Our Habits can send us to Hell. But are we in control of our Habits?

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A habit, for Aquinas, is not equivalent to the modern term “habit” and its psychological or compulsive connotations. Still, there is some overlap.

A habit in Aquinas’ moral theology is more like a disposition to do something — a disposition that is not intrusive (like a substance addiction) but more like something that we find ourselves easy to do.

Anyway, if we go to hell, one way to characterize it would be to say that we have formed a habit/habits that lead us there. In other words, we develop a “second nature” through our habits by which we prefer hell.

MY QUESTION is this: Even though a “habit” in this sense is not totally equivalent to the modern sense, like an addiction, I still wonder: To what extent are the habits we form actually our fault and under our control?
 
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One reason I ask this is because Aquinas is perfectly willing to admit some people have habits due to their own biological/psychological makeup. Some people have a habit of being temperate and chaste, because that’s just how they were born.

So conversely, how is it fair that one should go to hell because he has an inborn habit that he didn’t choose?
 
Dr. Eleonore Stump, the Thomist, sent this to me.
An addiction is something that diminishes responsibility because something bodily impedes reason through passion and for that reason makes it more difficult for the will to choose what it wants to will. It doesn’t remove responsibility, but it does diminish it.

The kind of habit that does not diminish responsibility is the kind of habit that results from repeated bad choices over which reason does have the usual control. If you become habituated to gossip, then the resulting bad habit is entirely attributable to you, rather than to some bodily process impeding reason. You worked for that bad habit, and you got it because you did a voluntary bad action over and over again.
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But I am not sure it totally gets at my question. I’m having trouble seeing how there is an actual distinction between a unchosen and chosen habit.
 
Aren’t there three criteria with regard to mortal sin, which, if unrepentant, leads one to hell? Now if one has an uncontrollable bad habit, that, I think, would mean that a mortal sin has not been committed, and such a mitigating circumstance would lessen one’s culpability.
 
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That indeed forms part of my confusion. Because in some places, habit it described as mitigating culpability. Such is in the Catechism. But in other places, including the Catechism, “habit” is described as a disposition (whether virtue or vice), which indeed can form our nature into wanting hell vs. Heaven.
 
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Mitigation is not removal.

I have a habit of viewing pornography. The strength and addictive nature of that habit may diminish my culpability for each individual act, but that does not change the fact that soul is continuously shaped each time I engage in the act.

I am also culpable for the habits I develop. I made the repeated decision to view pornography, and I am responsible for allowing it to shape my life in the way it did. I am the underlying cause of my negative habit, and that also has an impact on my soul.
 
Aquinas:
But whenever he uses the vicious habit he must needs sin through certain malice: because to anyone that has a habit, whatever is befitting to him in respect of that habit, has the aspect of something lovable, since it thereby becomes, in a way, connatural to him, according as custom and habit are a second nature. Now the very thing which befits a man in respect of a vicious habit, is something that excludes a spiritual good: the result being that a man chooses a spiritual evil, that he may obtain possession of what befits him in respect of that habit: and this is to sin through certain malice. Wherefore it is evident that whoever sins through habit, sins through certain malice.
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ProdglArchitect said:
The strength and addictive nature of that habit may diminish my culpability for each individual act, but that does not change the fact that soul is continuously shaped each time I engage in the act.
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But an individual act cannot be a mortal sin if culpability is diminished to that extent. Assume for the moment we are talking about culpability that is lessened to venial sin, or even completely excused. Then how can we talk about our soul being shaped for hell?

Do we go to hell because we are culpable for an act, or do we go to hell because of how our soul is “shaped” regardless of culpability?
 
…for then alone does anyone sin through certain malice, when his will is moved to evil of its own accord. This may happen in two ways. First, through his having a corrupt disposition inclining him to evil, so that, in respect of that disposition, some evil is, as it were, suitable and similar to him; and to this thing, by reason of its suitableness, the will tends, as to something good, because everything tends, of its own accord, to that which is suitable to it. Moreover this corrupt disposition is either a habit acquired by custom, or a sickly condition on the part of the body, as in the case of a man who is naturally inclined to certain sins, by reason of some natural corruption in himself.
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Here Aquinas says one can sin through certain malice (and not just ignorance or passion) via habit, including habits due to one’s body. How does that make sense? So some people can sin because of inborn habit? Some people can go to hell more easily than others because of the biological condition they are born into? How is that right?

???
 
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Yet Aquinas, at least in this passage, doesn’t seem to be rejecting the notion that a bad habit can be unlearned, or does he? If a habit is second nature, can such a nature be stripped of an individual? Would one even make the effort to unlearn such a habit that has been freely learned?
 
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Yes I think so. Still, it doesn’t make sense, to me anyway, that someone could ultimately go to hell because of a inborn disposition.

This is what is confusing. Because some Catholic writings talk about this sort of thing as diminishing culpability. Yet other times, it doesn’t matter what your inborn nature is: it can lead you to hell if that’s how you happen to be. IDK, the latter seems more Calvinistic.

So is habit diminishing culpability, OR is the sort of the thing that, by nature, in fact leads one to hell?
 
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We are in control of going to heaven or hell, no one goes to hell who did not choose to reject Christ.

We are in control of our habits because we have free will. I can choose to change my habits.
 
Not all habits are due to choice, at least as Aquinas says above ^

Yet he doesn’t seem to suggest these would reduce culpability.
 
Yes, it does sound Calvinist or Jansenist to me. At the same time, we know how difficult it is to fight against habits even if they are learned and not part of one’s nature. But it can be done if the habit is learned and NOT given or inherited by nature. The latter statement by Aquinas, involving the natural impulse of the habit according to certain people’s dispositions, is troublesome. All I can suggest is that the Church Fathers are NOT infallible according to Church teaching, and this may be one example of their fallibility.
 
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The only way it would NOT be troublesome is to, again, go down the path of identifying hell as “what you choose,” at something that goes along with what you happen to want, by nature.

However, Thomistic thinkers and Christians (and others) in general are explicit in saying that ALL rational creatures – human and angel – are designed for God, the Ultimate Good, in Heaven. They aren’t just “meant” for God. No, they are BUILT to seek the good.

So, again, while it might be convenient to think of hell as just getting what you want, how could hell really be what anyone wants on the traditional line of human action and happiness?

It’s like putting two magnets together on the same pole, trying to squeeze as hard as you can… and yet they never touch. Something similar happening here: We want to say all people are ordered to Good and God by nature, and yet we want to say some people freely choose hell. One seems to exclude the other.

Also @Magnanimity
 
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To me, Aquinas’ thought seems airtight. So I don’t know what the issue is. Is there a wrong conclusion in Aquinas? A wrong application from the get-go? Or is my understanding wrong?

As of this point in my understanding, I’m nodding along to everything Aquinas says about human action. But as I understand it, I simply cannot follow the conclusion that someone could ever ultimately choose hell, at least responsibly.
 
Habit: a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up

Habits are absolutely our choices. I chose to brush my teeth first thing in the morning, done the same way over time, it becomes a habit.

I tell the truth when asked a question, always doing this the truth becomes a habit.

What sort of habit is against our will?
 
Again, this thread is referring to Aquinas. See the above quote in bold. He says some habits are due to genetic predispositions.

For Aquinas, this may not necessarily be “against our will,” because the will just wants what it wants. And if you’re born with a certain tendency, then you’re just bent on willing a certain thing. But it doesn’t seem right that someone should go to hell because of how they’re born.
 
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Could Aquinas simply mean that people who are born with such genetic predispositions have a harder time ridding themselves of bad habits, rather than their being almost condemned by nature? And perhaps they just have to use their free will to fight the negative inclinations that they have at birth to a greater degree. Is this all he had to say about habits or is there a larger context in his writings?
 
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ProdglArchitect said:
I am also culpable for the habits I develop. I made the repeated decision to view pornography, and I am responsible for allowing it to shape my life in the way it did. I am the underlying cause of my negative habit, and that also has an impact on my soul.
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Are you, though? I mean, take your example. Obviously a lot of men have this habit, and usually develop it as adolescents. So you have a guy who starts looking at porn and masturbating. Let’s assume just the sake of argument his raging teenage hormones don’t mitigate his responsibility, so he has a mortal sin he needs to confess. Eventually, after he has ingrained this habit, he recognizes it’s wrong and confesses it.

But now he has this ingrained habit. He doesn’t like it and wishes he didn’t have it, but he does. He ultimately gave himself that habit, but he’s confessed that and genuinely regrets it. It’s hard to say he continues to be culpable for the ongoing problem (assuming he’s genuinely trying to stop and isn’t just rationalizing)
 
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