{
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  "oid": 165576,
  "revision": 1,
  "revision_oid": 165577,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
  "edition": "pg16769-r1",
  "title": "The active will can also receive healing",
  "anchors": [
    {
      "unit": "CH08.P023",
      "oid": 216,
      "role": null,
      "edition": "pg16769-r1",
      "paragraph": "CH08.P023",
      "exact": "All moral reform must start in the active not the passive will.",
      "start": 1646,
      "end": 1709,
      "prefix": "sonally impatient with forgery. ",
      "suffix": "",
      "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH08.P023#char=1646,1709"
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "The demand for personal rejection of sin has a close theological parallel in Thomas Aquinas: justification requires the rational adult's free will both to turn toward God and to turn away from sin (*Summa theologiae*, I–II, question 113, articles 3 and 5). But Aquinas makes that willing movement itself an effect of God's grace. Receiving and acting are therefore compatible; the sinner's activity need not mean self-salvation. The inspected English text is the Fathers of the English Dominican Province translation, online at New Advent; the *Summa* was composed in the thirteenth century. [Question 113](https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2113.htm).\n\nNor does this tradition reject medical imagery. Aquinas describes ignorance, malice, weakness and disordered desire as wounds of human nature (I–II, question 85, article 3). [Question 85](https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2085.htm). Chesterton's patient/sinner contrast is thus most useful as a protest against eliminating repentance from reform, rather than as a complete account of Christian moral healing. His deliberately comic grammar makes dependence and action appear mutually exclusive where Aquinas's account joins them.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2113.htm",
      "title": "Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, question 113",
      "locator": "Articles 3 and 5, I answer that; English Dominican translation",
      "exact": null
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2085.htm",
      "title": "Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, question 85",
      "locator": "Article 3, I answer that; English Dominican translation",
      "exact": null
    }
  ],
  "citations": [],
  "external_references": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2113.htm",
      "title": "Question 113"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2085.htm",
      "title": "Question 85"
    }
  ],
  "limits": [
    "This comparison identifies an agreement and qualification within Latin scholastic theology; it does not demonstrate direct borrowing or represent every Christian tradition."
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "run": "chapter-08-restart-2026-11-07",
    "paragraph_investigator": "P023",
    "task": [
      {
        "approach": "Interlocutors and historical debates",
        "question": "What contemporary argument gives substance to the proposal to treat crime as disease?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Theological contextualization",
        "question": "Does requiring the sinner's active will exclude receiving grace or describing sin as a wound?"
      }
    ],
    "model": "gpt-6.1-sol"
  },
  "content_sha256": "sha256:268370e5f4825ff65d90601969c52acd0d0b343ce12c0d1990652e083a876944",
  "created_at": "2026-11-07T18:31:03Z",
  "is_current": true,
  "url": "/a/a_tj7nw7wx",
  "revision_path": "/a/a_tj7nw7wx/r/1",
  "cited_by": []
}