157. Charity and sin
157. CHARITY AND SIN
St. John says that “any one who abides (lives) in Him (God) does not sin” (1 Jn 3:6), and that “any one born of God does not commit sin, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot commit sin because he has been born of God” (1 Jn 3:9). Yet in the same letter St. John says “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8). This sounds like a contradiction, but since it is in the same letter of the same author, he obviously has something else in mind. What?
Charity . . . as such . . . is incapable of anything that is against its nature. Wherefore charity cannot sin at all, even as neither can heat cool nor unrighteousness do good (II-II,24,11).
An apparent contradiction can be shown to be not a real contradiction if some of the words are used in two different senses. To undo a contradiction, make a distinction.
Part of the explanation depends on a point in Greek grammar. Verbs have many more tenses in Greek than in English, and two different present tenses in Greek are (1) the aorist and (2) the present progressive. The first designates a single action, like “he died” or “he left the city at noon.” The second designates an ongoing, repeated, natural or habitual action, like “birds fly” or “intercourse produces pregnancy” or “heavy objects fall.” It is the second tense that is used where St. John says that those born of God do not sin: they are born into a divine nature, so they do not sin naturally and continually, even though they fall into many one—shot actual sins of the moment.
The single concrete human person who has been “born again” has two dimensions, or two natures, not just one. They have a new, second nature, their participation in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), which is also called sanctifying grace, or the presence of the Holy Spirit, the presence of supernatural charity (agape) in their soul; and that new nature is incapable of sin. They also have the old nature, which St. Paul calls “the old man” or “Adam” or “the flesh” as opposed to “the new man”, “Christ in you”, and “the Spirit”. “Nature” means “the source of its habitual action that flows from and reveals what it is.” So the sin nature sins but the new nature does not. More exactly, we sin because we are sinners by our old nature and we love because we are lovers by our new nature. We sin only insofar as we are moved by our old nature, and we practice charity only insofar as we are moved by our new nature.
A single person can have two natures. Christ has two natures: perfect divinity and also perfect humanity. The redeemed have imperfect, fallen, sinful humanity (“the flesh”) and also a participation in the nature of Christ, which is perfect and which is charity rather than selfishness.
St. Thomas explains it with the key phrase “as such”. Charity as such is incapable of sin. Insofar as what moves our actions is charity, we cannot sin.
The same single concrete thing can both heat and cool other things because there is some heat and some cold in it. If you blend ice cubes and fire, you produce warm water, which will both cool fire and melt ice.
The practical point of this distinction is that whenever we sin, we should not think that is our true identity, but the “old man” still in us, the albatross around our neck. St. Paul says in Romans 7 that when he sins, the source of that is no longer himself but the sin that dwells within him. That does not mean that he is not responsible for it or that he does not choose it. It means it is his false identity that he is choosing to follow. And whenever we practice charity, we should not think that that is our natural human self doing it all by itself; that is God’s supernatural grace changing our human nature to conform to the nature of Christ.
Perhaps we can use the analogy of the person with deformed and dehumanized desires (e.g., lust—or homosexuality). That is not his true identity, though he may be deceived into thinking it is, in order to escape responsibility for changing it, and he may passionately resist this truth, which the Church offers him not as a condemnation but as liberation.