Prima Secundae
209. Understanding, Belief Seeking Understanding, and Whether Venial Sin Stains the Soul (Aquinas, Question 89, Article 1)
Class of 2015-03-12
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/209-understanding-belief-seeking-understanding-and-whether-venial/

[0:00] Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank your guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo Gratias God, God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, illuminate our minds and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, help us to understand all that you've written. Father, Son, I know it's the fourth article here. With a good angel or bad one, can sin venially.

[0:39] I guess neither one of them can, but for different reasons, right? Shows you how pure are these good angels, right? Huh? Don't even have venial sins, huh? Um. So why is why is the word to see? Why is why can it be said of understanding, but not of discourse or reason? Discourse you haven't arrived yet.

[1:09] Okay. okay. But seeing when you've seen something, you've got the whole image of. Yeah. Well, in the ninth book of Wisdom, when Aristotle is talking about activity there and so on, and he contrasts

[1:26] motion, right, with energia or something of that sort, and if you think of the difference between walking home, right, and seeing that painting over there, right, when I'm walking home, have I walked home? No. When I'm seeing that picture, have I seen it? No. You see the girls in class there, you know. How are you loving someone? Do you love them yet? Yeah. You see, so when you're what discourse is like emotion, right?

[2:06] Discourse is what defined as coming to know what you don't know to what you do know, right? So you're coming to know, right? So when you're coming to know, have you come to know? Well, not fully, right? When you understand something, you understand what a square is. Let's say, have you understood it yet? What it is? Yeah.

[2:33] What what's the perfection of reason, huh? To know, is that knowledge? Yeah. Yeah. In terms of the legs, right? Are the names derived from the legs? What is perfection of reason? Understanding. Understanding, yeah. So, who understands the most? God. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, among men, who understands the most? Yeah, because wisdom is the name of the highest perfection of what? Reason, right? Okay. But now I'm always struck by the fact that the word understanding and the word substance have the same etymology, right?

[3:26] And is there a connection between understanding and substance? They don't mean the same thing, right? But is there a connection, right? Yeah. What is that? Substance is what reason. Yeah, the senses don't know substance, right? I know your size, right? And some of my senses, right? But what you are, you know, your substance, I know that only by my what? Reason, huh? And substance is sometimes taken as opposed to accidents, right?

[4:03] Which exist in substance, but also substance is taken more generally as what a thing is, and that's what the reason wants to, as is an object, right? What something is. And you know the Latin word for to understand is intelligere, right? The way Thomas explains that it comes from intus legere, right? To read within. And of course the word nature in all its meanings, right, has the idea of something within.

[4:40] So the nature of a thing is what it is, right? And that's within the thing. And so intellectus in Latin fits in there, right? But also the English word understanding, right? But they have a little different etymology, right? As Thomas explains, the etymology of a word is not its meaning, right?

[5:03] My name is originally my last name is originally Bergquist, and my father dropped out the G, right? The etymology of Bergquist is what Berg was mountain and Quist I guess is branch. So that's not the meaning of it, huh? See, Bergquist was there. You don't mean there was a mountain branch in your in your room would fit in your mountain branch. Um. Or or my name is Duane, right?

[5:30] And I guess they said that means poem. I don't know. I'm not a poem. I don't. I'm not bit out of words. I have a lot of words, but I'm bit out of them. Sometimes you rhyme. Yeah. Now Hebrew was closer. They see that that means mine, right? That's that's what I think of myself. Um.

[5:53] Thomas is always giving the etymology of. Lapis in Latin, right? That it laid it pedem laedens you know, lapis. I don't know if that's a good etymology or not, but that's not what the name means. It doesn't mean hurt the leg, but it means that that thing that does hurt the leg, right? So the Latin word intelligere and the English word to understand, right, might have the same meaning, right, but not the same what etymology, right?

[6:23] And the Latin word substance and the Latin English word understanding have the same etymology, right? But they don't mean the same thing, huh? Why intellect, intelligere, and to understand mean the same thing, but they don't have the same etymology, right? But nevertheless, if a man knows the meaning of a word, he may see something in the etymology whereby he can manuducere, lead you by the hand to understand it, right?

[6:55] So when you say that the wise man most of all understands, right, and you're led, you know, from the idea of the word substance, right, that in a sense to understand is to know what stands under something, right?

[7:13] Does the wise man, you know, understand most of all? Does he most of all know what stands under? See, Aristotle spends in the fourteen books of wisdom two of the books seven eight are devoted to what substance, right? And Aristotle says wisdom is about being, but being is fundamentally substance, right? So he devotes that's the main subject of wisdom, huh? Substance, huh? So books seven and eight are devoted to what substance, huh?

[7:48] More material substance, and then books eleven through fourteen he investigates the immaterial substances, right? Um, but the wise man's ultimate goal is to know what? God. Yeah, to know the first causes, right? Okay, and we speak of the underlying causes of things, right? And the English word for cause was the word ground, right? So in the legal terminology, you know, grounds for divorce, right? Cause for divorce, right?

[8:28] And um, so that the causes is imagined, right? And logically speaking, to stand under the effect, right, and and hold it up or support it, right? And so to understand effects means to know their what causes, and so the man who knows the first cause. He most of all understands, right? But the man who knows substance very much understands too, right? And then Aristotle takes up what the axioms, right, to defend them, right?

[9:09] And then he spends a good deal of Book Four defending the first axiom. But the axioms are the statements that what understand all other statements, huh? Because they they support them, right? Um, you go back to the Greek there. You know, hypothesis wouldn't mean necessarily hypothesis. You know, something that stands under, right? Hupo under thesis sounds placed under. And then the words in the axioms, Aristotle, what knows what stands under those words, huh?

[9:44] So he distinguishes the senses of the words used in the axioms and used in wisdom, right? And the order of those meanings, right? So he most of all what understands, right? But you can kind of go from the can be led by the hand from. The etymology of understanding, right? Huh? To see that he most of all knows what stands under.

[10:10] Aristotle talks about what wonder which stands under, right? The whole philosophy to give rise to it, huh? But comes from the legs, huh? To stand, huh?

[10:29] You got, you got for the the the running ones, you know, which I have with that jumping and and stumbling, right? But I don't think there's any one from sitting, right?

[10:43] Yeah, Socrates just my old teacher quotes all the time, right? Huh? The man sitting comes, he's the big philosopher, but he becomes wise, right? Huh? Because he's getting, you know, he's not just not moving around. So

[11:01] I was reading in Thomas there today about the faith there to believe, huh? What's the definition of to believe there? huh The theological belief there. What is that? Name the act. Ever heard that? The act of faith What? Act of faith? Yeah. How would you define that? To assent. Yeah. To ass to willingly, I'm saying willingly to assent to um something not seen, Or on the basis of a witness, or something like that.

[11:43] Yeah. Well, the way Thomas takes does it, he follows his master there, Augustine of Hippo, right? And Augustine defines it as what to ascent while thinking about it, okay? And what Thomas shows is that this separates the act of to believe, right, of believing, from every other act of reason, huh?

[12:13] He says assent separates it from doubting, right? Where you don't know whether it is or isn't so. It separates it from what opinion, where you don't assent fully, right? Okay. It separates, and then while thinking about it, separates it from natural understanding, right? And then reasoned out understanding, it's closer, right? But reasoned out understanding, the ascent comes after the what? The discourse, right? Huh? And then that quiets it, right?

[12:50] Huh? In the case of the act of faith, as we're ex aequo you know. To assent to it firmly, right, and yet thinking about it because you don't what, yeah, you don't understand it, right, okay.

[13:07] Well, then you get to this interesting definition of theology there by Saint Anselm that people quote, right, that it's belief, right, or faith, belief seeking understanding, right. Fides quaerens intellectum, right, to use the Latin, right. You can see how it kind of arises in the very nature of the what act, right, because reason is moved to ascent by the the will, right, and it ascends firmly, but it doesn't have the evidence; it doesn't see it, right, and therefore the mind what thinks about it, wonders about it, right, and that naturally gives rise to what theology, right.

[13:54] So I was giving an example there the other day, and I was saying, you know, why should you love God, right, huh? Well, by faith you know you should love God, right, huh? This is the first of the commandments, right, love your neighbor. But why should you love God, right, huh? Well, that's belief seeking what? Yeah, I was suggesting my favorite book, and say Thomas has five chapters there, thirty-seven through forty-one, I guess it is.

[14:27] Where the first chapter shows that God is good, right? The second chapter shows that He's what goodness itself, right? It's not just good, but He's goodness itself. That whereby all things are good. And the third chapter from that shows that there couldn't be anything bad in God and not to be loved, or any reason not to love Him. And then the fourth chapter shows, following Augustine, that God is the good of every good, right.

[14:55] And the fifth chapter that God is the summum bonum, right? That is good, right? But, now you what getting a little understanding, right? Something you believe firmly you should love God, and that your salvation depends upon that, and so on. And but now you're starting to see why it's so, right, huh? Or as a child, you know, when they're explaining to us, you make your first confession, so on.

[15:20] You meet somehow the distinction between venial sin and what mortal sin, right? And you learn that you know, venial sins, even a large number of them, don't add up to what mortal sins. Thomas says all the venial sins of the world don't add up to a what mortal sin, right? But now you might wonder why it's that so, right? Because you don't maybe fully understand that, right?

[15:43] I mean, if you had you know a million venial sins, well, that would be enough, you know, you know. I mean, I mean. Does a penny add up to a dollar? No, but you get a hundred pennies, it's a dollar, and you get a hundred and twenty pennies, it's more, right? So why wouldn't you know? It's a number, right? Um, venial sins, why wouldn't they add up, right?

[16:12] And so, if is we follow St. Anselm there and say, well, theology is belief seeking understanding, right? Why is it that venial sins, you know, never add up, right? Whatever their number, to one mortal sin, right?

[16:36] Making up a whole imperfect thing. Yeah. I mean, it's it's not just that the the venial sin doesn't go as far as mortal sin, because then you could go, you know, add on to there and catch up with them. Um,

[16:56] but that with the mortal sin you break the very what beginning, right? You break the order to God as a what end, okay? Why venial sin? You don't do that. You just don't proceed as quickly and as surely, and you know, towards God, right? Huh? But you're not choosing a different road, right? You're not choosing another thing as as your end, right?

[17:28] Like when Shakespeare says, "Revolts from two births, stumbling on abuse," right? Well, then the very beginning is corrupted, right? Huh? It's like Aristotle says, you know, if you if you end up denying the principle of contradiction, which is the beginning of all the axioms, he says the natural beginning of all the axioms, huh? He says then the only alternative is return to the life of the plant, right?

[17:52] And you you just give up the philosophical life, right? Huh? You know. Yeah. I know. I always quote that thing from Whitaker Chambers. you know, when he actually became a communist, and he came back to his friends at Columbia University. You know, and he had a kind of contempt for them because they treated ideas like ping pong balls, right? Something you play with, right? Huh? But that's what ideas are.

[18:22] You think that you play with, knock back and forth. You don't take them seriously, though. Now it's fun. Now let's go into something else and knocking those around for a while. You've given kind of up the end, the the goal, right? You're no longer seeking what wisdom, yeah, wisdom, knowledge of the truth, right? You've given up the pursuit of the end. Think of our professors, you know, kind of you know, the spirit of reaching the end, of thinking just to know the truth, right?

[18:52] And so they just kind of you know play along and. And as one professor said, you know, it's better than digging ditches for a living, you know.

[19:03] But that's true, you know. It's hardly the purpose of the life of the mind, you know, to to have an easier, easier life than the guys out there. Have a neighbor, and I see him leaving around five o'clock in the morning, you know, and something like that. And he's he's five thirty, s he's gone. And so I said to his wife, I said, "Your husband gets off awfully early.

[19:24] Well, he's working in Boston. He's some kind of construction, you know. And he's out there in the cold, you know, in this kind of weather, you know. And so it's not easy to be knocking pot with the students, you know. But they've given up the the end right? So they're no longer really a philosopher, right?

[19:51] We're one professor there, you know. my brother Mark was there, I work with him, you know, and some dean out there in California, St. Mary's, and. What do you think, philosophy? is So he thought it was an amazing imaginatively pleasing picture of the world. You don't have the end there anymore. The end, so you start to understand why the moral sin, right?

[20:20] You know, like say in marriage, they'd say, you know, you know, why is adultery really, you know, different than, you know, than not turning the light off or something, or some, you know, thing that annoys somebody, you know, or leaving the light on or something, you know? Not locking the front door. Yeah, yeah. All kinds of little things that bother us, you know. Didn't take the trash out?

[20:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't squeeze the. Toothpaste. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But adultery is contrary to the very, you know, end or purpose, you might say, of the thing, right? You know, the confusion about the about about marriage in the modern mind is just kind of, you know,

[21:15] semi-formalization of friendship of some sort. You know, we like each other, so let's get married for a while, see how it works out, you know, and so on. But I mean, you don't see that the children are really the end of marriage, right? Once you've given up the end, then anything goes, even this homosexual marriage makes sense, so to speak, you know, in quotes, because they they've lost the the beginning, there, right? Okay, let's look at question eighty-nine here, right?

[21:49] Whether venial sin, okay, then we're not to consider about venial sin by itself, right? secundum quid say, and about this six things are asked. First, whether venial sin causes a what stain in the soul, right? It's interesting he said that.

[22:10] Secondly, about the distinction of venial sin in so far as it is figured through wood, hay, and straw. Anybody else have different translation of that? Wood and stubble. Okay, straw.

[22:30] What Thomas said about his theology, it's all straw. Third, whether man in the state of innocence would be able to sin what? Yeah. And whether the angel, the good angel or the bad angel, is able to sin venially.

[22:52] Five, whether the first motions of the faithless are venial sins. Six, whether venial sin can be in someone together with only what? Interesting. Are you writing these six questions? I don't know.

[23:22] Okay, so the first one, to the first then one goes for it. Thus, it seems that venial sin causes a stain in the soul. Oh, good, he's going to take the opposite side.

[23:34] He always gives it away. So, Augustine says in the book about penance, huh, that venial sins, if they are multiplied, take away the beauty of the soul, right? Or our beauty, yeah. Decorum.

[23:58] That they separate us from the embraces of the celestial spouse, huh? But nothing other is a stain than a what? Lessening or lessening, yeah, the detrimental of beauty, right? Therefore, venial sins cause a stain in the soul. That convinces me. Is

[24:30] nitwit here or dimwit? Excuse me. That's not that's not no false pride here. A dimwit, I'm not a nitwit. Moreover. Mortal sin causes a stain in the soul, on account of the disorder of the act and the affections of the one sinning. I see, mortal sin, yeah, cause of that. Today, what I see. Okay. But in the venial sin, there is a certain disorder of the act and the affections.

[25:08] Therefore, venial sin causes a stain in the soul, right? That's the importance of order and disorder here, and all this. Moreover, the stain of the soul is caused from the contact or touching of a what temporal thing through love, from a attachment.

[25:47] Touching coal. Yeah. Yeah. But you attach something to the sink or something the sink or something or the the icebox or something, you know.

[26:00] But in venial sin, the soul, by a disordered love, touches a temporal thing. Therefore, venial sin brings in a stain in the soul. The matter is settled now, right? But now, against this is what is said in Ephesians chapter five,

[26:33] that I might exhibit, huh? Myself, right? To him, glory. Yeah, to it might show, to him, the glorious church not having a what stain. And the gloss says that is some sin, criminal sin, right? Seems to imply mortal sin, right?

[26:59] Does it come from criminal? Criminal. C R I M E. Criminal. What's it come from? Yeah, what is that etymology? That might be interesting to see. I know it means, you know, that is a sin or a crime or something. Yeah. There's a certain kind of a. Yeah. Sin is called crime. Yeah. I'm not sure. People say it's not a crime. They say, in defending themselves.

[27:35] Um, therefore, it seems to be proper to a mortal sin to cause a stain in the soul, right? Huh. I see the importance now. The distinction's coming up now.

[27:57] In order to to to grasp what something is, right? You know, why can't you grasp the center of the desk here? huh Can't get around it Yeah, because you can't separate it from the rest of the table, right? So, when the mind to grasp something, huh? What they call simple apprehension, simple grasping. It's got to separate the thing you grasp from what everything else, right? So, when I was reading Thomas this morning, he's going through Augustine's definition of to believe, right?

[28:38] Huh? He had to show not only that it it brings out what it is, right, but that it separates it from every other what act, right? Huh? Now, of course, the the there was the lesser thinkers there who said, well, how can you separate something from everything else? That's an infinite task, right? Because how many other things are there? Now, so how can you separate something from an infinity of things?

[29:11] So, therefore, you never really grasp anything, right? How can you do that? Maybe not simply but in some way. Limited number of things Well, take a hint here from my friend Albert the Great, Albertus Magnus. He says in logic, the first thing to be considered is the universal.

[29:41] How many things can a universal be set of? Take number, for example. How many things is number set of? Yeah. So if I say something is not a number, I separate it from what? Anything. Yeah. And I'm pretty smart, and I figured out that no even number is an odd number, and no odd number is a what? Yeah. Now, how many have I separated from how many?

[30:16] How the hell did I do that? Universal statements. Yeah, yeah, because I had something odd number, which is set of an infinity of things, right? And even number, which is set of an infinity of things, right? And I see an opposition between the two, right? Huh? Because the one is divisible into two equal parts, and the other is what? Not. Huh? So they can't be the same, right?

[30:43] So I'm altogether sure. I'm even this Tim would assure that that no even number is an odd number. Okay. So by means of the universal can separate it from what? Yeah, yeah. So Thomas separates, you know, to believe in Augustine's definition there, right? From every state of the mind which is one of doubt, right? Because there's a an assent here, right? Firm adherence to one side of a what contradiction, right?

[31:19] And he that separates it also from the what? The probable opinion, right? Okay. But it also separates, he says, in the first act of the mind, which is understand what something is, right? But the second act of the mind is where you put together or divide these things that you understood by the first. Act right, and make a affirmation or negation, and you have something either true or false, right?

[31:44] So it separates it from that act too, right? And then what about the act of reasoned out understanding, huh? Well, there the discourse leads to the what understanding, right, huh? And then come to halt or stop, right? quietus, okay. That's in the Greek word etymology, episteme, right? Coming to a halt or stop, right? But in the act of faith, you don't say that it's a what, assent, because you thought about it, right?

[32:25] Until you were convinced of it, right? But it says we're kind of equally, right? The mind is both, right? So you see how you're separating it from everything else, right?

[32:47] But it's a square, right? Well, it's an equilateral and right angled quadrilateral, right? So you use these universals, they can separate it from everything else.

[33:02] Okay. So hence it should be said that it is clear from the things foresaid and that macula, that's a Latin word, and stain I guess is the way we translate it, right? Implies a what? A loss, detriment of what? Brilliance. Yeah, brilliance.

[33:36] Yeah. It had the idea of light in there too, you know, of shyness, yeah. From some contact, right? Unless this is borrowed from material things, which the word, right? As is clear in corporeal things, from which by a certain likeness, right? The name of stain is transferred to the what? Soul, right, huh? I get this spot of grease on my clothes when I when I cook, you know, or something, you know, and once you put something, you know, on, ah, someone puts on, ah, many, many cook it out, putting on, ah.

[34:19] Yeah, but I got a stain now, you know, it doesn't look right, you know, okay. Now just as in the body there is a twofold what? Brightness, huh? One from the Inward or intrinsic disposition of the members and their what? Color. Color. Another coming upon it from exterior what? Brightness. Brightness, yeah.

[34:51] So also in the soul there is a twofold what? Brightness. One habitual, as it were, inward or intrinsic. Another actual, as it were, an exterior what? Brightness. Huh?

[35:11] That's a strange distinction, right? Huh? What seems to be what? Valid, right? Huh? Now venial sin impedes the what? Actual brightness, huh? But not, however, the what? Habitual, right?

[35:39] Because it does not exclude, nor does it diminish the habit of charity and the other what? Virtues, huh? But it only impedes their what? Act, huh?

[36:00] But a stain implies something remaining in the thing what? Stained, huh? And it's very hard to get that out. I've been told that oil stain on my shirt. Okay.

[36:16] Whence it more seems to pertain to individual. habitual what? Lessening of brightness than the actual one. Whence, properly speaking, venial sin does not cause a stain in the soul.

[36:37] And if anywhere it is said to bring in a stain, right? This would be what? Yeah, kind of a qualified sense. In so far as it impedes the brightness, which is from the acts of the virtues, right? Huh? Okay. So you see the distinction that Thomas sees?

[37:05] No. Somewhat, yeah. Okay. The next time you read it, you'll see a little bit more and a little bit more, yeah. Okay. My old teacher, Kasurik I mean De Koninck, would say, you know, now if you think you've understood everything you've read, this is a sign you've understood nothing. If you understood, you'd see, you know, gee, not fully grasping this, right?

[37:36] To the first, therefore, it should be said that Augustine speaks in that case in which many what venial sins dispose, um, dispositively, lead into the mortal. Otherwise, it would not it would not separate one from the embrace of the celestial spouse.

[38:05] It's interesting, you know, because I I used to always kind of use that thing and say that the union of our soul with God is more intimate than the union of husband and wife, right? Which is only on the surface of things, right? When in the beatific vision, God Himself is joined to our mind, right? Our mind is joined to Him as that by which we see Him as He is.

[38:35] So we have to be altogether what pure, right, um, to be joined to Him. But here you use that expression of the celestial spouse, right?

[38:51] To the second, it should be said that the disorder of the act in the mortal sin corrupts the habit of what virtue, not over in what venial sin.

[39:18] That's very important to see that distinction. To the third, it should be said that in mortal sin, the soul, by love, right, touches a temporal thing as a what end,

[39:39] and by this it wholly impedes the flowing end of the splendor of grace. That's interesting thing. I'd say that the cyclical John. Yeah, yeah. Here's the splendor grace, right? It's very well said. You were darkness once. Now you're light in the Lord. Which comes in those who adhere to God as the last end through what charity.

[40:11] But in venial sin, man does not adhere to the creature as to his last what end. Once it is not what similar, right? I made a collection one time of those texts. I don't know if you ever showed these from Plato and Aristotle and so on about the importance of the beginning, right? And. There's something you really got from De Koninck and especially Dion, you know. You know,

[40:41] that's the beginning, you know. I mean, he saw so clearly the perfection of that, right? Huh? You know, when you give up that, huh?

[40:56] And then, of course, Aristotle is always making the comparison, you know, in practical matters of the end to the beginning, right? So when you give up the end of merit, like I was saying earlier, then you know you give up everything in a sense. And

[41:18] that's what you do with moral sin, right? You give up the end to to God as your last end, right? Okay. So at least we got. Unstained, here, right? Okay We're temporarily not glowing, right? As you could have venial sin. The