Pints With Aquinas - What is the DEADLIEST Sin? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

Father Pine breaks down what the greatest and gravest of sins is based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar in the province of St. Joseph. Let's see, what do I do? I teach at the Dominican Astro Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pons of the Aquinas. In this episode I'd like to talk about the worst sin or the gravest sin. Why? Well, because sins issue from vices. Vices are opposed to virtues.

Virtues give rise to good acts, meritorious acts, acts that conduct us unto the life of heaven. So, as it turns out, it's helpful to know a little bit about sin and vice so as to inform our practice of meritorious deeds and cultivation of virtue. But also like knowing what the worst or the gravest sin is, is also just interesting in itself.

So let's get after it. Here we go. I'm realizing that this is gonna shape up to be a little bit of a tease. It depends on how the video is entitled, whether it will in fact be a tease. But I'm gonna do my best to be a little bit of a tease here for just a second, because I'm not gonna tell you what the worst sin is. I'm gonna set this up, because I little bit of a tease here for just a second because I'm not gonna tell you what the worst sin is. I'm gonna set this up because I think a lot of people when they ask themselves What's the worst sin or if you're just to grab somebody on the stream be like what is the worst sin? They probably say something like murder

Or at the very least they choose something that does grave harm to other individuals or many other individuals perhaps like genocide would be yeah like corporate murder of a terrible scale okay so the harm that is done to the other is part of the lot you know it's part of the calculus for evaluating the relative gravity or the relative horribleness of a sin so like when it comes to sins perpetrated against your neighbor obviously you know like murder is bad but same time as we'll introduce another variable or another thing

that's important for our calculus for our evaluation of the relative gravity or horribleness of a sin and that's the person against whom you committed. Now we as Americans have very fiercely democratic sensibilities and we're like yeah that doesn't matter like if you do it to the least of persons or the greatest of persons it's still bad but I think that we'd probably be willing to grant that at the very least the person who attacks the president is probably going to go to jail for longer than the person who attacks not the president.

Okay, so you're like, I can see that happening. Okay, well, you know, this is not to say that some people are better than other people at the level of like basic human dignity. It's not what I'm saying. Okay, so we are all made to the image and likeness of God, right? We all evince a dignity attended upon the image and likeness of God. We're all called to participate in the divine life. Okay, good. We've got that established. Now, some people in society ascend to higher ranks, like I have just mentioned the president. St. Thomas, he's working within his medieval setting

and he's probably thinking about the king or whoever else in the ecclesiastical setting, like the bishop or the cardinal or the pope. So when you perpetrate a sin against a person who occupies a more dignified or noble status or like rank in society, that's probably going to end up being worse. But St. Thomas, he's going to use this as a basis for just talking about what moral acts are and the types of objects that they have. So for him, it's going to be determinative. It's going to be super important on the basis of the moral object.

So if you commit a sin which has for its object something bigger, better, bolder, beautifuler making up words here, then that's going to register worse than if you commit a sin against something more humble, modest, limited, whatever. Okay? You see where this is going, right? Do you see where this is going? I hope you see where this is going. Because what we're effectively saying here is that when we commit sins, we're not just committing sins against people, right?

I mean, like human beings. We can also commit sins against God. And for him, that is going to be determinative of relative gravity. So the worst sins are in fact the sins committed against the theological virtues because the theological virtues have God for their object. Okay, now mind you, there are going to be some circumstances where a sin committed against a human being might be worse, alright, because of this, that, or the other that impinges upon the act. But in general, right, abstracting from those circumstances, sins committed against the

theological virtues are going to be worse than sins committed against the moral virtues. Now, St. Thomas lists a bunch of sins against the theological virtues. Let's see if I can name some of them. Okay, so in the treatise on faith, he begins with infidelity, which is kind of like a general category, and then within that general category you got someidelity, which is kind of like a general category, and then within that general category you've got some specifics, which would include heresy, apostasy. So those would be against the act of belief, which is the interior act of faith. But then he says, contrary to the exterior act of faith, confession, you've got blasphemy,

specifically blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And at one point in that treatise he's going to be like, I mean, blasphemy is just about the worst thing that you can do because interiorly you've got some infidelity going on because you're not believing and then with blasphemy you're pronouncing it, you know, you're speaking it aloud, you're joining your whole main strength to that act of infidelity which shows either like a serious anger against God or it shows a

serious commitment to scandal, or it shows a more staunch rejection of belief. But then he keeps going, okay? And then he describes further sins opposed to the theological virtues. So when you arrive at the treatise on hope, for instance, he lists despair and presumption. And he'll say despair is worse than presumption because despair is more opposed to the spirit of hope. Presumption is actually closer to the spirit of hope than is despair because, you know, despair is like an exaggeration of the divine justice and presumption is like an exaggeration of the divine mercy. But it's better to exaggerate

mercy than justice because God tends in the direction of mercy more than of justice. In scare quotes, that requires clarification, but I'm not going to do it. So he'll say, you know, the kind of quintessential sin against faith is infidelity. The quintessential sin against hope is despair, but we haven't yet gotten to charity. And you're thinking, I bet you, I bet you it's against charity. You'd better believe it's against charity because charity is the greatest of virtues because whereas faith goes to God to get something, namely the truth, and whereas hope I bet you it's against charity. You'd better believe it's against charity because charity is the greatest of virtues

because where faith goes to God to get something, namely the truth, and where hope goes to God to get something, namely beatitude, charity goes to God to get God. Because charity is the substance of Christian perfection, it's the highest of virtues, it's what orders and commands all the other virtues besides, it's what renders virtue, truly virtue, simply so-called, and it conducts our whole life unto the love of God, which is the point. So it gets to God who is the ultimate end, who is the highest good, who is beloved friend beyond compare. Alright, so then what would be examples of sins against charity?

Well, you've got hatred, for once, for one, of God and of neighbor. And then you got sloth, sometimes called a chedia. And then you got envy, okay? So, sloth would be like sadness at the divine good. Envy would be like sadness at the good of your neighbor because it represents a threat to you or a diminishment of your own honor and glory and other things besides. And then, same time, so he'll say hatred is just opposed to love, you know, like the principal act of charity. He'll say that sloth and envy are opposed to joy. And then he'll start listening things which are opposed to peace, and he's got a bunch of them. So like dissension for once, for one, or contentiousness, or schism, or war, or quar or quarreling or sedition I want to say

and then he talks about scandal at the end okay so he's got like ten things opposed to charity which is a long list I don't know if I named them all but he'll end up saying that that the quintessential sin against charity is hatred all right so the quintessential sin against faith is infidelity the quintessential sin against hope is despair the quintessential sin against charity is hatred. And I'll be like, alright, which one of these is the worst? And he'll say, yeah, it's not despair because despair is not against God so much as it's against our participation in God, like our share in God.

Infidelity is against God, charity is against God, okay, that's for darn sure. And he's going to end up saying that the sin against charity is worse than the sin against faith because of its peculiar opposition. Okay? So why? Well, here's the thing. Hatred. Hatred of God is the worst possible sin because it's not just the refusal to love, it's actually the contrary. It's a kind of detestation of God. And you might think to yourself, how is that even possible? How can you detest God? Because God's infinite goodness. I mean, God is goodness itself. So the thing is, with hatred of God, you can't have God for the motive of your hatred, because yeah, you're right, God is goodness itself.

But you can wish that God were not, or you could wish that God were not or you could wish that God were otherwise, alright? And you can resent him, hate him on account of the fact that Yeah, he forbids sin and that he punishes transgression That becomes for you a great source of distress or a great source of Discomfiture which gives rise to hatred and basically like it's so You know It's like the quintessential sin because it turns

us from God and that's the point of it, to turn us from God. Now with all sins you're turning from God, like mortal sins I should say, you're turning from God, but it's usually that you're turning to some created good and in the process of turning to some created good you're turning away from God, whereas with hatred you're just turning away from God and you're just turning to whatsoever you darn well please, provided that it's not God because you hate him so. So again, like we said, you can't find the motive of that hatred in God's very essence. Like it's not possible to hate God while beholding him, right? So it's unconscionable that somebody could have the beatific vision and hate him.

But you can have access to something, you can find a motive in that, like I said, that he forbids sin or that he punishes transgression. And plenty of people do. And plenty of people do. But what does this reveal to us about the virtuous life? Are we meant to just identify sins and vices and then just leave it at that because we've got some rank curiosity? No.

It's supposed to reveal to us the life of virtue, and specifically those meritorious acts which issue from it. So I think that we'll often find ourselves in the position of hating God as an arrival point. So St. Thomas will talk about it, and he'll ask the question I should say about whether hatred is a capital vice, and he'll say no, because we call those vices capital vices, which give rise to other vices, like the head vices, as it were. But he says this is not a head vice, it's tail vice. It's the type of vice at which you arrive at the end of a long life of sin. It represents the kind of blinding of the mind and dulling of the heart to a point of

utter detestation or finding God to be odious. And I think that you might ask yourself, like, how could this arise? What might somebody do in order to arrive at such a state? Here I think of the story of Graham Greene, who was Catholic but struggled with the virtue of chastity for a long time. At one point he was at San Giovanni Rotunda where Padre Pio was celebrating mass and he was there with his mistress and Padre Pio invited him to meet

after the mass and he said no. Graham Greene said no. And the reason for which he said no, he was later asked and he replied to the question, was he goes something along the lines of, I knew he was a saint and I suspected that were I to meet a saint he might cause me to change my life. So what we come to discover is that hatred of God usually arises from a certain fixity on other things from which we cannot detach ourselves and it gradually hardens or ossifies into a hatred, right? That we can, you know, at the end of our days find ourselves in such a position because we've built our lives on another foundation and we've implicated our hearts or we've kind of bound our hearts up with other goods. And so I think it becomes an occasion for us to say like, what do I love? Like, what do I truly love? And is there something which is kind of clogging the pipes or getting in the way as it were, posing obstacles or hindrances to the love of God. And why? Like, what do I fear?

What do I resent? What have I yet to forgive? Or how could I possibly address whatever it is that stands in the way? Because I don't want this to, you know, harden or ossify into a hatred. I want to continually chip away at it. I want to continually bring it before the healing grace of God so that way it can flourish, that I can observe the opposite trajectory in my life and grow into all the fullness of the love of God which lies in store for those whom God is so very ready to lavish his, you know, his great gifts upon. So

yeah, we're seeking to grow in the virtue of charity because it's just about the only thing that matters insofar as St. John of the Cross says, in the evening of life we'll be judged on love alone. So there at the heart of the church we seek with St. Therese to be loved and being on the lookout for anything which might eventuate in a kind of hatred, either for resentment or unforgiveness or otherwise some other disposition which could give rise to it. So that's what I was hoping to say. I hope that's helpful for you in some way, shape, or form. This is Pines for the Quinus. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell

and get email updates when other things come out. Also check out God Splitting, which is a podcast to which I contribute with four of the Dominican friars. We did a series on the seven deadly sins, and though hatred is not one of the seven deadly sins, the seven deadly sins do feature into this kind of logic of the spiritual organism and the ways by which we seek to heal and grow beyond the effects of sin and unto the fullness of virtue. And then lastly, I wrote a book. It's called Prudence. Choose confidently, live boldly. It has nothing to do with the hatred of God, but it has everything to do with making good decisions and feeling certain and confident of the course of your life.

So that's all I got. Know what my prayer is for you. Please pray for me and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.