Prima Secundae
Lecture 196: The Causes of Sin: Act, Disorder, and Interior Motions

Transcript
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In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand all that you have written. Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. So if you thank God for freely choosing you to be, you have to thank Him for that before you thank Him for creating your immortal soul. What do you have to thank Him for before is freely choosing you to be? What do you have to thank Him for you to be? I suppose that's one point to start. I was thinking that you have to thank Him for freely choosing this universe to be, right? Because God could have created an infinity of different universes. So unless He had chosen this universe to be, right, there wouldn't be any place in the universe He chose for you, right? And of course you have to thank Him for the common good even before the private good, right? So you're thanking God for choosing the universe of which you could be a part. And that's what He said this universe could be without me, you know? That's a likely guess. Not always the universe is in Him, but so are you. But if He had made that universe, I could not even have been a part of it, right? So it's one thing for Him to have chosen a universe that I could be a part of, and then more so, you know, then second, He chose me freely to be in this universe, right? The fact that He created you with an immortal soul means that your soul is going to be a permanent part of the universe, right? Because it's immortal, right? So the soul of a dog or a cat is not eternal. That nice dog who greets me there, you know? That brown dog out there. So we're up to question, what, 75? And let's just look back for a second at question 71, the premium. Just so we'll recall how thorough Thomas is, right? And the premium to question 71, which is the premium to a whole bunch of these questions here. Consequently, we're not to consider about vices and what? Sins. And about these six things occur to be considered, huh? The first is about the vices and sins in themselves, right? Secondly, about the distinction of these. Third, about the comparison of them to each other. Fourth, about the subject of sin, right? And now the fifth part that we're about to begin, about the, what, cause of sin. And that would be followed by the further articles on the effect of it, right? So Thomas, again, is looking before and after here when he looks for the cause and the effect, huh? But in the first four ones, he's more looking at the thing itself, right? Okay. We're up to the causes, huh? Now, this is divided into two parts, right? First, you're going to consider about the causes in a very general way here. And then in, what, special, right? And we'll see what the special consideration is. We can understand what special will be better after we know the general. Now, about the first, four things are asked. First of all, whether sin has a cause. That's how fundamental Thomas is, huh? Is there a problem about whether sin has a cause? The criminal says, I just blacked out, you know? I've heard this so many times, it used to be a common thing, you know, kind of excuse, you know? But I never remember the many. Yeah, I guess there was this famous bank robber, you know, and he got caught a number of times. And finally, the judge says, well, why do you rob these banks, you know? That's what the money is. Simple answer. You don't see how I blacked out, you know? That's what the money is. And if it does have a cause, whether it has a, what, interior cause in the second article, right? Cause within us. And then third, whether it has a cause outside of us, right? It's going to have an abundance of causes inside and outside of you, huh? And then, interesting question, whether sin can be the cause of sin, huh? So to the first one goes for it thus. It seems that sin has no cause. For sin has the, yeah, character of something bad, right, huh? As in nature, something bad, the definition of something bad, right? This has been said. But the famous Dionysius says that bad does not have a cause. Therefore, sin does not have a cause. That seems to settle it pretty much, right? What more could you ask for? A nice syllogism, I guess they call that. More a cause is that to which of necessity something other follows. But that which is from necessity does not seem to be a sin in that every sin is something, what? Voluntary. Therefore, sin has no cause. I'm pretty impressed with these arguments. Moreover, if sin has a cause, either it has for a cause something good or something bad, huh? An either or argument now, right? But not something good because the good does not make except the good. For a good tree cannot bring forth bad, what? Fruit. As someone of great authority said in Matthew 7, chapter 18, I mean verse 18. Likewise, neither can, what? The bad be a cause of sin because the bad of, what? Punishment follows, what? To sin. But the bad of guilt is the same thing as sin. Therefore, sin has, what? Does not have a cause, huh? That was a strange argument, that last one, isn't it? But against this is that everything that comes to be has a cause because, as is said in Job, chapter 5, verse 6, nothing is on the earth except what comes to be without a cause, right? There's a reason for everything. But sin comes to be for is something said or done or desired against the law of God. That's kind of the definition, I guess, of sin, right? Comes from Augustine, it says in my footnote here. Therefore, this sin has a, what? Cause. So what this time is going to sort this out, huh? As you know, that's that part of the article we left you for the day to think about, right? And then tomorrow we'll drop in the second part, right? I remember with Charles DeConnick, you know, came down and first gave a public talk there at the College of St. Thomas. And Duffy there was a friend of my brother Richard and my cousin Donald, you know. He said, you know, I didn't even have to think about it for a whole week, he said, you know, the one talk, he said. If I could get a, you know, talk like that, you know, once a week, you know, that would give me enough to occupy my mind for the rest of the week. I asked him to go around with it with a phrase of Monsignor de Honor, he said, some key thing in this lecture, you know, for thinking about it day in and day out, you know, for several days, you know, and there's something about that, right? We tend to rush through things, huh? I remember when some philosopher, I won't mention who, but some philosopher I knew, you know, was taking one of these speed reading courses. I just laughed, I could hardly help but laugh at my face. I said, one thing a philosopher doesn't need a speed reading course to read a philosophy text. You've got to slow down. Why is he doing slow, right? They stumble to run fast. I mean, it's just ridiculous. I mean, you're working in government, you've got to go through these crazy documents. I mean, you know, nobody even reads the bills anymore. Yeah, nobody reads those things. So Thomas begins, he says, sin is a, what? Disordered act, right? What did Dionysius say? That sin is something against what? Reason, right? And how is reason defined? By, yeah, by order, right? So a disordered act is one that is opposed to what? Reason, right, huh? So there's two things involved there in the idea of sin, then. That it's an act and it's, what? Disordered, right, huh? Now, on the side of, therefore, of act, it can have a cause per se, right? Just as any other, what? Act, right, huh? But on the other side of the disorder, it can have a cause in the way in which a, what? Negation or a privation or a lack, to use the English word, is able to have a cause, right? So this is key in understanding what the bad is in general, right? The bad is a lack of something one is able to have and should have, right? Now, of some negation, a two-fold cause can be assigned. Well, I didn't know that. That's something to think about, right? First, huh? The defect of the cause itself, huh? That is the negation of the, what? Cause itself, huh? Is a cause of the negation secundum se ipsum, huh? According to itself. For to the absence, you might say, of the cause follows the absence, huh? Of the effect. Just as the cause of the obscurity, the darkness is the absence of the, what? Sun. I didn't have light bulbs in those days. In another way, the cause of some, something affirmative, right, huh? To which there follows a, what? Negation, right? Is the accidental cause, the prejudice cause of the negation that falls upon it. Just as, what? Fire in causing heat from its chief, what? Intention, consequently causes the privation of, what? Yeah. So you see the distinction to be understood here, right, huh? And he's pointed out a distinction, right? And he's what? Exemplified it, huh? Okay. Of which the first of these two can suffice for a simple, what? Negation. Negation, right? But since the disorder of sin and every evil is not a simple negation. Now, if you go back to the categories and Aristotle first distinguished the four kinds of, what? Opposites, right? And one is simply negation, right? One is privation or lack, huh? And one is contrariety, right? And then you have, kind of distinct from those three, relative opposition, right? Okay. It's extremely important in that text of Aristotle, huh? You know, it extends all the way to, what? The distinction of the, what? Trinity, right, huh? You know, this relative distinction, huh? Yeah. That's right there. Yeah. Yeah. What's the difference between a negation, a simple negation, and a lack, right, huh? See? Well, if this glass here doesn't see, right, is that a privation? It's lacking something it should have? No. It's just a mere negation, right? It does not see, right? But if somebody is, what, blind, huh? Some man or even a dog is blind, well then, what? Yeah. Yeah. So it's an unbeing of something you should have and don't have, right, huh? Something that, by nature, you should have, right? You would have, of course, Aristotle in the fifth book of wisdom would stem his very senses of privational lack, right? But in the full sense, it's an unbeing of something you're able to have and should have, right? Now he says, because of that, huh? Is necessary that such a disorder, right, huh? I skipped what I said in English there, yeah. But it's a privation of that which something is not domest, huh? Haberi and debit ought to have, right, huh? It's necessary that such a disorder have an agent cause, what, procudence, huh? For what something is naturally apt to be in, what is naturally apt to be in something and ought to be, never is absent except an account of some cause, what, impeding this, right? And according to this, it is customary to say that the evil, which consists in a certain privation, right, has a deficient cause or an agent, what, procudence, huh? Now, every cause, procudence, is reduced to a cause, what, per se, huh? That's generally true, the procudence in some way reduced to the per se, right? So I'm a, what, a wise grandfather, right? That's being procudence, right, huh? Okay. But the way I became wise and the way I became a grandfather are totally unrelated, right, huh? And wisdom and grandfather don't come together, although they tried to say so today in church. They had a special mass, you know, for the grandfathers, right, of the children who were in the parish school, right, huh? And Bishop McManus was there to say the mass, right, huh? So the bishop was saying it along with the pastor, the Monsignor, Rose, you know, and so it's a nice mass. But they're talking about the wisdom of the grandfathers, right? They accumulate all this wisdom from their age, and he was quoting Pope Francis, I guess, huh? Until youth and wisdom meet, we're going to have trouble, right? We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. We're going to have trouble. we need these two good things youth is good right wisdom is good but the two have got to meet to come together right some of the grandfathers meet with the grandchildren since however every peraccident's cause is reduced to a but every peraccident's cause is reduced to a cause per se since therefore sin on the part of disorder has an agent cause peraccident's and on the side of the act it has an agent cause that is what per se it follows that the disorder of the sin follows from the what cause of the act thus therefore the will lacking the direction of the rule of reason and of the divine law aiming at some changeable right good it causes the the act of sin per se but the disorder of sin peraccident's and apart from what intentions right but the defect of order in the act comes from the defect of what direction in the what the will this is the way they solve the argument from what Tanisha's right because when Tanisha says evil does not have a cause what does he mean per se as such right see because no one acts aiming at the bad as such right okay to the first therefore he says it should be said that sin not only signifies the what lack of good which is a disorder but it signifies an act under such a what such a lack which has a notion of something bad which in what way it has a cause peraccident's has been what said in the body of the what article right put that in your pipe and smoke it for a while right didn't have to be a corncob pipe but my father used to smoke a corncob pipe sometimes you know but I think especially when they were trying to sell wagons to the farmers right he'd put that corn pipe in his house you know so they kind of associated with MacArthur that corncob pipe you know and so on I had a picture of my son and myself before with a picture of MacArthur in the background there at West Point you know but I don't know where it is they'll have to find over these days and I'll bring it in you know but after I went across this one here I said yeah I'm definitely wanting to see my patriotism you know and so on standing at attention there in front of the Washington's grave there Washington Irving you know that was his last work on this biography of Washington yeah yeah it's a very very good very good biography I mean he was a little boy I think he was in the arms of his nurse right and she went to the bookshop there in New York that's where the first presidency was and Washington came in and she said to Washington here's a little one named after you sir and he put his head on his hand you know so of course everybody knew that but he told him how Washington put his hand upon him and so on and he had this good respect for Washington you know kind of a personal touch if I can say to second should be said if that definition of cause universally ought to be what verified is necessary that it be understood about a cause that is both sufficient right to produce the effect right and that is not impeded right so Thomas often qualifies that definition of or the aspect of a cause that something follows what necessarily right because some things fall necessarily if they are a sufficient cause of the thing being and no one impedes it right but you have to bring that out because otherwise the definition would fail in some cases right for it can happen that something is a sufficient cause of another right and nevertheless not from necessity does the effect follow on account of some impediment right coming upon it otherwise it would happen that all things happen from necessity as is clear in the sixth book of metaphysics as Aristotle points out thus therefore although sin does have a cause it however does not follow that it is what necessary because the effect is able to be what impeded right to the third it should be said that it has been said the will without the addition of the rule of reason or the divine law right is the cause of what sin now this which is to not what apply the rule of reason or the divine law in itself does not have the notion of something bad right nor of punishment nor of guilt before it is applied to act right you can't always be thinking about these things right whence according to this the cause of the what first sin is not something bad but something good with the absence of some other good so when the will proceeds to act right without having waited for the ordering of reason right or without you know paying attention to divine law then comes the cause actually of what sin right that's kind of a subtle thing right the will proceeding to act without waiting the due consideration of reason don't confuse me with the facts willful inadvertence yeah you see that sometimes in conversation with people too you know they don't want to think about that okay sin as an inward cause, right? Here she turns the interior inward. To the second one goes forward thus. It seems that sin does not have a cause within. For that which is within a thing is always, what, present to it. If therefore sin had an inward cause, always man would sin. Oh my God, that's terrible. Since the cause being what? Since the cause of being laid down then the effect is laid down, right? Moreover the same is not a cause of itself. That's a good principle, right? But the inward motions of a man are what? Sin, right? We talked before talking about what sin was, right? It's the inward motion, right? Therefore they're not a cause of sin, right? In a sense you say that sin is more the inward motion of the man, right? Yeah, okay? But that is the cause of itself. Moreover, whatever is within a man is either natural or voluntary. But that which is natural cannot be a cause of sin because sin is against nature as Damascene said. As Shakespeare says too, right? What however is voluntary if it be disordered is already a what? Sin. Therefore something inward cannot be a cause of the first sin. It's amazing. Amazing these arguments. Imagine I could torture somebody with these, huh? Enough getting out of prison until you can resolve this problem, right? Because you're in prison because you sinned and you better find out what the cause of sin is, right? You probably have more suicides on your case than you would. They used to hear the story that the Voltaire is supposed to look at the objections, you know, and that's all we bothered with, you know. And then he'd throw them up against his Catholic acquaintance and they couldn't answer them, you know. It's not fun of it, huh? Wouldn't put it beyond him, I mean. But again, this is what Augustine says that the will is the cause of sin, huh? That's a nice, concise sentence, huh? Voluntas is causa peccati. Brevity is the soul of wit. It's wisdom in that brief statement. I answer it should be said that it has been said, huh? That the per se cause of sin, right? Must be taken on the side of the act itself, huh? Now, of a human act, one can take both a what? Yeah. And one that's what? And one that is immediate, huh? Now, the immediate causes of human acts are reason and will, according as man is free in his what? Judgment, huh? You've got to find that Librium Arbitrum, you know. Thomas takes it up, you know, and the Prima Par is there, you know. Is Librium Arbitrum more in reason or in the will? Thomas says it's more in the will, right? And, but yet you say Arbitrum, right? Judgment seems to name an act of reason, right? And so the way you name this thing is kind of strange, right? And Thomas will try to explain, you know, this is the freedom of the will, right? It kind of depends upon the reason, the ability to judge and to go to opposites and so on, right? But it's kind of fun the way you name it, right? And people always have a problem how do you translate Librium Arbitrum? Because if you translate it word by word, it's free judgment, right? It seems like you want to talk about free will here, you know. But you kind of seem the source of it, huh? In the reason, huh? I mean, Aristotle says that we, you know, that everybody who does wrong, you know, is mistaken. He saw that, right? Now, the remote cause is the grasping of the sensitive, what? Part. And also the sense appetite, sense desire. For just as, huh, the will is moved from the judgment of reason, right? To something that is according to reason, so also it is moved, I guess, by the grasping of what? Excuse me, not it, but the sense appetite, sense desire, is also what? Something from the apprehension of senses, right? So the apple was attracted to the senses there of Eve, huh? Which inclination sometimes draws the will and reason? I assume you have experience of that, huh? Okay. Thus a two-fold interior cause of sin can be assigned. One which is proximate, right? On the side of reason and the, what? Will. Another which is remote, on the side of the imagination, right? Or of sense desire, right? And because, as has been said above, the cause of sin is some good apparent, right? That is moving, right? With a defect of the proper motive, which is the rule of reason or of the divine law, right? Therefore, the mover that is the apparent good pertains to the grasping of the senses and the sense desire, right? The appetite of it. But this absence of the right rule pertains to, what? Reason, which is actually apt to consider a rule of this sort, huh? But the perfection of the voluntary act of sin pertains to the, what? Will. In that the act itself of the will, presupposing the, what? Lack of the order of reason and so on, right? Is itself already a, what? Sin. Sin, huh? So he's saying there's inward cause, but it's both, what? Remote and immediate, right? But the immediate one being reason and will, right? But reason beginning and the will completing, right? And then the other one is kind of influencing it, right? Now what do you say to the first one here about what's always in the mind and always sinning? As soon as we are. To the first thereof it should be said that that which is within as a natural power is always what? Within, right? You nest. But that which is within as an interior act now is distinguished from an interior power ability. Such as a interior act either of a desiring power or a grasping power, right? Most of the way he names those two, right? The desiring power. I guess that's what you translate is the appetitive, right? It's better than saying appetite. Or he always uses the word apprehensive, you see the grasping power, right? For the knowing power. That's intrinsic but it's non semper inest. It's not always within, right? People aren't always thinking or always willing. It's not always thinking but it's not always thinking but it's not always thinking about it. It's not always thinking about it. but it's not always thinking about it. It's not always thinking but it's not always thinking Now, the power of the will itself is a cause of, what, sin in potency, right, in ability, right? But it's reduced to an act through the, what, preceding motions of the sensitive part first and of reason, what, consequently. Now, from this, that something is proposed as desirable according to the senses, and since desire is inclined in that, right, reason sometimes, interdum, ceset, ceases from the consideration of the suitable, what, rule. And thus the will produces the act of, what, sin. Because, therefore, the preceding motions are not always an act, neither is sin always an act. That was a close call. To second, it should be said that not all interior motions are of the substance of sin, which consists chiefly in the act of the, what, but some precede and some follow the sin itself, huh? What's the one in Symboline there, where posthumous, you know, he's deceived by, uh, Yakimo, right, you know, the way that, uh, I thought it was deceived by Yago, right, huh? Yago and Yakimo. It's a beautiful, Italian villains, right, um, his wife has been unfaithful, right, uh, so it's a beautiful scene there where, where he denounces womankind, you might say, because, you know, he doesn't trust any woman now, you know, huh, because she had seemed to be, you know, the paragon of virtue and so on, huh? And, uh, and, uh, he's attributing every, what, evil man to, or the human race to woman, right, huh? And, uh, this is, there are styles that people like to generalize that thing, you know, whatever they suffer from. And, uh, but, you know, sometimes we speak of man as having, what, reason and woman as being, what, will, right, huh? So I always think about that when you, you see this here, right, because now he's saying the will is, what, is, uh, consistent principality, right, in not to voluntatis, right, huh, see? So it's a will that is, what, you know, it's that reason that is principally what's inconsistent, right, huh? So it consists more in woman than, than man, see? No, but it's kind of interesting that sense that we think of man as being, uh, more tied up with reason, right, and, and, and woman more tied up with love, you know, and, uh, you know, how, how, uh, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look Well, then you're not acting like a man, really, huh, pursuing goods in a way that's natural for a man to pursue them