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From: amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: mortal and venial sin
Message-ID: <525@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Jan-84 12:37:12 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.525
Posted: Mon Jan 23 12:37:12 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 05:31:18 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 21

In answer to several requests that I give the scriptural or other
basis for dividing sin into mortal and venial categories, I will
endevour to do so here.

As I suspected, the real originator of the distinction was St.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).  He did not base it on scriptural
grounds, but rather by analogy to human justice.  He started by
noting that, in the human world, there is not the same punishment
for all crimes.  Some are punishable by death, some by imprisonment
and/or fines.  He considered that this was the way things should be,
that there should not be the same punishment for willful murder and
for (say) creating a public nuisance.  He then went on to say that
human justice was a reflection of divine justice, and that God would
not punish two sins of obviously different severity in the same way.
Hence the differentiation between mortal and venial sin.

				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Naperville, IL
				(312) 979-7293
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