Chapter III: The Causes of Actual Sins.
CHAPTER III: ON THE CAUSES OF ACTUAL SINS
§ 14. There are three causes of actual sins: (I) The corruption of the nature introduced into us through the fall of our parents (Matt. 15:19, etc.).
(II) The suggestions of Satan, which drive people to sins of various types. 1 Chron. 21:1: “Satan incited David to number the people.” John 13:2: “The devil had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Christ.” Acts 5:3: “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”
(III) The stumbling blocks of the world. Matt. 18:7: “Woe to the man through whom the stumbling block comes.” Rom. 12:2: “Be not conformed to the world.”
Observe, moreover: (1) The term “efficient cause” is used broadly here. In fact, if we should wish to pursue philosophical precision, Dionysius the Areopagite (De div. nominibus) is correct in saying, “Evil is without essence, end, and efficient cause”; and from Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 12, ch. 7): “Of evil, it is not an efficient so much as a deficient cause that should be sought.” This is something which Thomas (Contra gentes, bk. 3, ch. 10) cites in this way: “The cause of a defect according to itself is not something positive but another defect, for an effect is the same sort of thing as is the cause according to itself.” Thomas again ([ST,] 1.2., question 75, art. 1): “Sin is an inordinate act. An act can have a cause according to itself in reference to the act, and it can have a cause in reference to the inordinateness in the same way as negation or privation have a cause.”
But two causes can be assigned for any negation: (a) A defect of cause; that is, the negation of the cause itself is the cause of the negation itself, for from the removal of the cause there follows the removal of the effect. (b) The cause of affirmation, which negation follows and is by accident1 the cause of the consequent negation. But because the disorder of sin is not a simple negation but the privation of that which ought to be present, it is necessary for the total disorder to have a cause which acts through accident.
[2] The first among these three causes is interior, the third is exterior, and the second is at once both interior and exterior. Bernard (De sept. pan., 3., col. 183) says: “Behold that enemy whom I cannot see, much less beware of. He attacks and persecutes us now openly and violently, now in secret and deceitfully, but always maliciously and cruelly.”
(3) Consequently, the first of these is the immediate, proper, and adequate cause2 of actual sins. Indeed, the devil can suggest, but he cannot compel, which must also be stated in reference to the temptations of the world.
§ 15. And this is the three-headed Cerberus,3 who zealously disturbs us with his howling: namely, the flesh, Satan, and the world. Augustine (De peccat. orig., bk. 2, ch. 37): “The instigator of vice is the slyness of the deceiving devil and the will of man who consents.” Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 85, col. 748):
The instigator is the devil; the instigator is the world; the instigator is the man. What is the man, you ask? Each one for himself. Do not be surprised. Man is such an instigator for himself and such a driver of himself that if you yourself restrain your own hands you need not dread what happens because of another instigator. The devil impels with the ill will of malice; the world, with the wind of vanity; and man, by the weight of his own corruption.
[Bernard] again (Medit. devotiss., ch. 14, col. 1200):
My enemies—namely, my body, the world, and the devil—have surrounded my soul. I am unable to escape from my body, nor am I able to drive it away from me. It is necessary to carry it around, because it is bound to me; it is impossible to shrug it off. I am forced to bear it; and when I fatten it, I nourish my own opponent against myself. But the world surrounds me and, indeed, besieges me and wounds me with its arrows through the five gates, that is, through the five senses of the body. The devil, whom I am unable to see and thus, all the less, to ward from me, bends his bow and sets his arrows to wound me suddenly, etc. The flesh suggests comforts; the world, vanities; the devil, bitter things. Therefore all the causes of sin must be reduced to these three sources. But it is sacrilege to ascribe the causes of sin to God. If someone lacks righteousness and piety, if he is carried headlong by his own will, if he is drawn by his own concupiscence and is deceived by his own persuasion, not the Father, not the Son, and not the Holy Spirit have any part in that at all, nor does any of the will of God intervene in such business.
([See] Augustine, Ad art. sibi falso impos., art. 10.) We have said more about this subject in the commonplace On Providence [Commonplace IX, §§ 107–41].
§ 16. The corruption of the nature and the perversion of the human will, which are the interior and proper cause of sin, can be divided into more parts for the sake of instruction. They can also be embraced under the following terms: (1) Corrupt concupis cence itself. James 1:15: “When concupiscence has conceived, it brings forth sin.”
(2) The consent of the will. Matt. 5:28: “Whoever looks after a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
(3) Ignorance and darkness of the mind. 1 Tim. 1:13: “Formerly, I blasphemed and persecuted, but I did that out of ignorance.”
(4) The weakness of the flesh. Matt. 26:41: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
(5) The voluntary and intended malice of the mind. Heb. 10:26: “If we sin deliberately, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.”
(6) Vicious habits contracted through frequent acts. Rom. 2:5: “By your hardness and your heart, ignorant of repentance, you are storing up wrath for yourself.”
(7) Sin itself is often the cause of another sin, as we have shown elsewhere [On Providence (Commonplace IX), §§ 140–41]. Isa. 5:18: “Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes.”
The cause of sin through accident.
The causes of sins through accident are the external objects which make inroads into the senses and entice them into being abused. Gen. 3:6: “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was delightful to the eyes,” etc. In fact, the holy and righteous Law of God itself increases sin through accident by forbidding those things which are pleasing to the flesh and by commanding those things which displease it. Rom. 7:8: “Sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, worked in me all kinds of concupiscence; for apart from the Law, sin was dead,” etc.
1 See above, p. 12 n. 6.
2 The total cause of something, which perfectly constitutes the essence of an effect (Micraelius, s.v. “Causa”). An effect proceeds from the whole adequate cause and from it alone (Scherzer, part 1, s.v. “Causa”).
3 In Greek mythology, the Cerberus was a three-headed hound that guarded the gates of the underworld.