Pints With Aquinas - 05: Are wet dreams/sexual dreams sinful?

Episode Date: April 26, 2016

"Nocturnal pollution may be considered in two ways. First, in itself; and thus it has not the character of a sin. For every sin depends on the judgment of reason, since even the first movement of the sensuality has nothing sinful in it, except in so far as it can be suppressed by reason; wherefore in the absence of reason's judgment, there is no sin in it. Now during sleep reason has not a free judgment. For there is no one who while sleeping does not regard some of the images formed by his imagination as though they were real, as stated above in the FP, Q[84], A[8], ad 2. Wherefore what a man does while he sleeps and is deprived of reason's judgment, is not imputed to him as a sin, as neither are the actions of a maniac or an imbecile. Secondly, nocturnal pollution may be considered with reference to its cause. This may be threefold. One is a bodily cause. For when there is excess of seminal humor in the body, or when the humor is disintegrated either through overheating of the body or some other disturbance, the sleeper dreams things that are connected with the discharge of this excessive or disintegrated humor: the same thing happens when nature is cumbered with other superfluities, so that phantasms relating to the discharge of those superfluities are formed in the imagination. Accordingly if this excess of humor be due to a sinful cause (for instance excessive eating or drinking), nocturnal pollution has the character of sin from its cause: whereas if the excess or disintegration of these superfluities be not due to a sinful cause, nocturnal pollution is not sinful, neither in itself nor in its cause. A second cause of nocturnal pollution is on the part of the soul and the inner man: for instance when it happens to the sleeper on account of some previous thought. For the thought which preceded while he was awake, is sometimes purely speculative, for instance when one thinks about the sins of the flesh for the purpose of discussion; while sometimes it is accompanied by a certain emotion either of concupiscence or of abhorrence. Now nocturnal pollution is more apt to arise from thinking about carnal sins with concupiscence for such pleasures, because this leaves its trace and inclination in the soul, so that the sleeper is more easily led in his imagination to consent to acts productive of pollution. In this sense the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 13) that "in so far as certain movements in some degree pass" from the waking state to the state of sleep, "the dreams of good men are better than those of any other people": and Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xii, 15) that "even during sleep, the soul may have conspicuous merit on account of its good disposition." Thus it is evident that nocturnal pollution may be sinful on the part of its cause. on the other hand, it may happen that nocturnal pollution ensues after thoughts about carnal acts, though they were speculative, or accompanied by abhorrence, and then it is not sinful, neither in itself nor in its cause. The third cause is spiritual and external; for instance when by the work of a devil the sleeper's phantasms are disturbed so as to induce the aforesaid result. Sometimes this is associated with a previous sin, namely the neglect to guard against the wiles of the devil. Hence the words of the hymn at even: "Our enemy repress, that so our bodies no uncleanness know" [*Translation W. K. Blount]. On the other hand, this may occur without any fault on man's part, and through the wickedness of the devil alone. Thus we read in the Collationes Patrum (Coll. xxii, 6) of a man who was ever wont to suffer from nocturnal pollution on festivals, and that the devil brought this about in order to prevent him from receiving Holy Communion. Hence it is manifest that nocturnal pollution is never a sin, but is sometimes the result of a previous sin." ST II-II. Q 154. A5. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. 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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, Episode 5. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we'll ask St. Thomas the question, Are wet dreams sinful? Yep, you heard correctly. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor and discuss theology and philosophy. Not sure if I shocked you with today's topic,

but that is what we're going to talk about. Wet dreams, or more broadly, very sexualized dreams. Is this something that St. Thomas Aquinas really addresses in the Summa? Yep, he does. And that's what we're going to be talking about. He addresses it in the second part. Here we go, second part of the second part, question 154, article 5. Now, when St. Thomas talks about it, he calls them nocturnal pollutions, right? Nocturnal meaning night, pollution meaning, well, I don't know what he says. Nocturnal emission is sometimes what we refer to wet dreams as. So he's responding to this question. People are saying, look, isn't it a sin because you can get merit or demerit during sleep? That's one of the objections that comes up here.

Just like Solomon, for example, while he was asleep, he obtained the gift of wisdom from the Lord. Therefore, a man may demerit while asleep, and thus nocturnal pollution would seem to be a sin. That's one of the things that is objected. Let's just quickly see what Aquinas' response to that one is. He says, Solomon did not merit to receive wisdom from God while he was asleep. He received it in token of his previous desire. He says, Solomon did not merit to receive wisdom from God while he was asleep. He received it in token of his previous desire. It is for this reason that his petition is stated to have been pleasing to God.

Very nice, Aquinas. All right, are you ready? Are you ready to hear the bulk of his answer? By the way, in case you're dying to know, let me quickly tell you, the answer St. Thomas is going to give is no, it is not a sin to have a wet dream and it's not a sin to have a sexualized dream. Now let's explain. He says, quote, nocturnal pollution. Okay, that's just going to get weird. I'm going to say wet dream. Okay, I'm just going to substitute wet dream. Here we go. Quote, wet dreams may be considered in two ways. First, in itself, and thus it has not the character of a sin. For every sin depends on the judgment of reason, since even the first movement of the sensuality has nothing sinful in it, except insofar as it can be suppressed by reason. Wherefore, in the absence of reason's judgment,

there is no sin in it. All right. That was very deep and very beautiful. Do you hear what he's saying here? Where there is no act of the will, there is no sin. This is what he's saying, huh? And did you see what he said there? He's talking about even those first movements of sensuality has nothing sinful in it. Very interesting. I think too often we can get very scrupulous where maybe a thought will come back to our mind from something we've seen, or perhaps something flashes on the screen, or we see a billboard and we have this temptation of sensuality, well, there's no sin in that. And what does he say here? He says, it's not a sin except insofar as it can be suppressed by reason. And so, of course, Aquinas' point is when we are sleeping, we do not have

that option. All right, let's continue. Quote, now during sleep, reason has not a free judgment. For there is no one who, while sleeping, does not regard some of the images formed by his imagination as though they were real. Wherefore, what a man does while he sleeps and is deprived of reason's judgment is not imputed to him as a sin, as neither are the actions of a maniac or an imbecile. So the reasons, you know, a maniac might do something horrific, an imbecile might do something stupid or imprudent, but we don't say that the maniac is culpable for his sin because he's out of his mind. is culpable for his sin because he lacks the maturity or the judgment due to physiological reasons, perhaps suffering from maybe a mental defect or something, such that he just can't be culpable for sin. All right, let's continue here. Quote, is disintegrated either through overheating of the body or some other disturbance, the sleeper dreams things that are connected with the discharge of this excessive or disintegrated,

let's just call it semen, okay? He doesn't use that word, but semen. The same thing happens when nature is cumbered with other superfluities. So the phantasms relating to the discharge of those superfluities are formed in the imagination. Accordingly, if this excess of semen be due to a sinful cause, and here he says something that if I understand him correctly, I don't think it's scientifically accurate. Okay, so he's saying, accordingly, if this excess of semen is the result of, and here he says, excessive eating or drinking. So, you know, I'm not a medical doctor, but I don't think that that's why we get a buildup of semen. Please, if you're out there and you are, correct me if I'm wrong, but Aquinas might be wrong on this. Let's just finish his sentence

and then we'll maybe say something else that might apply instead. Okay, so let's go back. Accordingly, if this excess of semen be due to a sinful cause, for instance, excessive eating or drinking, wet dreams have the character of sin from its cause, whereas if the excess of disintegration of these superfluities be not due to a sinful cause, nocturnal pollution, wet dreams, is not sinful neither in itself nor in its cause. Let's stop. Let's break that down. Okay, so Aquinas is saying, you know, if you go to sleep, you have a wet dream, that's

not sinful. But when he's talking about we can consider this wet dream from its cause, he's now talking about something we may be culpable for, let's say during the day, which brings on this wet dream. But even then, it's not the wet dream that's the sin, it's the thing we did during the day. Now, he hypothesizes that, it looks like he's saying like the body being heated or excessive eating or drinking can lead to this. Well, I don't think that's necessarily true. If it is, then okay, we've committed the sin of gluttony. Perhaps what we can do though is we can modify it a little bit and say that maybe not eating or drinking excessively led to this, but perhaps

we've been doing things during the day that have created this sort of sexual tension within us. I speak to a lot of high schools and to a lot of colleges, and I'll very often have people come up to me and complain about all of the sexual tension they're experiencing. And they talk about how it is so hard to be sexually pure. Now, if I'm not mistaken, I heard this from Jason Everett somewhere. I forget where. I think it was off one of his CD sets on pornography. But he brought up this point. He said, very often, we are the cause of this sexual tension we complain about. Okay. So for example, dear listener, okay. If you're one of these people who complains about all of the sexual tension going on in your life, let me ask you this. Over the past week, how many softcore sex scenes have you watched? Game of Thrones, anybody? How many hardcore sex

scenes have you watched? Maybe you have been looking at porn occasionally. How many music videos have you seen that, let's face it, are pornographic? Or how many songs have you listened to whose lyrics are vulgar and sexualized? How many conversations have you been in that haven't been pure? These things can contribute to this sexual tension we complain about. Whereas if we were to remove these obstacles, these things which fuel our sexual tension, we may begin to see some, not all, but some of this sexual tension go away. Okay. So, what we can understand Thomas to be saying here is, if you've been like looking at this sort of stuff, subjecting yourself to this immoral content, okay, then that might be the cause of this nocturnal omission, this wet dream. And in

that case, you should repent of subjecting yourself to that sexual material, okay, that inappropriate pornographic material. So that might be the cause of your wet dream, but the wet dream of itself isn't something you need to confess. All right, let's continue. Here he goes. A second cause of wet dreams is on the part of the soul and the inner man. For instance, when it happens to the sleeper on account of some previous thought, for the thought which preceded while he was awake is sometimes purely speculative. For instance, when one thinks about the sins of the flesh for the purpose of discussion, while sometimes it's accompanied by a certain emotion, either of

concupiscence or abhorrence. Now, a wet dream is more apt to arise from thinking about carnal sins with concupiscence for such pleasures, because this leaves its trace and inclination in the soul, so that the sleeper is more easily led in his imagination to consent to acts productive of pollution, having a wet dream. productive of pollution, having a wet dream. In this sense, the philosopher says, and by the way, side note here, whenever St. Thomas Aquinas says the philosopher, who's he referring to? That's right, Aristotle. That's who he's referring to. So here he's quoting Aristotle from the Ethics, who says, quote, insofar as certain movements in some degrees pass, unquote, from the waking state to the state of sleep, the dreams of good men are better than those of other people. Okay, that's him quoting from Aristotle and he's about to quote Augustine. And Augustine says

that, quote, even during sleep, the soul may have a concupis merit. I didn't get that right. Conspicuous, sorry, may have conspicuous merit on account of its good disposition, end quote. Thus, it is evident that nocturnal pollution, wet dreams, may be sinful on the part of its cause. On the other hand, it may happen that wet dreams ensues after thoughts about carnal acts, though they were speculative or accompanied by abhorrence, and then it is not sinful, neither in itself nor in its cause. Did that make sense to you? If not, let me break it down in a couple of sentences. He's saying something similar to the point I mentioned earlier. down in a couple of sentences. He's saying something similar to the point I mentioned earlier. He says, having this wet dream may be a result of having carnal thoughts, having thoughts about sexuality. Now, there's a way in which we can think about sexuality that is not sinful,

and there is a way in which we can think about sexuality that is. If the latter, then that is the cause, which, as I said earlier, we ought to repent of. If the former, it is not a sin. What do I mean? Okay. So I speak about sex a lot, actually. I am the founder of the pornefact.com. If you're not familiar with that, you should be, the pornefact.com. I speak a lot about pornography and chastity to high school students. Now, when I do that, I've got to talk about certain things, sometimes on the beauty of human sexuality. Someone might have a question about, let's say, oral sex or something like that. So, when I'm addressing these issues, I'm not doing it in a way where concupiscence, that is the desire to sin, is being brought up in me. Rather, I'm addressing it in a sort of academic and pure way.

And so, let's say a conversation I had during the day with a teenager in a pure way, that thought got stuck in my mind and later on I had a wet dream. Okay, the wet dream is not sinful, neither is the cause. But if I thought about it in an inappropriate and sinful way, then as I say earlier, that is sinful. Okay, continue Aquinas. The third cause is spiritual and external. Now, I'm not going to read everything he has to say here because I think I can summarize it. At this point, he says it could be on part of a spiritual attack. So maybe the devil puts thoughts into our minds in a way that leads us to think about these things and therefore have a wet dream. But of course, even in that instance, the will isn't activated and so we haven't sinned.

There you go. We just spent about 15 minutes talking about wet dreams. Now, Father Sean Kilcoley is a priest from the Diocese of Lincoln in Nebraska and he wrote recently on my website about this very issue. And he says, and I agree with him, that actually having a wet dream can be a sign not of impurity, but of purity. What does he mean? Here's what he says, quote, for someone who has had a history of pornography and masturbation, a wet dream is actually a sign of progress. It's a sign that they have maintained chaste consonants for a period of time. When working with young people

who are trying to break free from pornography, wet dreams are a sign of purity, not of sinfulness. from pornography, wet dreams are a sign of purity, not of sinfulness. In many cases, the first wet dream a man experiences comes after gaining sobriety in adulthood. So there you go. Rest assured it's not a sin. I hope that was a help for you. As we wrap up today's episode, it seems appropriate that we offer a prayer that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote regarding chastity. So if you'd like to pray it with me, we could begin by making the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear Jesus, I know that every perfect gift, and especially that of chastity, depends on the power of your providence. Without you, a mere creature can do nothing.

Therefore, I beg you to defend by your grace the chastity and purity of my body and soul. And if I've ever sensed or imagined anything that could stain my chastity and purity, blot it out, supreme Lord of my powers, that I may advance with a pure heart in your love and service, offering myself on the most pure altar of your divinity all the days of my life. Amen. In the name of the Father and and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you very much for listening today. If you've been listening to the previous podcasts I've put out, you probably know what I'm about to say to you, and that's this. I would really appreciate it if you could rate this podcast. I want to share with you just a couple of the reviews that we've received so far.

Here's one. S. M. S. Melson, whatever, whoever that is, said this, quote, I'm really excited about this podcast. It's straightforward, practical, and substantive. A podcast the angelic doctor would appreciate, end quote. Well, that is quite a compliment. I do hope he would appreciate it. At the very least, I hope I'm not butchering his meaning. Here's another one from a guy called Deathwinger. How's that for a name? Deathwinger. He says this, or she, I guess.

the deep end of the pool just yet. Great short podcast that do not distract and get to the points that are being conveyed. We'll recommend to any friends who would be interested. Very kind of you. Thank you so much. If you haven't rated the show yet, please go to iTunes and rate it. I know it's just a few clicks for you, but it means a lot to me. Thank you so much. And finally, follow me on Twitter at Matt Fradd and visit me at my website mattfradd.com May God bless you you you you you you you you you you