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1. By original sin man was despoiled of the gratuitous
gifts. This doctrine is of faith. Man lost sanctifying
grace and the annexed gifts. This privation of grace as
the habitual aversion from God and as voluntary by the
will of the head of the human race has the nature of
guilt, but when it is inflicted by God it is a penalty.
Man lost also the four preternatural gifts that belong to
integrity: immunity from death, from pain, from
concupiscence, and from ignorance. He was reduced to the
servitude of the devil and sin, from which he cannot be
freed except by grace.
2. Man was wounded in his natural endowments, although
he preserved his nature and the nature of his faculties.
The Second Council of Orange[1616] and the
Council of Trent[1617] say that "in body and soul
man was changed for the worse"; and the Council of
Trent adds that his "free will was weakened and deformed
in its exercise."[1618]
St. Thomas and theologians in general enumerate four
wounds of the soul: "Inasmuch as reason was deprived of
its order to truth we have the wound of ignorance;
inasmuch as the will was deprived of the order to good we
have the wound of malice; inasmuch as the irascible
appetite was deprived of its order to the difficult we have
the wound of weakness; inasmuch as concupiscence was
deprived of the order to the delectable moderated by reason
we have the wound of concupiscence."[1619]
Doubt. Whether man is weaker to accomplish moral good of
the natural order in the state of unredeemed fallen nature
than he would have been in the state of pure nature. In
other words, does the wounding of nature consist only in
the loss of the gratuitous gifts, or does it include the
weakening of the natural powers?
There are three principal opinions.
1. Some theologians hold that the powers of fallen man
have been intrinsically reduced by his positive habit of
being inclined to changeable goods. Such is the opinion
of Henry of Ghent, Gabriel Biel, and certain ancient
writers. The Jansenists held an exaggerated form of this
opinion.
2. Others hold that man's powers for moral good have in
no way been diminished. This view is held by Suarez,
Bellarmine, and by the theologians of the Society of
Jesus, among them, Mazzella, Palmieri, and Pesch.
3. Others teach that the natural powers of fallen man
have been weakened, not intrinsically,—but
extrinsically, because of the placing of an obstacle.
This is the opinion of Thomists in general: Alvarez,
Lemos, John of St. Thomas, Contenson, the
Salmanticenses, Goudin, Billuart, Gonet in his
Clypeus, in which he amended what he had taught earlier
in his Manual, St. Alphonsus, and Tanquerey.
This last opinion seems to be more in accord with the
doctrine of St. Thomas; the first opinion sins by
excess, and the second by defect. St. Thomas proposes
the question, whether sin diminishes the good of nature.
He replies by explaining the words of Venerable Bede,
"Man was despoiled of the gratuitous gifts and wounded in
his natural powers." "The good of nature," St.
Thomas says, "is threefold. First, the principles of
nature, by which are constituted the nature itself and the
properties caused by these principles, such as the powers
of the soul. Secondly, because man has from nature an
inclination to virtue, as we said above,[1620] the
inclination to virtue is itself a certain good of nature.
Thirdly, the gift of original justice, which was given
to the whole human race in the first man, can be called a
good of nature."
"The first good of nature is not lost nor is it
diminished by sin. The third good of nature is completely
lost by the sin of our first parent. But the second good
of nature, the natural inclination to virtue, is
diminished by sin."[1621] Following this, St.
Thomas treats of the four wounds "inflicted on all human
nature by the sin of the first man."
What is the extrinsic impediment which diminishes the
powers of the soul? Many Thomists reply as follows:
The faculties of the soul and its properties, like the
essence of the soul itself, do not admit of reduction or
increase, because they are entirely spiritual and
therefore incorruptible and unalterable. They cannot
therefore suffer intrinsic diminution. But in the state
of fallen nature man is born habitually and directly averse
to God his supernatural end, and indirectly averse to
God his ultimate natural end, since every sin that is
directly opposed to the supernatural law is indirectly
opposed to the natural law, commanding us to obey God in
everything. When Adam sinned, he turned all his
posterity away from God the author of nature.
In the state of pure nature this aversion would not have
existed because there had been no sin and man would have
been born capable of positive conversion to God and of
aversion to God. Hence in the state of pure nature man
would have been more capable of turning to God than the
man who is born with an aversion to God. This aversion
is a wounding of the will, which, as St. Thomas says,
"is deprived of the order to good."[1622] Thus we
see how man's free will is "weakened in its powers and
inclined (to evil)," in the words of the Council of
Trent. From this follows the wound of ignorance,
particularly in the practical intellect, because everyone
arrives at a practical judgment according to his
inclination. If this inclination is not right, the
intellect is inclined to error. Similarly the wounds of
weakness and concupiscence follow in the sensitive
appetite, because the higher faculties are not strong
enough to direct the sensitive appetite as they should.
Hence fallen man is compared to man in the state of pure
nature not only as a stripped man to a naked man but as a
wounded man to a healthy man.[1623]
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