Seven Deadly Sins

Hello and welcome to the blog, I’m your host the Pocket Theologian, and today we’re discussing the seven deadly sins, otherwise known as the capitol vices, or the cardinal sins. If your new to the blog, allow me to explain, I’m the pocket theologian and here on the blog we like to take a theological or philosophical topic and discuss it, anyways let’s get to it.

I wanted to talk about these because I was browsing reddit, which we have by the way, and someone mentioned that he thought the seven deadly sins were some of the most overused things in fiction. And I thought that was interesting, so I thought I’d research them and look into their religious significance and beginnings. With all that out of the way let’s go ahead and get started.

History
So to clarify the main version of the Seven Deadly Sins that is commonly taught has these seven as THE seven: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.

So to address the elephant in the room, the seven deadly sins are never described all together in the bible, there are passages detailing sin and the closest passage that exists is in Proverbs 6:16-19, but it is notable how these mentions things that aren’t included in the list, and is presented in a much more poetic fashion than the sins are usually presented.

But with exception to each of the sins being mentioned separately of the others in the Bible, their original listed form is found in the writings of the Desert Fathers in the 3rd century. To briefly describe who they are, basically when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, some people thought that was a bad idea and fled into the desert, where they became what we call today… monks!

Now one of these monks, Evagrius Ponticus, wrote down seven sins that he thought were the absolute worst; and were to be avoided at all costs. Eventually some of the monks migrated back into Roman society; and Evagrius’ student, John Cassian, wrote a book called the Institutes, in Latin, which really took off and spread the list across all of Europe. Where it became ingrained in Catholic teachings to this day. We can see the notable impact it’s had on a lot of people to this day. Dante’s “Purgatory” shows people classified by the seven deadly sins; Chaucer also has a sermon called “Parson’s Tale” where he discusses it.

The last major development in the Seven Deadly Sins history is Pope Gregory I editing the list to its more common form. You see the seven deadly sins actually changed as they crossed language barriers, their original Greek listing is actually closer to this: gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, wrath, dejection, boasting, and pride (notice that there is eight). And THEN in Latin they go like this: gluttony, lust, avarice, sorrow, wrath, sloth, vainglory, and pride. And then, the last list that Gregory made is our current one, he combined a few and added one the new list is: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. That’s all for the major history of the seven deadly sins, it’s been mentioned lot’s of times but no major theological development has occurred since 509 AD.

Notable Figures

Aristotle: So for long time readers of the blog, you’ll remember that Aristotle was well known for a concept closely related to that possibly inspired the seven deadly sins. This is called the golden mean, which is basically a balancing act between two extremes. A few examples are that the golden mean is courage, while the two extremes are cowardice and rashness, another is modesty with the two extremes being shamelessness and bashfulness. Anyway this is notable since the Seven Deadly Sins are often interpreted as being good things made into evil things, thus making them a theological type of the golden mean. We’ll discuss this a bit more later, but for right now we need to remember Aristotle.

Evagrius Ponticus: The man himself, as being the originator of the idea his influence is obvious. However, it is notable that he was known as “the thinker” and was pretty widely traveled for a monk, traveling from Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Egypt all within his lifetime. Meaning that he was exposed to a lot of different ideals and definitions, and felt very strongly that these seven things specifically needed to be written down and avoided as much as possible.

Thomas Aquinas: As the last in our timeline, Aquinas is interesting both for being Aquinas and for his theological defense of Gregory’s editing of the list. Aquinas defended it for a variety of reasons, some of which being the appeal to Papal authority, as well as the proof of the sins in the scriptures. Regardless, Aquinas is a theologian above many others so his mentioning it and defending it gives it an air of legitimacy. So that’s pretty cool.

Key Characteristics

A starting point: One of the key points of the seven deadly sins is that they actually lead to even worse sins down the road, meaning that you start with these seven and then only get worse. You start with pride and then that leads to murder, which then leads to genocide and so on and so forth. The idea of sin starting small and growing is a well documented part of Christian doctrine, so I don’t feel the need to mention it here.

A perversion or a corruption: Another key point of the seven deadly sins is the idea that they take something that is good and corrupt it to be something evil. This goes back to our Aristotle connection, the Seven Deadly Sins are contrasted by the Seven Heavenly Virtues, so a person is proud of themselves but that then turns into pride, which then leads to other problems. Christianity in this time really wanted to stress ethical practice. So they highlighted the idea of thinking about what you were doing and measuring it up to what the Bible says and ultimately what God has to say.

Resonation: So like I said at the top a lot of the episode, there is just some random thing that makes people curious and want to look into and reference the seven deadly sins. We can see this in a quote by Mark Twain.

“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” – Mark Twain

So there is something about these sins that hit a secret curiosity in people, what exactly that is? I’m not sure! But I personally think it’s a person’s inner desire, subconscious, or not to know how far they can go without sinning; or how far they can go without incurring some punishment or something of that nature.

Misconceptions
That they are permanent: So kinda connected to our last point, whoever addressing sin or hell, or anything in that unpleasant wheelhouse, I always feel the need to connect the good news of the Bible. So the Seven Deadly Sins are something to watch out for, to be wary of how much you look into. But they, like every evil thing… have been defeated! Grace is given for all sins, including these ones. So if you concerned I’ll lead you in a prayer real quick, and then we’ll continue.

Prayer for salvation… “Jesus, I believe that you are God, I believe that you came as a man, I believe you died for my sins, I accept this gift of redemption, and publicly declare you as my Lord and savior, and If I have wandered may I be restored in your grace, amen.”

That they are of numbered according to value: Pride is typically depicted as the worst, and this is fair since it IS the sin Lucifer committed. However sin is sin, and while the numbering of the list is sometime’s significant, in the end they all value the exact same. Any one of them is enough to condemn and all of them are enough.

That Hell is organized by them: I’ve never been to hell, so I couldn’t tell you guys how it’s organized, but many people carry the misconceptions that you’ll be organized and punished according to them. This isn’t in scripture, this is in various art forms including Dante’s Inferno. This is an artistic choice not a theological fact! Hell may not be organized at all or it may be. Regardless the seven deadly sins don’t determine that.