Original Sin in the Soul: the Soul's Essence and the Will First (ST I-II q.83 a.2–3)

Orientation #

He opens by recalling what he mentioned before class: in the Summa contra Gentiles Thomas takes up original sin in Book IV just before the Incarnation, so that the connection between original sin and Christ’s coming is visible. The class then picks up at q. 83, a. 2 and finishes a. 3. The previous class treated the article on whether original sin is more in the flesh or in the soul.

The class, in order #

1. Original sin placed before the Incarnation (“he’s a Houdini in a different sense”) #

Point: the order of the Contra Gentiles itself argues that Christ came principally to remove original sin, because it touches the common good — and actual sin too. He notes the theologians’ question whether God would have become man had Adam not sinned; as far as Scripture says, the reason he came is that we had sinned and could not get out. Aside: Christ as a Houdini in reverse — untying rather than tying.

2. Objections of a. 2 (“original sin is not before in the essence of the soul”) #

1. The soul is apt to be subject of sin as it can be moved by the will; but it is moved by the will not according to essence but according to its powers.
2. Original sin is opposed to original justice; original justice is in some power of the soul, the subject of virtue.
3. As from flesh original sin is derived to the soul, so from the essence of the soul to the powers; but it is more in the soul than in the flesh.
4. Original sin is said to be concupiscence (as in the earlier question), and concupiscence is in the powers.

3. Why soul and powers are hard to distinguish (“two and half of four”) #

Point: the powers are like a natural property of the soul, so people run them together — he names Descartes and “people like that.” Aristotle (On the Soul): we know the soul through its powers, powers through acts, acts through objects. Example: two and half of four. Two is a number, in the genus of discrete quantity; half-of-four follows upon being two, and is always there. Applying the senses of “before” (Categories 12): two is not before half-of-four in time, nor in being (since neither can be without the other), but is before as cause is before effect — the sense Aristotle stops to distinguish because it is the hard one, since cause and effect can be together. So too a third of six, a fourth of eight.

4. Original justice and Plato’s parts of the soul (“there’s no place to put what, justice”) #

Point: original justice is something like Plato’s harmony of soul-parts. Plato’s three parts: reason, thumos (irascible), epithymia (concupiscible); prudence in reason, courage in thumos, temperance in epithymia — and no place left for justice, because he has no distinct will. Plato blows the soul up into the city to see it: foresight in the rulers, fortitude in the soldiers, temperance needed in the crowd. Pedagogical remark: students readily distinguish reason from emotion, but the distinction of the will from the emotions — love in the will vs. love in emotion — is very hard for them to see.

5. Sed contra: original sin is a sin of nature (“peccatum naturae”) #

The soul is the form and nature of the body according to its essence, not its powers; original sin is peccatum naturae; so its subject is the soul according to its very essence. Digression: why Aristotle sometimes calls the soul a nature and sometimes contrasts them. Taking nature as what is ordered to one, earth, air, fire and water go only up or only down; a tree grows up and down, overcoming that determination; taste senses sweet and sour; most of all reason has one knowledge of opposites. Those limited to one keep the name “nature”; the soul gets a new name. But in the broad sense — beginning of motion and rest in that in which it is — the soul is a nature.

6. Grace in the soul, virtues in the powers (“what is the subject of sanctifying grace?”) #

He asks the subjects: hope — will; charity — will; faith — intellect (though it may depend on the will). Then sanctifying grace: the soul itself, a partaking in the divine nature, from which faith, hope and charity proceed as half-of-four proceeds from two. Since grace is what first releases from original sin, and grace is in the soul as in its subject, the cleansing may begin in the soul and proceed outward — light on the present article.

7. Corpus of a. 2 (“original sin is caused by origin”) #

That part of the soul is chiefly the subject of a sin to which first pertains the cause moving one to that sin — e.g. if the moving cause is sense pleasure, which pertains to the concupiscible as its own object, the concupiscible is that sin’s proper subject. But original sin is caused by origin; and origin reaches the soul as the end of generation, according as the soul is the form of the body, which belongs to it by its proper essence. Therefore the soul according to its essence is the first subject of original sin. He calls this “very subtle”: to get half-of-four you must first generate a two; so a sin got in our very origin touches first the soul itself, and then the powers flowing from it. Reply 1: as the will’s motion, its property, pertains to the powers and not the essence, so the will-motion of the first generator arises, by way of generation, first at the essence of the soul — the soul generated first, the powers following, even if at the same time.

8. Reply 2, and the digression on Porphyry (“the Isagoge”) #

Reply 2: original justice too pertains primordialiter to the essence of the soul, being a gift given divinely to human nature and received along with it from our parents; the powers pertain rather to the person, as sources of personal acts, whence they are the proper subjects of actual sins, peccata personalia. Original sin belongs to me by my nature — peccatum naturae. He stresses “see how Thomas looks before and after here.” Digression on “property”: why the Isagoge is called the introduction — logic is the beginning of philosophy, and Thomas notes that logic is the exception to starting with the easier, being a necessity: you need logic even for geometry, where one Euclidean theorem can contain all three kinds of syllogism (the “either-or”, the “if-then”, and the regular). Porphyry writes to Chrysorius, who met these words in Aristotle’s Categories: one must know genus, difference, species, property and accident — not only for the Categories but for definition (species through genus and differences; where differences are lacking, a property serves as second best; no accidents go in) and for division and for demonstration (a property demonstrated of a subject through its definition). Asides: no colleague of his had read the Isagoge; at Laval the first year he had Albert the Great’s commentary on it. Aside on person: are you something or someone? “Something” asks what you are (thing and nature go together among the transcendentals); “someone” means an individual substance of a rational nature. Thomas notes that the individual substance of an irrational nature has no such name, because a person has very great dignity. “Someone” applies to persons by antonomasia — the cat Tabitha, standing on her hind legs at the window, was “almost human… almost someone”; one says “someone’s coming to dinner,” not of the dog. De Koninck said “Aristotle is somebody.” He mentions John Paul II’s The Acting Person, said to be a hard book. (Warren Murray was the one on the phone.)

9. Reply 3: two different orders (“not the same reason”) #

Body to soul as matter to form: the soul is after in the order of generation — which, he asks, falls under which sense of “before”? Under time (a special sense) — but before in perfection and nature, the fourth sense. He recommends knowing chapter 12 of the Categories. But the essence of the soul is to the powers as subject to proper accidents (accidentia propria, another name for properties — outside the nature of the thing, but following upon it, so they get a new name). Hence not the same reason: two different orders are being mixed up. On the definition of the soul: first act of a natural body composed of tools; Aristotle uses “act,” though he does say form too. “Organic” in translations loses the sense — nothing is more apt to have a purpose than a tool; with any odd thing in the attic or the shop the first question is “what is this for?” (a pipe bender; buttons on his computer). Aside: the car alarm going off when Rosalie opens the door — “elderly couple found dead in the parking lot.” Reply 4: concupiscence stands materially and ex consequente in original sin, not as its source; once original justice is removed, the concupiscible powers go to their natural act without the ordering of reason — except in Christ.

10. Objections of a. 3 (“does not infect the will before the other powers”) #

1. A sin chiefly pertains to the power by whose act it is caused; original sin is caused by the act of the generative power.
2. It is carried over through the carnal seed; the other powers, all the sense powers using a bodily organ, are nearer the flesh than the will is.
3. “Most interesting of all”: the understanding is before the will, since there is no will except about a good understood; so it would infect the intellect first. Aside: “I wonder if Thomas joked about his objections when he thought them out. The question is, who would he joke with?”

11. Tying and untying the knot (“that’s what Thomas is doing here”) #

Point: the shape of an article is the shape of a plot. From the Poetics: the plot is the soul of tragedy; Homer taught the Greeks that a good plot is not about one man or one war but a course of action with beginning, middle and end — defined by before and after (beginning: before something, after nothing; end: after something, before nothing; middle: both; so there can be no fourth part). Homer therefore did not take the whole Trojan War, which is only battles reported like a Second World War correspondent, but the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon and what follows. Later Aristotle says tragedy has two parts, tying the knot and untying it; so too in Metaphysics III the dialectical book uses tying and untying — opposite arguments tie the mind up, and one must find the loose end (he recalls C. S. Lewis on looking for loose ends). Thomas ties the knots in the objections and unties them, sometimes only the arguments against his position, sometimes both sides.

12. Sed contra and corpus of a. 3 (“per prius it regards the will”) #

Sed contra: original justice before regards the will, being a rectitude of the will (Anselm, On the Virginal Conception); therefore original sin, its opposite, before regards the will. He notes he does not know whether Anselm meant it belongs mainly in the will, but it is a probable argument. Corpus: two things in the infection — (a) its existence in a subject: here it first regards the very essence of the soul, as said; (b) its inclination to an act: here it regards the powers, and so regards first what has the first inclination to sinning, which is the will. Reason: the will is essential to any sin, since sin must be voluntary, and the will moves all the other powers. He remarks on the Latin per prius — English cannot make the adverb exactly.

13. The three replies (“not by the generative power of the offspring”) #

Reply 1: original sin is not caused in a man by his own generative power but by the act of the parent’s generative power — the offspring’s is not even active at that point — so the offspring’s generative power need not be the first subject. “A simple way to get out of that one.” Reply 2: original sin has a twofold procession — from the flesh to the soul, and from the essence of the soul to its powers. The first is according to the order of generation, the body generated first; the second according to the order of perfection. So although the sense powers are nearer the flesh, the will, as superior power, is nearer the very essence of the soul. Again two senses of “before.” Reply 3: the understanding precedes the will in one way, proposing its object; in another way the will precedes, according to the order of motion to act. He links this to intellect and will as causes of each other in different ways: the intellect more as the end is a cause, the will more as the mover or maker is a cause.

His words #

• “before in time / before in being / cause before effect / before in perfection and nature” — the senses of before from Categories 12; he numbers the last of these as the fourth sense.
• thumos [ed.: irascible appetite]; epithymia [ed.: concupiscible appetite] — Plato’s lower parts.
• peccatum naturae — sin of nature, belonging to me by my nature; opposed to peccata personalia, personal sins, belonging to me by the person I am.
• primordialiter — “first in order”, of original justice pertaining to the essence of the soul.
• “natural body composed of tools” [ed.: organic body] — his rendering of Aristotle’s definition of the soul.
• accidentia propria — proper accidents, another name for properties.
• ex consequente — how concupiscence stands in original sin, materially and consequently.
• per prius — “before”, of original sin regarding the will; he notes English cannot render it as an adverb.
• “antonomasia” — how “someone” is said of persons among all individual substances.
• “tying the knot / untying it” — his name for the structure of a Thomistic article, from the Poetics and Metaphysics III.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 83, a. 2 — objections, sed contra, corpus, replies.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 83, a. 3 — objections, sed contra, corpus, replies.
• Porphyry, Isagoge, opening address to Chrysorius (paraphrased closely).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles IV (original sin placed before the Incarnation).
• Aristotle, Categories 12 (senses of before); On the Soul (definition of soul; soul known through powers); Poetics (plot, beginning-middle-end, tying and untying); Metaphysics III.
• Plato, tripartite soul and city (inferred: Republic).
• Anselm, On the Virginal Conception — original justice as rectitude of the will.
• Albert the Great, commentary on the Isagoge.
• John Paul II, The Acting Person.
• Boethius (as source of the definition of person Thomas discusses).

His questions #

• In what sense is two before half of four? — Not in time or in being, but as cause before effect.
• Is Aristotle confused when he sometimes calls the soul a nature and sometimes not? — No: “nature” strictly means what is determined to one, and the soul overcomes that; broadly the soul is a nature.
• What is the subject of hope, charity, faith? — Will, will, intellect.
• What is the subject of sanctifying grace? — The soul itself, from which the virtues proceed as properties.
• In what way is the soul before its powers? — Not in time, but as cause before effect, like a property.
• Why among all introductions is Porphyry’s called the Isagoge? — Because logic is the beginning of philosophy and this is the beginning of logic.
• Are you something or someone? — Both: “something” asks your nature, “someone” an individual substance of a rational nature.
• Under which sense of before is the order of generation? — Under before in time (a special sense); the soul is before the body in perfection and nature.
• Does original sin infect the will before the other powers? — Yes, as regards inclination to act, the will having the first inclination to sinning and moving the other powers.
• Whether God would have become man had Adam not sinned? — Left open; as far as Scripture says, he came because we had sinned.