Chapter XVIII: Sins that are More Serious than Others, § 87.
CHAPTER XVIII: ON SINS THAT ARE MORE SERIOUS THAN OTHERS
Some sins are more serious than others.
§ 87. Fourteenth. Christ teaches that some sins are more serious than others in John 19:11: “He who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.” Augustine (on John, tract. 116) comments on this passage: “He who maliciously delivers an innocent person over to the power sins more than the power itself if it slays him out of fear of another greater power.” Ezek. 16:47: “In all your ways, you did more wicked things than they.” 1 Tim. 5:8: “If anyone does not care for his own [family], he is worse than an unbeliever.” 2 Pet. 2:20: “The last state becomes worse than the first,” etc.
The same thing is proved by the different grades of punishments which will finally be called down upon sinners on Judgment Day. Matt. 10:15: “It will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that city” which did not receive the apostles. Matt. 11:21[–22]: “Tyre and Sidon will be more forgiven on Judgment Day than the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida.” Luke 12:47–48: “That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make ready nor act according to the master’s will shall be beaten many times. But he who did not know and deserved a beating will receive few blows.”
The Stoics and the Jovinians had the paradoxical statement that “all sins are equal.” Augustine (De sentent. Jacobi apost. ad Hieron., bk. 2, ch. 3): “The idea about the inseparability of the virtues has pleased all the philosophers, but the one concerning the equality of sins only the Stoics have dared to debate, contrary to every sense of the human race. This vanity of theirs you have very clearly refuted from the Holy Scriptures in the case of Jovinian, who was Stoic in this idea but Epicurean in pursuing and defending pleasures. In this very pleasant and excellent disputation of yours, it appeared quite clearly that it did not please our authors—or, rather, the very Truth who spoke through them—to say that all sins are equal.”
The Jesuit Campianus (Rat. 8) also tries to smear our churches with this error of the Stoics and Jovinians: “This, too, is common among the dregs of Protestants: that sins are equal. On this scale, the innkeeper who killed the cock on the dunghill sinned against God no less than the one who killed a man.” But Bellarmine himself (De justif., bk. 3, at the beginning of ch. 26) frees us from this calumny: “This I know: that Lutherans do not say that the virtues are equal or that sins are equal, nor do they deny that a person can grow in hope, love, and the other virtues.”
§ 88. But there are various ways in which one sin becomes more serious than another, yet they seem to be reducible to these four classes. One sin is more serious than another: (1) With respect to the person who sins. Luke 12:47: “That servant who knew his master’s will and did not do it will receive many blows.” Wisdom 6:[6]: “Mighty men will suffer torments mightily.”
Every vice of the soul makes its crime conspicuous
In proportion to the greatness of the sinner.1
(2) With respect to the person who is offended. Thus he who blasphemes God sins more seriously then he who reviles a man; he who harms widows, orphans, or the poor sins more than he who sins against others. Zech. 2:8: “He who touches you touches the pupil of My eye.”
(3) With respect to the thing which incurs detriment. Thus it is a more serious sin to counterfeit the Word of God than to counterfeit a piece of money. He who injures the life of his neighbor sins more seriously than he who takes the goods of his fortune away from him.
(4) With respect to the sin itself, and this is both with regard to causes as well as with regard to the act itself. Thus he sins more seriously who sins knowingly than he who sins ignorantly. Augustine (Contra Donatist. de baptismo, bk. 4, ch. 5; De grat. et lib. arbit., ch. 3): “A sin of malice is more serious than a sin of ignorance or weakness.” We have proved this with the thesis of Augustine (thesis 24 in De visit. infirm., bk. 2, ch. 5): “Sinning because of pleasure is more serious than sinning out of necessity.”
Thomas ([ST,] 2.2., q. 73, art. 4) proves that a sin of commission is more serious than a sin of omission in this way: “The more serious a sin is, the farther away it is from virtue. But contrariness is the greatest distance of all. For this reason, a contrary is farther away from its contrary than its simple negation. Thus black is farther away from white than nonwhite is. But now, a transgression is contrary to an act of virtue, while omission introduces the negation of an act.”
Sin also is aggravated by continuation, by multiplication, by backsliding, by the defense or excusing of sin. In this way greater harm also renders a sin more serious. Thomas ([ST,] 1.2., q. 73, art. 8):
Harm relates to sin in three ways. At times it is foreseen and intended, and at such times the quantity of harm increases the gravity of the sin directly. At times it is foreseen and unintended, such as when someone passes through a field to make a shortcut for the purpose of fornication and brings harm to what has been sown in the field. In this case the amount of harm also aggravates the sin, but indirectly. At times it is neither foreseen nor intended. At such a time, if it is related to the sin accidentally, it does not directly aggravate the sin. But due to his negligence in considering the harm which can result, the evils which result are imputed to the person for punishment. But if the harm itself should follow from an act of sin, though it may be neither foreseen nor intended, it aggravates the sin directly, as in the case of a public fornicator.
Furthermore, Thomas ([ST,] 1.2., q. 73, art. 10) limits and confirms what we have said about sin being aggravated by the person who sins in this way:
Sin is twofold. Some sin catches us unawares because of the weakness of human nature. Such sin is imputed less to him who is greater in virtue. Other sins come from deliberation; and the greater the person [is in virtue], all the more are these imputed to him for four reasons. (1) Those who are superior in knowledge and virtue can resist sin more easily. (2) Every good with which one is magnified is a gift of God, to whom the person is being ungrateful. (3) Due to a specific opposition, the act of sin may apply to the greatness of the person as, for example, in the case of a prince who violates justice though he has been appointed as the guardian of justice. (4) Because of greater scandal.
In art. 9 he proves that the sin is more serious with respect to the person against whom the sin is committed:
The person sinned against is in a certain way the object of sin, but the chief gravity of a sin is drawn from its object. Thus sin is aggravated on the part of God, for the more virtuous or the more dear to God a person is, the more closely he is united with God. On the part of the person himself, one sins more seriously the more one sins against a person united with him by natural necessity or by kindnesses or by some bond or other. On the part of his neighbor, the more people his sin touches, the more seriously does he sin. Therefore sin against a prince is more serious.
In art. 5 he proves:
Spiritual sins are more serious than carnal ones because: (1) Spiritual sin has more to do with aversion to God. (2) Carnal sin is in one’s own body, which ought to be loved less than God and his neighbor against whom he sins through spiritual sins. (3) Carnal sins have a stronger impulsive principle,2 namely, innate concupiscence itself.
1 Juvenal, Satires 8.140–41 (LCL 91 [2004], p. 334).
2 That is, an “impulsive cause,” which impels a principal efficient cause to act. This impulsion comes either from inside or outside of the principal cause. Here Thomas means that innate concupiscence is an internal impulsive cause, impelling a person to commit carnal sins.