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The Seven Deadly Sins

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Written by Benoît Santos - Updated on Oct 27, 2024

Summary :

    Have you ever heard of the seven deadly sins? Would you like to have a little insight into the reality hidden under this term?  

    We are here to bring you answers. We have found some very interesting information about what these seven deadly sins represent.

    The idea of ​​mortal sins originated in monastic life in the fifth century AD. Over hundreds of years, a catalogue of sins was elaborated, tested and refined, and finally settled on seven of the eight original sins: Pride (saligia), Greed (avaritia), Lust (luxuria), Wrath (ira), Gluttony (gula), Envy (invidia) and Sloth (acedia).

    With this article, you will be able to:  

    • To speak with ease about the seven deadly sins ;
    • List the new forms of deadly sins ;
    • Emphasize the similarities between these sins and different religions.

    Without further ado, let’s get started right now!

    General information on the seven deadly sins

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    The idea of ​​mortal sins originated in the monastic life of the fifth century AD. For hundreds of years, a catalogue of sins was elaborated, tested and refined, and finally settled on seven of the eight original sins . We have: Pride (saligia), avarice (avaritia), lust (luxuria), anger (ira), gluttony (gula), envy (invidia) and sloth (acedia). In the monastic microcosm, characterized by renunciation, contemplation and work. Also by the temptations of body and mind, the condensate of human weaknesses, vices and passions was distilled. This was done through scholarly contestation and introspection, also, to use the modern term, through self-awareness. Monks and nuns became the specialists in questions of temptation, self-control and loss of control.

    Over time, a meaningful grid has gradually emerged in the study of the seven main vices. To describe and explain the needs and ways of acting of man in the field of tension between religion, morality and society. Even for non-believers, the confrontation with the "Seven Great" allows a better understanding of one's own psyche. They are an opportunity for enlightening, sometimes disturbing, self-knowledge. Mortal sins also represent negative archetypes of human characters. That is why the once sinful passions and vices served as primary colors with which great novelists and playwrights portrayed their negative heroes. Jago's murderous urge is the true theme of Shakespeare's Othello.

    Ebenezer Scrooge in Dicken's Christmas Carol or Molière's Miser are literary archetypes of greed. And Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas is the embodiment of self-destructive anger. Because mortal sins obviously capture anthropological constants. They are also suitable for reflecting on the behavior of contemporary people and for examining the changing shape of societal moral and ethical problems. Pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and laziness are emotions laboriously retained by culture and civilization. Sin is therefore a concept that remains comprehensible to every human being today, even if he rejects it for himself.  

    New forms of deadly sins

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    " New sins " appeared: selfishness, hypocrisy, intolerance, cruelty and cynicism. However, greed and envy, anger and laziness, arrogance, gluttony and lust can still be observed today. And always in ever new variations and manifestations. Even if they are not always called by their name and we use a variety of other terms.  

    •  Greed, for example, has many faces: But greed and avarice are not the preserve of the powerful. It seems that we have become virtually a nation of bargain hunters, practicing a strange mixture of avarice and greed - wanting as much as possible and paying as little as possible for it: The word "value for money" appears in almost every conversation about dining out or vacationing, at the latest in the second sentence.  
    • Even lust is no longer a vice today, barely a consuming passion. The contemporary Don Juan is a passionate man who compensates for his self-esteem problems with sexual conquests. Erotic stimuli also condition us as consumers: it is not for nothing that sex sells.  
    • Gluttony in all its manifestations (orgy, drunkenness, ostentatious extravagance) is even less perceived as a sin. Gluttony, it is true, is considered in some circles as a contemptible weakness of character. But it is also recognizable in the obsessive preoccupation with everything related to food. For example, the invasion of television chefs or the search for ever new taste titillations and "exclusive" pleasures. The blasphemy inherent in the term "gluttony" completely escapes us.  
    • Envy is the first sin beyond Eden. Cain killed Abel out of envy. But at the latest with the beginning of the bourgeois era, envy is the real engine of progress and economic growth. This is all the more true today, in an accelerated consumer capitalism, where it is necessary at all costs to succeed in awakening desire. Nevertheless, envy often turns into resentment and thus becomes a permanent mental pain. Because existential inequalities and social injustices can never be eliminated, not even remotely.  
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      • Since biblical times, pride has had the faces of arrogance, reserve, and vanity. Today, pride and intellectual arrogance are as much a part of its manifestations as the uninhibited display of magnificently operated and stylized bodies. On the other hand, the profound fall of the arrogant prepared by the media is now part of the basis of entertainment and information. In the modern attention economy, success is not possible without self-fulfillment and exaltation. For the attention of others is the capital that yields the most interest.  
      • Inertia , today, is above all indifference, it manifests itself in the deliberate ignorance of foreign destinies. It is the comfortable neutrality that suggests we stay outside of everything. But it also appears as a habitual laziness of thought and as self-stimulation, quite often disguised as an overload of work. Inertia, paradoxically, makes us inventive: we strive to avoid ever more movements, both physical and mental.
      • And how angry we are today. We are quickly enraged, especially by other sinners who cost us time and money. Indignant and angry because our demands are not met or our rights are not respected. And we have great demands and many rights.

      Mortal sins have largely lost their spiritual or existential significance in our lives. They appear to us today rather as unpleasant but banal behaviors, as fads and neuroses, but also as contemporary strategies to maximize success and pleasure or to assert oneself.

      The Age-Old Secret of the Seven Deadly Sins

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      Pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth; the seven deadly sins are not even real sins, yet everyone knows about them. But where did they come from - and is their concept still relevant today?  

      In Pieter Bruegel the Elder's drawings from 1558, lounging people are surrounded by beasts from hell. Furious soldiers saw through a group of people with a huge knife, and the vain are already waiting for the Mouth of Hell. It is images like these that have brought the seven deadly sins into the collective memory. Whether it is the expressionist cinematic masterpiece "Metropolis" from 1927, the thriller "Seven", Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" or even a ballet by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, the series of seven is omnipresent in high culture as well as in popular culture. It has held up over the centuries, so it seems to have something supra-temporal about it.  

      Strictly speaking, these are not real "sins" . For sins are concrete actions. However, pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and laziness are not actions but attitudes. Theologically, it is therefore correct to speak of major vices or root sins . For sinful acts and other vices can arise from these attitudes. Mere laziness is not yet a sin. The concept of the seven deadly sins has nevertheless become common, it is linked to history.  

      The concept was "invented" by Euagrios Pontikos (345-399), a monk living in the Egyptian desert at the end of the 4th century. With a philosophical background, he closely observed the life of hermits and the dangers that threatened their asceticism. He speaks of "oktologismoi", that is, eight evil thoughts whispered to the monks by demons. Euagrios summarizes both aspects and presents eight main vices . There is therefore no explicit biblical basis for his list.

      Pope Gregory the Great compiles the list of the seven deadly sins

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      It is only in the West that the term "principal vices" ( vitia principalia ) comes into being. The list remains variable depending on the local and historical contexts, and the emphasis on the individual vices differs. The collection of the seven vices known today was compiled by Pope Gregory the Great (540-604). He again adapted the collection of vices to a different time and a different target group. Today, it is no longer addressed to desert monks, but to the public. Thus, the category of jealousy is added prominently. Later, other emphases are also placed, for example on greed and avarice.

      Theologians such as Thomas Aquinas or Peter Lombardus, however, retrospectively attributed formative importance to Gregory and canonized his words. This assessment has become generally accepted.  This period also saw the growing confusion between major vices and mortal sins. The concept of mortal sin had so far developed largely independently of the major vices. And it refers to sins by which a person deliberately leaves communion with God. These include, for example, adultery, murder or apostasy. Thomas Aquinas, while strictly distinguishing the two phenomena, also asks: is envy a mortal sin? In doing so, he encourages the mixing of terms.  

      "There is no sin without context," writes Israeli philosopher Aviad Kleinberg in a book on the seven deadly sins . "If the contexts and rules change, the definition of sin also changes." This phenomenon can be observed in the genesis of the concept. For Euagrio's main vices are not only more numerous than the list known today, they are partly different. Envy is not on his list, but glory and gloom are. For the hermit does not address the general public, but his fellow monks, the vices refer to the monastic life of his time.

      The Seven Deadly Vices in Other Conceptions

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      But what makes the seven deadly vices so exciting to this day that they continue to fascinate people even in a secular Western society? "They are fundamental experiences of every human being, regardless of religion," believes the Hildesheim ethicist Alexander Merkl. He is researching this topic as part of his doctoral thesis. Consequently, these seven basic attitudes are also interesting from a sociological and psychological perspective. "People want and need to eat, drink and make love. The seven deadly sins do not deny this. However, they find fault with excess." Disorder, intemperance, irrationality are in the spotlight.  

      This is where current research comes in. “Ethical imperatives are addressed to collectives, but ethical decisions are always individual in nature. In the realm of good and evil, everything is personal,” Kleinberg says. A look at Paul and his vision of human freedom supports this theological view. “You are called to freedom, brothers and sisters. Only do not use freedom as an excuse for the flesh, but serve one another in love,” he writes in Galatians (Gal 5:13).  

      Saint Thomas Aquinas will also look into the subject. In one of his conclusions, Thomas Aquinas defined the term " 7 deadly sins ". According to Saint Thomas Aquinas: " We call deadly sins those whose ends have the first and principal virtue of moving the appetite, and as these virtues are seven in number, we also distinguish seven deadly vices which are: pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and envy".  

      The seven major sins and the devil in an 1879 engraving

      One may also wonder where certain attitudes come from. According to Aviad Kleinberg, the great human failings are not the seven sins combined, but rather "weakness, loneliness, and despair, for these (and not pride, envy, and anger) are the primary forms of sin." The extent to which these primitive human fears are realized depends on one's upbringing, self-esteem, and life situation. A person who is afraid for his or her immediate future is more in a state of anxiety than a well-off retiree who has nothing to worry about. As a result, the risk of committing a sin varies.

      Merkl believes that despite all the appreciation of the tradition of the seven deadly sins, they need to be supplemented today: "The classical conclusion that bad actions make a bad person and vice versa is no longer valid in this exclusivity. We must also examine where vices come from with the help of current findings in psychology and sociology." In this way, he said, the traditional concept of deadly sins could become connectable and stimulating for further discussion.

      From Faust to Macbeth, famous literary characters have debated whether they should give in to their vices or become their masters. Even outside of a religious context, the seven deadly sins retain their value and justification in an individualized society. And can even give rise to further discussions about the origins of sin and thus, ultimately, about what is bad in people.

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