Summa I-II Q.77 aa.7–8 and Q.78 a.1: Whether Passion Excuses Sin, Mortal Sin from Passion, and Sinning from Malice

Orientation #

He picks up at q. 77, a. 7, finishes the question, and moves into q. 78 (“we’ve got time to go on for one more”), stopping in the middle of the replies of a. 1 (“we got to stop there, then”). He refers back to the earlier treatment of the practical syllogism about adultery (“that was talked about earlier”) and to the earlier claim that there is no mortal sin in sensuality. The next class continues with q. 78 on sin from certain malice, articles 1-2.

The class, in order #

1. Three objections that passion wholly excuses (“passion wholly excuses from sin”) #

• (1) Whatever causes the involuntary excuses totally; concupiscence of the flesh causes the involuntary (Galatians 5: the flesh desires against the spirit, “that not whatever one wills does he do”).
• (2) Passion causes ignorance of the particular, and ignorance of the particular wholly excuses (“this has been had” — treated already).
• (3) Infirmity of soul is graver than infirmity of body; bodily infirmity wholly excuses, as in the mad (frenetici — he notes the word is originally Greek).
• Aside on objection 1: “You made me so angry, I blacked out” as everyman’s version; the monk who served jail time for beating a man with a hammer — “I said we’ll pray about that.”

2. Sed contra and the body: voluntary in itself or in its cause (“voluntarily becomes drunk”) #

Sed contra: Paul in Romans 7 calls them “the passions of sin,” which he would not, if they excused wholly. Body, two considerations:

1. Something is voluntary in itself (the will is carried directly to it) or in its cause (the will is carried to the cause, not the effect) — the man who voluntarily gets drunk: what he commits through drunkenness is imputed as quasi-voluntary. Student adds Noah as the excused case — he did not know the power of the (new) wine.
2. Something is voluntary directly or indirectly — indirectly when the will could have prevented it and did not. Hence the distinction: (a) passion so great it wholly takes away the use of reason (love or anger driving to insanity — he asks about Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus): if that passion was voluntary in its beginning, the act is imputed as sin, as with drunkenness; if its cause was natural (sickness or the like), the act is altogether involuntary and wholly excused. (b) Passion not so great: reason can still exclude it by turning to other thoughts, or impede its effect, since the members are not applied to work except by consent of reason — so it does not wholly excuse, “because you still have use of reason, although diminished.”

3. The three replies of a. 7 (“two ways of expounding that text”) #

• To 1: “not whatever you will, that you do” refers not to exterior acts but to the inward motion of concupiscence — a man wills never to desire the bad; likewise Romans 7:15, “the evil that I hate, that I do.” Or it refers to a will preceding the passion, as in the continent, who act against their own earlier will under concupiscence.
• To 2: the particular ignorance that wholly excuses is ignorance of a circumstance one could not know despite suitable diligence. Passion causes ignorance in the particular by impeding the application of common knowledge to this act — and reason can repel that. (Back-reference: “adultery is bad / this is pleasant,” assuming one premise to the other. “It’s not excusing you.”)
• To 3: bodily infirmity excuses because it is involuntary; it would be otherwise if voluntary, as with ebrietas, itself a bodily infirmity.

4. Article 8, objections: can sin from passion be mortal? (“we’ll talk to David about that”) #

• (1) Venial is divided against mortal; sin from infirmity is venial because it has in itself a cause of pardon. (He asks whether “venial” means a forgivable sin — “well, that’s encouraging.”)
• (2) A cause cannot be more potent than its effect; passion cannot be a mortal sin, since there is no mortal sin in sensuality.
• (3) Passion takes away from reason, but turning toward or away from God — wherein the ratio of mortal sin consists — belongs to reason.
• Sed contra: Romans 7:5, the passions “operate in our members with the fruit of death,” which is proper to mortal sin.
• Digression: is any apostle besides Paul called “the Apostle” by antonomasia? A student thought John was so called in an earlier objection; on rereading, the name was given after the quotation. He and the students settle on Paul, apostle of the Gentiles, and Peter of the circumcised (with a student noting Peter’s claim to have been chosen to bring the gospel first to the Gentiles — Cornelius). Aside: “trickle-down moral theology.”

5. Body of a. 8: deliberate consent is not sudden (“this does not come about suddenly”) #

1. Mortal sin consists in turning away from the last end, which is God.
2. That aversion pertains to deliberating reason, whose office it is to order to the end — ordinare in finem, which he calls the effective definition of reason.
3. Therefore an inclination of the soul to what is contrary to the last end fails to be mortal sin only where deliberating reason cannot intervene — i.e. in sudden motions.
4. But proceeding from passion to the act of sin, or to deliberate consent, does not happen suddenly. David saw Bathsheba bathing, then sent to have her brought up — “that took a little time” — and planned to be rid of the husband.
5. Therefore deliberating reason can here exclude or at least impede the passion; if it does not, the sin is mortal — as with the homicides and adulteries in the paper every day.

• Aside as an example of reason deliberating: the man who recognised his drinking problem and rerouted his walk so as not to pass the bar, “because if I go by it, I’ll be in it.”

6. Reply 1: venial said in three ways (“that’s news to me”) #

1. From its cause — it has some ground of pardon that diminishes the sin: thus sin from infirmity and from ignorance. (Paul persecuted the Church out of ignorance: still something sinful, but with a reason for pardon.)
2. From the event — every sin becomes venial through penance, i.e. obtains pardon.
3. From its genus — as an idle word; this alone is venial in the sense opposed to mortal. (Exchange on what an idle word is: “I’ve been trying to be polite” — “No, I think that’s deliberate.”) The objection proceeds from the first sense.

7. Reply 2, and the per se / per accidens digression (“the stove heats the water”) #

Passion causes sin on the side of the conversion (to the temporal good); that the sin is mortal is on the side of the aversion, which follows per accidens on the conversion. So “a cause cannot exceed its effect” does not apply — we do not weigh the gravity of the sin by the gravity of the cause.

• The per se cause must be stronger: the stove that heats the water must be hotter. Per accidens: if I burn my house down and it then gets cold, the fire is not colder than the cold air.
• He asks the class for Aristotle’s first distinction of being in Metaphysics V (“the fifth book of Wisdom”), before being according to the figures of predication and before act and ability: answer, per se and per accidens. Examples: a “philosophical grandfather” (being grandfather and being philosopher happen to the same man); “a white logician.”
• Aside: Warren Murray’s joke that two Irish parents or two Swedish parents would have made him a bad philosopher, the defects of each offsetting the other.

8. Reply 3: reason is not always wholly impeded (“there remains free judgment”) #

Reason is not always wholly impeded in its act by passion, so free judgment remains, able to turn to or from God; if passion totally took away the use of reason there would be no sin at all, neither mortal nor venial.

• Can anger be that great? The Viking berserker rage — good for offense, bad for defense. A student adds love (“love drives some people mad”). Coriolanus: he would not be a tragic character if anger had wholly taken his reason — he still tries to listen to reason before being set off again. MacArthur near his removal by Truman; and Truman’s own furious letter over the review of his daughter’s performance — “Maybe he lost his temper… and put it in writing.”

9. Proemium of q. 78: the cause of sin on the part of the will (“which is called malice”) #

Infirmity is on the side of the passions, ignorance on the side of reason, malice on the side of the will — “this is the worst one.”

• Thomas’s prayer for confession: having sinned from infirmity against the Father (to whom power is appropriated), from ignorance against the Son (wisdom), from malice against the Holy Spirit — thus offending the whole Trinity. He says he prays similarly for people: power from the Father, wisdom from the Son, love from the Holy Spirit.
• The four articles: (1) can anyone sin from certain malice or industria; (2) does whoever sins from habit sin from certain malice — note it says habit, not passion; (3) the converse, does whoever sins from certain malice sin from habit; (4) does the one who sins from certain malice sin more gravely than the one who sins from passion — “I would anticipate he would say yes.”
• Asides: Hitler’s Holocaust as planned, not passion; Catholic legislators who are pro-abortion cannot claim ignorance, since they say they know what the Church teaches and disagree; the pro-life radio ad he heard; Buckley’s phrase “tenacious ill will.”

10. Article 1, objections (“it seems that no one sins from industry”) #

• (1) Ignorance is opposed to industria; but everyone who is bad is ignorant, according to the Philosopher, and Proverbs 14:22, “they err who do evil.” So all sin is from ignorance.
• (2) Dionysius (Divine Names ch. 4): no one acts intending evil. But to sin from malice is to intend evil in sinning; what is praeter intentionem does not denominate the act. (Aside on Dionysius being better known in Byzantium than in the West, brought back by an ambassador [unclear in recording].)
• (3) Malice is itself a sin; if malice causes sin, sin causes sin in infinitum, which is unfitting.
• Sed contra: Job 34:27, quasi de industria they receded from God and would not understand His ways; to recede from God is to sin.
• Aside: the Christian witnessing at a gay pride parade who was insulted — “they know what that means… and they don’t want to know what it means.”

11. Body of a. 1: the disordered will loves the lesser good more (“loves more the lesser good”) #

1. Man, like everything else, naturally desires the good; so that his desire declines to evil comes from some corruption or disorder in one of his principles — as peccatum is found in the actions of natural things.
   • Digression on translation: peccatum is wider than “sin” — a baby born with defects is a peccatum naturae, not a sin; the translation program rendered it “sin,” where “defect” would serve. “Translating is a thankless task” — as with “full fathom five thy father lies” into French.
2. The principles of human acts are intellect and appetite (rational appetite, the will; and sense appetite). Sin arises sometimes from a defect of intellect (sin from ignorance), sometimes from a defect of the sense appetite (sin from passion), and so also from a defect of the will, which is its disorder.
3. A will is disordered when it loves the lesser good more; then one chooses to suffer loss in the less-loved good in order to enjoy the more-loved — as a man knowingly has a limb cut off to preserve his life, which he loves more. (Student: a bear will chew off its trapped leg.)
4. So when a disordered will loves a temporal good — wealth, pleasure — more than the order of reason or the divine law or the love of God, he wills to undergo loss of spiritual goods to enjoy a temporal good. (David; Faust selling his soul for temporal things.)
5. Evil is nothing but privation of some good; so he knowingly wills a spiritual evil, evil simpliciter, that he may enjoy a temporal good. Hence he is said to sin from certain malice or from industria, as knowingly choosing evil. (Some translate industria “on purpose.”)

• Aside: why the Democratic Party is so pro-abortion — votes, or a stepping stone to power; “there’s nothing lovable about it by itself,” as in Obama’s “nobody likes abortion.” “Seems to be more malice now than ignorance.”

12. Replies 1 and 2, and the threefold malice of reply 3 (“we can finish the objections”) #

• To 1: three ignorances. (a) Ignorance excluding the knowledge by which one simply knows this deed to be bad — sin from ignorance. (b) Excluding the knowledge that this here and now is evil — sin from passion. (c) Excluding the knowledge that this evil is not to be borne for the sake of obtaining that good, while he still knows it to be evil simply — and it is in this way that the one sinning from certain malice is called ignorant. A student asks him to repeat it: “He knows something to be bad, but he doesn’t know that it should not be sustained, this evil, in order to get this other good.” Applied: not knowing the child is a human being would be one thing; knowing it and holding the evil worth bearing is another. Ginsburg’s testimony that this is required for women’s equality — “so in order for women to be equal, men have to kill people.” Students add the “willful ignorance” of doctors and lawyers who look away — “crass ignorance,” or as a saint [name garbled in recording] calls it, “willful inadvertence.”
• To 2: evil cannot be intended in itself, but can be intended for avoiding another evil or attaining another good; then one chooses to pursue the good per se intended, but for the attached loss. The lascivious man wishes to enjoy the pleasure without God’s offence; but with the two set before him he chooses rather to incur God’s offence than be deprived of the pleasure. (He applies it: the ideal held up is irresponsible men — “free from justice, free from responsibility. Get the wrong model.”)
• To 3: “malice” from which one sins can mean (a) habitual malice — a bad habit named “malice” by the Philosopher as a good habit is named virtue: sinning from the inclination of a habit; (b) actual malice — the choice of evil itself is called malice: sinning from the choice of something bad; (c) a preceding fault from which a later one arises, as when someone attacks his brother out of envy. Thus the same thing is not cause of itself; the interior act causes the exterior, and one sin another, but not in infinitum, since one must arrive at a first sin not caused by a prior sin. “It goes back to your life history, right? Back to your first sin.”

His words #

• frenetici — the mad; he notes the word is originally Greek.
• voluntary in itself vs. in its cause — the will carried to the thing, vs. to its cause but not its effect (drunkenness).
• voluntary directly vs. indirectly — indirectly, when the will could prevent and does not.
• ordinare in finem — to order to the end; “that’s the effective definition of reason.”
• “sudden motions” — where deliberating reason cannot intervene, so no mortal sin.
• venial “in three ways”: from its cause, from the event, from its genus.
• conversion / aversion — passion causes on the side of conversion; the mortality is on the side of aversion, which follows per accidens.
• per se / per accidens — Aristotle’s first distinction of being, prior to the figures of predication and to act and ability [ed.: potency].
• industria / certain malice — sinning knowingly, on purpose; quasi de industria (Job).
• peccatum naturae — a natural defect, e.g. a child born defective; wider than English “sin.”
• praeter intentionem — outside the intention, and so not denominating the act.
• habitual malice vs. actual malice vs. malice as a preceding guilt.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 77, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 77, a. 8 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 78, proemium and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Galatians 5:17; Romans 7:5; Romans 7:15; Job 34:27; Proverbs 14:22

Mentioned

• Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 4
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (“the fifth book of Wisdom”) on per se / per accidens being (inferred)
• Aristotle, on the bad habit called malice as the good is called virtue (locus not given)
• Thomas Aquinas, prayer before confession (Father/Son/Holy Spirit; infirmity/ignorance/malice)
• Noah’s drunkenness; David and Bathsheba; Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest (“full fathom five”)

His questions #

• Does passion wholly excuse from sin? Only when it wholly removes the use of reason and its cause was natural, not voluntary; otherwise it diminishes but does not excuse.
• The drunk man did not seem to act voluntarily — how is it imputed? He voluntarily became drunk; the act is voluntary in its cause.
• Can sin from passion be mortal? Yes: proceeding to the act or to deliberate consent is not sudden, so deliberating reason could have impeded it.
• Is anyone besides Paul called “the Apostle” by antonomasia? The class settles on Paul (and Peter as apostle of the circumcised); the supposed case of John turned out to be a name given after the quotation.
• “A cause cannot be more potent than its effect” — why does it fail here? Because the aversion follows per accidens on the conversion; the per se cause must be stronger, not the per accidens.
• What is Aristotle’s first distinction of being in Metaphysics V? Per se and per accidens.
• Can anger be so great that a man loses the use of reason? Yes — the berserker rage; but then there is no sin at all, neither mortal nor venial.
• Was Hitler’s Holocaust passion or malice? Malice: it was planned.
• How can anyone sin from certain malice, if no one intends evil? The will is disordered by loving the lesser good more, and so knowingly accepts a spiritual evil to enjoy a temporal good.
• In what sense is the one who sins from certain malice “ignorant”? He knows the deed is evil simply, but does not know that this evil is not to be borne for the sake of that good.