The Stain of Sin (Q86) and the Debt of Punishment (Q87 a1): Lost Brightness, Returning to the Light, and the Threefold Order

Orientation #

He opens straight into the stain of sin (“Okay. So let’s look at the stain of sin here now. Is that a metaphor?”), which follows on the material of the preceding class (prev. lecture). At the end he sets down q. 88 (the distinction of mortal and venial sin) as the next question, and stops at article 1 of q. 87.

The class, in order #

1. The question announced, and joking about Thomas’s mind (“Hope he doesn’t change his mind again”) #

Two things asked in q. 86: whether the stain of the soul is an effect of sin, and whether it remains after the act of sin has passed away. He jokes that Thomas “changes his mind” every article — he recalls a graduate-school classmate who imitated professors’ quirks at the Christmas party, and says he would like “to have some fun with Thomas.”

2. Objection 1: the sun’s ray is not stained (“the ray of the sun is not what stained”) #

• A superior nature cannot be stained by contact with a lower nature; the sun’s ray is not stained by touching fetid bodies (Augustine, Contra quinque haereses).
• The human soul is of a far superior nature to the changeable things to which sinning turns it; therefore it contracts no stain. He calls this “a famous example of the solar ray… kind of a subtle argument.”
• Aside on why bad things are tolerated: a student recalls Thomas on Matthew’s parable of the tares — the master says “an enemy hath done this” and forbids uprooting. Thomas gives about four reasons not to destroy the bad: one would lose out on many goods (patience, for one); sometimes you do not know who is really bad; sometimes others would be pulled up with him. The argument, he notes, is Augustine’s against the heretics (the Pelagians, in his fight over grace), and Augustine spoke more carefully and profoundly about grace after that fight.

3. Objection 2: reason is not stained, and whether all knowledge is good (“all knowledge is such as what good”) #

• Sin is chiefly in the will; the will is in reason (De Anima III); reason is not stained by considering anything whatever but rather perfected; therefore the will is not stained by sin. He notes this objection is merely dialectical — it rests on authority and probable opinion.
• Aristotle at the beginning of the De Anima: all knowledge is good, but one knowledge is better than another by being of better things or more certain — hence the high value of the study of the soul. So we are perfected, he says, by studying sin and vice.
• His argument to students comparing knowledge and love: not all love is good, but all knowledge is as such good; so in that respect knowledge is better than love.
• Objection from a parent at a Trivium talk: sex education is bad and harms children. His reply: it can be bad, but is that per se an effect of knowledge or per accidens? To argue from it against all knowledge being good is the fallacy of the accidental. Same with a terrorist knowing how to make a bomb, or his knowing how to use a knife — he uses it every morning to cut an orange for breakfast; someone else stabs a man with one. Per se, all knowledge is good.

4. Objection 3: positive or privation? (“if sin causes a stain… something what positive”) #

• If the stain is positive it can only be a disposition or habit, since nothing else is caused by an act. But it is not, since the stain could remain after the disposition or habit is removed — his case: one who sinned mortally by prodigality and then changes by sinning mortally in the habit of the opposite vice (avarice).
• Nor can it be pure privation, since all sins agree in turning away from God; then all sins would give one and the same stain. Therefore stain is not an effect of sin.

5. Sed contra, and the authorities on stain (“You put a stain upon your glory”) #

• Ecclesiasticus 47 to Solomon: “you put a stain upon your glory.” Ephesians: presented to God a glorious church “not having a stain or wrinkle.”
• Asides on Solomon’s fall: at Laval he read Albert the Great on woman — “if I told the whole truth about these, the whole world would be stupefied.” The story of Alexander’s mistress taming Aristotle to ride him about the room on all fours; Aristotle’s line: “If she can do this to me, who am old and wise, what could she do to you, who are young and foolish?” And the old monk’s warning: “You’re not wiser than Solomon. You’re not holier than David. You’re not stronger than Samson.”
• Aside on avarice, from a Hagar the Horrible cartoon: “Did you marry him for love or for money?” — “Both. I love money.” Also the counting-house exchange about the Super Bowl: he should have answered “either the Patriots or Seattle will win.”

6. The body of a. 1: stain proper to bodies, metaphorical in the soul (“stain is said properly in what bodily things”) #

• Properly, a shining body loses its shine by contact with another body — silver tarnishing and needing polishing; his own car and clothes rubbing against the dirty snowbank in the crowded driveway.
• By likeness in spiritual things: the soul has a twofold splendor — (1) from the light of natural reason, directing him in his actions; (2) from the refulgentia of the divine light, to wit of wisdom and grace, by which man is perfected to act well and suitably. He dwells on refulgentia (from fulgur, lightning-flash) as reflecting or returning light; he canvasses “shine,” “comeliness,” and settles toward shine or sparkle — prompted by Washington Irving’s phrase about “Sophia’s sparkle.”
• There is a certain touch of the soul when it adheres to something by love — “you’re attached to somebody” (his Washington Irving volumes, his wine, candy, lemon heads).
• When one sins, one adheres to things against both the light of reason and the light of divine law; hence the loss of shine from such contact is called, metaphorically, the stain of the soul.

7. Reply to 1: the soul stains itself (“but more a converso”) #

• The soul is not stained by inferior things by their power acting upon it, but conversely: the soul by its own act stains itself by adhering to them inordinately. (Virtus here = power.)
• Shakespeare defines reason by order — “looking before and after.” Here one adheres in a disordered way, and the shine is lost.
• Aside: what you carry to purgatory is combustible material, the things to which you are inordinately attached; it gets burned away.

8. Reply to 2: the mind takes, the will gives (“truth is primarily in the mind, but the good is in things”) #

• The act of the understanding is perfected as the understandable is in the understanding after the understanding’s own mode — the famous distinction of Aristotle’s “sixth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics VI]. First act of the mind is simple grasping: I grasp whole and part, and join them — “a whole is more than a part.” What I grasp is contained in my hand, so in the mind; learning is getting something into your head.
• The act of the will is a motion out to the things themselves — you give your love; “I left my heart in San Francisco.” Hence the will is in some ways more proportioned to God than reason: the boy on the beach told Augustine he could not get the ocean into that little hole — you cannot get the Trinity into your mind, but you can jump into the ocean, and it is easier to jump in than to get the ocean into you.
• Hence “give and take”: the mind takes (in defining a square you take the genus and take the difference); loving is not a taking but a giving.
• Evil is basically a lack, and the good falls in the definition of the lack — so the professor knows your ignorance better than you do, because he knows what you lack.
• Therefore love glues the soul to the thing loved, and from this it is stained when it adheres inordinately: Hosea 9:10 — “They were made abominable just as the things which they loved.”
• His own supplement (he is surprised Thomas does not give it): two ways of dividing the powers of the soul. (a) By act and ultimately by object — Aristotle’s five genera: vegetative, sensitive, locomotive, appetitive, intellectual. (b) By the way they rise above matter, giving three levels: plants (a little rising, making something out of raw materials); the sensitive part with a start of real immateriality (receiving the shape of the chair without the chair being in the eye — “it would be rather uncomfortable”) plus irascible and concupiscible; and the fully immaterial level, which holds both reason and will. On this second division the will is “in reason,” not as a part of the power called reason; they are two different powers.

9. Reply to 3: a lack, but a lack from a cause (“a very subtle thing here”) #

• The stain is not something positive in the soul (“not a bump”), nor does it signify the lack alone, but a lack of the soul’s sparkle in order to its cause, which is sin. Hence diverse sins induce diverse stains.
• Likeness: a shadow is a lack of light, but a lack of light from an interposed body; as bodily objects differ, shadows differ.
• A student adds: it is almost like stained glass — since we turn from God to other things, the light is reflected differently by the different objects we turn to. He agrees, noting Thomas often contrasts how anger and concupiscence stain the soul differently.

10. Article 2: three objections that the stain does not remain (“There’s no way he’s going to get out of this one”) #

1. Nothing remains in the soul after the act except habit or disposition (he is not now thinking of the Pythagorean theorem but has habitual knowledge of it — he used to work it on the board while waiting for exams); but the stain is a privation, not a habit. “That convinces me.”
2. The stain is to sin as shadow to body; the body gone, the shadow does not remain.
3. Every effect depends on its cause; the cause is the act of sin; so the act gone, no stain — “I’m no longer murdering you… so no stain in my soul at all.” He dramatizes: “I don’t see any way he’s really tied himself up.”

• Sed contra, Joshua 22: is it little to you that you have sinned, and “up to the present day the stain of this bad act remains in you.” So Thomas could have been taken in by the arguments, but he has the authority of Joshua; now he must get out of the knot.

11. The body of a. 2: you must come back (“But necessary that he approach returning through the contrary motion”) #

• The stain implies a defect of brightness on account of the recess from the light of reason or divine law; as long as a man remains outside that light the stain remains; when he returns to the divine light and the light of reason — which comes about by grace — the stain ceases.
• Though the act ceases, a man does not at once return to where he was: there is required some motion of the will contrary to the first motion, just as one who moved away does not come near merely by stopping, but must approach by the contrary motion. A student: sin is not just turning away, it is running away; stopping is not enough, you must run all the way back.
• He gropes for a scriptural text about “shadow” — Simeon? Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist? — and lands on “to enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow [of death].”

12. The replies of a. 2, and a word on metaphorical theology (“you can’t argue from metaphors”) #

1. After the act, nothing positive remains except disposition or habit; still something remains lacking, namely the lack of union to the divine light.
2. With the obstructing body removed, the transparent body remains at equal proximity and relation to the illuminating body — his mother’s phrase to one blocking the light: “you make a better door than a window.” But with sin removed the soul does not remain in the same relation to God; so the ratio is not similar.

• Aside: you cannot argue from metaphors, but you can argue about them; metaphorical theology is not argumentative — yet (as Father Boulay used to say) it is in a way better, because what is said metaphorically is plainly not said properly of God, whereas in proper speech (“I am who I am”) you might think you understand more than you do.

3. The act of sin causes a distance from God, which distance follows the defect of grace; as local motion causes local distance, so the motion ceasing does not take away the distance. “I was close to you, then I went for a walk away from you… No, I’ve got to come back.”

13. Question 87 introduced: translating reatus (“How do you translate reatus, guilt?”) #

• Reatus is a problem word: culpa is more guilt, reatus more the being-worthy-of / subject to punishment. The class agrees to render it the debt of punishment — what you owe.
• The eight articles listed: (1) whether the debt of punishment is an effect of sin; (2) whether sin can be the punishment of another sin; (3) whether some sin makes one subject to eternal punishment; (4) whether some sin makes one subject to punishment infinite in quantity; (5) whether every sin makes one subject to eternal and infinite punishment; (6) whether the debt of punishment can remain after sin; (7) whether every punishment is inflicted for some sin; (8) whether one is due punishment for the sin of another — “the bishop better watch out.” Q. 88, on the distinction of mortal and venial sin, comes next.

14. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“it is outside the intention of the one sinning”) #

1. What is per accidens to something is not its proper effect; the debt of punishment is per accidens to sin, being outside the sinner’s intention. “Ah, I can relax now.”
2. The bad is not a cause of the good; punishment is good — two middle terms: punishment is just, and what is just is good; punishment is from God, and what is from God is good — so it is not an effect of sin, which is evil.
3. Augustine, Confessions I: every disordered soul is a punishment to itself. But a punishment does not cause the debt of another punishment, else it would go on forever.

• Sed contra, Romans 2:9: “tribulation and anguish upon every soul of him that doeth evil”; to do evil is to sin, so sin induces punishment.
• Asides: Mozart’s Don Giovanni; the counting-house man quoting Padre Pio — a man said “I don’t believe in hell,” and the answer was “You will when you get there”; little preaching on hell now, unlike the parish missions of his boyhood, where a man dropped dead on the church steps after the sermon, which the preacher used as his text — “it could be you.”

15. The body of a. 1: the threefold order and threefold punishment (“whoever rises up against some order”) #

Argument as he gives it:

1. From natural things it is derived that what rises up against something suffers something from it: one contrary acts vehemently when the other comes — heated water congeals the more (Meteorology I, “one of Aristotle’s more particular works”), water boils.
2. Hence in men there is a natural inclination that each presses down the one who rises up against him.
3. Whatever things are contained under an order are in some way one in relation to the source of the order; so whoever rises up against an order is pressed down by that order or its source.
4. Sin is a disordered act, so the sinner acts against an order; therefore it follows that he be pressed down — and that pressing down is punishment.

• Three orders the human will is subject to: (1) the order of his own reason — again Shakespeare’s definition of reason by order, “looking before and after”; (2) the order of a man outside him governing him, spiritually or temporally, civilly or in the household (“Do we punish our children? I guess so. Should sometimes.”); (3) the universal order of divine rule.
• Hence a threefold punishment: from himself, the remorse of conscience (“that’s what every sinner experiences… I hate myself”); from man; from God.
• On Shakespeare’s definition: the ability to look before and after is the ability for distinctions, and in the ability for large discourse is included the ability for small discourse; you understand each part separately, then put it together.

16. The replies of a. 1 (“punishment follows sin in so far as it is bad”) #

1. Punishment follows sin in so far as it is bad, by reason of its disorder; and as the bad is per accidens in the sinner’s act, being apart from his intention, so also is the debt of punishment. He insists the key thing is the first sentence: the following is not accidental; what is unintended is the badness. Illustration: the bank robber asked by the judge why he does it — “that’s where the money is.” He goes for a good as he sees it; he takes an order not his own; no surprise he does not want punishment for what he loves. The rapist sees pleasure.
2. Punishment can be inflicted by God or by man; so the punishment itself is not directly an effect of sin, but sin makes a man worthy of punishment, which is bad — Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4: to be punished is not bad. Hence the debt of punishment is what is directly laid down as caused by sin.
3. The punishment of a disordered soul is owed to sin in that it perverts the order of reason; it becomes obligated to a further punishment in that it perverts the order of divine or human law. Test case: if he drives home on the left side of the street tonight, will he be punished? — “You’ll find out real fast.” Such laws are in that sense arbitrary. Aside: signs posted in Boston that it is the law to remove the snow from your car, since falling snow slides over the windshield and has caused accidents.

• He stops at (article) twenty-one [unclear in recording] and asks: “Has everybody seen Lady Wisdom?”

His words #

• stain — his rendering of macula; said properly of bodies, metaphorically of the soul.
• refulgentia — the returned or reflected divine light; “fulgur means to shine”; he prefers shine or sparkle to “comeliness.”
• touch / attachment — the soul’s contact with things through love; “attach comes from touch.”
• a converso — “a reverse”: the soul stains itself rather than being acted on.
• virtus — here power, not virtue.
• the sixth book of Wisdom [ed.: Aristotle, Metaphysics VI] — truth primarily in the mind, good in things.
• simple grasping [ed.: the first act of the mind] — the understandable contained in the mind as in a hand.
• give and take — the mind takes, the will gives.
• fallacy of the accidental — arguing from a per accidens effect against a per se good.
• culpa vs. reatus — guilt vs. worthiness of / subjection to punishment; rendered the debt of punishment.
• depressed / pressed down — his literal rendering of the order’s action on one who rises against it; that pressing down is punishment.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 86, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 86, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, prologue and article list; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Ecclesiasticus 47 (“you put a stain upon your glory”); Ephesians (“not having a stain or wrinkle”); Hosea 9:10; Joshua 22; Romans 2:9

Mentioned

• Augustine, Contra quinque haereses; Confessions I; the boy on the beach
• Aristotle, De Anima I (all knowledge good) and III (the will is in reason); Metaphysics VI (inferred); Meteorology I
• Dionysius, De Divinis Nominibus ch. 4
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Matthew (parable of the tares)
• Albert the Great (at Laval); Shakespeare on reason as “looking before and after”; Washington Irving (“Sophia’s sparkle”); Mozart, Don Giovanni
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 88 (announced as next)

His questions #

• Is “stain” said of the soul a metaphor? Yes — properly of bodies losing their shine by contact; of the soul by likeness.
• Is all knowledge as such good, and what of sex education or bomb-making? Per se all knowledge is good; the harm is per accidens — the fallacy of the accidental.
• Is the stain something positive or a pure privation? Neither simply: a lack of the soul’s sparkle taken in order to its cause, sin — so diverse sins, diverse stains.
• How is the will “in reason”? Not as part of that power; on the division of powers by degrees of immateriality, reason and will share the highest level.
• Does the stain remain when the act of sin passes? Yes — one must return by a contrary motion of the will, which comes about by grace; stopping is not returning.
• How do you translate reatus? The debt of punishment — what you owe, being worthy of punishment (culpa is guilt).
• Why does punishment follow sin at all? Because whoever rises against an order is pressed down by that order or its source; man is under three orders — his own reason, human governance, divine rule — hence three punishments.
• Is the debt of punishment per accidens, since the sinner does not intend it? Punishment follows sin precisely as bad; the badness, and so the debt, is outside his intention, as he intends the good he sees.