Where Original Sin Lives: Flesh or Soul, Chief and Instrumental Causes (ST I-II q.83 a.1)

Orientation #

He opens by reading the division of Question 83 (“about the subject of original sin”): whether it is in flesh or soul; if soul, through essence or powers; whether the will before other powers; whether certain powers — the generative, the concupiscible of touch — are especially infected. Only the first article is treated in this class; the rest are announced, not taken up. He refers back to what “was had in the first part” (the Prima Pars) on the soul not beginning to be except in a body. The previous class treated q. 82, on original sin as regards its essence.

The class, in order #

1. The division of the question (“about the subject of original sin”) #

He reads out the four articles. His gloss on the second: “is your soul corrupting your body, or is your body corrupting your soul.” On the third: “you are going to put that will in its place, right?” The fourth names the generative power and the concupiscible power “in the sense of touch.”

2. The five objections read (“original sin is more in the flesh than in the soul”) #

He reads them in order, joking as he goes:

1. The flesh wars against the spirit; the repugnance of flesh to mind proceeds from the corruption of original sin, and the root of that repugnance is in the flesh — Romans 7, “I see another law in my members repugnant to the law of my mind.” Aside: Falstaff pleads he has more flesh than other men, therefore more excuse; “Falstaff is just a mouthpiece of Saint Paul. Disciple of Saint Paul — and the large one.”
2. Each thing is more potent in its cause than in its effect (heat is more in the fire heating than in the water heated); the soul is infected through the carnal seed; therefore original sin is more in the flesh. He notes the underlying pressure: the soul is created by God, “we don’t attribute that to God,” so the blame falls on “that filthy body.”
3. We contract original sin from our first parent insofar as we were in him according to a seed-like ratio; but the soul was not there, only the flesh.
4. The rational soul created by God is poured into the body; if it were infected, it would be corrupted from its creation or infusion, and God, author of both, would be the cause of sin.
5. No wise man pours a precious liquor into a vessel he knows will infect it; the rational soul is more precious than any liquor; so God, who is Wisdom itself, would never pour it into such a body — yet He does. Aside on new wine and new wineskins; “to be making wine you’ve got to pour it into the right barrels.”

He counts these five; note that later he calls the last “the sixth objection is the most interesting” while Thomas’s reply is “to the fifth” — his own slip, left uncorrected.

Aside: “You’re really tying yourself into knots this time, Thomas — the rest of these pages are actually blank.”

3. Sed contra (“flesh cannot be the subject of virtue”) #

Virtue and the sin contrary to virtue have the same subject; but flesh cannot be the subject of virtue — Romans 7, “I know that there does not dwell in me, that is in my flesh, the good.” Therefore flesh cannot be the subject of original sin, only the soul. His gloss: “good and bad are in the same thing.”

4. The body of the article: the threefold distinction (“in one way, as in a cause… another way as in a subject”) #

The point: “in” divides into in-as-in-a-cause (principal or instrumental) and in-as-in-a-subject.

• In Adam, as in a first principal cause — Romans 5:12, “in whom all have sinned.”
• In the bodily seed, as in an instrumental cause, since by the seed’s active power original sin is carried over to the offspring simul cum natura humana, together with human nature. He adds: had they not sinned, original justice would have been carried over with the nature.
• In the soul alone, as in a subject; in no way can it be in the flesh as subject.

He stresses “three different things going… three is the first number.” A student’s “it’s all mixed up then” he corrects: “No, it’s all distinguished.”

5. Digression on the senses of “in” (“we use the word ‘where’ in talking about ‘in’”) #

Prompted by “where is original sin?”, he recalls the senses of in from the fourth book of the Physics (inferred) — but he actually enumerates them loosely: first, in a place (“where are we? in this room”); second, part and whole; third, genus and species; fourth, species and genus — and he calls the species-in-genus sense “the fourth sense, I guess,” having named it earlier as third. The count is left untidied. Examples of the logical sense: dog in substance, number in quantity, virtue in quality, father in ad aliquid.

The Michelangelo example, given to make the threefold distinction concrete: where is the shape of the Pietà? In Michelangelo as in a principal cause; in the hammer and chisel as in an instrument; in the marble as in a subject. So with original sin: Adam in place of the artist, the seed in place of the hammer and chisel, the soul in place of the marble.

6. How this returns to the definition of reason (“the ability for large discourse”) #

He asks how all this bears on the definition of reason (handout, “The First Definition of Reason”, p. 58). Reason is the ability for large discourse, looking before and after; in the ability for large discourse is understood the ability for small discourse; and in the ability to see a before and after is included the ability to see a distinction. Proof from the obvious statement that nothing is before or after itself: if this is before that, this and that are distinct.

Illustrations: you could not say wine is better than beer if you could not distinguish wine from beer; nor that Mozart’s music is better than Haydn’s. Asides: his son-in-law and his son Marcus drink a lot of beer at Christmas — “too late to be educated”; sausage calls for beer. He corrects himself on vocabulary: we do not make distinctions, “that sounds too artificial” — we see them.

7. Body continued: derivation from the will (“whatever comes from the motion of the will of sin”) #

From the will of the first parent original sin is carried to posterity by a certain generative motion, as from a man’s will actual sin is derived to his other parts. In that derivation: whatever comes from the motion of the sinning will to a part of man which can share in the sin — either by way of subject or by way of instrument — has the ratio of guilt.

Example (gluttony): from the will comes the desire of food to the concupiscible, and the taking of food to the hand and mouth; these, as moved by the will, are instruments of sin. But what is further derived to the nourishing power and the interior members, which are not actively moved by the will, has no notion of guilt — “digesting the food is not a bad thing morally.”

Hence: the soul can be the subject of guilt; flesh of itself cannot. What comes of the first sin’s corruption to the soul has the ratio of guilt; what comes to the flesh has the ratio of punishment. Therefore the soul, not the flesh, is the subject of original sin.

Student exchange: how can the soul be affected by a physical medium? His answer: you receive human nature from Adam, but receive it without original justice; so the soul is vitiated — lacking what it should have, subjection to God. And the guilt traces to the will of the first parent, since sin is in the will.

Aside on Matthew: “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” — what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart.

8. Reply 1 (“the apostle speaks there of man already redeemed”) #

Augustine in the Retractions: Paul speaks of man already redeemed, freed from guilt but still subject to punishment; by reason of that punishment sin is said to dwell in the flesh. So flesh is subject of punishment, not of guilt. “It’s very subtle. Very subtle.” Since the fomes is a consequence of sin, Paul attributes it to the cause; the term lex fomitis is noted, “we’ll come to law eventually, I hope.”

Aside: “Every professor should be made to write a book of retractions. They’re not smart enough to discover their own mistakes.”

9. Reply 2 (“more in the principal cause, not the instrumental”) #

The axiom — a thing is more in its cause than in its effect — holds only of the principal cause, not the instrumental. So original sin was more in Adam, in whom it had the character of actual sin. He notes Thomas always quotes Avicenna’s text on the mover/maker when distinguishing principal from instrumental cause.

The teacher example: the teacher is wiser than the student (in what he teaches), but his words — mere sounds, his tools — are not wiser than the student; sounds are not capable of wisdom. Wisdom is in the teacher’s mind and is to be in the student’s mind; the words are the instrument. Calling the words “wise” is attribution. If the student has only the words, “he’s just memorizing words.” Corollary on bad teachers: they deceive by their words, and usually are deceived first.

10. Reply 3 (“not as an effective beginning, but as a disposing one”) #

The soul of this man was not in sinning Adam according to a seminal reason as in an effective principle, but as in a disposing one: the bodily seed carried over from Adam does not by its power make the rational soul but only disposes for it. Parents do not make the rational soul of the child; they dispose. He contrasts the dog: there, he says, the parents do make the soul. The reason: the rational soul does not come about through the transformation of matter, since it does not depend on the body. Aristotle saw this in the Generation of Animals, because of what he had learned about the rational soul in the De Anima — “amazingly, he saw that.”

He admits earlier a partial grasp: “I think I half understand that, Thomas” — the seed-like reason is apparently not the same as the seed of the flesh; left unsettled.

11. Reply 4 (“creation implies a relation of the soul to God alone”) #

The infection is caused in no way by God but by the sin of the first parent alone, through carnal generation — which, he notes, “includes both the instrument and the principal cause.” Creation implies a relation of the soul to God alone, so the soul is not stained from its creation. Infusion implies respect both to God pouring in and to the flesh into which it is poured; on the side of God pouring in, the soul is not stained; only on the side of the body receiving it. So: being poured into such a body, it receives human nature without original justice. A student adds: until the soul is united to the body it would not have original sin; and the soul is not created in time before being infused.

Aside on the presupposition: “That’s an awfully subtle thing he’s saying here. It would be lost on most moderns who are influenced by Descartes” — Cartesian dualism, and “perhaps many of our ecumenical brethren.” Without the Catholic understanding of the human being as soul and body a single unit essentially, Thomas is harder to understand. He declines to treat Descartes’ account of the soul: “it’s all fouled up.” A student reports Heisenberg said Thomas makes more sense than Descartes.

12. Reply 5 (“the common good is preferred to the singular good”) #

God by His wisdom does not forego the universal order of things — that to such a body such a soul is ordained — merely to avoid the singular infection of one soul, especially since the nature of the soul is such that it does not begin to be except in a body (as was shown in the Prima Pars, against souls created by themselves). It is better for it to be thus according to nature than in no way to be, especially since through grace it can evade damnation. His reaction: “I don’t know about this, Thomas. I have to come back to that one.” Left open.

His words #

• “seed-like ratio / seed-like notion” — ratio seminalis, seminal reason; “that ratio — that’s a terrible word, got to fix that.”
• “principal cause” vs. “instrumental cause” / “the tool” — the twofold division of in-as-in-a-cause.
• “subject” — that in which something is as in a receiver; the marble, the soul.
• “poured in” / “infusion” — the soul’s being given to the body.
• “stained,” “vitiated,” “corrupted” — his renderings for the soul’s being infected.
• “guilt” vs. “punishment” — culpa vs. poena; what reaches the soul vs. what reaches the flesh.
• “lex fomitis” — the law of the fomes, named but deferred.
• “ability for large discourse, looking before and after” — his definition of reason.
• “dimwits” — his running self-description of the class.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 83, a. 1 — the division of the question, the five objections, sed contra, body, and all five replies.
• Romans 7 (“another law in my members”; “there dwells not in me, that is in my flesh, the good”) — quoted in obj. 1 and sed contra.
• Romans 5:12 (“in whom all have sinned”) — quoted in the body.
• Augustine, Retractions — quoted in reply 1.
• Handout, “The First Definition of Reason”, p. 58 — read from in the digression on reason.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics IV, on the senses of “in” (inferred as to the book number he gives: “the fourth book of physics”).
• Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals; De Anima — the rational soul not from the parents.
• Avicenna — Thomas’s habitual text on principal vs. instrumental cause.
• Matthew, “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (inferred as to book).
• Thomas, Prima Pars, on the soul’s not beginning to be except in a body.
• Shakespeare’s Falstaff; Michelangelo’s Pietà; Descartes; Heisenberg (reported); Mozart and Haydn.

His questions #

• Is your soul corrupting your body, or is your body corrupting your soul? The soul is the subject; the flesh receives only punishment.
• Where is original sin? In three ways: in Adam as principal cause, in the seed as instrument, in the soul as subject.
• Where is the shape of the Pietà? In Michelangelo as principal cause, in hammer and chisel as instrument, in the marble as subject.
• Are the words of the teacher wiser than the student? No — they are sounds, his tools, not capable of wisdom; wisdom is in the mind.
• Do the parents make the rational soul of the child? No; the seed only disposes, since the rational soul does not come through the transformation of matter.
• Would God, being Wisdom, pour a precious soul into such a vessel? Yes — the common good and the universal order are preferred, and it is better to be according to nature than not to be.
• How does all this go back to the definition of reason? Reason is the ability to look before and after, and in that is included the ability to see distinctions — as here, three senses of “in.”
• Can the soul be affected by the physical medium of the seed? Yes: it receives human nature from Adam without original justice, and so is vitiated.
• Is the soul stained from its creation? No — creation regards God alone; only infusion regards the body receiving it.
• Is Thomas right that it is better to be thus than not to be at all? Left open — “I have to come back to that one.”