What makes sin deadly

Of course your lust kind of fits in with the neighbor's wife commandment, but still, what's the deal with anger? I can think of any number of parties rap artists, oppressed high school students, assorted NFL players who might have benefited from a course in anger management.

You raise a good point, though. I mean, how did sloth make the list? The seven deadly sins go back a long way, having gotten their start in Eastern monasticism. The fourth-century Egyptian monk Evagrius Ponticus defined eight deadly sins, which were later reduced to seven, presumably for the same reason there are seven sacraments, seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and seven dwarfs. The current heptad pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust was fixed by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

Earlier, instead of sloth, there was accidie, often translated as sadness or listlessness. I can only point out that the list was developed by desert monks living lives of Survivor -type privation. But the term seven deadly sins survives for obvious reasons — it sounds a lot snappier. In current thinking the seven really bad things do not loom very large. I notice in the official Catechism of the Catholic Church , consisting of 2, numbered sections published in by order of Pope John Paul II, the capital sins warrant exactly one paragraph.

The principal codification of moral transgression for Christians continues to be the Ten Commandments, upon which the catechism confidently excogitates, much as the Supreme Court finds guidance for cable TV regulation in a document written in Early Christian theologians understood gluttony to include drinking too much alcohol and desiring too much fine food, in addition to overeating.

When Aquinas replaced sadness with sloth in his list of capital sins, he maintained a connecting between the two. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.

Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. Broadly speaking, the seven deadly sins function as ethical guidelines. The head leads the body as the capital vices, chief among them pride and greed, lead to further immorality. A capital crime or punishment , for instance, involved the loss of life, or the head, metaphorically. The seven deadly sins also have counterparts, the seven heavenly virtues : humility opposed to pride , kindness envy , temperance gluttony , charity greed , chastity lust , diligence sloth , and patience wrath.

Outside of art, literature, and theology, writers and presenters often employ the seven deadly sins as a device to advise against poor practices in a particular line of work, activity, or phenomenon.

The seven deadly sins also enjoy wide use as a common cultural reference, often with playful variations on the classic sins, across a variety of registers.

This is not meant to be a formal definition of the seven deadly sins like most terms we define on Dictionary.

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