The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices within Christian teachings. According to the standard list, they are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth, which are contrary to the seven capital virtues. These sins are often thought to be abuses or excessive versions of one's natural faculties or passions (for example, gluttony abuses one's desire to eat).
This classification originated with Tertullian and continued with Evagrius Ponticus.
The seven deadly sins are discussed in treatises and depicted in paintings and sculpture decorations on Catholic churches as well as older textbooks.
History
Greco-Roman antecedents
Roman writers such as Horace extolled virtues, and they listed and warned against vices. His first epistles say that "to flee vice is the beginning of virtue and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom."
Origin of the currently recognized seven deadly sins
These "evil thoughts" can be categorized as follows:
physical (thoughts produced by the nutritive, sexual, and acquisitive appetites) emotional (thoughts produced by depressive, irascible, or dismissive moods) mental (thoughts produced by jealous/envious, boastful, or hubristic states of mind)
The fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus reduced the nine logismoi to eight, as follows:
() gluttony
() prostitution, fornication
() greed
() sadness, rendered in the Philokalia as envy, sadness at another's good fortune () wrath () acedia, rendered in the Philokalia as dejection () boasting () pride, sometimes rendered as self-overestimation, arrogance, or grandiosity
Evagrius's list was translated into the Latin of Western Christianity in many writings of John Cassian, thus becoming part of the Western tradition's spiritual pietas or Catholic devotions as follows: (gluttony) (lust, fornication) (greed) (sorrow/despair/despondency) (wrath) (sloth) (vain, glory) (pride, hubris)
In AD 590, Pope Gregory I revised the list to form a more common list. Gregory combined with and with , adding envy, which is in Latin. Thomas Aquinas uses and defends Gregory's list in his Summa Theologica, although he calls them the "capital sins" because they are the head and form of all the other sins. Christian denominations, such as the Anglican Communion, Lutheran Church, and Methodist Church, still retain this list, and modern evangelists such as Billy Graham have explicated the seven deadly sins.
Historical and modern definitions, views, and associations
According to Catholic prelate Henry Edward Manning, the seven deadly sins are seven ways of eternal death.
Lust
Lust or lechery ( "carnal") is intense longing. It is usually thought of as intense or unbridled sexual desire, which may lead to fornication (including adultery), rape, bestiality, and other sinful and sexual acts; oftentimes, however, it could also mean other forms of unbridled desire, such as for money, or power. Henry Edward Manning explains that the impurity of lust transforms one into "a slave of the devil".
Lust is generally thought to be the least serious capital sin. Thomas Aquinas considers it an abuse of a faculty that humans share with animals and sins of the flesh are less grievous than spiritual sins.
Gluttony
Gluttony () is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste. The word derives from the Latin , meaning to gulp down or swallow. One reason for its condemnation is that the gorging of the prosperous may leave the needy hungry.
Medieval church leaders such as Thomas Aquinas took a more expansive view of gluttony, arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals and overindulgence in delicacies and costly foods. Aquinas also listed five forms of gluttony:
– eating too expensively
– eating too daintily
– eating too much
– eating too soon
– eating too eagerly
Greed
In the words of Henry Edward Manning, avarice "plunges a man deep into the mire of this world, so that he makes it to be his god".
As defined outside Christian writings, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth. Aquinas considers that like pride, it can lead to evil.
Sloth
Sloth (, or "without care") refers to a peculiar jumble of notions, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states. It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.