Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

By the connections of sins I understand their connection or disjunction; equality or inequality; gravity or lightness: that these may be made clear,

Notandum 1. It is certain that not all sins are connected with one another; for some are contrary to others and at variance with them, such as prodigality and avarice, nor is it necessary that one who commits one be said to admit all the rest. For he who steals does not on that account blaspheme against God, nor is he guilty of adultery. Add that since the objects of sins are goods desirable, and these diverse and disparate, there is no need that one who desires one desire the others: nor therefore ought one who is illicitly detained about one object to be engaged also in undue desire about the others. Nor does that saying of St. James, chapter 2, stand against this truth: Whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all: for the sense of that oracle is that whoever transgresses one precept of the divine law becomes a transgressor of the law, which he ought to have fulfilled in its entirety: and he is guilty of all according to something [secundum quid], namely according to aversion from God the lawgiver, who commanded all those precepts, as the same Apostle signifies when he adds: For he that said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, said also, Thou shalt not kill: wherefore he who transgresses one precept seems to depart from the whole law, because he turns away from the author of the law. Or, as St. Augustine expounds, Epistle 21, since the bond of charity is the beginning of the whole law to be kept, and this is lost by one mortal sin, he who offends in one precept is judged guilty of all, because plainly he has not charity: for love is the fulfilling of the law. Or, as others add, he is said to be guilty of all, because he is stripped and despoiled of sanctifying grace, which is the life of the soul, and he incurs the guilt of eternal damnation, as if he had struck in all things. Wherefore I judge that nothing here remains to be said concerning a necessary connection of sins with one another. There occurs, therefore, only this to be determined here, from what source the gravity or lightness of sins, their equality and inequality, must be sought.

Notandum 2. From the Seraphic Doctor, book 2 of the Compendium of Theology, chapter 5: that one sin is said to be greater than another in many ways: namely by causality, as the sin of Lucifer: or by generality, as the sin of Adam: or by deformity, as the sin of Judas: or by difficulty of remission, as sin against the Holy Ghost: or by perilousness, as the sin of ignorance: or by inseparability, as the sin of cupidity: or by proneness, as the sin of the flesh: or by offensiveness, as the sin of idolatry: or by difficulty of expiation, as the sin of pride: or by blindness of mind, as the sin of anger. He admonishes further that there is no sin in the perfect man which is not sin in the imperfect, save in those things which he knows: for perfection does not change the species of sin: but it increases its quantity.

Notandum 3. By the name of the gravity of sin nothing else is understood than a certain manner and measure of malice, by reason of which a sin is said to be more or less disconsonant with rational nature, and also more or less offensive to God. For the moral magnitude of the depravity which inheres in sin is called gravity, and it derives from the fact that, as it were by its weight, it draws sinners from the highest good down to misery. Moreover, a twofold gravity is assigned by Theologians in sin, namely one essential or specific, the other accidental. The accidental is again subdivided into intensive and extensive. The first is that which a sin has from its own depraved species: the other is that which accrues to it accidentally, or which comes upon an act already constituted in its species. The intensive, moreover, is that which it has from the intensification of the act: the extensive, however, is that which it takes either from the duration of the same act, or from the quantity and multiplication of the object, or from other circumstances, to which may be reduced the manner of acting on account of, namely, greater or lesser liberty and advertence.

First Conclusion. — Not all sins are of equal malice, but one is graver than another. This is of faith against the Stoic Philosophers, who, as Tully relates in the third Paradox, taught that all sins are equal, and that he who killed a cock when there was no need sinned no less than he who smothered his father. Various heretics followed them, especially Jovinian, as is evident from St. Jerome, in the book published against him.

And it is proved from Sacred Scripture, which expressly declares one sin greater and graver than another. Thus Lamentations 4: The iniquity of the daughter of my people is made greater than the sin of Sodom. Jeremiah 3: They have wrought worse than their fathers. And John 19, Christ the Lord addressing Pilate, who was gravely sinning in condemning Him to death, says of Judas the traitor: Therefore he that hath delivered me to thee hath the greater sin: it is evident that this same truth holds in all those texts of Scripture, and likewise in the oracles of the Holy Fathers, by which we proved above that some sins are mortal: others venial; and that these are of lighter, those of graver offense.

The same assertion is proved by reason: Sins are specified, since they take their malice from the objects about which they are illicitly engaged, or from the virtues against which they militate: now certain objects befit rational nature more than others do: similarly certain virtues are more excellent than others; and therefore sins too ought to be graver one than another. Then, among virtues and good works there is an inequality of perfection, and they are rewarded diversely and unequally: therefore the same inequality between the vices opposed to them must necessarily be established: for contraries and opposites have the same reason. Finally, a sin is judged graver by how much a greater good it takes away: and the offense is greater by how much worthier a person it afflicts: consequently it is graver to kill a man than to take away his goods unjustly; for life is a more excellent good than any other temporal goods: so too it is worse to blaspheme against God and offer irreverence to Him than to injure a common man; for God infinitely excels man.

You will say 1: Sin is a transgression of a precept: whence the sinner performs the same thing in morals, transgressing the rectitude prescribed by the law, as one who in physics should leap over the fixed terminus of a line: but that transgression consists in an indivisible: and consequently, just as it matters not for leaping over a line whether one recede farther or less far; for either way it is true that he transgresses the fixed terminus: therefore equally since all sins transgress the rule of reason, they must necessarily be equal, although they transgress it more or less — I distinguish the major: sin is a transgression of the law considered only generically and universally, I deny; considered specifically and in the individual, I concede. But since precepts and laws according to their particular reason can be of greater or lesser moment, even their transgressions can be of greater or lesser malice: for although the law considered generically prohibits every sin universally with equal force; nevertheless this or that law considered singly and in particular can prohibit one sin more than another; e.g., avarice more than prodigality, or conversely: therefore although each would be a transgression of the precept of liberality, and would agree in that generic respect, yet one of those transgressions could be of one species and the other of another; and for this reason they can be mutually disconsonant, and one more sinful than the other.

You will say 2: Sin is the privation of rectitude, which ought to inhere in the act: but one privation no more takes away rectitude than any other: therefore one sin is not graver than another. — I deny the minor: for although one privation does not take away rectitude more than another, yet one can take away a better rectitude than another; namely if it be the privation of a nobler virtue: and by reason of this privation, the sin with which it is connected is judged graver than another, not because rectitude is more taken away by it than by another, but because a more excellent rectitude is removed, namely by the taking away of the greater perfection which would have been in the act, if that act had been an act of a nobler virtue.

Second Conclusion. — The gravity and inequality of sins is determined sometimes from opposition to a nobler or less noble virtue: sometimes truly from a more excellent object; sometimes from precepts: and also from certain joined circumstances. This Conclusion has three parts, all of which the Doctor teaches in book 2, dist. 21, q. 2, n. 3, saying: The gravity of sin is concluded either from this, that it is opposed to a more intense goodness: or because the goodness opposed is more necessary, namely because such a sin is more against more precepts, and more arduous ones, than another sin etc. As if he said: the gravity of sin as regards its intrinsic species is determined either from this, that it be opposed to a more perfect goodness, that is, a more excellent virtue; whence it comes that since the perfection of divine love is greater than the perfection of obedience, therefore it is graver to hate God than not to obey Him: and because it is more excellent to obey God than to render to one's neighbor what is his, therefore the sin of disobedience toward God is graver than injustice toward one's neighbor. Or, as he adds, the gravity or lightness of sin is gathered sometimes from this, that it bears upon the act of a virtue which is more necessary by reason of more precepts by which it is commanded or prohibited; thus it is graver not to obey God when He commands something which is to be kept by the law of nature, because it is more necessary, or because the obligation of keeping two precepts, namely positive and natural, is greater and stricter than of keeping one alone.

But that a greater gravity of sin also sometimes arises from circumstances, he teaches in the same place, num. 1, saying: A sin can be aggravated by an accidental circumstance, on account of the excellence and dignity of the person, who on this account ought the more to guard against sin: likewise on account of fortitude and the ability to resist. Whence if two committed one sin: and one did not have so perfect a knowledge of the malice of the sin as the other, nor was so strong to resist, nor had so great an obligation of avoiding the sin, it would follow from those circumstances that his sin would be lighter than the other's.

I have said, however: that sometimes one sin is graver than another from this, that it is opposed to a nobler virtue; for, as Poncius rightly observes in the appendix to dist. 35, num. 101, it is not universally true that a sin is always judged graver from this, that it excludes a more excellent virtue; for the sin of blasphemy is graver than not loving God, when one is bound to elicit an act of love: nevertheless religion, to which blasphemy is opposed, is less perfect than charity, to which the defect of the love of God is opposed. Again, to kill a man is a graver sin than not hearing Mass on a feast day; and yet justice, to which homicide is opposed, is not a virtue more excellent than religion, which obliges to hearing Mass. Finally, prodigality is a greater or lesser vice than avarice, and yet it is not opposed to a more perfect virtue; for each of them, according to the common opinion of the Philosophers, bears upon liberality.

To these add, that sometimes a sin opposed to an inferior virtue by reason of quantity or deliberation is graver than some sin opposed to a nobler virtue in a slight matter, or committed with imperfect advertence and deliberation: thus light negligence against the virtue of religion is a less grave sin than the theft of a thousand gold pieces, which is opposed to justice; for every mortal sin is graver than any venial sin. Similarly, although the virtue be more excellent, yet if its acts are not so necessary, even the omission of them is not so grave as would be the omission of an act more necessary of an interior virtue: thus to omit an act of gratitude or charity lightly necessary is a less sin than to omit an act of restitution most necessary. Hence it comes that concerning the gravity or lightness of sin scarcely any general rules can be laid down: but each must be gathered according to the dictamen of reason, and of a prudent man, sometimes from the more excellent virtue, at other times from the nobler objects upon which the sin bears, sometimes from various concurrent precepts, and also from joined circumstances.