My Issues regarding Thomistic understanding of Sin helped by book

[RealisticCatholic]

The book Sin: A Thomistic Psychology by Steven J. Jensen appeared in my recommended books on Amazon, and it was very fortuitous that it did, since these last 3 weeks or so I have been struggling with questions relating to Aquinas’ understanding of sin.

First off, I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this subject. It gets into the details without totally being too technical.

A summarized takeaway of the book indeed confirms what I had been thinking all along: That ignorance is the foundation of all sin. In Aquinas’ three classifications of sin, due to malice, passion, and ignorance, all of them are technically due to error in reasoning.

However, this does not in itself take away culpability. Why? Because the individual can still be aware that he or she has not fully considered the issue further.

Moreover, the book deals with the problem that, for Aquinas, every act of will is preceded by the intellect. So it is hard to see how Aquinas doesn’t fall into the trap of determinism. If we do what we take to be good, how can we be blamed for sin?

 

[RealisticCatholic]

(I have decided to make a separate post since the answer to the above gets to the heart of my issue these past few weeks

Anyway, the dilemma is solved by noting that the will itself can “turn back on itself” as the book describes, even without prior indication of the intellect, because the will can cease willing to deliberate (in the intellect) when the will reaches the point of being satisfied in the matter. Satisfaction, after all, properly belongs to the will.

Now I have just read this nearly 300 page book, and only once, so I am in no way in a position to explain it in a very precise way. Nevertheless, I hope others can interact with this as well.

@magnanimity @Wesrock @IWantGod

 

[RealisticCatholic]

Now as for the sticky issue of an eternal hell:

The book does not really talk about hell itself, but there are a few points that may help @magnanimity:

(1) Again as above, there is a sense in which every act of will is preceded by intellect. However, the will retains its independence when it comes to being able to cease deliberating — cease the intellect’s power of deliberating. It does not need prior indication of the intellect for this; it just needs a sense of satisfaction, which is proper to the will (much like knowledge is proper to the intellect).

So people can be culpable of sin.

(2) If I understand correctly, it seems sins due to malice are only ever first due to habits set in place by previous sins, which in turn would have to be due to passion or ignorance. (But again, these wouldn’t remove culpability necessarily). Previous sins can dispose the will to prefer another good to the highest good. While this indeed is an error of judgment, it is still a culpable one, since the person is choosing to ignore while remaining content with what he has. ’

(3) Mortal and Venial sin are as different as day and night because the former is a re-direction to another end while venial sin is not. In Venial sin, one is still habitually choosing the highest God even if not in particular acts.

So my initial thoughts would be that hell is a preference of the person based on his habitually forming another character than that which his true nature would prescribe.

 

[Magnanimity]

Hi @RealisticCatholic, this looks really good. Thanks for sharing. I’ve been away this week for training and then vacation, but I will take a closer look at all these considerations soon. It looks intriguing. Thanks for the heads-up!