Annotation CCLV

”All that is not of faith is sin.” — Romans 14:23

Whether the whole life of unbelievers is sin.

Anselm of Laon [Laudunensis], in the Glossa ordinaria, explaining this clause, seems to hint that all the works of unbelievers are sins, and that nothing can be done by them which is good. And he uses these words: “THE WHOLE life of unbelievers is sin: and nothing [is] good without the highest Good, where the acknowledgment of eternal truth is lacking: [it is] false virtue even in the best morals. The works which seem probable [commendable], apart from faith, are thus: as great strength [powers], and a most swift running, off the road.” To this opinion — which is taken word for word from Augustine — Anselm, bishop of Canterbury, agrees, [and] in the commentaries on this passage repeats these very words: “AMBROSE accords with these [things, in] the first book On the Calling of the Gentiles, chapter 3, saying: ‘Without the worship of the true God, even [that] which seems [to be] virtue is sin, nor can anyone please God without God.’ Nor does the author of the commentaries of Origen on Job dissent from these: who, [in] the first chapter, writes thus: ‘That I may say [it] briefly, and boldly: All [things], whatsoever men shall do — whether in virginity, or in abstinence, or in the chastity of the body, or in the distribution of their goods — they do all in vain [for nothing], if they shall not have done [them] in faith. For all severity, and all justice, which anyone shall do outside the true faith of God, he does in vain, he does unto perdition; it profits him not, it helps him not in the day of wrath. To which Paul is witness, saying: “All that is not of faith is sin.”’” Thus he [Anselm]. John Ferus followed the words and sense of these, in the commentaries on Matthew — even as was noted above, [in] the fortieth Annotation of this book. St. Thomas, in the second [part] of the second [part], question 10, article 4,

—coursing [on] the proposed passage of Anselm, says [that] it can be understood in two ways, that is: either [in the sense] that the life of unbelievers cannot be without sin, since sins are not taken away without faith; or because whatsoever they do out of unbelief is sin. Whence in the same place it is subjoined, that everyone living or acting in unbelief sins vehemently. But hence it does not follow that unbelievers sin in every [single] work, since in them that natural goodness of reason — which pleads toward the best [things] — is not utterly extinct and abolished. See below, Annotation 178.