Prima Secundae
195. Original Sin in the Soul: the Soul's Essence and the Will First (ST I-II q.83 a.2–3)
Class of 2015-01-15
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/195-original-sin-in-the-soul-the-souls-essence-and-the-will-first/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gratias. God our enlightenment, guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order to illuminate our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:31] I mentioned before class that in the Summa contra Gentiles, right? Thomas takes up original sin there in the fourth book, right? Just before he's going to take up the what, incarnation, right? And there you have, because of the way the books are designed, you see the connection between original sin and Christ's what, coming, right? He came principally to remove original sin, and because that's tied up the common good, right?

[1:05] And then actual sin too, if he knows it too. But by taking up original sin right before that, Thomas is saying, well, it seems to be the reason why he came, right? You know, sometimes the theologians discuss, but God had become man if we had not sinned, or if Adam had not sinned, right? Well, as far as what Scripture says, it seems, you know, that the reason why he came was because we had sinned, right?

[1:30] Couldn't get out, right? He's a houdini in a different sense, right? But he's untying, huh? Untying this thing. So we're up to question article two here in question eighty three.

[1:51] The second one goes forward. Thus, it seems that original sin is not before in the essence of the soul than in the what, powers, huh?

[2:06] For the soul is apt to be the subject of sin as regards that, as regards this that it is able to be what, moved by the will.

[2:18] But the soul is not moved by the will, according to its essence, but only according to its what, powers, huh? And therefore, original sin is not in the soul according to its essence, but only according to its what, powers, huh? Aristotle, in the book on the soul, there are three books on the soul. He says that we know the soul through its powers, right? And the powers through their acts, and the acts through their what, object, huh?

[2:53] But it's hard, sensible people, to separate the soul from its what, powers, right? Because the powers are like a natural property of the what, soul, right? And so some people have a hard time, say, separating, let's say, two from half of four. Same thing. Well, are they the same thing?

[3:16] Two and half of four? Well, two is a number, and therefore in the genus of quantity, huh? Discrete quantity. And half of four is a what? Yeah, yeah. And half of four follows upon being two, right? Huh?

[3:38] Yeah, yeah. But it's always there, right? Huh? Yeah. And, um, you know, a lot of students, you know, have a hard time, you know, distinguishing those two things, right? And, you know, when Aristotle gave as the this last sense there that he talks about of before the cause is before the effect, right? That's different from before in being or before in time, right? Huh? What's before in time can be without something else, right?

[4:10] It comes later in time. What's before in being can be without what is later in being, right? But the cause and effect can be together, huh? And that seems kind of funny. How can this be before that if they're together in time, right? Together in being, right? Huh? It's not that something becomes two and then a little while later on in time it becomes half of four, right?

[4:36] But no, since it's two, it's half of four, right? Okay. Or can it be two without being half of four? No. So, in the first two senses of before, huh? Two is what? Not before half of four, is it? But it's a different sense. The cause is before the what? Effect. Yeah. So half of four or a third of six, right? Fourth of eight. These are all properties that follow upon being two, right?

[5:09] You can see how that last sense is in some sense harder to understand. It's a different sense, and Aristotle stops and shows how it's different from the other senses.

[5:22] So people have difficulties separating or distinguishing between the soul and its what? Yeah. And you'd see it in Descartes and so on, people like that. Now they mix them up.

[5:40] Moreover, original sin is opposed to original what? Justice. Huh? I always thought original justice being a little bit like Plato's thinking, right? Huh? Because Plato wants to put the soul, the different virtues in different parts of the soul, right? In order to see it, he he blows up the soul, right? Huh? Compares it to the parts of the city and so on. And so the prudence or foresight is going to be in the what intellectual part of the city, right?

[6:18] The rulers and fortitude in the soldiers and temperance is necessary in the the crowd, right? Huh? Well, he can distinguish between reason and the emotions, right? But it's hard for people to distinguish the will from the emotions, huh? And if you ever teach a class and so on, you're trying to make the distinction or point out the distinction, I should say, between love which is in the will and love which is what in emotion, you know, that's a hard thing for kids to see, right?

[6:52] See? And they're more sure the distinction between reason and emotion. But this distinction between the will and the emotions is very hard for them to see. So Plato has just what three parts there in the soul: the reason and then thumos, which is called the irascible appetite, and in here, and then what

[7:17] epithymia, right, which is called concupiscible right? Well, prudence is is in reason, courage is in thumos, spirit and temperance in epithymia. Well, there's no place to put what justice, right? Because he hasn't got will; they're distinct. So it's a little bit like the idea of original justice, right? For the parts are what in harmony with each other, right? In the lower parts obeying the higher parts and so on, right?

[7:45] So it's not like he's talking about original justice, but I mean he has something like that, right? But original justice is in some power of the soul, which is the subject of virtue. Therefore, also original sin is more in the powers of the soul than in its what essence, huh?

[8:10] Moreover, just as from flesh original sin is derived to the soul, so from the what essence of the soul it is derived to the what powers. But original sin is more in the soul than in the what flesh. Therefore, also it is more in the powers of the soul than in its what essence, huh?

[8:40] Moreover, original sin is said to be concupiscence, as we said in the earlier horrible question, huh? But concupiscence is in the powers of the soul, therefore original sin.

[8:52] But against all this is that original sin is said to be a natural sin, right? The peccatum naturae. But the soul is the form and nature of the body according to its essence, and not according to its what, powers, as has been shown in the first book when we took up the soul. And therefore, the soul is the subject of original sin chiefly according to its very what, essence, huh?

[9:23] Now, incidentally, there sometimes Aristotle will say that the soul is a nature, right? And sometimes he will kind of distinguish between the soul and nature. What's the is he confused there, or what is the reason for that? huh

[9:46] Is he taking nature in a sense of order to one, yeah, yeah. And then he sees, you know, how earth, air, fire, and water in the old science, you know, either go up or they go down; they don't do both naturally, right? But then you see the tree growing or something, and it what? Goes up and it grows down, huh? So it's kind of overcoming this determination to just one direction, huh?

[10:11] And then even more so when you get the what? The sense of taste that can sense the sweet and the sour together, right? And and most of all, and the reason that has the same knowledge of what opposites and so on. So sometimes he distinguishes them that way, and the things are limited to just one. They keep the name nature, right? The soul gets a new name, right?

[10:35] But in the broad sense of nature, beginning, cause, emotion, rest, and then which it is, the soul is a what? A nature, huh? So if it's a sin of nature, then it is seems to be primarily in the soul, right? Okay.

[11:00] This is interesting to see. Now another thing about this, you know, if you ask somebody, what is the subject of the theological virtue of hope? What would you say? Where is that? The will. Yeah. And what is the subject of the theological virtue of charity? Will. Yeah. What is the subject of the theological virtue of faith? What? Intellect. Yeah, it's an intellect. Yeah. Might depend upon the will in some way, but it's actually in the intellect, huh?

[11:39] But now, what about grace? Sanctifying grace, now. What is the subject of sanctifying grace? Yeah, yeah. And sometimes they speak of sanctifying grace as a partaking in the divine nature, right? So Thomas will speak as if grace is in the soul itself, right? And then just as from the soul itself the reason and the will proceed like a property, right? Like half a four proceeds from two.

[12:12] Well, then when there's grace in the soul, then there proceeds from that these what virtues of faith and hope and charity, right? Well, does that cast a little bit of light upon this, huh? Because

[12:30] don't we first attribute to grace, right, the release from what original sin, right? But if grace is in the soul, as in the subject, right? Well, then maybe the cleansing begins in the soul and proceeds outwardly from that, huh?

[12:49] Okay. I answer it should be said that that part of the soul is chiefly the subject of some sin. To which first pertains the cause that moves one to that what sin, huh? Just as if the cause moving one to sinning is the pleasure of sense, which pertains to the concupiscible power as to its own what object, huh? It would follow that the concupiscible power is the proper subject of that what sin, huh?

[13:28] Now it is manifest, however, that original sin is caused by origin, right? Whence that of the soul that is first obtained by the origin of man is going to be the first subject, original sin.

[13:48] But the what origin attains the soul or arises the soul as the end of what generation, according as it is the form of the body, which belongs to it according to its proper what essence, right? Whence the soul, according to its essence, is the first subject of original sin, huh? Just like you were talking about the origin of two and half of four, right, huh? Well, the half being half of four follows upon being two, right, huh?

[14:27] So if you want to get to half of four, you got to first generate a what a two, right? Yeah. And so if this is a what sin that we get in our very origin, right? What does our very origin in that first? Well, the soul itself, right? And then the powers of the soul flow from the soul like half of four and half of six, or I mean, third of six follow from what being two, right?

[14:59] So this is very what subtle, right? Whence the soul, according to its very essence, is the first subject of original sin, right? And I say, you know, proportional that though saying what's the first subject of grace? Saying what's the soul itself, right? And then from that there followed maybe certain virtues, right? In the reason or in the will and so on.

[15:42] Now to the first it should be said, huh, that just as the emotion, the will of someone, right, huh, its property, huh, pertains to the powers of the soul, right, but not to the essence of soul. so the emotion of the will of the first one, what, generating, by way of generation, arises first at the essence of the soul, as has been said, huh? So you first what, generate the the soul itself, right?

[16:15] And then from that follows the powers, right? Even if they're at the same what, time, right, huh? Okay. Now the second objection, huh? About original justice here. The second should be said that original justice also, huh? Pertains, primarily, right, to the essence of soul, right? Because it was a gift given divinely to human nature, which before regards the essence of the soul, then the what, powers, huh?

[16:56] See how Thomas looks before and after, right, huh? But what way is the soul before its powers, right? What sense is before? Before in time? No.

[17:11] Cause and effect, yeah, yeah. Like a property, right? Okay. You know when when the great Porphyry there is writing his book the Isagoge, right, huh? Of course they say, why is his book called the Isagoge, huh?

[17:30] What way of naming is that? Like a metaphor? Introduction means introduction, right? Yeah, but I mean there are many introductions, right? Why among all introductions should this be called the introduction? The Isagoge referred to it as.

[17:53] Yeah, it's the beginning of logic, right, huh? And logic is the beginning of philosophy, huh? Thomas says you know that the study of logic is an exception to the rule that you start with the easier, right? But it's kind of necessity, right? You have to know some logic in order to do even what, geometry, right? Because there's definitions and all kinds of syllogisms, right, huh? I used to drive the kids crazy.

[18:18] They're giving a little Euclid there, you know. But you got in one theorem you got sometimes you know all three kinds of syllogisms, right? And the disjunctive syllogism and the either or, I mean either or syllogism, I call it, and the if then syllogism, then the regular syllogism, right? You have all three of them in one simple theorem, right? So you got to know some logic to really do these things scientifically.

[18:44] But the Isagoge is the beginning of that, right? And so Porphyry, though at the beginning the Isagoge, he says we're going to talk about, you know, what genus is, what difference is, what species is, what property is, and what accident is, right, huh? And He's talking to Chrysorius, who's asked him to explain these because he's he's run across these words in the categories of Aristotle and what the hell do these words mean, right?

[19:11] And he says, "Oh, Chrysorius, it's necessary to know what is genus, what is difference, what is species, what is property, what is accident. Not only to know the categories of Aristotle, but to understand definition, huh?

[19:28] And to understand division, right? Of course, the definition is you know what you define as a species, right, through its genus and differences, right? And if you don't know the differences, you use a property as a second best, you know. But you don't put any accidents in there, right? And it's necessary for understanding demonstration, because in demonstration you demonstrate a property of a subject, right, a species through its what definition, yeah.

[19:59] So you got to know this, right? Right? So one time I started doing a little thing and asked my colleagues that assumption. Have you read the Isagoge? Couldn't find anybody who had read the Isagoge.

[20:15] And I said, you know what it is? Something you know what the Isagoge was? This is this is this is out of order, right? Huh? I went to Laval there the first year there. You know they had the Albert the Greats commentary, you might call it, is of the Isagoge, right? Huh? Goes into the Isagoge, you know, and all the teaching of it, you know. So you get a nice foundation there, right?

[20:40] But gotta know those things, huh? So gotta know what property is, huh? So look at the reply again to the second objection. To the second should be said that although that that also original justice pertains primordialiter, right? First in order to the essence of the soul, for it was a gift divinely given to human what? Nature, huh? And to be received along with human nature from our parents there.

[21:26] Um, and this before regards the essence of the soul, than the powers, right? Notice how Thomas is looking before and after here. The powers, however, more seem to pertain to the what? Person, in so far as they are beginnings of the personal acts or sources of the personal acts. Whence they are the proper subjects of actual sins, right? Which are peccata personalia, huh? Personal sins, right?

[22:04] So my personal sins belong to me because of the person I am, right? Which is not much of a person. And but original sin belongs to me by reason of my what? My nature, yeah, yeah. That's a peccatum naturae, right? Okay.

[22:25] I was saying to Warren Murray on the phone the other day. I said, are you something or someone? Yes. Or both. You know. But when I say you're something, what would it mean to find out the something you are? What would that mean?

[22:48] Yeah, yeah. What are you, right? And of course thing and nature are probably you know the words go together in the transcendental ones, huh? Okay. When I say someone, I'm thinking of you as what? Yeah, individual. Substance of a rational nature, right? Okay.

[23:11] Of course, you know when Thomas says, you know, that the individual person, individual substance of a rational nature has a name, person, right? He talks about this in, Boethius and so on, and individual substance of a irrational nature doesn't have a name, right? And it's because a person has a very great dignity among all individual substances, huh? So when he says someone, although one could be applied, you know, one cat, one dog, right?

[23:40] But we kind of by antonomasia it applies to what? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think that's I think that's the way it is in English, right? Because we had a pet cat there, but I never thought of calling the cat as someone, you know.

[24:03] Maybe if he ate my my steak, I might say somebody ate my steak. You know. I say someone's coming to dinner. You mean some person, right? You mean the dog's coming to dinner? Have a tabby come to you know sit next to me all the time and and get you know little tidbits from my steak or whatever it was, you know. I like to like to to spoil her as much as I could.

[24:29] Get away with it. Let her enjoy what she's capable of enjoying. Yeah, yeah. Wife dug up these old pictures of of of this cat, Tabitha, and one where she's up there, standing on her hind legs and looking out the window, you know, and you better fight that. And I say, look at this, she almost human, you know. And not quite. Almost someone, right? Huh?

[25:07] And De Connick said Aristotle is somebody. That's another. The person, right? Okay. What's the name of the book there, John Paul II? The acting person, isn't it? Kind of a hard book, they say.

[25:32] Okay. So the powers seem more to pertain to the person, insofar as they are the beginnings of personal acts, whence the proper subject of actual sins are.

[25:46] Yeah, whence they are the proper subject of actual sins, huh? Which are personal sins, he calls them, peccata personalia. But the sin of the nature is more, as the the the as a primary subject, yeah.

[26:04] To third, it should be said that the body is compared to the soul as matter to what form. Put the definition of the soul, by the way.

[26:19] First form First form of the body Aristotle actually uses the word "act," but he does say it's a form too. Yeah, but he says the first act of a natural body composed of tools. So in the translations, a lot of times you use the word "organic," but that doesn't get you really the sense of what the word means, right? Aristotle says the natural body composed of tools, right?

[26:43] What is more apt to have a purpose than a tool, right? It's hard to talk about tools without talking what what they're for, right? Yeah, that's what whenever you find some odd thing in the shop or something, you use in the attic, whatever. you say, What is this for? That's sort of your first thing. What's this thing? Yeah. You never saw a pipe bender

[27:18] before. You look at things. What do they use this thing? Even in my computer, there. Yeah. What is this for? I don't know what this is for. I didn't get to the trouble, you know, pressing buttons. I don't know what they're for.

[27:41] Strange, these cars. And I, as soon as I jump out the car before Rosalie, and then I lock the door, right? But when she does open the door, the alarm goes off. What the heck is doing that for? Now, how do you stop this? How do you turn the alarm? Before the cops come,

[27:58] right? Elderly couple found dead in the parking lot. One had a heart attack. Turning the alarm. So the body is compared to the soul as matter to form, which, although it is after in the order of generation, that is, say, the soul is after, right? The order of generation, which is under what sense of before Before, and before and after order generation? That's the second sense. No.

[28:44] It comes under the order of time, right? By special sense, yeah. But nevertheless, it is before in the order of perfection and nature, and that was the what fourth sense of before, right?

[29:01] So I think it's good to know the twelfth chapter, the categories, right? That distinction of before is very useful for understanding these things. But the essence of the soul is compared to what? The powers, as subjects are compared to what? Their proper accidents. It's another way of saying properties, right? Sometimes they call properties accidentia propria, right? Because it's something outside the nature of the thing, right? But because they follow upon the nature of the thing, right?

[29:36] Then they get a new name sometimes, property. So sometimes they divide accidents into, you know, what are just accidents and the propria accidentia, and then they're called what? Properties.

[29:52] Okay. Whence there is not the same what reason? Oh, two different orders. Are you mixing up? Now. The fourth argument is taken from concupiscence, but he pointed out before that concupiscence has itself materially and ex consequente, right? In what original sin, right? It's not the original source. But when original justice is removed, right, then the concupiscible powers go to their natural act, right, without the ordering of reason, except in Christ, right?

[30:34] Now, what does it infect first among the powers? To the third one proceeds thus: It seems that original sin does not infect the will before, then the other what? Yeah, then the other powers.

[30:57] For every sin chiefly pertains to the power by which its act is what caused. But original sin is caused by the act of the generative power.

[31:12] Therefore, among the powers of soul, it seems more to pertain to generative power than the will. Oh I haven't thought of that before. I wonder if Thomas joked about his objections when he when he thought them out. The question is, who would he joke with? I was confessing that the original what is his name? Okay.

[31:50] Moreover, original sin is carried over through the carnal seed, right? But the other powers of the soul are what closer to the flesh than what the will, as is clear about all the sense powers, which use a bodily what organ. Therefore, in them more is original sin than in the will, right? Closer to the body.

[32:21] Now, most interesting of all here. Moreover, the understanding is before the will, for there is no will except about a what good understood. You can't will something you don't know it.

[32:39] If therefore original sin infects all the powers of the soul, it would seem that it before infects the intellect as being prior, right? Okay, Thomas. Tie yourself in knots. Yeah. Yeah.

[33:04] So I'm always thankful about the influence of Austerli upon me, you know, towards the foundation of music, but it got me reading the poetics of Aristotle more carefully and so on, right? And when Aristotle talks about the plot of the tragedy, he calls it the he says it's the soul of tragedy, right? The plot. But what is the plot, right? And then he says, you know, well Homer taught all the Greeks how to make a good plot.

[33:34] And a good plot is not one that's about one man or one war or something, but it's a course of action that has a beginning, middle, and end. But then later on, he says that a plot involves tying the knot and then what? Untying it, right? Well, of course, beginning, middle, and end is as you know tied up with before and after, right? In their meanings, right?

[33:58] So when Aristotle defines them, you know, he'll say that the the beginning is before something but not after anything, and the end is after something but not before anything, and the middle is before something and after something, right? So it can't be a fourth part because that would be neither before anything nor after anything, and would not f would not fit in there, right? So the great Homer didn't take the whole Trojan War, Anything could happen, you know, huh?

[34:27] Like he's reported there in the Second World War or something, you know, reporting the battles that go on, right? Because these different battles going on don't we form what? Beginning, middle, and end, huh? They took a course of action, right? Starting with the disagreement between Achilles, right, and Agamemnon, and going all the way through, right? Okay. But then later on, he says that it has what? Tragedy has two parts: tying the knot or knots and then untying them, right?

[35:02] Well, of course, you know, I think of before and after a lot, but also you can see what's a philosophy, right? It's tying the knots and untying them. So in the

[35:15] metaphysics there, when he takes up this whole book of dialectic, right, and the third book there, and he's saying, you know, he used the term tying the knot and untying it, right? So the mind is kind of what? When you're hearing opposite arguments, the mind is kind of tied up by that, right? And then you have to examine the knot and then find the loose end, right?

[35:40] Okay. I remember C. S. Lewis sometimes. he'll say, "you're looking for the loose ends," you know, and then you start to unravel it, right? Huh? So have those things very much in mind, right? That's what Thomas is doing here, right? He's always tying the knots in the first part here because contrary produces the knot, right, against the other ones, and then he unties them in the. Yeah, and finally at the end when he replies to each objection, but

[36:12] and sometimes he he just unties the arguments against his position, right? But sometimes he has to. Answer both of them, right? But anyway, okay. So where are we now? We're in Article III.

[36:29] We just finished the third argument. Okay. Okay. But against this is original justice before regards the will, for it is a rectitude of the will, as Anselm says, right? In the book on virginal conception. Therefore, original sin, which is opposed to it, before regards the what will. Now, is Anselm thinking though it belongs mainly in the will? I don't know, but anyway, he's certainly streaking out the will here, right?

[37:07] So this is a certainly probable argument on the side that that's going to be the first thing affected. I answer: It should be said that in the infection of sin,

[37:25] of original sin, there are two things to be considered. First is its existence in a what subject, right? And according to this, it first regards the very essence of the souls, as has been said. Then we're not to consider its inclination to a what an act, and in this way it regards the powers of the soul. It is necessary, therefore, that it regard before what first what what has what a first inclination to sinning, right?

[38:05] But this is the will, as has been said above. The will's essential to any sin, right? It's got to be voluntary, and of course the will also moves all the other what powers, right? When's original sin per prius, huh? You can't say that English? Can you exactly, huh? It previously regards the will, right? You wanted to make a an adverb out of it. Regards the will before the son.

[38:33] Okay. Now, how does he answer that first objection about it coming through the generative power? A very simple thing that he points out. The first, therefore, should be said: the original sin is not caused in man by the generative power of the offspring, yeah. But through the act of the generative power of the parent, whence it is not necessary that what the the son's own generative power be the first subject of what.

[39:09] Yeah. You're talking about what does the one who's receiving original sin, right? Yeah, yeah. It's being caused by the generative power of the parents, but not by the generative power of the offspring. It's not even active at that point.

[39:34] That's a simple way to get out of that one, huh? To the second, it should be said that original sin has a two-fold what Process, huh? One from the flesh to the soul, and another from the essence of the soul to its power. The first proceeding is according to the what order of generation, the body generated first. Second is according to the order of what perfection. And therefore, although the other powers, to wit the sense powers, are nearer to the flesh, right?

[40:28] Because nevertheless, the will is nearer to the very essence of the soul. As a superior power, it first arrives to it the infection of what original sin starts in the soul, right? Notice that again you have different senses of before here, right?

[40:50] Now, what about the intellect? Then, well, as Thomas points out, you may recall when he talked about the intellect and the will, they both are causes of each other, but in different ways.

[41:03] And the intellect is more a cause in the way that the end is a cause, right? And the will is more a cause in the sense in which the mover or maker is a cause, right? So, to the third, it should be said that the understanding, in some way, precedes the what will, in so far as it proposes to it its what object. But another way, the will precedes the will according to the order of motion to act, which motion pertains to what?

[41:37] Yeah, moving towards the yeah. Okay.