Comparing Sins II: Opposed Virtues and Carnal vs. Spiritual Sins (ST I-II q.73 aa.4-5)

Orientation #

He gives no explicit “last time / next time”; he only echoes Thomas’s “as has been said above” (that both sin and virtue take their species from the object) and closes with “better stop here” after a. 5. Verified sources put the class on I-II q. 73 a. 4 and a. 5, with the middle digression probably drawing on the Democritus page of the First Philosophers handout. The previous class covered the earlier articles of q. 73 (connection, equality, measure by object); the next takes a. 6-7 (measure by cause, aggravation by circumstance).

The class, in order #

1. Article 4, objections and sed contra (“to the pessimum, the worst, the best is”) #

Point: does a greater sin oppose a greater virtue? He reads the three objections and the contrary.

• Obj. 1: Prov 15, in abundant justice there is great virtue; but Mt 5, abundant justice restrains anger, a lesser sin than homicide, which a lesser justice prevents. So the greater virtue faces the lesser sin.
• Obj. 2: Ethics II, virtue is about the difficult and the good, so a greater virtue is about the more difficult; but to fail in the more difficult is less a sin. Aside: “these guys making these objections should be persecuted… they’re exercising your mind, they should be rewarded.”
• Obj. 3: charity is greater than faith and hope, but hate (opposed to charity) is less a sin than infidelity or desperation.
• Sed contra: Ethics VIII, to the worst the best is contrary. He calls this “a famous principle” and tests it: opposite of knowledge is ignorance, of wisdom foolishness; foolishness is worse, because it goes with the greater good, wisdom. The best in morals is the greatest virtue, the worst the greatest sin.
• Aside on the same principle: he used to ask students whether deaf or blind is worse; most say blind, so seeing must be better than hearing; one organist said she would rather be blind than deaf.

2. Article 4, the body: two ways a virtue opposes a sin (“contraries are about the same thing”) #

Point: the answer turns on a distinction between direct opposition and opposition by extension.

1. Chiefly and directly, a virtue opposes a sin because both are about the same object (contraries are about the same thing). Gravity of sin and dignity of virtue are both read from the object, since both get their species from it (said above). So the greatest sin is directly contrary to the greatest virtue, “most of all distant from it in the same genus”. He notes this is the definition of contraries: furthest apart in the same genus; the contrary of white is not yellow or blue but black.
2. In another way, by a certain extension: virtue prohibits or restrains from sin, and the greater the virtue the more it distances a man from the contrary sin, restraining even the things that lead to it. So the greater the virtue, the smaller the sins it prohibits, “just as health, which is greater, excludes even minor distempers”. In this way, on the part of the effects, a lesser sin is opposed to a greater virtue. Illustration: the saints want to avoid even venial sin; one might think that too much concern, but the saints care about the small things.

• Ad 1: the objection proceeds about the restraining opposition; abundant justice restrains even lesser sins, not what is directly opposed.
• Ad 2: to the greater virtue about a good that is difficult, the directly contrary sin is about an evil that is more difficult; in both there is an eminence, in that the will is more inclined to the good (or to the bad) from not being conquered by difficulty.
• Ad 3: charity is not just any love but the love of God, so its direct opposite is not just any hate but the hate of God, which is gravissimum peccatorum. He stresses this: most people do not see that blaspheming or hating God is worse than hurting someone; the hate of God is in the devil, and the devils are guilty of the most grave sins.

3. Student question: is there a realm of angelic sins? (“a lazy angel, right”) #

A student asks whether the demons’ unforgivable fall implies a whole order of sin above human sin. His answer: Thomas distinguishes carnal and spiritual sins; angels have no carnal sins (fornication and the like), and he is about to argue that spiritual sins are worse; the devils’ pride is the chief case. So there is no separate set of angelic sins, but angels have only that genus, the spiritual (“a lazy angel”). A student adds that Thomas says the demons incite men to carnal sins yet are disgusted by them, being so far above them; he agrees, adding that with Adam and Eve the fruit was attractive to sense but there was a spiritual side to the temptation too. “Thomas always anticipates you… not only what you’re thinking about, but something you overlooked.”

4. Article 5, objections and sed contra (“the devil most of all rejoices”) #

Point: are carnal sins of less guilt than spiritual sins?

• Obj. 1: Prov 6, it is not so great a guilt when someone steals, but the adulterer, on account of his poverty of heart, loses his soul. Theft belongs to avarice, a spiritual sin; adultery to luxuria, a carnal sin. Aside: “watch out for the luxurious life.”
• Obj. 2: Augustine says the devil most of all rejoices about the sin of lust and idolatry; he rejoices more in the greater guilt.
• Obj. 3: Ethics VII, the man incontinent in concupiscence is more ugly (shameful) than the man incontinent in anger; Thomas always says the irascible is closer to reason than the concupiscible. But anger is a spiritual sin according to Gregory (Moralia I).
• Sed contra: Gregory, Moralia (he first says book 31 from his footnote, then corrects to 33: “the way to become wise is to be a man of one book”): carnal sins are of less guilt and of greater infamy.
• Aside from the irascible: Mozart’s 36th and 41st symphonies (both C major) deal with magnanimity, the great virtue of the irascible; the 38th and 40th with fortitude, also in the irascible. Handel’s Opus 3 and Opus 6 recommended to Martin; Samuel Johnson’s biographer Boswell passed up time with Johnson only to hear Handel.
• Aside: a wine called “carnivore” in the grocery store (dry red, Cabernet Sauvignon, to eat with flesh), prompted by “carnality”.

5. Article 5, the body: three reasons spiritual sins have greater guilt (“more of conversion… more of aversion”) #

Point: considered under the difference of spirituality and carnality alone, other things equal, spiritual sin is of greater guilt; not every spiritual sin is worse than every carnal sin.

1. From the subject: spiritual sins pertain to the spirit, to which it belongs to be converted toward or turned away from God; carnal sins are consummated in the pleasure of bodily appetite, which turns toward the body. So carnal sin as such has more of conversion (cleaving), spiritual sin more of aversion, from which the ratio of guilt proceeds.
   • Aside: the psalm asking God for help under the pride of others is, he thinks, less about scorn done to you than about their attitude to God, the blasphemies you must put up with.
   • Student: doesn’t pride turn away from God more directly? He agrees; with gluttony you turn toward what pleases the senses and turn away from God only per accidens.
2. From the one against whom one sins: carnal sin is in one’s own body, which by the order of charity is less to be loved than God and even than one’s neighbour (you may die for the neighbour); spiritual sins are against God and neighbour.
3. From what moves one: the graver the thing pushing toward sin, the less the man sins (said before); carnal sins have a more vehement impulse, the concupiscence of the flesh “inborn in us” (concupiscentiam carnis nobis innatam). He notes: the flesh drags the spirit; in the Prima Pars Thomas says the bad is rare except in the human race, where it is for the most part, because we follow sense rather than reason, and sense dominates especially in the child. Aside: young people dying of drug overdoses, conferences held about it; people are “weighed down”.

• Student: moral theology says the more pleasing, the more voluntary; this balances it, since we are more inclined, so less grave in guilt. He: Falstaff, “I have more flesh than another man,” as excuse; “Shakespeare’s very wise.”

6. Digression: misusing the mind vs misusing the body (“more wrong to misuse your mind”) #

Point: since mind is greater than body, misusing the mind is worse, and in sins of the flesh you are also misusing your mind.

• Examples: careers built on misusing the mind, Karl Marx and the pride of such men (more Marx taught in his day, before the Soviet collapse); watching too much TV (misusing the mind on silly things) vs eating too much, which “seem to go together”; rock and roll instead of Mozart as misusing the ears, though eye and ear are higher senses than tongue and touch; he places this under the second reason (the sin in one’s own body vs against God and neighbour, and charity loves the soul more than the body, though the body is loved by charity too).
• Psalm 62 (his numbering): “my flesh pines, my soul thirsts… to see your power and your glory”; flesh named first; Christ to the Sadducees, “you err, not knowing the power of God”, the power shown in the resurrection of the body. Still the soul is loved more; corruptio optimi pessima.
• Using reason to deceive is worse than using the hand to hit: Ward Churchill, a “crazy professor” interviewed on the phone, spreading crazy ideas; the academic misleading students corrupts another soul.
• Student: isn’t not applying your mind to greater things also misuse? He: his first teacher at Missouri appended to his translation of Thomas on Physics I-II a passage of Albert the Great: whoever studies lower things not with a view to stepping up to knowing God has a perverted attitude toward knowing, unless forced by necessity to something practical. De Koninck taught time (Physics IV) and ended with eternity, since Boethius’s definition of eternity cannot be understood without time.

7. Digression: discrete vs continuous time, the one and the point (“the indivisible in number is a part”) #

Point: prompted by his morning reading of Thomas on why angels do not know the future (they are in a discrete, not continuous, time, still a kind of time as Augustine says), a student asks what discrete time is.

1. Arithmetic (of the discrete) is more certain than geometry (of the continuous), as the text he cites says [ed.: he names the source in a garbled way, heard as “Meno”; unclear in recording], because there is less to consider. The first thing in geometry is the point, in arithmetic the one; both indivisible, but the point adds position (three points may be collinear or triangular; the three ones in “three” are not here or there). Hence some say the point is the one with position.
2. The key difference: the indivisible in the continuous is a limit, not a part; the indivisible in number is a part (one is part of two, three…). A point is the limit of a line, a line the limit of a surface, but the surface is not composed of lines.
3. Democritus and the modern view that a line is an infinity of points, a plane of lines, a body of planes: a cylinder as a stack of circles seems fine, but a cone (triangle rotated about a side) fails: the next circle above is either equal (then a cylinder) or unequal (then a staircase, not the straight side of a cone). The error is taking the indivisible (no depth) as a part of the continuous instead of a limit. Verified source: probably the Democritus page of the First Philosophers handout.
4. Aristotle: points cannot compose a line, because to form it they must touch, and touching is part-to-part, part-to-whole or whole-to-whole; a point has no parts, so whole coincides with whole, and two, ten or an infinity of coinciding points have no more length than one point.
5. Application: angels move from place to place by applying power here and then there without passing through, so the indivisible is a part of their motion or time; in continuous motion the indivisible is only its limit. “You can see that difference already in arithmetic and geometry.” He wanted to catch John, who teaches Euclid.

• Asides: angels are “really wonderful things”, known through our own mind and then by difference from it; his guardian angel is probably amused at how little he has understood; a teacher said that at death one might mistake the guardian angel for God, as St John twice tried to worship an angel in the Apocalypse and was corrected; “blessed was Mary who believed the angel.”

8. Article 5, replies (“carnal sins are of less guilt and of greater infamy”) #

He first recaps the three reasons (subject, against whom, motive).

• Ad 1: adultery pertains not only to luxuria but also to injustice, and in that respect can be reduced to avarice, as the gloss on Ephesians says (“every fornicator or unclean person or avaricious”); adultery is graver than theft insofar as a man’s wife is dearer to him than his possessions.
• Ad 2: the devil rejoices most in luxuria because it is of greatest adherence, owing to our animal nature, hard for a man to be pulled out of; the desire of the pleasant is insatiable (Ethics III). Not because it is the worst sin but because it is most common and hardest to overcome, “easier bait”; “look at our society.”
• Ad 3: the Philosopher says the man incontinent in concupiscence is more shameful than the incontinent in anger because he partakes less of reason; the great tragic figures (Achilles, Coriolanus) have great anger, while Falstaff is laughable. Ethics III: sins of intemperance are maxime exprobrabilia, being about pleasures common to us and the beasts, by which a man is made bestial; hence, as Gregory says, they have more shame, though they are not therefore worse.
• Aside on antonomasia: texts capitalize “the Philosopher” (Aristotle), as “the Bible” means “the Book”; “angel” should not be capitalized, except perhaps of Christ, “the angel of great counsel”.

His words #

• pessimum / optimum: the worst is contrary to the best; his test case knowledge/ignorance, wisdom/foolishness.
• contraries: things furthest apart in the same genus (white/black, not white/yellow).
• direct opposition vs opposition by extension: the virtue’s own contrary sin vs all the sins the virtue restrains.
• gravissimum peccatorum: the hate of God, the gravest of sins.
• carnal vs spiritual sins: consummated in bodily pleasure vs pertaining to the spirit.
• conversion vs aversion: cleaving to the body vs turning away from God; guilt comes from aversion.
• luxuria: he leaves it as “luxury” [ed.: lust].
• concupiscentia carnis nobis innata: the inborn concupiscence of the flesh, the more vehement impulse.
• corruptio optimi pessima: the corruption of the best is the worst (misuse of mind).
• discrete vs continuous: indivisible as part (the one, angelic time) vs indivisible as limit (the point, our time).
• maximae adhaerentiae: of greatest adherence, why the devil rejoices in lust.
• maxime exprobrabilia: most reproachable, of the sins of intemperance.
• antonomasia: “the Philosopher”, “the Bible” (the Book).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 73, a. 4 (whole article).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 73, a. 5 (whole article).
• Handout, The First Philosophers (Democritus), p. 33 (verified; probably the line-composed-of-points discussion).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics II (virtue about the difficult and good), III (insatiable desire; intemperance most reproachable), VII (incontinence in concupiscence vs anger), VIII (worst contrary to best).
• Gregory, Moralia I (anger a spiritual sin), XXXIII (carnal sins less guilt, more infamy).
• Augustine (devil rejoices in lust and idolatry; angels in a kind of time).
• Proverbs 15, Proverbs 6; Matthew 5; gloss on Ephesians; Psalm 62 (his numbering); Apocalypse (John and the angel); Christ and the Sadducees.
• Thomas, Prima Pars on evil being frequent in the human race; Thomas on angels not knowing the future and on angelic motion (loci not stated).
• Albert the Great passage on the perverted attitude to study; Boethius’s definition of eternity; Aristotle, Physics IV (time); Aristotle on points not composing a line (locus not stated).
• Shakespeare, Falstaff (“more flesh than another man”), Coriolanus; Homer, Achilles.

His questions #

• Which is worse, to be deaf or to be blind? Most students say blind, so seeing is better; one organist chose blindness over deafness.
• What is the contrary of white? Black, not yellow or blue: contraries are furthest apart in the same genus.
• Is there a separate realm of angelic sins above human sin? No; angels have only the spiritual genus of sin (pride chiefly), none of the carnal.
• Doesn’t pride turn you away from God more directly than gluttony? Yes; carnal sin turns toward sense pleasure and away from God only per accidens.
• Is it more wrong to misuse your mind or your body? The mind, since it is the greater thing; in sins of the flesh you misuse your mind too.
• Who does worse, the man who uses his mind to deceive you or his hand to hit you? The deceiver, since he corrupts another soul.
• What is discrete as opposed to continuous time? Time composed of indivisibles as parts (the one), against time whose indivisible is a limit (the point).
• Is a cone a stack of circles? No; equal circles give a cylinder, unequal ones a staircase, so the indivisible is a limit, not a part.
• Why does the devil rejoice most in lust if it is not the worst sin? Because it is of greatest adherence, most common and hardest to escape.