To Acknowledge the Existence of Sin is to Claim We Understand

If an adult were to make a general examination of conscience based on a list of virtues or vices, I believe he would find himself guilty of failing in each virtue and committing each vice. Thus, the motive with which he has acted or failed to act in some instance, however minor, is the same motive by which the most heinous violation of each virtue or commission of each vice has been perpetrated in human history. Except for Jesus and the Immaculate Conception, no adult from this perspective can throw the proverbial first stone (Jn 8:7).

Of course, we have an excuse for every sin. My favorite covers them all, “Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell, and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy?” (Henry IV: Part 1, Act 3, Scene 3). Adam had no excuse. He had no unruly emotions, no inclination to sin, no bad habits. He had nothing to gain, but false pride. Yet, he sinned.

Before the fall, Adam knew only goodness. Satan proposed to Adam that he ought to know evil as well as good. After sinning, Adam knew evil, i.e. he now had the experience of evil, like the gods, the fallen angels, just as Satan promised (Gn 3:5). With that original sin, our father left us our inheritance, each one of us a poor Jack or Jill Falstaff, with our emotions and desires insubordinate to what we know is true and good.

Although offering excuses may be a fault in itself, it does indicate some acknowledgment of responsibility. In an attempt to reduce culpability, offering an excuse recognizes sin as sin. To recognize sin as sin acknowledges that entities are what they are because sin is their abuse.

The contemporary trend is to deny the existence of sin by denying that entities have natures, which we can understand.  Rather it is human desire which determines what an entity is. If entities are what we want them to be, then there can be no sin, except in a clash of wills.

Two Modern, Yet Ancient, Ways of Denying the Existence of Sin

The Ethics of Modern Hedonism

Hedonism is the philosophy that consists of one rule, having a positive and a negative expression: Seek pleasure. Avoid pain.

In his Regensburg address, Benedict XVI traced the modern triumph of the will over the intellect in western thought, by which modern western thought parallels a basic tenet of Islam, namely that the will of God is independent of his intellect.

The superiority of the will is a variant of Hedonism. There is no rationality associated with the entities which are the means to our pleasure. We are like brute animals, which have no intellect to discipline their appetites and emotions. Sexual ethics degenerates into one rule: Avoid the subjugation of another’s will to one’s own appetite.

Respect for Hedonism was highlighted as a virtue on the Fox News’ Megyn Kelly show on April 22nd. In the news item, a male university student was presented as virtuous in that he stopped acts prospective to intercourse when his partner said they should desist because she was not using medicinal contraception. Later that day, they engaged in sex using a condom. Ostensibly, pleasure should not be sought, if the possible consequences, such as conceiving a baby, are too painful in comparison to the pleasure. The male student’s behavior was presented as honorable, not only in avoiding rape in a moment of passion, but in avoiding any natural, but painful, consequence of the seeking of pleasure.

In modern western thought, the seeking of pleasure and the avoiding of pain is presented as the ideal of a Hedonism achievable in this life. Modern culture encourages us to seek a life of pleasure on earth. In contrast, Islam presents the life of heaven as a Hedonistic paradise where earthly pleasures have no admixture of longing, pain or satiety. Modern western thought and Islam have the same starting point, the exaltation of the will over the intellect. They have the same end, a heaven of pure pleasure. They differ in their location of heaven.

Hedonism denies understanding the nature of things. The guide to behavior is not intelligence, but enjoyment.

The Philosophy of Evolution

This is not simply biological evolution as proposed in the nineteenth century. Evolution is now held as a philosophy. Nonetheless, the modern movement is. in fact. a reversion to one of the earliest Greek philosophies. Evolution was the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus, who preceded Plato by a hundred years.

With respect to ethics, there can be no sin in this philosophy, except coercing the will of another. In traditional western thought, sin is the abuse of the natures of entities. However, in the philosophy of evolution, there are no entities having stable, intelligible natures, because reality is becoming. Reality is change, itself. There is no sin because one cannot thwart or abuse a transient appearance. It is becoming, i.e. change that exists, which is a mere appearance, not the stability of intelligibility. In this philosophy, things, through their transience, are conformed to one’s will.

This philosophy alleges that there is nothing having an identity in itself. One cannot sin by abusing his own identity or the identity of other entities because identity itself is an appearance. Thus, there is no rationale at all, including any rationale for discord, just Imagine there is only peace.

The Catholic View

Jesus, the Logos, Wisdom Incarnate, declares that he is the way, the truth and the life (Jn 14:6). These refer to the three transcendental aspects of being, namely the Good, the True and the Existent. All of material creation, every material entity, is good in its existence, which is inherently intelligible. In this life we are to know, love and serve God because he is Pure Being, The I Am, and the source of our being. We love and serve him, in our material creature-hood in the corporal works of mercy, which we do for others (Mt 25:34-45).

The pleasures of animal appetite are recognized as inducements to do good. Consider the pain of thirst and the pleasure of drinking water. Without the incentive of pleasure, we would frequently not bother to drink and suffer chronically from dehydration. However, due to the fall of Adam. our appetites are unruly and only with difficulty are subjected to moral rationality. In cases other than thirst, we are tempted to seek pleasure solely for the sake of pleasure rather than in accord with its intelligible purpose. Such hedonism is inane. It is sin.

It is true that this life is characterized by transience. Yet, by that transience, we do not evolve into something else. Rather, the transient character of material creation is the means to growth in virtue. Acts of goodness to others become easier through the repetitive exercise of virtue. These human acts, with their fully material expressions, are elevated by grace to a level supernatural to man, becoming expressions of the divine life, which we share through baptism, whether by water, desire or blood.