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Sin: a Thomistic Psychology Was Designed in Adobe Jenson and Composed by Kachergis Book Design of Pittsboro, North Carolina Sin Sin A ThomisTic Psychology StSineven J. Jensen The Catholic UniversiTy of AmericA Press Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2018 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ∞ Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress isbn 978-0-8132-3033-7 � For Roy Lepak En soledad vivía, y en soledad ha puesto ya su nido, y en soledad la guía a solas su querido, también en soledad de amor herido. Juan de la Cruz � In memoriam James Stromberg 1926–2017 A la tarde te examinarán en el amor. Juan de la Cruz ConTenTs Acknowledgments ix 1. The Enigma of an Evil Will 1 2. The Order of Actions to the Ultimate End 15 3. The Satisfaction of Desire 41 4. Venial Sin 66 5. The First Moral Act 84 6. The Shared Good 103 7. Sins of Passion 124 8. Weakness of Will 142 9. Sins from an Evil Will 158 10. Sins of Ignorance 185 11. Omissions 194 12. The First Cause of Moral Evil 212 13. Compatibilism or Libertarianism 238 14. Free Decision 260 15. Choose Life 285 Bibliography 293 Index 301 vii AcknowledgmenTs I would like to thank all those who have helped with this book. Michael Torre, as well as an anonymous reviewer, provided many valuable suggestions. My wife, Christine, whose love supports me in all of my work, supplied careful reading and correction. I would also like to thank Louise A. Mitchell for her fine work in copyediting the manuscript. For the cover art, I am indebted to Barbara Stirling, who first suggested the artwork. The beautiful cover design I owe to Anne Kachergis at Kachergis Book Design, who captured the spirit of sin perfectly. Finally, I would like to thank all those at the Catholic University of America Press who have brought this project to realization, especially John Martino, Trevor Lipscombe, Theresa Walker, and Brian Roach. ix Sin The enigmA of An evil will Enigma � chapter 1 The enigmA of An evil will When he was sixteen years old, Saint Augustine joined with fellow adolescents in raiding a pear tree, taking its fruit and throwing it to the pigs. Years later Augustine reflected upon why he did this evil deed.1 He considers the possibility that in doing evil he was seeking some good, or at least some apparent good. Perhaps he wanted the camaraderie or approval of his friends. Perhaps he wanted a feeling of power over his victim or even over God. Perhaps in some way he wanted to be like God. Augustine also dwells upon another possibility: perhaps he did the evil deed simply because it was evil. Thomas Aquinas famously (or infamously) rejects this last possibility (as Augustine himself may have), affirming that in all of our choices we -al ways act for some good, however confusedly perceived.2 It follows that sin, in which we pursue what is in fact evil, must arise from some ignorance of the good. Perhaps from fear that Thomas has conceded too much to Socrates—making evil nothing other than ignorance—many have pulled 1. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 28–34. 2. See Thomas Aquinas,Questiones disputate de malo, q. 3, a. 12, ad s.c. 2; see also Aqui- nas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 10, a. 2. 1 back from Aquinas’s teaching on sin.3 By trying to explain sin in terms of pursuit of the good (so the thought goes), Thomas has explained away sin.4 He has failed to grasp the true essence of evil. A CAtAlogue of errors This supposed error is only the first of many attributed to Aquinas’s treatment of sin. Otherwise friendly readers of Thomas find it difficult to accept much of what he says concerning sin. He teaches that the very first moral action of an unbaptized youth must either be an act of ordering himself to God or a mortal sin, that is, a rejection of God. But surely (the objection goes) it is absurd to suppose that a youth, or at least every youth, is so informed at the time of his first moral action as to be contemplating his order to God.5 Thomas teaches that those who sin from weakness do not advert, at the moment of choice, to the evil character of the action they choose. Someone who commits adultery under the influence of passion, for ex- ample, does not advert to the adulterous character of his action. Not only does Thomas (his detractors insist) thereby explain away sin; he also ex- plains away the true character of weakness, in which a person knowingly perceives the evil of the deed but nevertheless succumbs to temptation.6 Thomas teaches that someone can be guilty of a sin of omission even while he sleeps, or even when he has completely forgotten about his obli- gation. Someone who sleeps through Mass, for instance, can be guilty— as he sleeps—of the failure to go to Mass. Has Aquinas lost sight of the 3. Or, at any rate, to a common interpretation of Socrates. 4. See, for instance, Carlos Steel, “Does Evil Have a Cause? Augustine’s Perplexity and Thomas’s Answer,”Review of Metaphysics 48 (1994): 265–67, 273; John Langan, “Sins of Malice in the Moral Psychology of Thomas Aquinas,” inThe Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, ed. D. M. Yeager (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987), 179–98. 5. See Peter F. Ryan, “Must the Acting Person Have a Single Ultimate End?” Grego- rianum 82 (2001): 326–39; Germain Grisez, “The True Ultimate End of Human Beings: The Kingdom, Not God Alone,”Theological Studies 69 (2008): 48–49; Germain Grisez, “Natural Law, God, Religion, and Human Fulfillment,”American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001): 32–33. 6. See Daniel Guevara, “The Will as Practical Reason and the Problem of Akrasia,” Review of Metaphysics 62 (2009): 525–50. 2 Enigma fact that sin is a voluntary action, and that what is voluntary requires some act of will?7 Thomas teaches that the very first cause of moral evil is a failure to consider the moral rule.8 A person commits adultery, for instance, be- cause he does not consider the rule that adultery should be avoided. Un- derlying this doctrine of Thomas is the error at the head of this catalogue of supposed errors. If we always act for some good, and if evil always pre- supposes some ignorance, then in some way a person who does evil must have set aside his knowledge of the moral rule.9 However subtle Thomas may be, the objectors insist, he cannot hold the sinner responsible for what he does in ignorance.10 By focusing upon knowledge and ignorance, Aquinas has left out the central role of the will in the explanation of sin. Regarding the will, Thomas teaches that the will always follows upon a judgment of reason.11 He thereby explains away, claim some, the very foundation of morality itself, namely, free will.12 If the will must always follow the judgment of reason, then in what way is it free? Thomas makes the will simply the obedient servant of reason. His doctrine must fail (so the objection goes) because he does not give to the will the power to reject reason. The catalogue of errors continues. Thomas teaches that when com- mitting venial sin a person does not reject God, but then neither does he order his action to God.13 In this regard, the objection claims, Aquinas is inconsistent with himself, for he teaches that in all we do we must order 7. See Michael Barnwell, The Problem of Negligent Omissions: Medieval Action Theories to the Rescue (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 105–12. 8. Aquinas, De malo, q. 1, a. 3. 9. Ibid.; Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III, chap. 10, no. 14. 10. See Michael Barnwell, “The Problem with Aquinas’s Original Discovery,”American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2015): 277–91; Steel, “Does Evil Have a Cause?”; James F. Keenan, “The Problem with Thomas Aquinas’s Concept of Sin,”Heythrop Journal 35 (1994): 401–403. See also Patrick Lee (“The Relation between Intellect and Will in Free Choice According to Aquinas and Scotus,” The Thomist 49 [1985]: 336), who presents but does not endorse this objection. 11. Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 82, a. 4, ad 3. 12. See Thomas Williams, “The Libertarian Foundations of Scotus’s Moral Philoso- phy,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 193–215. 13. See Aquinas, De malo, q. 7, a. 5; Aquinas, In Sent. II, d. 38, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4. Enigma 3 our acts to some ultimate end.14 It seems, however, that venial sins can have no ultimate end. On the one hand, venial sins are not ordered to God as to an ultimate end, or they would be good actions. On the other hand, they are not ordered to any creature as to an ultimate end, for if they were, then they would become mortal sins. It follows that venial sins have no ultimate end. Aquinas himself, however, insists that every action must have some ultimate end.15 A unified solution These difficulties with Aquinas’s teaching on sin have a certain unity to them, and their solution will be unified as well. The unity arises from Aquinas’s account of the human will. Thomas teaches that the will has a certain nature, and as such it has a necessary object.
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