Extremes of Sin

It's a popular trope for people these days in the Church to say that "we are all sinners," and then they often rush to the bottom to efface themselves more than anyone else. While it is true, of course, that all ordinary men, anyone other than Christ and Mary, are fallen and are sinners, there are some misconceptions about the nature of Christ's statement that we are to "go and sin no more." This precept is not meant as hyperbolic or as a general unobtainable point which the faithful ought to seek, but to which we can never actually obtain. St. Thomas mentions in the Summa Theologica that it would be to no purpose for God to command the impossible of men. So when Christ said, "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect," He meant exactly that. Moral perfection is possible to men in this life, though it is doubtless very difficult.

Perfection is the state where a thing lacks nothing that it can have for what it is. In the sense that all ordinary men suffer from the consequences of the original sin, no one is perfect in everything that we do. Even if we try our best, we still commit errors. But this does not mean that we cannot totally avoid sin while we live. Sin is an act that is lacking in due rectitude. Something that can be present in the act is not present. This is the sense in which sin is a kind of imperfection. All sins are imperfections, but not all imperfections are sins. In some sense a sprained ankle or lactose intolerance can be called imperfections; something that can be present in the subject is not there. This is an imperfection. But obviously neither of these things involves sin of any kind.

As far as sins are concerned, it is indeed possible for men to live without sin entirely; to live without relapsing back into sin and departing from God's grace and virtue. This involves habits. If people develop virtuous habits, they can avoid the contrary sins. Surely this is difficult for men, but it can be done. It is difficult because it takes men above their sinful state. Things cannot rise above themselves by their own power; they can only attain to things at their own level or beneath it. As sin takes men above the fallen state, it involves in some sense a movement contrary to nature. But it is possible to men insofar as the order of virtue is the order of nature, and men can act in accord with their nature. Their own nature is not above itself, since this would mean that it was contrary to itself, which makes no sense. So they can rise above sin to proper virtue; but there is difficulty because the upward movement is in some way contrary to nature. If the virtues directly bring the subject closer to God, as in the case of the theological virtues, they require the help of God to obtain that end. As God is above men, no man can come to God solely by his own power. God has to infuse His grace and virtue in the man for the man to come to Him.

So while living in perfect virtue is difficult, it is not just an empty admonition when Christ tells the faithful to "be perfect." He actually means it as such. But too many people take the statement that "nobody is perfect" as meaning that moral perfection is not at all possible in life. This is simply not true. It's not only a misstatement to say in this context that "nobody is perfect," too often it serves as a bromide to assuage one's own guilty conscience. People in life can attain to moral perfection, and some even do.

Yet there is also a contrary issue to what I have said thus far. People misunderstand the nature of sin, thinking in some cases that the category of sin, so to speak, is much broader than it is. As said, sin is defined as an act that is lacking in due rectitude. Personal sins (leaving aside the original sin) can be either mortal sins or venial sins. For a sin to be mortal, it requires grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent. Grave matter means that you desire the created good more than God Himself. This makes the sin to be mortal rather than venial. Venial sin is when you desire the created good more than you should, but not more than God.

Too often people think that these three categories for mortal sin fall, as it were, on the same level, or operate in the same way. They think that any one of the three categories can be subtracted from the act in order to make the act a venial sin rather than a mortal sin. But this is not how it works. Grave matter makes the distinction between mortal sin and venial sin; but full knowledge and deliberate consent operate different from grave matter. Technically you can only give deliberate consent if you have full knowledge. If you give deliberate consent to an act thinking the act is other than it really is, you did not give deliberate consent to the objective act as such. Your consent can be deliberate in the sense that you did the act without hesitation; but the lack of full knowledge about what you did does not mean you formally did what you seemed to do. There is a distinction between the material and formal aspects of the act that is done. The material aspect is what is done; the formal aspect is how it is done, which is the intention. If I intend to do A but do B thinking that B is A, then B is materially done, but not formally done, since I intended A when I actually did B. If I intended B as A, then I cannot be held responsible for doing B as such, since I thought it was A. This is the way that full knowledge and deliberate consent operate.

Since the formal aspect of the act done determines culpability for the act, that refers to the intention, which is the deliberate consent; and by extension, the full knowledge which is requisite for there to technically be deliberate consent in the first place. But if you do not know that what you do is objectively wrong, you are not held responsible for doing it. In other words, you cannot just subtract either full knowledge or deliberate consent to turn a mortal sin into a venial sin. If you do something objectively wrong without knowing it to be such, it is not only not a mortal sin, it is not even a venial sin. It is simply an error. God does not punish men for errors; He punishes men for sins.

There are some scrupulous people that agonize over whether they may have committed a sin either "by accident" or "without knowing it." Well, if you did not know that it was a sin when you did it, it's not a sin. It may be an error, but it is no sin at all, either mortal or venial. God punishes people only for what they know they did wrong.

God may be strict in requiring perfect virtue from men, but He's not unreasonable. He does not hold men to account for things they didn't know that they did wrong. This would be blatantly contrary to God's perfect justice. To think that God would punish men for such things is practically to despair of God's justice and not to trust in God's essential goodness. And God wants men to be saved. He is not waiting to catch men on a technicality in order to send them to hell. If God knows all things, He knows when you know that you did something wrong. Only then will you be punished for what you did. Only then is it necessary to repent of what you did to avoid being punished for it.

So while Christ appears to give men a tall order in calling for perfect virtue, and in some ways actually does, it still must be borne in mind that God does not hold men to account for what they do not know they did wrong. Such acts are, at worst, errors, but certainly no sins. You cannot just subtract randomly one of the three categories from a mortal sin to make it a venial sin. If deliberate consent and/or full knowledge is not there, the act might not be a sin at all. If it was objectively wrong, and you find out later on, don't do it in the future now that you know. But also don't worry about what was done. If you didn't know, it was not a sin at all.