Chapter I: On Sin in the Confused Sense

Usefulness. Since the study of moral theology is chiefly ordered to the right administration of the sacrament of penance, in which the minister is in the first place a judge concerning sins to be absolved, the moment of the whole treatise on sins can escape no one. In the first chapter, moreover, we already hand down several things which in reality are fundamental, concerning the very essence of every sin; concerning its specification and its seat. Nor today can the question, once so greatly disputed, concerning philosophical sin, be neglected (1).

N.B. We shall treat of sin in the confused sense, not because we propose to speak here without order and clarity, but because, from the beginning, we wish strongly to inculcate this: that there is not some genus of sin under which mortal and venial should be placed as species. Therefore we give a confused notion of sin, when we do not speak separately of each sin. If there were a common genus, Chapter I would be inscribed: On sin in common.

— I. The name of sin and its confused description. The word sin was already often used by Cicero himself to designate a human act deformed from its rule or law ¹, as in the most beautiful saying: "Apart from fault and sin, nothing can happen to a man which is horrible and to be greatly feared" (Ad Fam. V, 21).

By nominal description, sin is called a morally evil act ². In these words, the word moral does not designate a genus, of which there would be the two species, good morality and evil morality. For there is no common notion of morality which indifferently becomes good or evil, as the same notion of animality is preserved in man and in the brute; but he who says a moral act already says, confusedly, a good act or an evil act, just as he who names being already insinuates such a being.

Furthermore, although the description related falls upon mortal sins and upon venial sins, and although we are accustomed to speak of the theological specification by which mortal sins are distinguished from venial, nevertheless there is not even a genus of sin whose species would be mortal and venial sin: but, as will easily appear from the notion to be handed down here, there is sin properly so called, mortal, and there is sin of diminished notion, venial.

¹ Because laws are of art, therefore by metaphorical usage an artisan can be accused of having sinned against art.

² Summa, 1, 2, q. 71, art. 6.

— II. Essence. Insofar as it is an evil act, sin says some privation of good, which here will be some departure from the order of reason or from the law of God; but insofar as it is a moral act, it necessarily says some good which is inordinately sought. For evil as such is not appetible, but we do not choose it except under the aspect of good, or as joined with the good which we love. Hence, as such, evil is not voluntary except per accidens. But although the act is wholly evil and the omission is wholly evil whereby, on account of some good, we choose or embrace evil, nevertheless it is a lesser evil to will evil under the aspect of good than under the aspect of evil. Therefore, in that tendency toward good, in that election of evil under the aspect of good, there remains a trace of positive order. Hence that saying of St. Thomas, that evil in morals is not pure privation; but "is a certain good joined to the privation of another good" ¹. Whereas in the physical order there is had total privation, for example of vision by blindness, and partial privation, by dimness of sight. Only observe that, in the physical order, what remains of vision in one who sees dimly is simply good, whereas in the moral order the positive appetite itself is evil, because it founds the choice of evil.

¹ Summa, 1 p., q. 48, art. 1 ad 2; 1, 2, q. 73, art. 2.

— III. Specification. If in every sin there is had some appetite of a good object, which of itself is voluntary, and an appetite of evil, which is only voluntary per accidens, since voluntary acts are specified according to that part by which they are voluntary of themselves rather than according to another by which they are only voluntary per accidens, hence again follows that consequence or corollary indicated by St. Thomas, that the moral specification of sins is made by the objects to which the sinner turns himself, rather than by the privation which accompanies the pursuit of the object. Hence it happens that mortal sin, or sin properly so called, and venial sin, or sin of diminished notion, can agree in the same moral species. (Cf. 1, 2, q. 72, art. 5; q. 73, art. 3, and below, n. 426-427.)

— IV. Distinctions. Sins are distinguished:

1. Into deliberate sins, which are committed from full consent, and surreptitious or semi-deliberate sins, in which full advertence was lacking, or where only a certain remissness in repelling the suggestion of evil can be charged to the will.

2. Into sins committed in duties toward God, toward oneself, toward one's neighbor, from the order or proximate object to which they pertain. Duties toward God, moreover, are ruled both by the theological virtues and by the moral virtue of religion. The material object of the former is God himself; the material object of religion is the worship of God, taken most broadly.

3. Into sins of malice, of infirmity, of ignorance, according as the free choice of evil is made without any illusion of ignorance and affection of the senses; or guilt is lightened because of the impulse of passions, of temptations, or because of a certain ignorance, although blameworthy in itself.

4. Into sins of heart, of mouth, of work, according as they are completed by the mind alone, or also by words, indeed by external action. Observe that there are sins, say hatred, blasphemy, which are perfected by mind or words, while others are merely begun by mind or words: say the internal intention and the external proposal of stealing.

5. Into sins of commission or omission, according as a prohibited action is done or a prescribed action is neglected.

6. Into one's own sins or another's sins: the latter consist in illicit cooperation toward another's sin.

— Formal sin, material sin. Sin is properly formal when it is formally opposed to the dictate of conscience and at the same time, of itself, to the dictate of law, while material sin disagrees with the remote rule of law alone, but not with the proximate rule of conscience. Material sin excludes free consent into evil.

Wherefore material sin supposes: a) a person who is subject to the law; b) an act which of itself is done freely, and therefore can be deliberated, not however a first-first movement; c) an act prohibited by law, such as passive pollution is not; d) error or a certain good faith of the agent with ignorance of the prohibition.

[Supplementary note to n. 395.] There we described the material sin which he commits who acts freely but ignorantly. But another reason of material sin is had when an evil act is done by him who, on account of madness, sleep, or drunkenness, is not master of himself.

— V. Subject of sin. In every power, moreover, which is a principle of acts, sin can be present, dependent, of course, on the will. Wherefore sin is had in the sensitive appetite, in reason, and in the will. (Cf. 1, 2, q. 74, art. 1-4.) It is not had in powers which we rule despotically, for example, in the locomotive power.

— VI. Concerning philosophical sin. We know that sin is present psychologically where action has been taken against the absolute dictate of conscience. And there is no doubt that sin is opposed at the same time to the order of reason and to the law of God ¹. Moreover, it is called theological insofar as it offends God; philosophical, insofar as it repugns the order of reason. Merely philosophical sin, therefore, would be that which is opposed to right reason but not to the law of God.

That no such sin exists objectively is most certain, for "whatever is contained under the order of reason is contained under the order of God himself" ¹, and therefore is sanctioned by the most wise will of God. Besides, without God there would be neither the order of reason nor honorable good, since the essences of things have their ultimate foundation in the divine essence, and are formally constituted by the divine intellect.

But it is asked whether a man who perfectly or invincibly is ignorant of God as author and preceptor of order and reason can sin merely philosophically: or whether, on the contrary, it is repugnant that the same man should say that something absolutely must be done or omitted, and not advert, at least confusedly, to a divine command.

That this should happen regularly, so that some ordinary division of sins into philosophical and theological should be proposed, must be altogether denied. Alexander VIII, decree of the Holy Office, August 24, 1690, condemned as scandalous, rash, offensive to pious ears, and erroneous this proposition: "Philosophical or moral sin is a human act disagreeing with rational nature and right reason; but theological and mortal sin is a free transgression of the divine law. Philosophical sin, however grave, in one who is ignorant of God, or who does not actually think of God, is a grave sin, but it is not an offense of God nor a mortal sin dissolving the friendship of God nor worthy of eternal punishment" (Denz. 1290). But not a few scholastics, holding the matter rather as hypothetical, think that this can happen in strictness: thus Lessius, Suarez, Vasquez, Lugo; while others contend that the same thing strictly repugns. Thus today C. Frins and several others.

Concerning this matter we think it must be said as follows.

He who perceives the absolute obligation of doing good and declining from evil, at the same time spontaneously, in the order perceived, perceives at least confusedly an ordering force dominating him, which he obeys while he does good and declines from evil; which he resists, from which he makes himself alien, if he does evil. In this way, however, he tacitly acknowledges God as legislator, and by his action either honors or more or less despises him. Therefore, if he has acted badly against conscience, he has at the same time acted against God. Cf. Lehmkuhl I, n. 281.

Those, however, who explicitly deny God and then turn their mind to the imperious commands of conscience are logically brought to the conclusions of modern impiety, which simply denies absolute moral duties. It is indeed decorous to preserve the order of reason; noble is the appetite of satisfaction which is begotten from an order preserved. Yet this belongs to the genus of relative goodness which alone is open to man, and which therefore can be outweighed by a greater goodness. And in very truth, with God set aside, the necessary dictate by which I judge that one must act honorably and the equally necessary appetite of one's own beatitude often cannot be reconciled with each other. That absurdity or contradiction causes each necessity, at least in an elicited act, to be denied as absolute.

¹ Not rarely here a passage of St. Thomas, 1, 2, q. 71, art. 6 ad 4, is badly alleged, as if the Holy Doctor there had handed down that every moral malice is rooted in divine prohibition, so that, for this reason, when divine law is being treated, that celebrated distinction must be denied, by which some things are called evil because prohibited, but others prohibited because evil. At first sight St. Thomas seems to teach this in the place indicated. For he has it thus: "When it is said that not every sin is evil because prohibited, it is understood of a prohibition made by positive law. But if it is referred to natural right, which is contained first indeed in the eternal law, but secondarily in the natural judgment of human reason, then every sin is evil because prohibited." But that interpretation is excluded by the final words which ought not to have been neglected: "for from the very fact that it is disordered, it repugns natural right." For by these words the disordered thing is proposed rather as logically prior to the right of nature. But it must be said that the question concerning that priority, or concerning the relation of divine prohibition to the malice of an act, is not touched by St. Thomas in this place. His present intention is this: to demonstrate that the definition of St. Augustine is true, by which sin is called "something said or done or desired against the eternal law." But for this it is enough that no evil exists which is not prohibited by that law, so that it draws its malice, whether first or second, initial or complete, from opposition to divine law. Here, therefore, the Holy Doctor already affirms what he will repeat more than once, that by divine law, not by human law, all sins are prohibited and punished. Cf. 1, 2, q. 91, art. 4 c. (where Augustine is alleged from the same book I On Free Will from which he was brought forward in the present objection); 1, 2, q. 93, art. 3 ad 3, etc.

¹ Summa, 1, 2, q. 72, art. 4 c.

— Corollary. Barbarians are not accustomed to scrutinize such things. Wherefore, in regions of the missions, the poor natives, although they are formally and explicitly ignorant of God as orderer and legislator, nevertheless, while they do what they judge to be good, are not incapable of merit before God (grace being supposed); and by acting against conscience they must be judged to sin theologically.

— 1. By a usage already ancient, sin says a human act deformed from its rule; and it is a morally evil act, with this observation, however, that there is no generic notion of morality which indifferently becomes good or evil, but only a confused and analogical notion is proposed, as of being. The notion of sin also belongs analogically to mortal and venial.

2. Since evil is always sought under the aspect of good or as joined with some good, evil in morals does not say pure privation, but is some good joined to the privation of another good. And the moral specification of sin is made, rather than by the joined privation, by the objects to which the sinner turns himself, since on that side the act is voluntary of itself.

3. Sins are distinguished into deliberate and surreptitious; committed in duties toward God, toward oneself, toward one's neighbor; of malice, of infirmity, of ignorance; of heart, of mouth, and of work; of commission or omission; one's own or another's.

4. Sin is properly formal. Material sin supposes a person subject to law, who acts freely, and with a certain good faith does an act or omission prohibited by law.

5. Sin is always done dependently on the will; but it can be present in any power which is a principle of acts.

6. Philosophical sin exists neither objectively, since by divine law every moral evil is forbidden, nor even subjectively, since conscience of absolute obligation brings with it a confused notion of God the legislator. Hence even barbarians are capable of merit (with divine grace) and of theological demerit.