Mortal Sin and Eternal Punishment: Aquinas on Aversion, Conversion, and the Beginning of Order (Q. 87, aa. 3–5)

Orientation #

He is reading straight through q. 87 of the Prima Secundae, article by article, with a break between a. 3 and a. 4 and a stop at the end of a. 5. He mentions he was “reading in Matthew” that morning, and digressions on Matthew recur. The neighbouring class continues in the same question, articles 6–8.

The class, in order #

1. Objections of a. 3: eternal punishment for a temporal sin (“in measure against measure”) #

The point: four objections that no sin deserves eternal punishment.

1. Just punishment must be equal to the guilt, “for justice is an equality” (Isaiah, “in measure against measure”); sin is temporal, so it cannot merit eternal punishment. He dwells on just as meaning equal — “it just fits”: a sofa through a door, a shoe. Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure takes its title from this; eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
2. Punishments are medicines (Ethics II); no medicine ought to be infinite, since it is ordered to an end, and the ordered-to-an-end is not infinite — the contrary terms finis and infinitum (Politics I).
3. No one always does something unless he delights in it for its own sake; God does not delight in the perdition of men (Wisdom 1).
4. Nothing against nature lasts forever; such punishment is not according to the nature of the one punished. Aside on the objections’ force: “Well, I’m convinced, aren’t you? Doesn’t take much to convince me, a dimwit like me.” Sed contra: Matthew 25, “these will go into eternal punishment”; Mark 3:29, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has no remission in aeternum.

2. Digression: the divisions of Matthew, and God has no idea of evil (“that’s the editorial and reference division”) #

Matthew has 28 chapters — a perfect number; he notes Thomas puts the perfection of God in ch. 28 of Summa Contra Gentiles I, “not by chance”, and that the chapter divisions come from the University of Paris masters, “subtle guys”. But 28 chapters and verses is the editorial and reference division, not the logical and understandable one. The logical division is threefold, from Gregory’s four animals (man = Matthew, eagle = John, ox = Luke, lion = Mark): as man he came into the world (chs. 1–2), proceeded through the world teaching (chs. 3–20), went out of the world (chs. 21–28). John divides into two. Aside: that morning he read in Thomas that God has no idea of evil; one might object with Aristotle against Empedocles that this makes us know something God does not know — “laughable” — so it forces you back to what an idea in God is, in Augustine’s sense; the English word “idea” is equivocal here. He leaves it: “I’ll let you think about that.”

3. The body of a. 3: every order has a beginning (“of any order there is some beginning”) #

1. Sin brings the debt of punishment by perverting an order; the cause remaining, the effect remains — so while the perverseness remains, the debt remains.
2. Some perversions are reparable, some not: a defect is irreparable if the principle is destroyed, reparable if the principle is saved. Example: corrupt the principle of seeing and no repair of vision is possible except by divine power; save the seeing principle and an impediment coming to the eye can be repaired by nature or by art.
3. Of any order there is some beginning by which one is a partaker of that order. Excursus: Aristotle first treats order in Categories ch. 12, distinguishing the senses of before, hence of after, hence of order. His torture-question to students: in what sense of before does one sense of before come before another? The four senses: in time; in being (this can be without that, not vice versa — alongside it, cause before effect); in the discourse of reason; in the better. Answer: in time, because we name as we know, and naming follows knowing; and before-in-time is tied to motion (motion is the number of the before and after in motion), and as Shakespeare says, “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.”
4. In Metaphysics V (the fifth book of wisdom) Aristotle treats the words used in wisdom, beginning with beginning, and when he later treats before he recalls the common notion of beginning — because every order has a beginning as its source.
5. The beginning of the order by which man’s will is subject to God is the last end, to which man adheres by charity. “So this is extremely important, this love of God.”
6. Therefore sins that turn away from God, taking away charity, are of themselves irreparable and lead to eternal punishment — “there’s no beginning to go back to.” These are mortal sins, taking away the principle of life, so they end in death. Comparisons: the philosopher who loses the axioms — give up the principle of contradiction (Metaphysics III–IV, he says “the third book”) and you have given up everything; a man who thinks something can both be and not be, “just go back to sleep”, he has turned into the life of a vegetable, since even the animal distinguishes hot and cold, hard and soft. Order-of-parts example: the chair. Its end, sitting, is exterior to it; the parts are ordered to each other (the back at an obtuse, not acute, angle — “the angle of repose”) on account of the order of the whole to sitting. So too the order of the universe’s parts is on account of its order to God, who is its exterior end. Asides: the cat Tabitha hissing at her daughter Moppet over a napping spot — an animal expressing a disposition. The Cretan tag homo sedens fit sapiens, “the man sitting becomes wise,” mistranslated by his informant as “the man sitting makes wisdom.” Jokes on students who cannot even repeat the lecture (the seminary student waving his hand: “I don’t think we’ve been introduced”).

4. Replies of a. 3 (“in no judgment is it required that a punishment be equal according to duration”) #

• To 1: punishment is proportioned to sin according to its gravity, not duration, in human as in divine judgment (Augustine, City of God XXI). Adultery or homicide is committed in a moment but not punished momentarily: perpetual imprisonment, exile, or death — where what counts is not the time of the killing but that he be taken away forever from the society of the living, which represents in its own way the eternity of divine punishment. Gregory: he who has sinned in his own eternity is punished in God’s eternity — “in his own eternity” not by the act’s duration but because he puts his end in the sin, having the will to sin forever. Gregory, Moralia XXXIV: the wicked wish to live without end that they might remain without end in their iniquities. Illustration: Don Giovanni, whose will is fixed on sexual pleasure and who therefore cannot repent; down he goes to hell — the Vienna State Opera film with real fire, and the short ensemble afterwards where the witnesses resolve to turn a new leaf, heaven opening briefly, Mozart knowing when to stop. Compare Sherlock Holmes on the builder who framed a man: “he lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop”; likewise a book on Titian says above all he knew when to stop; likewise a comic story teller should stop at the tickling line. A student notes a parallel with Islam’s paradise as living in one’s sins forever; this runs into a discussion of the 9/11 terrorists and pornography, Father Tom’s claim that drugs and pornography above all open the soul to diabolical influences, the Worcester billboard “lust dragged you down to hell”, the funeral on Wednesday and billboards for “forty shades of grey” [ed.: Fifty Shades of Grey], and the Super Bowl running both an ad against domestic violence and an ad for a film celebrating it — “make up your mind.” The 72 virgins/72 raisins joke.
• To 2: punishment under human law is not always medicinal to the one punished but to others — the thief is hanged not to amend him but that others by fear desist (Proverbs 19: the pestilent one whipped, the stupid one will be wiser). So the eternal punishments of the reprobate are medicinal to those who consider them — like the other characters in Don Giovanni. Psalm 59: he gave a sign to those fearing, that they might flee from the face of the bow (arcus), that your beloved might be freed.
• To 3: God does not delight in punishments for their own sake — “so the guy does who tortures” — but in the order of his justice which requires them.
• To 4: punishment is per accidens ordered to nature; per se it is ordered to the lack of order and to justice, restoring the order; so while the disorder remains, the punishment remains. Aside before the break: not a pulpit topic. Bonaventure says the saints in heaven think about hell, because thinking what they deserved and how kind God was redoubles their joy; a student adds Thomas on the resurrection — the objection that seeing the damned would ruin the saints’ day, answered that it makes them thank God all the more.

5. Article 4: is the punishment infinite in quantity? (“one infinite is not greater than another infinite”) #

Objections: (1) Jeremiah 10:24, “correct me, Lord, in your judgment, not in your fury… unless perhaps you would reduce me to nothing”; fury signifies the strictness of divine justice, and to be reduced to nothing is infinite punishment, as to make something from nothing is of infinite power (only God creates; angels cannot). (2) Deuteronomy 25, the measure of sin will be the measure of the punishment; a sin is graver the greater the person sinned against — graver to strike the prince than a private citizen — and God’s magnitude is infinite. (3) Infinite is twofold, in duration and in quantity; the punishment is infinite in duration, therefore also in quantity. Sed contra: then all mortal sins would be punished equally, for one infinite is not greater than another. Body — the key distinction: in sin there are two things. (a) The aversion, turning from the unchangeable infinite good: on this side sin is infinite, and to it corresponds the punishment of damnation, also infinite, for it is the loss of an infinite good, God. (b) The disordered conversion to a changeable good: on this side sin is finite, because the changeable good is finite and the act of a creature cannot be infinite; to this corresponds the punishment of sense, which is finite.

6. Digression: five reasons to love God, and whether it may be asked (“why should one love God?”) #

From Summa Contra Gentiles I, chs. 37–41: (37) God is good and good things are to be loved; (38) God is goodness itself, after which all good things are good; (39) being goodness itself there can be nothing bad in him, so there is no reason not to love him — unlike creatures, where “there’s always something not to love in everybody and ourselves” (the bride who asked prayers because “marriage is hard, we’re all flawed”; and the friend’s line about tolerating someone because of his knowledge, “but there are limits”); (40) God is the good of every good — a phrase from Augustine, and this article is missing in the Summa Theologiae; (41) God is the summum bonum. Student exchange: is it scandalous for a Christian to ask why he should love God, since he is commanded to? His answer: no — with Anselm, theology is belief seeking understanding; you are not seeking a reason to believe but an understanding of what you believe. The parable of the seed: they hear the word without understanding and do not care to understand; a real Christian does. And the answer given: God is the end, the purpose of the universe. Closing note on the distinction: aversion is the worse side — you turn from the one who is the reason anything is good at all; hence those who seek changeable goods are, as Chesterton says of pleasure seekers, never pleasure finders.

7. Digression: Matthew chapter 10 and the humility of the tax collector (“he sticks it in”) #

In Matthew 10 the twelve are named in couples: Peter first, then Andrew “his brother”; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; then Philip and Bartholomew; then Thomas and Matthew — and Matthew adds to his own name “the tax collector” (telōnēs). Why should this tax collector write the first gospel — the first book of the New Testament, and the Second Vatican Council says the four gospels are the principal books even of the New Testament? One might see why John, or Mark the pupil of Peter, or Luke the pupil of Paul. His suggestion, with the class: humility — “he who is forgiven much will love much,” as with Mary Magdalene, who had a torrid past, was there at the cross and first announced the resurrection to Peter and John. He notes Matthew 18’s “treat him as a tax collector”, and that Matthew is named before Judas. Left as a question.

8. Replies of a. 4 (“if I do not have charity, I am nothing”) #

• To 1: to reduce the sinner utterly to nothing does not fit divine justice, since it is repugnant to the perpetuity of punishment; but he is said to be reduced to nothing who is deprived of spiritual goods — 1 Corinthians 13, “if I do not have charity, I am nothing.” Student exchange: do the damned wish not to be? Scripture says they wish they could die and cannot; yet it is natural to want to be — left unsettled. Asides: his friend Jim Fransack [ASR uncertain] quoting Augustine that sin is nothing and the man who sins becomes nothing; and the story of a religious of immense talent with charity problems, of whom it was said, had he had charity he would have been perfect.
• To 2: that argument proceeds about sin on the side of aversion, for thus man sins against God.
• To 3: the duration of punishment corresponds to the duration of the guilt — not on the side of the act but on the side of the stain, which remaining, the debt of punishment remains; the bitterness corresponds to the graveness of the guilt. Guilt irreparable of itself lasts forever, hence eternal punishment; but on the side of conversion it has no infinity, hence no infinite bitterness — “so the fires consuming Don Giovanni are not infinite. They’re bad enough.”

9. Article 5: does every sin deserve eternal punishment? (“a disorder about those things which are towards the end”) #

Objections: (1) punishment is proportioned to guilt; eternal differs from temporal infinitely, but no sin differs from another infinitely, since every sin is a human act and cannot be infinite; since some sin deserves eternal punishment, every sin does. (“Well, that convinces me — you can convince a dimwit of anything.”) (2) Original sin is the least of sins — Augustine, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Charity: mildest is the punishment of those punished for original sin only — yet it is owed perpetual punishment, since infants dying unbaptized never see the kingdom (John 3:3, unless one is reborn again). So much more all other sins. (3) A sin does not get greater punishment by being joined to another; but venial sin in one damned is punished eternally, since in hell there is no remission; therefore venial sin as such deserves eternal punishment. Sed contra: Gregory, Dialogues IV, some guilt is remitted after this life. Body: sin causes the debt of eternal punishment inasmuch as it is irreparably repugnant to the order of divine justice, i.e. contrary to the very beginning of that order, the last end. In some sins there is disorder but no contrariety to the last end — only disorder about the things that are toward the end, as when a man is excessively attached to some trifling thing yet would not on that account offend God by acting against his precept. To such sins temporal, not eternal, punishment is owed. Excursus on beginning vs. principle: he prefers the English “beginning” so that the earlier meaning is kept; the danger of transliterated words (principle) is that they are taken only in their later meanings — “he has no principles” sounds natural, “he has no beginnings” does not. First sense of beginning: the point is the beginning of the line, the line of the surface, the surface of the body; then beginning in time — “my beginning goes back to 1936 — no, 1935, in my mother’s womb.” Nicodemus: a man cannot go back to his mother’s womb; that beginning is in the past.

10. Replies of a. 5, and the road to the end (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”) #

• To 1: sins do not differ infinitely on the side of conversion to a changeable good, in which the substance of the act consists; they do differ infinitely on the side of aversion, since some are committed by aversion from the last end and some by disorder about the means — and the last end differs infinitely from the things that are to the end. He checks: “Is that clear to you?” Illustration: Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” — the truth and life are the end, he is the road. Mortal sin is getting off the road; venial sin is looking at the flowers along the way, stopping for an ice cream — you are not off the road but delayed and impeded from reaching your destination. So too the philosopher is on the road to wisdom; if he gets off it he is on the way to foolishness; whereas one who gets lost in geometry and never reaches natural philosophy, let alone wisdom, is only delayed. Aside: a man met after the funeral, from the University of Vermont, “a philosopher, I guess, but he doesn’t know any philosophy” — a different road.
• To 2: eternal punishment is owed to original sin not by reason of its gravity but by reason of the condition of the subject, a man found without grace — “without the wedding garment”, to which alone belongs the remission of sin. He notes there is some present discussion among theologians in the church about this.
• To 3: the eternity of venial sin’s punishment in hell answers not to the quantity of the guilt but to its being irremissible there. The damned man with mortal sin is also punished for his venial sins, but not per se forever — because of his condition, he can get no forgiveness “for eating too much ice cream or whatever it was he did.” “Stop here now.”

His words #

• “merit of punishment” / “debt of punishment” — what sin brings in [ed.: reatus poenae]; he notes “obligated”/“accused” are strange English for it.
• “just” = equal — “justice is an equality”; “it just fits.”
• editorial and reference division vs. logical and understandable division — of Matthew: 28 chapters and verses vs. the threefold Gregorian division.
• beginning — his preferred rendering of principium, kept so the earlier senses (point, beginning in time) are not lost behind “principle.”
• aversion / conversion — the two sides of sin: turning from the unchangeable good (infinite) and the disordered turning to a changeable good (finite).
• punishment of damnation vs. punishment of sense — the two answering punishments, infinite and finite.
• stain (macula) — what remains after the act and carries the debt of punishment.
• “the angle of repose” — the proper ordering of the chair’s parts to its end, sitting.
• homo sedens fit sapiens — “the man sitting becomes wise.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, a. 4
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, a. 5
• Quoted within these: Isaiah 27; Matthew 25; Mark 3:29; Wisdom 1; Jeremiah 10:24; Deuteronomy 25; Proverbs 19; Psalm 59; 1 Corinthians 13; John 3:3; Augustine, De Civitate Dei XXI; Augustine, Enchiridion; Gregory, Moralia XXXIV; Gregory, Dialogues IV; Aristotle, Ethics II; Aristotle, Politics I

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, cc. 37–41; and I, c. 28 (perfection of God)
• Aristotle, Categories ch. 12 (senses of before); Metaphysics V (inferred) on “beginning”; Metaphysics on the principle of contradiction (he says “the third book”)
• Matthew 10 (the twelve named); Matthew 18 (treat him as a tax collector); Gregory on the four animals; Second Vatican Council on the four gospels
• Shakespeare, Measure for Measure; “things in motion sooner catch the eye”; Mozart, Don Giovanni; Sherlock Holmes; Chesterton; Anselm; Bonaventure

His questions #

• In what sense of before does one sense of before come before another sense of before? In time — because we name things as we know them, and naming follows knowing; before-in-time is tied to motion.
• What is the logical and understandable division of Matthew? Threefold: came into the world (1–2), proceeded through the world teaching (3–20), went out of the world (21–28).
• Why is the sin against the Holy Spirit called irreparable? Because it corrupts the very beginning of the order — the last end held by charity — so of itself it cannot be repaired, though divine power could.
• What do we call the sins that destroy the beginning? Mortal sins — they take away the principle of life and so end in death.
• Why should one love God? Five reasons from SCG I: he is good; goodness itself; there is nothing in him not to love; he is the good of every good; he is the highest good.
• Is it scandalous for a Christian to ask why he should love God, since he is commanded to? No: belief seeking understanding, not seeking a reason to believe.
• Why should Matthew the tax collector write the first gospel? Suggested: his humility — he who is forgiven much loves much; left as a suggestion.
• Do the damned wish not to be any more? Scripture says they wish they could die; yet it is natural to want to be — left open.
• Why is one sin punished eternally and another not, if no human act is infinite? Because sins differ infinitely on the side of aversion: the last end differs infinitely from the means.
• Why is venial sin punished eternally in hell? Not by reason of its gravity but because in that condition it is irremissible.