Prima Secundae
Lecture 213: Pride and Cupidity as Beginnings of Sin

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beginning in another way, right? To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that pride is not the beginning of every what? Sin. For the root is a beginning of the tree. And thus it seems to be the same what is the root of sin and what is the what? Beginning of sin. But cupidity is the root of every sin. As has been said, therefore also it is the beginning of every sin and therefore not what? Pride, huh? Okay. And Thomas a lot of times used this idea of, you know, the root in the beginning as if they're kind of synonyms sometimes, right? So this is an interesting thing that it's going to be a beginning in a much different way, huh? Moreover, in Ecclesiasticus 10, it's Ecclesiasticus, right? Yeah. Yeah. They change the names of these books, I'm getting, so I'm not too sure how. I used to have it up down pretty well, which one it is. The beginning of the pride of man is to be what? Yeah, to stand apart from, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Apostare, I guess. What? It says here, to fall off. Yeah. Okay. But apostasy from God is a certain sin, right? Therefore, some sin is the beginning of pride, and it itself is not the beginning of every sin, right? Okay. More of that would seem to be the beginning of every sin, which does all the sin. But this is a disordered love of oneself, which makes the city of Babylon, as Augustine says in the 14th book on the city of God. Therefore, the love of oneself is the beginning of all sin, and not pride. Maybe there is something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But against this is what is said in Ecclesiasticus 10, the beginning of every sin is what? Pride, huh? There's one psalm there, which is just all about pride, huh? I mean, about being delivered from pride, huh? Answer, it should be said that some say that pride is said in three ways. Something like the way you began the last article, right? In one way, according as pride signifies the disordered desire of one's own, what? Excellence. And in this way, it is a special sin, huh? In another way, according as implies a certain actual contempt of God, huh? As regards this effect, which is to not be subject to his, what? Recept, huh? And thus, they say that it is a general peccato, like a genus, right? Okay. In a third way, according as it implies a certain inclination to this contempt from the corruption of nature, right? Okay. And thus, they say that is the beginning of every, what? Sin. And it differs from cupidity, because cupidity regards sin from the side of, what? Conversion to a changeable good, from which sin, in a certain way, is nourished and favored, right? Or purged. What? Foster, yeah. And on account of this, cupidity is said to be the, what? Root. But pride regards sin on the side of aversion from God, to whose precept or command God refuses to be subject, right, huh? And therefore, it is called the beginning, because on the side of aversion, it begins the idea of what? Evil. Okay. And these things, although they are true, he says, nevertheless, are not according to the intention of the wise one, huh? Who says the beginning of every sin is, what? Pride, huh? For it is manifest that he speaks of pride according as it is a disordered desire of one's own, what? Excellence. As is clear through what is joined to that, right, huh? That God destroyed the seats of the, what? Proud leaders. Yeah. And about this matter, he speaks almost, you might say, in the whole chapter there, right, huh? And therefore, it should be said that pride, even according as it is a special sin, right, is the beginning of every sin, huh? For it should be considered that in voluntary acts, of which sort are what? Sins. Sins. A two-fold order is found, one of intention and one of carrying them out, right? In the first order, the end has the notion of a beginning, right? As has been said many times above, huh? But the end in all temporal goods and acquiring them is that man through them might have a certain perfection and excellence. And therefore, from the side, from this side, pride, which is a desire of excellence, is laid down to be the beginning of every sin. But on the part of carrying it out, what is first is what gives one the opportunity of fulfilling all one's desires for sin, which has the notion of a, what? Root to it well. And therefore, on this side, or from this side, avarice is laid down to be the root of all evils, as has been said, huh? That's a very subtle distinction there, right? That's how we divide that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to this is clear the reply to the first, right, huh? Yeah. In the sense of the end, huh? Yeah. And of the, yeah. The second, it should be said that to be an apostate from God is said to be the beginning of pride and the part of, what? Aversion. From this, that a man does not wish to be subject to God. It follows that he, what? In a disordered way, wishes his own excellence in temporal things. And thus, apostasy from God is not taken there as a special sin, huh? But more as a general condition of every sin, which is turning away from the unchangeable good, huh? Or it can be said that to be an apostate from God is said to be the beginning of pride because it is the first, what, species of pride, huh? Which species will be taken up in the secunde, secunde, huh? But to pride it pertains to not wish to be subject to any, what, superior, huh? And especially not to be subject to God, from which it happens that a man is extolled above himself unduly, yeah, yeah. A way that's not owed to him, huh? As regards the other species of, what? Pride, huh? To the third, it should be said, in this a man is, what? Loves himself that he wishes his own excellence, huh? But it's the same thing to love oneself as to wish good to oneself, right? Whence to the same it pertains, that is laid down as the beginning of every sin, pride, or one, yeah. That's, that's pride itself, huh? Stop there. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gratias. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds. Lord, illumine our images and arouse us to consider more quickly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Praise God. And help us to understand all that you have written. So, question 84, article 3. To the third one goes forward thus. It seems that besides pride and avarice, there are not some other special sins which are called, what? Capital. For the head seems to have itself to the animals as a root to the plants, as Aristotle says in the second book of this. So, we take our food in through our mouth, right? He thought that the plants, you know, draw nutrients, in a sense food, from the soil, which has got some truth to it, right? So, the roots are like, you know. So, if you say one of these avarice is the root, you know, well, then you're saying it's the head. It's just a different metaphor, if you want to say, right? If, therefore, cupidity is said to be the root of all sins, it seems that it alone ought to be called the capital vice, and no other, what? Sin, of course, even words like beginning can be said, what? In many ways, right? So, the prince is not God, but he's the beginning of something, right? Principium. Moreover, the head has a certain order to the other members, insofar as from the head are diffused in some way, both sense and, what? Motion to the other parts of the body. But sin is said to be the lack of order, right? But, therefore, sin does not have the notion of a, what? Head, huh? And thus, there ought not to be, what? Lay down any capital vices. But there's a head of the rubber band, right? There's an order there, you know. And some of these crimes are all organized, right? So, moreover, capital crimes are said, those which are punished by the, what? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But such a punishment are punished sins in each genre, right? Or a different genre. Therefore, capital vices are not some determined ones, according to species. But against this is what Gregory says, that must be Gregory the Great, huh? A famous worker called Moralia, they refer to, how Thomas depends a lot upon. 31st book of the Moralia. He enumerates certain special vices, which are said to be, what? The capital vices, huh? Now, Thomas begins by distinguishing two senses of the word capital, right? That is important in that third objection, I guess. I think it should be said that capital is said from the capital, the head, huh? Now, the head is, properly speaking, a certain part of the animal, huh? Which is the beginning and the directive part of the whole animal. Whence metaphorically, huh? Metaphorically. Every beginning is called a, what? Head, huh? So, is Christ called a head sometimes? Okay. Pope called the head in the church. And also men who direct others and govern them are called the heads of others, right? So, we're talking about the capital, huh? Washington, D.C. Yeah. So, he's distinguished two uses of the word copy tune there, right? Therefore, there is said to be a capital vice in one way from head, properly said. That's the one way you lose your head, properly speaking. And according to this, a capital sin is said to be a sin which is punished by the punishment of the head. Lose your head. And in this sense, and thus now we do not intend about capital, what? Sins, which one to be punished by losing your head. Okay. But according to the other way in which a capital sin is, what? From the head, insofar as it metaphorically signifies the beginning or what is directive of others, huh? Okay. You speak of the mercy of God. How did you say about that? Is that word being said properly or metaphorically? Perhaps, yeah. Because it means just an emotion, doesn't it? Aristotle speaks, you know, tragedy is moving fear and pity, right? But the word is taken up, the Greek word, huh? It's an important distinction, huh? St. Thomas says an article there in the first part of the Summa there, right? The first question there, whether scripture should use what? Metaphoras. And he says, yes. Not just because it does so, right? Because it's appropriate to us, right? And that's where he had that famous objection that says, well, it belongs to the poetry as metaphors. But poetry is in female doctrina, the lowest teaching of all. So why should the highest teaching use what the lowest teaching? What's the answer that Thomas gives to that? Have you seen that? Yeah, say that you have in both cases something that goes, what, kind of beyond our mind, right? But in one case, it's above our mind, huh? In the other case, it's below our mind, huh? And the poet is telling you to take something that is below our mind in some way, because it's not fully understandable, right? And give it more meaning than it has, right? Okay? And the, what? In theology, it's reverse, right? Okay? So it's in a sense for the reverse reason that the poet uses metaphors and the, what? Scripture does, huh? So I used to sometimes say, you know, when you talk about, you know, who are the greatest poets, right? And sometimes they say, well, Homer may be among the Greeks, and Shakespeare among the moderns, and Dante in the middle, right? But Dante is not really, it seems, a poet in the way that Homer is, huh? Because he's trying to talk about heavenly things and give them kind of a, what, imaginative things, right? So he's kind of imitating, you might say, what Scripture does, but I mean, in a way, why Homer is doing what? He's taking what might have been a pirate rage, you know? And, you know, Aristotle says, you know, Homer taught the other Greeks how to make a good plot. It's got to be a course of action. There's a beginning, middle, and end. But he can't take the whole Trojan War and make something out of it, because it's a, you know, conglomeration of things, right? And so if you just take a course of action that has a beginning, middle, and end, you have a course of action that has much more order than your own life has in a week, right, huh? If I told you what I did this week, you'd say, well, what has this got to do with that? You know, you did this, and you did that, and I did this, and I did that. You know, what's this got to do with that? You know, and I bought a, look at a chair. I went here and I, you know, put gasoline, you know, in the car. What does, you know, staying theology got to do with, you know, putting gas in the car, you know? And here I cooked something or something, you know? You know, it's just, my life is just a hodgepodge of things, right? I don't know what it is, maybe it's a more order, but, you know, I just, you know? I have a pretty regular schedule. So you can't really compare Dante to Homer and Shakespeare, right? And, you know, Homer, you know, he takes what might have been just, as I said, a pirate man or something. And it's, you know, like Job said, man's life on earth is warfare, you know? And it's all the meaning it seems to have, right, huh? And you see it, you know, it all seemed like it in something like Mozart, you know? And I'd come, you know, and I babbled at the story about... what Mozart's doing in the music, you know. He says, Dwayne, you think that's got more meaning than it does? I mean, Mozart is getting what? The emotion's more meaning than they really, what? Have, you know? So that's an important thing. Oh yeah, he's just metaphors. Very good at metaphors, right? Dion the Sunday School Mozart's metaphors in class. So he says, thus now we do not intend about capital sins, as he said properly, but in another way, as a capital sin, he said metaphorically from the head, which signifies a beginning or something that is direct of others. And thus a capital sin in this sense is one from which other vices, what? Rise. And especially according to the origin of the final cause, which is the formal origin, this has been said above. And thus a capital vice is not only the beginning of others, but also is directive of them in some way, leading them along, right? For always the art or the habit to which pertains the end is what? Principle and commands those things which are to the end. Whence Gregory in the 31st book of the Moralia compares these capital vices to the leaders of armies, right? Capital vices, all kinds of vices, you know, hauling them, you know, and you can do this nice, you know, you can make a movie out of this sort of stuff, you know, like you have in Spencer a little bit, you know, bringing the vices, you know, going down, following the leader. Now, the first objection, right, is based upon taking the head more, what? Property maybe, huh? The first thereof it should be said that capital is said denominatively from the head, right? And that's very, what? Important, huh? Which is, what? Through a certain derivation or partaking of the head. As something having some property of the head, but not being simply a head. And therefore, capital vices are said not only those which have the notion of the first, what, origin of all, as avarice, which is said to be the root, and pride, which is said to be the beginning, but those which have a, what? The notion of origin that's near, right? With respect to many, what? Yeah. Well, you've got a chain of command there, right? You made it one general on top, and then the general has got five colonels, and they're the beginnings of these, and quite an organization you've got this, you, you know? It's an organization. Yeah, yeah, it is. To the second it should be said that sin lacks order on the side of what? It turns away from, namely God, huh? For on this side, it has a notion of something bad, right? For the bad, according to Augustine in the book on the nature of the good, is a lack of mode, species, and order, right? But on the side of what it turns toward, it regards some little good, at least a commutable good, right? And there, on this side, it could have, what? Order, right? Okay. So we're saying even for the, what? The head of the, head of the, uh, robber band, right? And the pirate, the head of the, there was, you know, these pirate ships, and someone was in charge, right? Because they don't have to do some goods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They might be lesser goods, you know? That's a great idea. So they're turning away from the law of the country, or whatever it is, and God, too, of course. But, you know. Something to move on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can have some kind of a, you know, organization. You keep the car running, and I'll go with the gun. The Briggs, what is it? The things. The third objection, of course, the argument is taken from, what? The capital sin, according as it is said, by reason of the punishment owed to it, that you lose your head. But here we do not speak thus, right? Suppose Mohammed doesn't understand that better than I used that word, right? Because some use a hand. You just want to use a hand, you know? I heard of people who worked, like, in the oil companies there in Saudi Arabia and went to one of those public executions and decided not to go and visit them anymore, you know, because off goes a hand, right? Swift, you know? Of course, you get these movies now from the ISIS. They're terrible things. Okay. Now, now... When you get to the enumeration of the capital vices, this really gets interesting, right? That's what I say sometimes, you know, people like the bad characters in movies or in plays, you know, better than the wishy-washy good characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, our Lord said, you know, if you're lukewarm, you know, I spit you out, right? But he'll take you to the extreme, right? Something like paradise lost, paradise regained with the figure of Satan being surprisingly attractive to the reader, whereas the figure of Christ is pretty bland. Yeah, yeah. C.S. Lewis criticizes Milton for that, you know? C.S. Lewis does, right? The devils and Dante say are much better, you know, for what the reader like. The devil's kind of almost a hero, right, going against God, right? And what's that book that Clinton wrote her thesis on? You know? C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. Yeah, yeah, it's dedicated to— C.S. Lewis. The first revolutionary. C.S. Lewis. Yeah, to Satan. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. Yeah. C.S. Lewis. Yeah. C.S. Lewis. Yeah. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. Yeah. I was reading some things there about St. Francis de Sales the other day, you know, and I guess when he first went, you know, he was fairly young, into the Chablis there, you know, to try to convert the fallen away Catholics there. That's where Calvin was very powerful and so on. And he says in some of his less scarred moments he referred to Calvin as a stinker. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. To the fourth one goes forward thus, it seems that there ought not to be said to be seven, what, capital vices, right, which are inane or empty glory, right, no? Invidia, which means what? Envy. Ira, anger. Tristitia, I guess it's got a special name there some days, it's like scedia, you know, but anyway. Avarizia, avariz, gula, it's Latin in. And luxuria, okay, lust, I suppose, huh? Somebody's put a big sign up in that, when they drive by Worcester there, you know, coming back from here, you know, lust drags you down to hell, you know. That's a reference to something in the Bible, you know. There's one that, you always have to look at a spiritual message there for you, you know, but this is the one that's up there now, lust draws you down to hell, you know. It's good for everybody to see this thing, you know. The first objection to the same distinction of these seven, right? Well, sins are opposed to the what? Virtues, huh? But the principal virtues are what? Four. As has been said above. Therefore, the principal vices, or the capital vices, are not except four. What do you get, seven there, okay? Moreover, the passions of the soul are certain causes of sin, as has been said above, right, huh? But the principal passions of the soul are four, of about two of which no mention has been made among the four said sins. In the hymn, about hope and what? Fear, huh? So what does it say in the Constitution there, Vatican II there, and the modern world there, huh? Church, you know, identifying with the, what? Joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, right? That's the four principal passions. Well, here, you just have two of them, right? This sadness, whatever it is, and this, what? Delight in gula or luxury. Now, they enumerate some vices that pertain to what? Yeah. For a delictatio pertains to gula and luxurium, right? Lust and gluttony. And sadness to, what? Chidia, huh? And envy, huh? And therefore, unsuitably, are enumerated the principal sins, huh? Gregory's in deep trouble now, isn't he, huh? On the basis of these two objections, would you say? What does he know about these things, huh? Just because he's called Gregory the Great, huh? Yeah. He's called Gregory the Great, huh? Yeah. And I envy him being called the Great, huh? What was the name of that guy in Greece there? He was called, he's called the Just or something, you know? And anyway, somebody, you know, voted to have him thrown out of the country or something like that. He said, why'd you do that? I'm just tired of hearing him called that all the time. That's what the modern's idea, you know, like there's somebody being called the Great, you know? You know, they started calling John Paul, the second John Paul the Great, right? And I don't know if there's got a stick or not, I don't know, but I mean, you know, I'm tired of hearing him called the Great, you know? That kind of envy, you know? Nobody's great to me, but we're all the same. We're all great. We're all heroes. So they locked two of the principal passions right, and now in the third objection, you've got this thing, anger. Anger is not a principal passion, huh? Therefore not to be laid down among the principal vices, right? Well, you always never read Coriolanus by William Shakespeare, right? Someone shot a doctor there he didn't like, but I didn't think he was charged $8,000 or something like that for having his wife or his mother in the hospital. I don't know. Boy, that's a good issue. That's easy. That's a quick fix. You know, Tim, how did you know when the doctor shot him? There's a customer in the heart and she knows him. Is there a local, there's a local phenomenon? Well, where the door was going to shut him? Yeah, yeah, in Boston. In Boston, yeah, yeah, yeah, just in the, it's just here, something like that. Charlie too much, guys, I guess. I don't know if that was the reason I didn't, that he didn't like the way his, you know, he'd operated on his mother and his mother didn't survive the thing, so I don't know. I don't know. He snapped, that's all he said. He snapped. I blacked out. Yeah. Moreover, just as cupidity or avarice is the root of sin, so pride is the beginning of sin, right? As has been said above. But avarice is laid down as one of the seven capital vices. Therefore, pride ought to be enumerated among the capital vices, right? But actually, it's the queen of the vices, right? I know the woman would probably be mad about being called that. Because I think the ancients thought the queen bee was the male, right? It was actually the queen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're not really sexist, you see? Because they called the queen bee the king, right? Moreover, some sins are committed which are not able to be caused, which are not caused from any of these, right? They're caused from none of these. Just as when someone errs from, what? Ignorance, right? Or when someone from some good intention commits some sin. As when some robs and you might give, what? Yeah. Or what Robin wrote there, right? That's Obama. Therefore, insufficiently at a capital vices, is enumerated, right? But what a mess he's made of, poor Gregory, huh? Of course, Gregory's not here to defend himself, right? He's made a mess of Gregory's teaching, right? He got that from the monks, you know. Desert Faulkers. Desert Faulkers. Yeah, what did he know? He was a monk, so. Yeah, yeah. But Thomas says, but against this is the authority of Gregory. That's enumerating him in the 31st book of the Moralia. Think of ours, I confess, I had assigned him. Now, you read such and such a book. You read a book of the Moralia. In book 31. Next time you're in here, I'll send another book to you, you know. Get you. Oh, yeah, that's true, yeah. Both my daughter and my daughter-in-law, they're both home teach, you know, and kids are learning their stuff, you know. No way they wouldn't, even a Catholic school. I answered, should be said, as has been said, that the capital vices are said, those from which others arise, especially according to the notion of a, what, final cause. But this origin can be, what, noted in two ways. In one way, according to the condition of the one sinning, who is thus disposed, that he is most of all affected to one end, from which, for the most part, he goes forward to other sins. But this way of origin is not able to fall under, what, art, right? In that infinite are the particular dispositions of, what, men, okay? So I got angry because you served me salmon, right? Of all the things you could have served me, why'd you have to serve me that? No way. Yeah, see, well, that's some peculiar hang-up that I have, right?