De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

What wounds man incurs through original or actual sin.

I. St. Thomas touches on this difficulty in I–II, q. 85, art. 3, where he asks whether infirmity, ignorance, malice, and concupiscence are suitably posited as the wounds of nature consequent upon sin. He answers affirmatively, proving this by the authority of the venerable Bede, found in the Ordinary Gloss on the words of Luke 10, And laying wounds upon him, they went away, leaving him half dead.¹ There he enumerates the four wounds mentioned above that man incurs through sin. In the body of the article he gathers the sufficiency of these wounds as follows: For by original justice perfect reason held the lower powers of the soul in check, and reason itself was perfected by being subject to God. But this original justice was taken away through the sin of our first parent, as has already been said; and thus all the powers of the soul remain, in a certain way deprived of their proper order by which they are naturally ordered to virtue, and this deprivation is called a wound of nature. There are four powers of the soul that can be the subjects of virtues, as was said: reason, in which prudence resides; will, in which justice resides; the irascible power, in which fortitude resides; and the concupiscible power, in which temperance resides. Thus, insofar as reason is deprived of its order to the true, there is the wound of ignorance; insofar as the will is deprived of its order to the good, there is the wound of malice; insofar as the irascible power is deprived of its order to the arduous, there is the wound of infirmity; and insofar as concupiscence is deprived of its order to the pleasurable as moderated by reason, there is the wound of concupiscence. Accordingly, these four were inflicted on the whole of human nature through the sin of our first parent. But since the inclination of virtue to the good is diminished in each person by actual sin, as is clear from what has been said, these four wounds also follow from other sins, insofar as by sin reason is blunted, especially in practical matters, the will is hardened toward evil², greater difficulty in doing good increases, and concupiscence grows more ardent.³

II. For fuller explanation, it should be noted that, as St. Thomas teaches in I–II, q. 109, art. 2, reply to objection 3, human nature is more corrupted by sin with respect to appetite for the good than with respect to knowledge of the true, because the will is the inclination of the whole man. Hence a person can know more by himself, without the help of grace, than he can accomplish by the powers of nature, although the intellect too was wounded.⁴ Accordingly, with respect to the intellect, man was wounded by sin with the wound of ignorance. For although by the powers of nature he can know some truth, not only speculative but also practical, among matters belonging to the order of nature, he cannot know every truth, especially practical truths concerning the right ordering of natural life, without the help of grace. Hence St. Prosper sharply reproves Cassian because, from the words of Genesis 3, Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he wrongly inferred: Therefore after the transgression Adam conceived a knowledge of evil that he had not had, but he did not lose the knowledge of good that he had received.⁵ The same St. Prosper elsewhere attacks this teaching, Now, he says, since no one can escape eternal death without the sacrament of regeneration, does not the very uniqueness of this remedy show most clearly into what depth of evil the nature of the whole human race was plunged by the transgression of him in whom all sinned, and that whatever he lost, they lost? First he lost faith; he betrayed continence, lost charity; he was stripped of wisdom and understanding; he lacked counsel and fortitude; and, impiously pursuing higher things, he was cast down from knowledge of the truth and the piety of obedience.⁶ And below: Hence, before he digests the lethal crudity by eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood, memory slips, judgment errs, his gait falters, and he is in no way fit to choose and desire that good of which he freely deprived himself. And in chapter 21: After Adam subjected himself—that is, the image and temple of God—to his deceiver, he lost knowledge of the good, because he lost a good conscience. Hence it is written in Wisdom 9: The thoughts of mortals are fearful, and our plans uncertain; for the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and this earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks on many things. We can scarcely judge what is on earth, and what is before our eyes we find with labor. But who can search out what is in heaven? Here, from the body's corruptibility, which comes from sin, it infers that human foresight is uncertain. Hence shortly after the beginning of the same chapter, it had said: A man is weak and short-lived, and too little able to understand judgment and laws. For even if someone is perfect among the children of men, if your wisdom is absent from him, he will be counted as nothing. As if it said: A weak man can know little, and with difficulty, so as to judge rightly and make laws, unless he is healed by your wisdom. Therefore he immediately asks God for it: Send her, he says, from your holy heavens, and from the throne of your greatness, that she may be with me and labor with me, and that I may know what is acceptable to you. Sin, therefore, first clouds the eyes of reason, so that afterward the wretched man is dragged without a bridle into the abyss. As a sign of this, Samson first lost his eyes and afterward was assigned by the Philistines to the mill. Hence Gregory says: Because often the eye of contemplation is first lost, and afterward through carnal desires the soul is subjected to the labors of this world, Samson, captured by the Philistines, bears witness: after he lost his eyes, he was assigned to the mill. For surely, after the wicked have gouged out the inward eye of contemplation with the goads of temptations, they send the soul outward, in all directions, to labor.⁷⁸

III. Hence sin is also compared to night, because just as in the night the bodily eye does not distinguish white from black, so too the sinner scarcely judges through the eyes of reason what is good and what is evil. Chrysostom noted this in these words.⁹ For just as in darkness neither friend nor enemy is recognized, but everything is wholly unknown, so it comes to pass in sin. For he who gapes after profit understands no difference between friend and enemy, and the envious man regards even his closest friend no differently than an enemy; robbers likewise make war on everyone and lie in wait for all; and in general, all who defile themselves with the filth of vices differ no more from the drunk and the insane in discerning distinctions among things. And just as at night, when the light is removed, we see and judge wood, lead, iron, silver, precious stones, and all other things in the same way, so those who live a foul and vicious life discern neither the force of modesty nor the beauty of wisdom. For in darkness, as I have already said, even precious stones display no appearance or brilliance, through no fault of their own but through the fault of eyes clouded over. Nor is this the only thing that troubles us while we live under the impious tyranny of vices; there is also this, that we are consequently tormented by fear. And just as those who travel through a dark night are shaken by fear even when there is nothing to fear, so those who commit some crime, even if no one sees it or reproves them, do not trust themselves any better but fear everything and suspect everything; for they are driven by the continual goads of conscience and look about them fearfully.¹⁰ And in Homily 22 on the First Epistle to the Corinthians: Just as, he says, robbers, when they wish to steal something precious, put out the light and then set about it, so reason is corrupted in sinners. For in us the light of reason is always burning; if the spirit of iniquity attacks it with greater force and extinguishes it, as soon as he has darkened the soul and overcome it, he plunders whatever is stored up in it. For when the soul has been seized by the desire of lust, just as bodily eyes are seized by mist and darkness, so the mind’s foresight is taken over by that desire and can look no farther—not at the precipice, not at hell, not at fear. And like a wall placed before the eyes without a door, it does not allow the ray of justice to illumine our minds. Just as the blind receive no light even if they are outdoors at midday, so these people, although countless teachings sound in their ears from every side, block their hearing against every argument because their minds have been preoccupied by this passion. Hence Origen too, explaining Job 3, Let a dark whirlwind seize that night, says: Unless the devil first darkens the hearts of men, unless he first blackens their souls, unless he first makes them forget the fear of God and his dreadful judgments, he will never be able to sow the seed of sins in their hearts. But after he has darkened the soul and turned it away from God, then, toward every evil, toward impurity, toward unbelief, and toward every desire of the flesh,¹¹ he easily turns them, as people who are in darkness.

When the judgment of reason has been wounded, the poison of sin spreads to the soul’s remaining powers, leaving nothing untouched and nothing unharmed; first of all, the will, which is the appetite of the whole man, is infected with the same poison and suffers many injuries.¹² For it remained turned away from its ultimate end, both natural and supernatural, and consequently without sufficient powers to turn itself by its own strength toward God himself, even insofar as he is the author of nature. Hence it also remained unable to keep the whole natural law and to resist the more serious temptations that arise. Hence, through the habit of sinning, free choice remains more and more weakened, inasmuch as it has voluntarily been handed over to the devil’s power. Thus St. Augustine: I sighed, he says, bound not by another’s iron, but by my own iron will. The enemy held my will, and from it he had made a chain for me and bound me. For from a perverse will came lust; and when lust is served, habit is made; and when habit is not resisted, necessity is made. By these links, as it were, joined one to another—which is why I called it a chain—cruel slavery held me bound.¹³ Origen explains in these words how the soul is affected by various wounds through different sins: Whenever the soul sins, it is wounded; and do not doubt that it is wounded by sin as by darts and swords. Hear the Apostle warning us to take up the shield of faith, with which we can extinguish all the fiery darts of the wicked one. You see, then, that sins are the arrows of the evil one, directed against the soul. The soul also suffers not only wounds from darts, but also fractures of the feet, when snares are laid for its feet and its steps are tripped up. O, if only we could see through each sin how our inner man is continually wounded! The soul is wounded through the tongue, and is wounded through thoughts and evil desires; it is broken and crushed through the deeds of sin. If we could see all these things and feel the scars of the wounded soul, it is certain that we would resist sin unto death.¹⁴

IV. When the will had been bruised and wounded by sin, the other powers and lower faculties also remained infected and weakened, namely the irascible and concupiscible powers. Although God had given these powers to man to aid reason, as a woman is given to a man, when the Lord said, Let us make for him a help like himself, they nevertheless helped reason itself to fall into sin by consenting to it.¹⁵¹⁶ Hence wretched man is stirred by various passions: he fears, grieves, and rejoices over what should not be feared, grieved over, or rejoiced over. Hence Augustine says: A rightly ordered life has all these affections rightly ordered, and a perverse life has them perverted. The elect fear eternal punishment and desire eternal life. They grieve in this life because they still groan within themselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of their body. They rejoice in hope, because the saying that is written will come to pass: Death is swallowed up in victory. Likewise, they fear to sin, desire to persevere, grieve over sins, rejoice in good works, and so on. But the perverse are shaken by these affections, disordered as if by diseases and disturbances.¹⁷¹⁸ Finally, the Apostle, speaking in the person of fallen man: I see, he says, another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive into the law of sin. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?¹⁹ And answering himself, he says, The grace of God through Jesus Christ. Thus we are to understand that these wounds, which human nature incurred through the sin of our first parent, can be healed only through the grace of Jesus Christ.