Whether a more convenient account of the traduction of concupiscence can be given than we gave as original sin's third part
Article X. Whether a more convenient account of the transmission of concupiscence can be given than we gave as original sin's third part.
1. Those who reject the common view — that the soul is infected from a body disposed to sin — fall into four classes. First: Traducians, who attack soul-creation and claim their foundations yield a far safer account of sin's traduction than ours. Of them later.
2. Second class: they say a human naturally consists of flesh and spirit, sharing nature with beasts and with angels. By flesh he has a propensity to corporal, sensible good via sense and appetite; by spirit, to spiritual, intelligible good via intellect and will. From these contrary propensities, flowing necessarily from essential principles, they posit a fight between sense and reason and from it a huge difficulty of acting well.
3. Second, they say providence at creation added original justice as a golden bridle to remedy that diseased languor arising from the essential principles, holding sensitive appetite under reason.
4. Third, after the fall Adam lost that gift; so now concupiscence flows partly from the soul's essential constitution (sensitive and rational parts) and partly from lack of the original justice that subjected sense to intellect.
5. Our theologians rightly reject this. First: it underwrites the absurd dogma that concupiscence in the regenerate after baptism is not sin but a natural disease. Second: calling the sensitive appetite's rebellion natural insults God — as if the most holy God who hates sin impressed on human nature at creation a propensity to sin and to dishonest objects. Third: Bellarmine himself admits (Loss of Grace 5) that vicious concupiscence is also in the will, prone to honors, empty glory, and objects pleasant to sense and displeasing to reason — though it once held the contrary naturally. Here Bellarmine sticks until he takes our view of concupiscence in the regenerate.
6. Answering us (Grace of the First Human 7), Bellarmine says fleshly concupiscence was natural in the first state not as a good of nature but as a defect or disease following from matter's condition. So it is rightly called not from God, hate-worthy, evil, contrary to nature: it would have existed beside the author's intention if humans were created in pure naturals; and God had removed it, and by human fault it has place in us.
7. Crass and absurd. First: rebellion from nature yet not from God, nature's fount, is a contradiction. Second: God cannot produce what is contrary to his nature — goodness itself and propensity to good, contrary to propensity to evil. Third: on Bellarmine's view the supernatural gift of justice did not remove the sensitive appetite's natural propensity against reason's order (that would overturn its nature) but only restrained actual resistance. So Adam in integrity already had a propensity to evil in his appetite, though not yet broken into acts — and so was stained with original sin. What else is original sin than propensity to evil?
Latin
ART. X. An possit reddi commodior aliqua, aut expeditior ratio traductionis concupiscentiae, seu propensionis ad malum, quam diximus esse tertiam partem peccati originalis. 1. Qui communem sententiam de infectione animae a corpore ad peccandum disposito spernunt & rejiciunt, illi ad quatuor classes seu ordines vocari & reduci possunt. Primo enim, Traduciarii, qui animarum creationem impugnant, firmissime asseverant se ex suae sententiae fundamentis posse reddere longe meliorem & tutiorem rationem traductionis peccati quam nos, qui animarum creationem defendimus: de his postea. 2. Secundo, sunt qui dicunt hominem naturaliter constare ex carne & spiritu, & ideo partim cum bestiis, partim cum Angelis communicare naturam: & quidem ratione carnis & communionis cum bestiis, habere propensionem quandam ad bonum corporale & sensibile, in quod fertur per sensum & appetitum; ratione spiritus & communionis cum Angelis, habere propensionem ad bonum spirituale & intelligibile, in quod fertur per intellectum & voluntatem. Ex his autem diversis vel contrariis propensionibus in uno eodemque homine naturaliter seu per necessariam consecutionem ex principiis essentialibus, existere volunt pugnam quandam inter sensum & rationem, & ex ea pugna ingentem bene agendi difficultatem, dum una propensio alteram impedit. 3. Dicunt secundo, divinam providentiam, initio creationis, ut remedium adhiberet huic morboso languori naturae humanae, qui ex conditione principiorum essentialium oriebatur, addidisse homini donum quoddam insigne, justitiam videlicet originalem, qua veluti aureo quodam freno appetitus sensitivus contineretur & rationi subjiceretur. 4. Dicunt tertio, post lapsum Adamum amisisse illud donum originale, & proinde nunc in nobis concupiscentiam seu propensionem ad malum dimanare ex ipsa animae constitutione essentiali, qua constituitur ex parte sensitiva & parte rationali; partim ex carentia originalis justitiae, quae partem sensitivam parti intellectivae subjiciebat. 5. Haec doctrina merito rejicitur a nostris Theologis. Primo, quia est fundamentum absurdi illius dogmatis de concupiscentia in renatis, quod videlicet post baptismum non sit peccatum, sed morbus & languor quidam naturae. Secundo, quia falso asserit rebellionem appetitus sensitivi contra rationem & ejus directionem esse naturalem: nam illi qui hoc asserunt DEO contumeliosi sunt, dicentes DEUM illum sanctissimum, qui peccatum odit & exsecratur, ipsi naturae humanae in prima creatione indidisse impetum tam rebellem & iniquum, videlicet propensionem ad peccandum, & talia ac inhonesta objecta appetendum. Tertio, quia (fatente Bellarmino ipso, lib. 5. de amissione gratiae) vitiosa illa concupiscentia non solum est in appetitu sensitivo qui rationi resistit, sed etiam in voluntate quae prona est ad concupiscendos honores, inanem gloriam, & appetendum illa objecta quae sensui jucunda sunt & rationi displicent, cum prius contrario modo se habuerit, idque naturaliter. Hic haeret Bellarminus, & aeternum haerebit, donec nostram sententiam de concupiscentia in renatis amplexus fuerit. 6. Bellarminus ad secundam rationem a nobis jam allatam respondens, lib. de gratia primi hominis cap. 7., concupiscentiam (inquit) carnis fuisse homini in primo statu naturalem, non quidem ut bonum aliquod naturae, sed ut defectum & quasi morbum quendam naturae ex materiae conditione consequentem. Quare rectissime dicitur concupiscentiam non esse ex DEO, odio non amore dignam, malam, naturaeque contrariam, propter duas causas: primum quia non ex intentione authoris naturae sed praeter ejus intentionem in homine extitisset, si in puris naturalibus homo creatus fuisset; deinde quia DEUS illam sustulerat, & ex ipsius hominis culpa locum in nobis habet. 7. Haec doctrina Bellarmini nimis crassa & absurda est. Primo, quia dicit hanc rebellionem esse a natura, & tamen non esse a DEO, qui fons est & causa naturae — manifestam contradictionem implicat. Secundo, quia DEUS non potest producere aliquid suae naturae contrarium; natura enim DEI sicut est ipsa bonitas, ita est ipsa propensio ad bonum, & proinde contrariatur propensioni ad malum. Tertio, donum illud supernaturale justitiae, ex sententia Bellarmini, non sustulit naturalem propensionem appetitus sensitivi ad concupiscendum contra ordinem rationis — sic enim ipsam naturam appetitus sensitivi evertisset — sed tantum eam cohibuit ne actu resisteret rationi & aliquid appeteret contra rationis directionem: Ergo Adamus in statu integritatis habuit in appetitu suo propensionem ad malum, quamvis nondum erupisset in actus & exercitia istius propensionis, & per consequens originali peccato inquinatus fuit; quid enim aliud est peccatum originale, quam propensio ad malum?
About this text
Robert Baron, Philosophia Theologiae Ancillans (Philosophy in Service to Theology): the first exercise, on being and essence, and the second, on the origin of the soul and the spread of sin — newly rendered from Latin. Later exercises are not in this volume.
English follows locked 1658 Oxford Latin. Prima Art. I-XII from IA PDF leaves ~15-53. Secunda Art. I-XV from PDF leaves 56-107 / printed pp.54-105 (tess+pdftotext+DjVu). No modern English copied. Exercitatio Tertia+ remain.
Catalogue & scope
Wing B887. IA bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_philosophia-theologi-an_baron-robert_1658. Exercitatio Prima Art. I-XII; Exercitatio Secunda Art. I-XV (De origine animae & propagatione peccati). Not whole Philosophia (213 pp). Exercitatio Tertia+ remain.
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