Q.72 aa.6-9: Negation rests on affirmation; sins of heart, mouth and deed; excess and defect; circumstances

Orientation #

The recording opens mid-discussion of a. 6 (commission and omission), whose body was apparently read before the recording begins; he goes back to “the beginning of the body of the article” to recover the material/formal distinction. He closes by saying they will not see each other until [unclear in recording] (“Like MacArthur, I shall return”). The previous class covered q. 72 aa. 3–6, the next takes up the comparison of sins (q. 73).

The class, in order #

1. Can you know God negatively without knowing something affirmative? (“every negation is based on an affirmation”) #

Point: Thomas’s principle from the body of a. 6 — “always in things negation is founded upon some affirmation, which is in some way its cause” — applied first to negative theology.

• Against those who say we know God only negatively: you would not see that God is unchangeable unless you knew he is pure act; you would not see he is not composed unless you knew he is simple (the Physics I shows what changes is composed). Or: what is composed has a cause, something before it; God is the first cause, so nothing before him. Either way the negation rests on an affirmation (“at least in words it involves negation” too).
• Student applies it to the sins of a. 6: the gluttonous man loves food too much, and that causes both his bad deeds and his omissions; the envious man praises himself and withholds praise due to another; the avaricious man takes more than justice allows because he loves money, then neglects to give back. Every sin is a turning from God toward a creature, but the affirmative behind it is the excess love of the creature — “there’s a love behind it.”
• Logical confirmation (he returns to it twice): in no figure of the syllogism does a negative conclusion follow from two negatives; a negative conclusion needs one affirmative premise; an affirmative conclusion needs two affirmatives. So an affirmative statement is necessary to prove a negative — and since the premises are the cause of the conclusion (syllogism: “speech in which some statements laid down, another follows necessarily because of those laid down”), “there’s an idea of cause there.”
• Scripture: God’s name to Moses, “I am who I am” — everything else based upon that. So it is because of what God is (affirmative) that he is not composed, does not change.
• “Always in things — that’s a strong statement.” Semper: he wishes they would think more about it; it takes a lifetime to understand a beginning, seen first partially.
• Thomas sees many consequences from one beginning: Shakespeare’s “large discourse” — large from its beginning (a large induction) vs. large from its end (one principle from which many conclusions are deduced); Thomas has the second.
• Aside: Einstein vs. Bohr at the Solvay Congress — Einstein’s thought-experiment objection; Bohr stayed up all night and showed Einstein had missed a consequence of his own relativity; Einstein never publicly attacked the Copenhagen interpretation again; Socrates’ method of drawing what follows until you reach something you can’t accept.
• Aside: Shakespeare, “when the planets in evil mixture wander to disorder, what portents, what calamities” (disordered act).
• Aside: “variety is the spice of life” (the sailors and two weeks of spam; his wife on his buying another Shakespeare edition) — yet there is no variety in God’s life; we look at God “through the wrong end of the telescope.” End of Summa Contra Gentiles I: God is blessed and his beatitude excels anything else. Revelation: “a pillar in his temple, and not go out anymore.” Thomas indicates vocal praise in heaven — “some people are going to sing better.”
• The article’s other example of semper: it is of the same ratio that fire heats and does not chill.

2. Reply to obj. 1 of a. 6: commission and omission differ materially only (“one material, another formal”) #

Point: the division by commission and omission is “not according to diverse formal species but material only.”

• He goes back to the body: in sins a twofold difference — material, taken from the natural species of the acts; formal, from the order to one end. So acts materially different in species can be formally the same species of sin, being ordered to the same thing.
• Examples: does it belong to the philosopher to teach truth and to eliminate error? one follows the other — I want to avoid error because I love the truth (the affirmative is the cause). Why hate the ugly? because you love the beautiful. Why not read certain authors? because you want to read the right ones. Student: “we can apply that to anything then?” — “Semper.”
• Aside: Monsignor Dionne would give one statement and he would think about it all day and night (“Do you remember everything I say?” “Yes”); De Koninck, teaching the Physics since the 1930s, still saw something new; “How could I have missed that after all these years?”

3. Replies to obj. 2 and 3: affirmative and negative precepts (“diverse grades or steps in virtue”) #

Point: the law’s affirmative and negative precepts lead men gradatim, step by step, to virtue — first abstaining from the bad (negative precepts), then doing the good (affirmative) — so they belong not to diverse virtues but to diverse grades of virtue, and hence not to diverse species of sin.

• Sin does not have a species on the part of aversion (a negation or privation) but on the part of conversion (a certain act); so sins are not diversified in species according to diverse precepts of the law. “That sounds almost heretical” — “tell that to a confessor”; “awfully subtle”: how often have you thought about the Ten Commandments and not seen this?
• Reply 3: the objection proceeds about material diversity; negation, though properly not a species, is constituted a species by reduction to the affirmation it follows. “All this subtlety is in distinguishing the sins, not alone in avoiding them.”
• Bellarmine’s catechism (he thinks): is it enough not to hurt people? no, he must do good works. Nathanson: first stopped committing abortions, later converted and did much good (his film shown by Reagan in the White House); Reagan too had signed something pro-abortion as governor and came to see it was wrong — you have to stop the bad first.
• Aside: Kasurik reported Augustine (he does not know where) saying the only part of logic worth teaching is about errors.
• Break.

4. Art. 7: sin of heart, mouth and deed (“the consummation of the sin is in the doing”) #

Point: the three are not complete species but grades of one perfect species of sin.

• Objections read: (1) Augustine, De Trinitate XII, three grades — carnal sense suggests an illicit thing (sin of thought), content with the pleasure of thought only, consent to the deed — all pertain to the heart; (2) Gregory, Moralia IV, four grades — guilt hidden in the heart, published exteriorly, strengthened by custom, proceeding to presumption of divine mercy or desperation — he does not separate mouth from deed and adds two; (3) no sin in mouth or deed unless first in the heart, so they don’t differ in species. He notes Thomas’s respect for the two great Western doctors, and “the most frustrating writer, constantly objecting to himself.”
• Sed contra: Jerome on Ezekiel — three general offences, in thought, word, deed.
• Body: two ways of differing in species — (a) both have complete species, horse vs. ox (“I know about that now from the farm with my grandchildren”); (b) diverse grades in one generation or motion, as building is the complete generation of a house but gathering materials, foundation, erection of walls are incomplete species (Ethics X); likewise the generation of animals. Sin of deed has complete species; the heart is the foundation, the mouth the breaking forth to manifest the heart’s concept, the deed the consummation. All pertain to the same perfect species since they proceed from the same motive: the angry man desiring vindicta is disturbed in heart, breaks out in tumultuous words, proceeds to injurious deed; same for luxury. Coriolanus: gets angry, breaks out into words, then joins the enemy against Rome.
• Aside: the man killed in a ballpark parking lot — “something was said, probably.”
• Reply 1: every sin of the heart shares the notion of the hidden — one grade, subdivided into thought, pleasure, consent (a division of one member of the first division). Reply 2: mouth and deed share being manifest, so Gregory counts them as one; Jerome distinguishes them because in the mouth manifestation is chiefly intended, in the deed the carrying-out of the heart’s conception. Custom and desperation fall upon the perfect species, as adolescence and youth come after the completed generation of a man.
• Thomas’s spiritual sense of the three raised by Christ: Jairus’s daughter (sin within), the widow’s son (proceeded outside), Lazarus in the tomb (accustomed — second nature, “get drunk every weekend”). Jokes: no mean of the extreme (Ethics) — no getting drunk moderately, no moderate adultery; Shakespeare mocks that idea too.
• Reply 3: heart and mouth are not distinguished from the deed when joined with it, only when found by themselves — as a part of a motion is not distinguished from the whole when continuous, only when the motion stops in the middle. His trip: not stopping at Bari, one trip to the monastery, not two.

5. Art. 8: do superabundance and defect diversify species? (“there is not the same motive for sinning”) #

Point: excess and defect are not only diverse but contrary species, because the motives are contrary.

• Objections: (1) they differ by more and less, which does not diversify species (a little angry, a lot angry — same species of emotion); (2) as sin recedes from right reason, falsity recedes from the truth of the thing, and saying more or less than is in the thing does not diversify falsity (2+2=5 vs 2+2=6 — further from the truth, “but another kind of falsity there”?); (3) Porphyry: from two species one species is not made, yet illiberal and prodigal are found in the same man.
• Aside: bank accounts never come out; brother Mark on car radios that work — take it in and get it fixed. Thomas walked around dictating, lay on the bed and kept dictating.
• Sed contra: contraries differ in species, contrariety being a difference in form (Metaphysics X); illiberality and prodigality are contrary.
• Body: in sin two things, the act and its disorder (“we’d say disorder, not inordered”). Species not from the disorder (outside the sinner’s intention) but from the act as it ends in the object the intention is directed to; wherever there is a diverse motive, there is a diverse species. The motive of intemperance is love of bodily pleasures; of insensibility, hatred of them — Aristotle coined the name, as of a man lacking sense of taste. So these sins are contrary, contraries being species furthest apart in the same genus.
• Reply 1: more and less, though not the cause of diverse species, sometimes follow upon diverse forms, as fire is lighter than air; Ethics VIII: those who deny diverse species of friendship because it is said by more and less do not argue from a sufficient sign. His examples: friendship for enjoyment vs. wishing good; friendship for use in a campaign vs. for virtue — “more friendship,” but the more falls on a different kind. Theology more desirable than logic because a different kind of science (God vs. syllogism). Love of God vs. love of candy: benevolence vs. concupiscence. The girl at the mixer — “she’s the good I want for myself” — vs. coming to wish her good. “You love me or you love my money”: The Heiress (the father offers the suitor money; he takes it, proving he loved the money; the daughter turns against her father); a student adds It Happened One Night as showing both loves.
• Reply 2: the sinner does not intend to recede from reason, so excess and defect are not of the same ratio by their receding. When the liar intends to hide the truth, more or less makes no difference; when receding from truth is outside his intention, different causes move him to more or less — the boaster seeking glory (Shakespeare’s Parolles, “word”) vs. the deceiver diminishing to evade paying a debt — so some false opinions are contrary to each other.
• Reply 3: the same man can be illiberal in taking what he ought not and prodigal in giving what he ought not; contraries can be in one person according to diverse things.

6. Art. 9: do circumstances diversify species? (“where there occurs another motive to sinning”) #

Point: a circumstance makes a new species only when it brings a new motive.

• Objections: (1) Dionysius, Divine Names 4: evil happens from singular defects, which corrupt singular circumstances; (2) human acts sometimes take species from circumstances (said above — “a long way back”); (3) the species of gluttony are assigned by the versicle praepropere, laute, nimis, ardenter, studiose — hastily (before one ought), sumptuously, too much, greedily, daintily — which are circumstances.
• Asides: his daughter-in-law lets no one eat before grace; Warren Murray at the gourmet club, the member in a fit over nearly not getting the special mushrooms; Chesterton, “I don’t take my body that seriously.”
• Sed contra: Ethics III and IV — the singular vices sin by more than one ought, when one ought not, etc., according to all circumstances.
• Body: the motive is the end and object. Sometimes corruptions of diverse circumstances have one motive — the illiberal man takes when, where and more than he ought from one disordered desire of gathering money — one species. Sometimes diverse motives: eating before the time from inability to bear delay (easy consumption of his humidity); desiring immoderate food from a powerful nature able to convert much; desiring delicately prepared food from appetite for its pleasure — diverse species.
• Replies: (1) evil as such is a lack, diversified by what is lacked, but sin takes species from conversion to the object, not from aversion; (2) a circumstance never transfers an act to another species except when it is another motive; (3) the species of gluttony have diverse motives.
• Student: “I didn’t know how bad I was. Now I know.” Closing: “Parting is such sweet sorrow”; “Like MacArthur, I shall return.”

His words #

• “every negation is based on an affirmation” — Thomas’s semper in rebus; the affirmation is in some way the cause of the negation
• “large discourse” — Shakespeare’s phrase; large from its beginning (large induction) or from its end (many conclusions from one principle)
• “material / formal” difference in sins — natural species of the act vs. order to one end
• “gradatim” — bit by bit, step by step; how our mind and virtue grow
• “aversion / conversion” — sin has no species from aversion (privation) but from conversion (act)
• “aedificatio” — building, the complete generation of a house; foundation and walls incomplete species
• “vindicta” — revenge, the angry man’s motive
• “disorder” — his English for the Latin (he rejects “inordered”)
• “insensibility” — Aristotle’s coined name for hatred of bodily pleasures
• “ratio falsi” — the kind of falsity, differing between boaster and deceiver
• “praepropere, laute, nimis, ardenter, studiose” — hastily, sumptuously, too much, greedily, daintily

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 72 a. 6 (body re-read; replies 1–3)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 72 a. 7 (whole)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 72 a. 8 (whole)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 72 a. 9 (whole)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics I (what changes is composed); Ethics X (house building); Metaphysics X (contrariety); Ethics VIII (friends by more and less); Ethics III–IV (vices and circumstances); Ethics on the mean (no mean of the extreme)
• Augustine, De Trinitate XII; Gregory, Moralia IV; Jerome on Ezekiel; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4; Porphyry (genus, species, difference, property, accident)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, end (God’s beatitude)
• Exodus, “I am who I am”; Revelation, pillar in his temple; the three dead raised by Christ (Thomas’s spiritual sense)
• Shakespeare: “large discourse”; planets in evil mixture; Coriolanus; Parolles; “parting is such sweet sorrow”
• Bellarmine’s catechism (he thinks); The Heiress; It Happened One Night; Chesterton

His questions #

• Could you know anything negatively about God if you didn’t know something affirmative about God? No — unchanging rests on pure act, not composed on simple, no prior cause on first cause.
• Can you give me two negative statements from which a negative statement follows? No; a negative conclusion needs one affirmative premise, an affirmative conclusion two.
• Does it belong to the philosopher to teach truth and to eliminate error — does one follow on the other? Yes; you avoid error because you love the truth.
• Why do I hate the ugly? Because you love the beautiful.
• Is two plus two is six more false than two plus two is five? Further from the truth, but “another kind of falsity there” — left as a puzzle.
• Is that the same kind of friendship — enjoying your company vs. wishing you good? No; the “more” falls upon a different kind of friendship.
• Is theology more desirable than logic in itself? Yes, because it is a different species of science, about God rather than the syllogism.
• You love me or you love my money? If you want her for her money you really love the money — a different kind of love.
• Did I take two voyages or one trip to the monastery? One, since I did not stop at Bari — as a continuous motion is one.