.” Because it is voluntary, satisfaction “loses somewhat the nature of punishment,” which is “to be against the will” (at. 6). Satisfaction repays a debt of punishment, and this is the sort of punishment that Jesus suffered “not for His, but for our sins” (art. 7, rep. obj. 3). Christ’s voluntary submission to punishment is crucial in making it a punishment of satisfaction.

In a somewhat confusing discussion, Thomas explains that voluntary submission to punishment removes the stain of sin in the soul.

Stains in the soul are blemishes, darkening of the brightness of the soul, that arise from a sort of spiritual contact between the soul and something other than God: “When the soul cleaves to things by love, there is a kind of contact in the soul.” Sin involves a “cleaving” of the soul to things “against the light of reason and the Divine Law,” and this “is metaphorically called a stain on the soul” (I-II, 86, 1). Even after the sin ceases, the stain remains (I-II, 86, 2).

Soul-stains are removed when the soul is united to God, “since it was through being separated from Him that it suffered the loss of its brightness, in which the stain consists” (I-II, 87, 6). Man is united to God by will, and thus his will must be inclined to God, he must voluntarily cling to God, if the light of the soul is to be restored. The stain of sin is removed only if the stained person voluntarily submits to punishment. That heals the wound of sin as regard to the will, but there is still a need for punishment to heal “the other powers of the soul” which have been “disordered by the sin committed” (art. 6). The relationship between the removal of stain and satisfactory punishment is hazy at best here.

Finally, “medicinal” punishments are a yet greater remove from punishment simpliciter . Punishments are evils in the sense that they are privations (I-II, 87, 7). Yet, privations may be evil only relatively. It is a privation, and hence an evil, to lose money for the sake of bodily health, but that privation serves the good of bodily health, a good greater than the good of externals. Similarly, the privation of bodily health might serve the interests of the soul; the pain of a punishment is a relative evil, not an evil simpliciter , since it restores the person to the order that he violated by his sin.

Only the last two forms of punishment may be transferred from one person to another. Penal punishment must be inflicted on the sinner “because the sinful act is something personal.” It’s entirely possible, though, for someone to voluntarily bear another’s punishment in the sense of satisfaction, and it’s also possible for another to one to be punished by another’s sin medicinally (art. 8). Since children are “property so to speak” of parents, when children don’t take part in the sin of their parents, they suffer only medicinal punishment, “since it is intended for the good of his soul, if he bears it patiently.” A child suffers medicinally, Thomas would say, for the drunkenness of his father.