Original Sin in Its Essence: Habit, Unity, Concupiscence, and Whether It Is Equal in All (ST I-II q.82)

Orientation #

He opens with the prayer and announces “1682” — Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 82, on original sin as regards its essence — and lists its four articles at once. At the end he says “then we’re not to consider…”, breaking off toward the next question. The next class takes up the following question, on the subject of original sin.

The class, in order #

1. The four questions of q. 82 (“original sin as regards its essence”) #

He reads the division: (1) is original sin a habitus, a firm disposition? (2) is it one only in one man? (3) is it concupiscence? (4) is it equally in all? He flags the fourth as the interesting one — “some are more equal than others.”

2. Article 1, objections: is original sin a habit? (“privation or lack”) #

1. Original sin is the lack of original justice (Anselm), hence a privation; a privation is not a habit. Aside to the class: “is your ignorance a habit? Some people… some are firmer than habit.”
2. Actual sin has more of the notion of guilt (more voluntary), yet the habit of actual sin has no guilt — otherwise a sleeping man would sin culpably. So a habit has no guilt at all.
3. In bad things the act always precedes the habit, for “no bad habit is infused, but acquired — that’s worth remembering.” But no act precedes original sin. Sed contra: Augustine, On the baptism of little ones: infants are concupiscible by original sin even though not actually desiring; an ability is said according to a habit.

3. Article 1, corpus: two senses of habit (“turned, as it were, into something nature”) #

Distinction:

• (A) The habit by which a power is inclined to acting — sciences and virtues, the first species of quality in the Categories. Original sin is not this.
• (B) The habit that is the disposition of a nature composed of many things, by which one is well or badly disposed, especially when the disposition has become as it were second nature — as in sickness. Original sin is this: a disordered disposition arising from the dissolution of the harmony in which original justice consists, just as bodily sickness is a disordered disposition dissolving the harmony in which health consists. Hence original sin is called the languor or sickness of nature. He notes the doctor calls sickness a disposition rather than a habit.

4. Reply 1 and the digression on wonder (“what’s the difference between ignorance and error?”) #

Reply: bodily sickness has both a privation (loss of the quality of health) and something positive (the humors disorderly disposed). So too original sin: the lack of original justice plus a disordered disposition of the parts of the soul — not a pure privation but a corrupt habit. His parallel: ignorance is a pure lack; error involves lack of knowledge plus a claimed knowledge. Examples of truths contrary to what you would expect, which therefore arouse wonder (his college story: Kasurik told him to go get Euclid; his friend Fred Monroe asked why he was studying geometry):

• Euclid III: between a tangent line and the circle no other straight line can be inserted — though you expect that since a rectilineal angle can always be bisected, you could always squeeze one in.
• Two circles touching internally touch at only a point, so the tangent at that point touches both.
• Euclid II.5: a line cut into equal and unequal segments — the rectangle on the unequal segments is less than the square on the half by exactly the square on the line between the sections. Hence you can have more perimeter but less area. His story of the man who could have all the land he could run around in a day and died of a heart attack — better to run a square than an oblong.
• The incommensurability of the side and diagonal of the square (used by Aristotle and Thomas).
• Einstein’s wonder at his father’s magnet: one thing moving another without contact. “That’s the beginning of philosophy… metaphysics [ed.: first philosophy] is the end.” Aside on the evidence that something has gone wrong with our nature: “Let’s go to New York City — you don’t have to go that far, but still, it’s sufficient.”

5. Replies 2 and 3 of article 1 (“sin here is not univocal”) #

Reply 2: actual sin is a disorder of an act; original sin, being a sin of nature, is a disordered disposition of the nature itself, having guilt insofar as derived from the first parent where it was voluntary. A disordered disposition of nature can be a habit; a disordered act cannot. Hence “sin” is not univocal here. It is called peccatum naturae because nature is its subject — not because nature is responsible. Student exchange: Adam and Eve cover themselves because they find their passions no longer obeying reason; original justice was created in them to be passed on to the offspring, and disobedience introduced the disorder. Berquist’s test question: “if you’re late for class, is that a disordered act or a disordered disposition?” — “It could be both. Depends on how many times.” Reply 3: the objection proceeds about sense (A). From original sin an inclination to disordered acts does follow, but indirectly, by removal of what prevented it — original justice — as bodily sickness indirectly inclines to disordered bodily motions. He notes Christ, and Mary, had no such disordered motions. Nor is original sin infused or acquired by act except in the first parent; in us it is contracted by origin. So Adam and Eve can no longer pass on original justice — “they got a lot to answer for… every single child that ever came into the world.” Aside: the Sisters of Life, who bring a frightened pregnant high-school girl and her parents together at the convent; the father offered to take the child as his own.

6. Article 2, objections: many original sins in one man? (“I was conceived in iniquities”) #

1. Psalm 50: “in iniquities… in sins” — plural. (He corrects a typo in the text: it reads Psalm 1, should be Psalm L, fifty.)
2. One habit does not incline to contraries, since a habit inclines by way of nature; but original sin inclines to contrary sins — despair and presumption.
3. Original sin infects all parts of the soul, which are diverse subjects of sin; one sin cannot be in diverse subjects. Sed contra: John 1:29, “the sin of the world,” peccatum mundi, singular — as the gloss expounds. Aside on Thomas and Houdini: he lets himself be tied in knots and gets free; the tying and untying of the knot in a plot (Aristotle), and “this game is all tied up” in sports.

7. Article 2, corpus: one in number in one man (“one by proportion to the first beginning”) #

Two ways of taking the reason:

1. From the cause: only the first sin of the first parent is carried over to posterity, not his later actual sins. So original sin is one in number in one man and one by proportion in all, with respect to the first beginning.
2. From the essence: in any disordered disposition, unity of species is taken on the side of the cause, unity in number on the side of the subject. As bodily sicknesses differ in species by differing causes — superabundance of the hot or the cold, injury to the lungs or the liver (hepatitis) — but one sickness in species is only one in number in one man. The cause of original sin is one only, the lack of original justice by which the human mind was subject to God. Hence one in species, and in one man only one in number; in diverse men one in kind but diverse in number. “I can’t multiply original sin in myself, but I can in my offspring.” Aside: the man who saw him in church with his grandchildren — “Are you responsible for this?” Yes. “So original sin is not noticeable in their behavior.” “Give them time.”

8. Article 2, replies (“the plural number for the singular”) #

Before the replies, his note on Augustine’s division of the Psalter: the first fifty concern repentance and purification (Psalm 50 is St. Teresa of Avila’s favourite), the second fifty progress in the virtues, the third resting in God — a nun told him “on Sunday we just rest in God.” Reply 1 — four explanations, as he counts them off: (a) Scripture often uses the plural for the singular, as Matthew: “they are dead who sought the soul of the boy,” though it was only Herod (he points to Shakespeare’s “out, out”). (b) In original sin all actual sins pre-exist virtually, as in a beginning — like a great principle that is the beginning of many conclusions. (c) In the first parent’s sin there were many deformities: pride (“you will be like gods”), disobedience, gluttony, et alia huiusmodi. (d) Because many parts of the soul are infected. Student addition: English does the same for things great in power or extent — “the waters,” “the skies,” “the heavens”; Hebrew Elohim is grammatically plural; the toast lechayim, “to life,” is plural. Reply 2: one habit cannot incline per se through its own form to contraries, but can indirectly, by removal of what prohibits — as when the harmony of a mixed body is dissolved the elements tend to contrary places (hydrogen and oxygen going different ways). So with the dissolved harmony of original justice. Reply 3: original sin infects the diverse parts of the soul as parts of one whole, since original justice contained them all in one — as there is one fever in one man though diverse parts of the body are weighed down.

9. Article 3: is original sin concupiscence? (“materially concupiscence, formally the defect”) #

Objections:

1. Every sin is against nature (Damascene, De fide orthodoxa II), but concupiscence is according to nature, the proper act of the concupiscible, a natural power. (“It’s a desire for candy.”)
2. Through original sin there are in us the passions of sins (Romans 7), but there are many passions besides concupiscence — anger and the rest.
3. Original sin disorders all parts of the soul, and the understanding is the highest (Ethics X); so original sin is rather ignorance. (“That’s the first I haven’t heard that one before.”) Sed contra: Augustine, Retractions: concupiscence is the guilt of original sin. Corpus: each thing has its species from its form; the species of original sin is taken from its cause; so the formal element is on the side of the cause. And since opposites have opposite causes, note the cause of original sin from the cause of original justice. The whole order of original justice came from the will’s subjection to God, and the will moves the other parts to their end; so from the will’s turning away follows disorder in all the other powers. Therefore the lack of original justice is what is formal in original sin; every other disorder of the powers is material. That other disorder is chiefly a disordered turning toward a changeable created good — which by its common name is concupiscence. “Original sin materially speaking is concupiscence; formally, the defect of original justice.” He says he comes back to this again and again: every sin is a turning away from God and a turning toward creatures; the punishment for the first is to miss out on God, for the second the fire. Replies: (1) desiring is natural to man insofar as it is according to the order of reason, since the concupiscible is naturally ruled by reason; concupiscence beyond reason’s limits is against nature — and such is the concupiscence of original sin. (2) The passions of the irascible reduce to those of the concupiscible as to the more principal, and among these concupiscence moves most vehemently and is most felt; so it names them all. (3) In good things intellect and reason have the principality; in bad, the lower part of the soul is found more principal, clouding and drawing reason. Hence original sin is said to be concupiscence rather than ignorance — though ignorance too is among the material defects. Asides: the priest in his mother’s hometown with the bag of candy (“under the guise of piety”); Sister Mary Alphonsus giving candy for new vocabulary at recess — “My, aren’t the girls loquacious today?”

10. Article 4: is it equally in all? (“nature is found equally in all”) #

Objections:

1. Original sin is disordered concupiscence, but not all are equally prone to concupiscence.
2. Original sin is a disordered disposition of the soul as sickness is of the body; sickness admits of more and less.
3. Augustine, On marriage and concupiscence: libido transmits original sin to the offspring; but one can have greater libido in the act of generation than another. Sed contra: original sin is a sin of nature, and nature is found equally in all. He glosses: in what sense are all men created equal? Not one of us is more a man than another — that is the equality meant. Aside: his “three minds” — the wits, who discover the great things themselves; the dimwits, who can learn them from the wits; the nitwits, who can do neither — matched to Aristotle’s three in the Ethics (the third being useless); he adds that Thomas is kinder, out of charity.

11. Article 4, corpus and replies (“privations totally depriving do not receive more and less”) #

Corpus: two things in original sin — (a) the formal aspect, the defect of original justice; (b) the relation of this defect to the first parent’s sin, from which it is derived by vitiated origin. As to (a) it admits no more and less, because the whole gift of original justice is taken away, and privations that totally deprive do not admit more and less — as death and darkness: one pitch darkness is not more than another, one man is not more blind than another. As to (b), all are equally related to the first beginning, and relations do not admit more and less — “I’m not more double than something else is double.” Hence original sin cannot be more in one than another. “It’s awfully subtle, isn’t it? He’s quite a subtle man, this Thomas.” Reply 1: with the bond of original justice dissolved, each power tends to its own motion, the more vehemently the stronger it is; some powers are stronger in one man than another from diverse bodily complexions, so one is more prone to concupiscence — but not by reason of original sin, since in all it equally unties the bond and equally leaves the lower parts to themselves. Reply 2: bodily sickness does not have an equal cause in all even within the same species — a fever from corrupting cholera can involve more or less putrefaction, nearer or farther from the principle of life, the heart. But the cause of original sin is equal in all. Reply 3: the libido that transmits original sin is not actual libido, for by divine power someone could be granted to feel no disordered desire in the act of generation and would still transmit original sin. It is libido taken habitually, as the sense-desiring power is not contained under reason, the bond of original justice being dissolved — and such libido is equal in all. Asides on anger, attached to reply 1’s point that men differ in the strength of their powers: Jerome’s anger (he would wash the pilgrims’ camels to overcome it); Francis; his theory that men who reach positions of great power tend to be choleric; the successful businessman, basketball player and coach, “choleric as a get-out”; drink lets out whatever passion a man is inclined to — some fight, some chase women; and the LBJ visit to St. Mary’s College in California on its hundredth anniversary, the hillside stones rearranged from SM to JWB (John Wilkes Booth), and LBJ chewing out a subordinate backstage; Washington’s formidable look at the man who slapped him on the back.

His words #

• habitus / “firm disposition” — what the article asks about; he keeps the Latin alongside “habit.”
• Two senses of habit: (1) that by which a power is inclined to act (science, virtue, first species of quality); (2) the disposition of a composite nature, well or badly, turned as it were into a second nature (sickness).
• languor of nature — original sin as the sickness of nature.
• “sin of nature” / peccatum naturae — so called because nature is the subject, not the agent.
• “ability” — his rendering of the potentia/aptitude in the sed contra of a. 1 [ed.: the power or capacity by which infants are called concupiscible].
• peccatum mundi — “the sin of the world,” singular.
• “one in number… one by proportion” — unity of original sin in one man and in all men.
• Formal / material in original sin — formally the defect of original justice, materially concupiscence.
• “turning away from God and turning towards the creatures” — the twofold in every sin.
• libido — he notes he does not know how to translate it; “lust, they translate that”; taken habitually, not actually.
• “the wits, the dimwits, and the nitwits” — his three grades of mind.

Texts #

Read in class: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 82, aa. 1–4 (prologue, objections, sed contra, corpus, replies). Quoted within the articles as he reads: Anselm, De conceptu virginali; Augustine, De baptismo parvulorum; John 1:29 with the gloss; Psalm 50:7; Matthew 2:20; John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa II; Romans 7; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X; Augustine, Retractationes; Augustine, De nuptiis et concupiscentia.

Mentioned: Aristotle, Categories (first species of quality); Aristotle, Poetics (tying and untying of the plot) (inferred); Euclid, Elements II.5 and Book III; Empedocles on love and hate; Augustine’s division of the Psalter into three fifties.

His questions #

• Is original sin a habit? Yes — not in the sense of a habit inclining a power to act, but as a disordered disposition of nature, like a sickness.
• Is your ignorance a habit? “Some people” — yes, some are habitually ignorant, some firmer than habit.
• What’s the difference between ignorance and error? Ignorance is a pure lack; error adds a claimed but false knowledge.
• If you’re late for class, is that a disordered act or a disordered disposition? It could be both — depends on how many times.
• Are there many original sins in one man? One only: one in species from its one cause (the lack of original justice), one in number in one man; one by proportion in all.
• Why does Scripture say “in sins,” in the plural? Four ways: scriptural idiom of plural for singular; all actual sins pre-exist virtually in it; the first sin had many deformities; many parts of the soul are infected.
• Is original sin concupiscence? Materially yes; formally it is the defect of original justice.
• Is original sin equally in all? Yes — a total privation and a relation admit no more and less, though men differ in the strength of their powers from bodily complexion.
• In what sense are all men created equal? In nature: no one of us is more a man than another.