Chapter XVII: Capital Sins, § 86.
CHAPTER XVII: ON CAPITAL SINS
Some sins are capital, and some have arisen from them.
§ 86. Thirteenth. Some sins are capital, and some have arisen from them. Bonaventure (Sent., 2, dist. 42, letter C): “ ‘Capital vice’ is used in two ways: first, for that which is chief and great in the genus of vicious things; and, second, for that which is the head and source of other [sins].” In this way he tries to reconcile the diversity of the ancients which occurs among them concerning the number of capital vices.
Gregory (on Exodus): “There are seven capital or principal vices: vainglory, wrath, envy, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust.” The Glossa ordinaria (on Proverbs 9) lists six capital vices. Isidore (commentary on Deuteronomy) lists eight. Thomas ([ST,] 1.2., q. 84, art. 4) proves the sufficiency and number of capital vices in this way:
Those are called “capital” vices whose ends have primary reasons for moving the appetite. But the good of mankind which moves the appetite is threefold. There is a good of the soul which has its reason of appetibility solely from its apprehension, such as the excellence of praise or honor, hence vainglory. The second pertains to the good of the body, and thus to the preservation of the individual, hence gluttony, or of the species, hence lust. The third is an exterior good—namely, wealth—and greed is directed toward it. But fleeing a good because of a conjoined evil (and being moved to sin indirectly) is [also] threefold. For this happens with respect to one’s own good, and thus there is sloth, which despairs of the spiritual good because of the accompanying physical labor. Or it happens in regard to the good of another person. If this occurs without recrimination [insurrectio], it pertains to envy; or it occurs with recrimination for revenge, from which there is wrath. But to each capital vice they attribute its own “daughters,” so to speak. The daughters of vainglory are said to be these: presumption, hypocrisy, stubbornness, discord, strife, disobedience. To wrath they assign these daughters: indignation, swelling of the mind, outcry, blasphemy, insult, quarrels. Greed is called the mother of harshness, disquiet, violence, deceit, perjury, fraud, betrayal. To gluttony are assigned these daughters: dullness of the senses, senseless joy, loquacity, scurrility, uncleanness. Lust is called the mother of blindness, rashness, lack of consideration, etc.
(See Thomas, [ST,] 2.2., qq. 118, 132, 153, 158, 168, etc.)
In 1 John 2:16 three sources of actual sins appear to be established: “Anything that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life.”
Augustine (on Psalm 78): “All sins originate either from desire that inflames badly or from fear that humiliates badly.”
Yet they distinguish between capital vices and the root of sins. As the word “head” [caput] indicates the principal and complete member which is the beginning of the others as far as feeling and impulse are concerned, so also a capital vice indicates a complete sin from which all other vices come. But “root” does not properly indicate a determined genus of sin but the propensity of corrupt concupiscence, which concurs in every sin. Scripture distinguishes between an evil tree and its evil fruits and charges unbelief with being the capital vice and the source of all the rest.