Prima Secundae
Lecture 211: Original Sin in the Essence and Powers of the Soul

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In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Dios, gracias. God, our enlightenment. Guardian Angels, strengthen the lights of our minds. Lord, illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Amen. And help us to understand how that you have written. Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. I mentioned before, class, that in the Summa Contra Gentiles, right, Thomas takes up original sin there in the fourth book, right, just before he's going to take up the, what, incarnation, right? And there you have, because of the way the books are designed, you see the connection between original sin and Christ's, what, coming, right? He came principally to remove original sin, because that's tied up the common good, right? And then actual sin, too. Well, I think those are the two. But by taking up original sin right before that, Thomas is saying, well, it seems to be the reason why he came, right? You know, some days the theologians discuss, but God had become man if we had not sinned, or if Adam even had not sinned, right? Well, as far as what Scripture says, it seems, you know, that the reason why he came was because we had sinned, right? Couldn't get out, right? He's a Houdini in a different sense, right? But he's untying, huh? Untying this thing. So we're up to question, article two here, in question 83, huh? The second one goes for it thus. It seems that original sin is not before in the essence of the soul than in the, what? Powerism. For the soul is apt to be the subject of sin as regards that, as regards this, that it is able to be, what? Moved by the will. But the soul is not moved by the will according to its essence, but only according to its, what? Powerism. And therefore original sin is not in the soul according to its essence, but only according to its, what? Powerism. Aristotle, in the book on the soul, there are three books on the soul, he says that we know the soul through its powers, right? And the powers through their acts, and the acts through their, what? Object, huh? But it's a hard sense for people to separate the soul from its, what, powers, right? Because the powers are like a natural property of the, what, soul, right? And so some people have a hard time, say, separating, let's say, two from half of four. Same thing! Well, are they the same thing? Two and half of four? Well, two is a number, and therefore in the genus of quantity, discrete quantity, and half of four is a, what? Yeah, yeah. And half of four follows upon being two, right, huh? Yeah, yeah. But it's always there, right, huh? And, you know, a lot of students, you know, have a hard time, you know, distinguishing those two things, right? And, you know, when Aristotle gave as the, this last sense there that he talks about of before, the cause is before the effect, right? That's different from before in being, or before in time, right, huh? What's before in time can be without something else, right? Comes later in time. What's before in being can be without what is later in being, right? But the cause and effect can be together, huh? And that seems kind of funny. How can this be before that if they're together in time, right? Together in being, right, huh? It's not that something becomes two, and then a little while later on, in time it becomes half of four, right? But no, since it's two, it's half of four, right? Okay? Or can it be two without being half of four? No. So, in the first two senses of before, huh, two is what? Not before half of four, is it? But there's a different sense. The cause is before the, what, effect. So half of four, or a third of six, right? Fourth of eight. These are all properties that follow upon being two, right? You can see how that last sense is, in some sense, harder to understand. It's a different sense, and Aristotle stops and shows how it's different from the other senses. So, people have difficulties separating or distinguishing between the soul and its, what, yeah. And you can see that in Descartes and so on, people like that, you know, they mix them up. Moreover, original sin is opposed to original, what, justice, huh? I always thought of original justice being a little bit like Plato's thinking, right, huh? Because Plato wants to put the soul, the different virtues, in different parts of the soul, right? But in order to see it, he blows up the soul, right, you know, compares it to the parts of the city and so on. And so the prudence or foresight is going to be in the, what, intellectual part of the city, right? The rulers, and fortitude in the soldiers, and temperance is necessary in the crowd, right, huh? Well, he can distinguish between reason and the emotions, right? But it's hard for people to distinguish the will from the emotions, huh? And if you ever teach a class and so on, you're trying to make the distinction, or point out the distinction, I should say, between love, which is in the will, and love, which is, what, an emotion, you know, that's a hard thing for kids to see, right? See? And they're more sure of the distinction between reason and emotion. But this distinction between the will and the emotions is very hard for them to see. So Plato has just, what, three parts there in the soul, the reason, and then thumas, which is called the erasal appetite in here, and then, what, epithumia, right, which is called the erasal, right? Well, prudence is in reason, courage is in thumas, huh, spirit, and temperance in epithumia. Well, there's no place to put, what, justice, right, because he hasn't got willed or distinct. So it's a little bit like the idea of original justice, right, where the parts are, what, in harmony with each other, right, and the lower parts obeying the higher parts and so on, right? So it's not like he's really talking about original justice, but, I mean, he has something like that, right? But original justice is in some power of the soul, which is the subject of virtue. Therefore, also, original sin is more in the powers of the soul than in its, what, essence, huh? Moreover, original sin is said to be concupiscence, as we said in the earlier. Horrible question, huh? But concupiscence is in the powers of the soul, therefore, original sin. But against all this is that original sin is said to be a natural sin, right? The katum naturae. But the soul is the form and nature of the body according to its essence, and not according to its, what? Powers. As has been shown in the first book when he took up the soul. Therefore, the soul is the subject of original sin chiefly according to its very, what, essence, huh? Now, incidentally, there, sometimes Aristotle will say that the soul is a nature, right? And sometimes he will kind of distinguish between the soul and nature. And what's the, is he confused there, or what is the reason for that, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he sees, you know, how earth, air, fire, and water in the old science, you know, either go up or they go down. They don't do both naturally, right? They don't do both of them, right? They don't do both of them, right? They don't do both of them, right? They don't do both of them, right? They don't do both of them, right? They don't do both of them, right? They don't do both of them, right? But then you see the tree growing or something, and it what? Goes up, and it grows down. So it's kind of overcoming this determination to just one direction. And then even more so when you get the what? The sense of taste, it can sense the sweet and the sour together, right? And most of all, in the reason, it has the same knowledge of what? Opposites, and so on. So sometimes he distinguishes them that way. And the things that are limited to just one, they keep the name nature, right? And the soul gets the new name, right? But in the broad sense of nature, beginning, cause, emotion, rest, and then which it is, the soul is a what? A nature. So if it's a sin of nature, then it seems to be primarily in the soul, right? This is interesting to see. Now, another thing about this, you know, if you ask somebody, what is the subject of the theological virtue of hope, what would you say? Where is that? Yeah. And what is the subject of the theological virtue of charity? Yeah. What is the subject of the theological virtue of faith? What? Yeah, it's in the intellect, yeah. It might depend upon the will in some way, but it's actually in the intellect, huh? But now, what about grace, sanctifying grace now? What is the subject of sanctifying grace, huh? Yeah, yeah. And sometimes they speak of sanctifying grace as a partaking in the divine nature, right? So Thomas will speak as if grace is in the soul itself, right? And then, just as from the soul itself, the reason and the will proceed like a property, right? Like half a four precedes in the two. Well, then, when there's grace in the soul, then there proceeds from that. These are virtues of faith and hope and charity, right? Well, does that cast a little bit of light upon this, huh? Because, don't we first attribute to grace, right? The release from what? Original sin, right, huh? But grace is in the soul as in the subject, right? Well, then maybe the cleansing begins in the soul and proceeds outwardly from that, huh? I answer, it should be said that that part of the soul is chiefly the subject of some sin to which first pertains the cause that moves one to that, what? Sin, huh? Just as if the cause moving one to sinning is the pleasure of sins, which pertains to the concupiscible power as to its own, what, object, huh? It would follow that the concupiscible power is the proper subject of that, what, sin, huh? Now, it's manifest, however, that original sin is caused by origin, right? Whence that of the soul that is first obtained by the origin of man is going to be the first subject of original sin. But the, what, origin attains the soul, or arises at the soul, as the end of, what, generation, according as it is the form of the body, which belongs to it according to its proper, what, essence, right? Whence the soul, according to its essence, is the first subject of original sin, huh? Just like you were talking about the origin of two and half of four, right, huh? Well, being half of four follows upon being two, right, huh? So if you want to get to half of four, you've got to first generate a, what, a two, right? Yeah. And so if this is a, what, sin that we get in our very origin, right, what does our very origin in that first? Well, the soul itself, right? And then the powers of the soul flow from the soul, like half of four and half of six, or, I mean, a third of six follow from what? Being two, right? So this is very, what, subtle, right? Whence the soul, according to its very essence, is the first subject of original sin, right? And I say, you know, proportional to that, though, it's saying what's the first subject of grace, right? What's the soul itself, right? And then from that there followed maybe certain virtues, right? In the reason or in the will and so on. Now, to the first it should be said, huh? And that just as the emotion, the will of someone, right, in this property pertains to the powers of the soul, right, but not to the essence of the soul, so the emotion of the will of the first one, what? Generating. By way of generation, arise first at the essence of the soul, as has been said, huh? So you first, what, generate the soul itself, right? And then from that follows the powers, right? Even if they're at the same, what, time, right, huh? Now, to the second objection, huh? Original justice here. To the second should be said that original justice also, huh, pertains primarily, right, to the essence of the soul, right? Because it was a gift given divinely to human nature, huh? Which before regards the essence of the soul, then the, what, powers, huh? See how Thomas looks before and after, right, huh? But what way is the soul before its powers, right? What sense of before? Before in time? Cause and effect, yeah. Like a property, right? Okay. You know, in the great, uh, porphyry there is writing his book, The Isagoge, right, huh? Of course, they say, why is his book called The Isagoge, huh? What way of naming is that? Yeah. But I mean, there are many introductions, right? Why among all introductions should this be called the introduction? The Isagoge we refer to it as. Yeah, it's the beginning of logic, right, huh? And logic is the beginning of philosophy, huh? Thomas says, you know, that the study of logic is an exception to the rule that you start with the easier, right? But it's kind of a necessity, right? You have to know some logic in order to do even, what, geometry, right? Cause there's definitions and all kinds of syllogisms, right, huh? I used to drive the kids crazy to give them a little Euclid there, you know? But you got, in one theory, you got sometimes, you know, all three kinds of syllogisms, right? And, uh, the disjunctive syllogism and the either-or, I mean, the either-or syllogism, I call it. And the then syllogism and then the regular syllogism, right? You have all three of them in one simple theorem, right? So you got to know some logic to really do these things scientifically. But the Isagoge is the beginning of that, right? And so, Porphy, though, at the beginning of the Isagoge, he says, we're going to talk about, you know, what genus is, what difference is, what species is, what property is, and what accident is, right? And he's talking to Chrysorius, who's asked him to explain these, because he's run across these words in the categories of Aristotle, and what the hell do these words mean, right? And he says, oh, Chrysorius, it's necessary to know what is genus, what is difference, what is species, what is property, what is accident. Not only to know the categories of Aristotle, but to understand definition, huh? And to understand division, right? And, of course, the definition is, you know, what you define is a species, right? Through its genus and differences, right? And if you don't know the differences, you use a property as the second best, you know? But you don't put any accidents in there, right? And it's necessary for understanding demonstration, because in demonstration, you demonstrate a property of a subject, right, a species, through its, what, definition, yeah. So you've got to know this, right? So one time I said, I do a little thing to ask my colleagues at an assumption. Have you read the Isogoge? Couldn't find anybody who had read the Isogoge. And I said, you know what it is? So you know what the Isogoge was? This is out of order, right? I went to Laval there the first year there. They had the Albert the Great's commentary, you might call it, of the Isogoge, right? It goes into the Isogoge, you know, and all the teaching of it, you know. So you get a nice foundation there, right? But you've got to know those things, huh? So, you've got to know what property is, huh? So look at the reply again to the second objection. To the second should be said that although, that also original justice pertains primordiality, right? First in order, to the essence of the soul, for it was a gift divinely given to human, what? Nature, huh? And to be received along with human nature from our parents there. And this before regards the essence of the soul, then the powers, right? Notice how Thomas is looking before and after here. The powers, however, more seem to pertain to the, what? Person insofar as they are beginnings of the personal acts or sources of the personal acts. Whence they are the proper subjects of actual sins, right? Which are peccata personalia, huh? Personal sins, right? So my personal sins belong to me because of the person I am, right? Which is not much of a person. And, but original sin belongs to me by reason of my, what? My nature, yeah. Yeah. That's a peccata natura, right? I was saying to Warren Murray on the phone the other day, he said, are you something or someone? Or both. But when I say you're something, what would it mean to find out the something you are? What would that mean? Yeah, yeah. What are you, right? And of course, thing and nature are probably, you know, the words go together in the transcendental ones, huh? Okay. When I say someone, I'm thinking of you as what? Yeah. Individual substance of a rational nature, right? Okay. And of course, you know, when Thomas says, you know, that the individual person, individual substance of a rational nature has a name, person, right? He talks about this in Weethius and so on. And individual substance of a irrational nature doesn't have a name, right? And it's because a person has a very great dignity among all individual substances, huh? So when we say someone, although one could be applied, you know, one cat, one dog, right? But we, kind of by Antonia Messina, it applies to what? Yeah. I was thinking, I think that's the way it is in English, right? Because we had a pet cat there, but I never thought of calling the cat someone, you know? Maybe if he ate my steak, I might say, somebody ate my steak. I see someone's coming to dinner. You mean some person, right? I mean, the dog's coming to dinner. I don't tell you to come to, you know, sit next to me all the time and get, you know, little tidbits for my steak or whatever it was, you know? I like to spoil her as much as I could and get away with it. Yeah, my wife dug up these little pictures of this cat, Tabitha, and one where she's up there, standing on her hind legs and looking out the window, you know, and she's like that. And they say, look at this, it's almost human, you know? Not quite. Almost someone, right, huh? And De Connick said, Aristotle is somebody. That's another person, right? What's the name of the book there of John Paul II there? The Acting Prison, isn't it? Kind of a hard book, they say. So the powers seem more to pertain to the person insofar as they are the beginnings of personal acts. Whence the proper subject of actual sins, yeah, whence they are the proper subject of actual sins, huh? Which are personal sins, he calls, huh? The kind of personnel, yeah. But the sin of the nature is more as the primary subject, yeah. To the third, it should be said that the body is compared to the soul as matter to, what, form, huh? What's the definition of the soul, by the way? Aristotle, yeah, I actually use the word act, but he does say it's a form, too, yeah. But he says, the first act of a natural body composed of tools. So in the translations, a lot of times, they use the word organic, but that doesn't get you really the sense of what the word means, right? Aristotle says, the natural body composed of tools, right? A purpose, not a tool, right? It's hard to talk about tools without talking about what they're for, right? Yeah, that's what, whenever you find some odd thing, in the shop or something, in the attic, whatever, what is this for? I saw your first thing, what's this thing for? Yeah. You never saw a pipe bender before, you look at anything, what do they use this thing for? It's obviously going to be... Even in my computer there, yeah. It's this for, I don't know what this is for. Destroyed everything in my heart. I don't get into trouble, you know, push the pressing buttons, I don't know what they're for. Strange, these cars, you know, sometimes I jump out of the car before Rosalie, and then I lock the door, right? Well, when she does open the door, the alarm goes off. What the heck is she doing that for? Now, how do you start the alarm? How do you start the alarm? That's why the cops come from the residence. So, the body is compared to the soul as matter to form, which, although it is after in the order of generation, that is, say, the soul is after, right? The order of generation, which is under what sense of before? Before, and before and after, order of generation. It comes under the order of time, right? By special sense, yeah. But nevertheless, it is before in the order of perfection in nature, and that was the, what, fourth sense of before, right? So I think it's good to know the 12th chapter, the categories, right? That distinction of before is very useful for understanding these things. But the essence of the soul is compared to what? The powers as subjects are compared to what? Their proper accidents. It's another way of saying properties, right? Sometimes they call properties accidentia propria, right? Because there's something outside the nature of the thing, right? But because they follow upon the nature of the thing, right? Then they get a new name sometimes, property. So sometimes they divide accidents into, you know, what are just accidents, and the propria accidentia, and then they're called, what, properties. Whence there is not the same, what, reason, huh? Two different orders that you're mixing up. One different orders that you're mixing up. One different orders that you're mixing up. One different orders that you're mixing up. One different orders that you're mixing up. One different orders that you're mixing up. One different orders that you're mixing up. One different orders that you're mixing up. the fourth argument was taken from concupiscence, but he pointed out before, that concupiscence has itself materially and ex consequente, right? In what? Original sin, right? It's not the original source. But when original justice is removed, right, then the concupiscible powers go to their natural act, right, without the ordering of reason, huh? Except in Christ, right? Now, what does it infect first among the powers? To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that original sin does not infect the will before than the other, what? Yeah, than the other powers. For every sin chiefly pertains to the power by which its act is, what, caused. But original sin is caused by the act of the generative power. Therefore, among the powers is so, it seems more to retain the generative power than the will. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wonder if Thomas joked about his objections when he thought them out. The question is, who would he joke with? I was confessing that. The original, what is his name? Okay. Moreover, original sin is carried over through the carnal seed, right? But the other powers of the soul are, what? Closer to the fa'ash than, what? The will. As is clear about all the sense powers which use a bodily, what, organ. Therefore, in them more is original sin than in the will, right? Now, most interesting of all here. Moreover, the understanding is before the will. For there is no will except about a, what? Good understood, huh? You can't will something, you don't know it. But if, therefore, original sin infects all the powers of the soul, it would seem that it before infects the intellect as being prior, right? Tied yourself in knots. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm always thankful about the influence of Austerli upon me, you know, towards the foundation of music, but it got me reading the poetics of Aristotle more carefully and so on, right? And when Aristotle talks about the plot of the tragedy, he calls it the, he says, it's the soul of tragedy, right? The plot. But what is the plot, right? And then he says, you know, well, Homer taught all the Greeks how to make a good plot. And a good plot is not one that's about one man or one war or something, but it's a course of action that has a beginning, middle, and end. But then later on, he says that a plot involves tying the knot and then, what, untying it, right? Well, of course, beginning, middle, and end is, as you know, tied up with before and after, right, and their meanings, right? So when Aristotle defines them, you know, he'll say that the beginning is before something, but not after anything. And the end is after something, but not before anything. And the middle is before something and after something, right? But it can't be a fourth part, because that would be either before anything or after anything, and we're not, we're not to fit in there, right? So the great Homer didn't take the whole Traugian War. Anything could happen, you know, huh? Like he was reported there in the Second World War or something, you know, reporting the battles that go on, right? Because these different battles going on don't reform, what? Beginning, middle, and end, huh? They took a course of action, right? Starting with the disagreement between Achilles, right? And Agamemnon, and going all the way through, right? Okay. But then later on he says that it has, what? The tragedy has two parts, tying the knot or knots, and then untying them, right? Well, of course, you know how I think of before and after a lot. But also, you can see, well, it's a philosophy that's right, huh? It's tying the knots and untying them. So in the metaphysics there, when he takes up this whole book of dialectic, right, and the third book there, and he's saying, you know, he used the term tying the knot and untying it, right? So that the mind is kind of what? When you're hearing opposite arguments, the mind is kind of tied up by that, right? And then you have to examine the knot and then find the loose end, right, huh? Okay. I remember C.S. Lewis sometimes, he'll say, you're looking for the loose ends, you know, and then you start to unravel it, right, huh? So you have those things very much in mind, right? That's what Thomas is doing here, right? He's always tying the knots in the first part here, because the said contour produces the knot, right, against the other ones. And then he enties them in the, yeah, and finally at the end when he replies to its objection, but, and sometimes he just enties the arguments against his position, right? But sometimes he has to answer both of them, right? But anyway, so where are we now? We're in Article III, the third objection, yeah. Okay. But against this is the original justice before regards the will, for it is a rectitude of the will, as Anselm says, right, in the book on virginal conception, huh? Therefore, original sin which is opposed to it before regards the, what, will, huh? Now, is Anselm thinking, though, that it belongs mainly in the will? I don't know. But anyway, he's certainly streaking out the will here, right? So this is a Sunday probable argument to decide that that's going to be the first thing affected, huh? I answer it should be said that in the infection of sin, huh, of original sin, there are two things to be considered, huh? First is its existence in a, what, subject, right? And according to this, it first regards the very essence of the soul, as has been said, huh? Then we're not to consider its inclination to a, what? An act. And in this way, it regards the powers of the soul. It's necessary, therefore, that it regard before what first, what has, what? A first inclination to sinning, right? But this is the will, as has been said above, huh? The will's essential to any sin, right? It's got to be voluntary. And, of course, the will also moves all the other, what, powers, right? When's original sin, per prius, huh? You can't say that English can you exactly, huh? It previously regards the will, right? You wanted to make an advert out of it. It regards the will before others, huh? Now, how does he answer that first objection about it coming through the generative power? Well, a very simple thing that he points out. The first, therefore, it should be said, the original sin is not caused in man by the generative power of the offspring, yeah. But through the act of the generative power of the parent. Whence is not necessary that, what? The son's own generative power be the first subject of what? Yeah. You're talking about what is the one who's receiving original sin, right? Yeah. It's being caused by the generative power of the parents, but not by the generative power of the offspring. It's not even an act of that point, huh? That's a simple way to get out of that one, huh? To the second it should be said, the original sin has a two-fold, what, process, huh? That's a simple way to get out of that one. That's a simple way to get out of that one. from the flesh to the soul and another from the essence of the soul to its power the first proceeding is according to the what order of generation the body generated first second is according to the order of what perfection and therefore although the other powers to with the sense powers are nearer to the flesh right because nevertheless the will is nearer to the very essence of the soul as a superior power it first arrives to it the infection of what original sin starts in the soul right now notice that again you had different senses of before here right now what about the intellect then well as Thomas points out you may recall when he talked about the intellect and the will they both are causes of each other but in different ways and the intellect is more a cause in the way that it the end is a cause right and the will is more a cause in the sense in which the mover maker is a cause right so to the third it should be said that the understanding in some way precedes the what will insofar as it proposes to it it's what object but another way the will precedes the will according to the order of motion to act which motion pertains to what yeah moving towards the yeah go forward here