Venial Sin and Its Final Goal

VENIAL SIN AND ITS FINAL GOAL THE question of the ultimate end of venial sin is one of the minor speculative problems in the theology of sin which has engaged the attention of scholars from the days of St. Thomas down to our own. Many solutions have been proposed but none of them, apparently, has proved fully satisfactory, They have failed to carry conviction to their readers , and perhaps to their authors as welt Their very number and intricacy seem to hint that there is something wrong with the approach to the problem, It may look strange but the case is not uncommon for so ordinary a thing as our daily faults to have been for centuries a crux theologorum. The problem is wont to be formulated as follows: 1 Every voluntary act must needs intend or be directed towards an ultimate goaL But venial sin is not directed to an ultimate end that is evil, else it would no longer be a venial but a mortal sin, Nor does it, apparently, aim at the true final end, God: if it did, it would not be a sin. What, then, is its goal? The history of the solutions up to SL Thomas inclusively was written some thirty years ago by A. Landgraf.2 A more recent study of J. J, Fajardo 3 completed that history for the 16th and 17th centuries. Brief systematic studies in our days have asked and answered the question anew.4 But who has felt satisfied 1 Ct Th. Deman, art. "Peche," Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique XII (19~8), !'t87-Q44,-Peche veniel et fin derniere, St. Thomas' solution (288-241) is contrasted with that of other theologians (241-248), 2 Das Wesen des liisslichen Sunde in der Scholastik bis Thomas von Aquin, Bamberg , 1926. Cf. M. de la Taille, "Le peche veniel dans la theologie de S. Thomas d'Aquin d'apres un livre recent," in Cfregorianum 7 (1926), QS-48; R. Schultes, review in Bulletin Thomiste I (1924-), 136-142; Deman, op. cit., 244. 3 La esencia del peccado venial en la segunda edad de oro de la teologia escolastica . Granada, 1944. ·. • R. Garrigou~.Lagrange, " La fin ultime du peche veniel," in Revue Thomiste 29 (1924), 818-817; M. de Ia Taille, op. cit.; F. Zimmem:fimti, "Das Wesen des lasslichen Sunde," in Divus Thomas (Fribourg) 12 (1984), 408-441; A. J. McNichol!, "The 32 VENIAL SIN AND ITS FINAL GOAL 83 with these solutions often involved and based on distinctions which look as if they had been invented for the sake of getting out of a quandary? Why is it so? Why have seemingly all endeavors at a real solution failed? Would it not perhaps be because the question is asked the wrong way, or because the wrong question is asked? The history of theology has shown similar cases of insoluble problems. Students of apologetics know the thorny question of the analysis fidei: how to resolve the assent of the faith into the reasons of credibility. After many and all more or less unsatisfactory answers, the solution which today seems to prevail more and more is the one which maintains that the assent of divine faith need not, and cannot, be reduced to its motives of credibility; there is and ought to be a breach between the assent of credibility and the act of faith. Could a similar fate possibly befall the problem of the final goal of venial sin? The point at issue. It is important to formulate the problem in a correct manner. 0. Lottin 5 recently noted the different perspectives in which St. Thomas on the one hand and his commentators on the other envisage the question. St. Thomas, he says, studies the problem from a moral viewpoint only. His commentators shifted it onto the metaphysical level. The former merely examines the intention of the moral agent who happens to commit a venial sin. The latter consider the metaphysical necessity of the final causality without which no act of the will is possible; all that a man strives after he necessarily wills by virtue of his desire of the last End; and this must also be the case of venial...