Seven Deadly Sins For Dummies
Nov. 20th, 2005 06:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykomancerOk, you know what? There are seven cardinal sins in traditional Catholic theology. SEVEN. Originally, yes, there were eight principle vices but this list was reduced to seven and restructured around the 6th century, and the names of the Sins in FMA are clearly derived from the much more well-known later tradition set forth by Gregory of seven.
And, for the real idiots in the audience, the seven cardinal sins are: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy and pride.
Now, what's so special about these seven?
Well, you have to know a little bit about classical Catholic theology, and in particular, what sin is.
In Greek philosophy, it was assumed that humans were logical creatures, and that we sinned because we didn't know any better; however, once we were told the right way to live and behave, we would all naturally do the right things, and then everyone would be happy.
St. Augustine of Hippo had different ideas about that. He understood that humans aren't always so logical, and that we have emotions, too, to take into consideration. We can know what's good and right and not do it because we don't love what's good and right; we love what's bad. We may know that cigarettes are bad for us, but we still smoke because we enjoy it. We may know that we should go to the gym and work out, but we like sitting at home and writing fanfiction better.
And so Augustine formulated this idea that all of our desires and loves are screwed up. Not that we have a lot of control about this-- we can't choose what we love, and he knew that-- but because we are born into an inherently screwed up world. (Remember, Augustine also fomulated Original Sin, too.) And because we are born into this screwed up world, we grow up with our desires twisted toward the wrong things. We love the created world with the kind of love properly reserved for God alone.
Really, Augustine thought, we are all searching deep in our hearts for God...but we get lost along the way and start substituting other, inferior things in to take God's place and love them instead of loving God. Again, this isn't really our fault; we are all victims of the Original Sin, and we are incapable on our own of changing our hearts around so that we love God as we should.
No, only God can reorganize our hearts and desires. Augustine picked out a verse in Romans, 5:5, which reads in Greek (in part): "he agape tou theou ekkexutai en tais kardiais hemon dia pneumatos hagiou". The literal translation of this is: "the love of God has been poured into our hearts in the Holy Spirit". Augustine chose to read "the love of God" NOT as "God's love for us" as many modern English translations have it, but as "our love for God"-- that is, the when the Holy Spirit enters our hearts, we feel a renewed love for God, and we are able to love God as we should instead of looking for Him in the material creation. This inpouring the Holy Spirit is grace, from the Latin gratia which means gift, because it is a freely given gift from God to us, and we can only be saved sola gratia-- by grace alone.
Now, there's a problem in radical monotheism. That is, the problem of evil. If you have benevolent and all-powerful God, it gets really tricky to explain evil and sin because there's no one to blame it all on.
Augustine's position was that evil was the result of the misuse of human freedom. Remember Adam, Even, the whole fruit thing? Yeah. Adam and Eve screwed up, and as a result they screwed up the whole human world, and we, being born into a screwed up world, are also screwed up and we love the wrong things all because our primal ancestors misused their free will and turned away from God.
And our misdirected loves? The fact that we love the world with the love reserved for God?
Well, that's sin, according to Augustine. (Actually, in City of God, he calls it "wicked love".)
You'll note that, as I said before, we aren't free to choose what we love, which means that we aren't free to choose not to sin... We need the saving grace of God to redirect our hearts and set us free from sin.
OK! Now we all know what sin is, right?
Now, let's go back to those seven: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy and pride.
This becomes pretty easy to boil down now. Lust is excessive love of carnal pleasure; gluttony that of food and hedonistic indulgence; avarice that of material goods, money, and power; pride is an excessive love of one's self.
Sloth, by the way, does not mean idleness or laziness in general-- although that's part of it-- but more specifically refers to spiritual sloth...that is, failing to prioritize God over one's own self. I love to sleep in more than I do getting up to go to church; I love reading porn more than reading the Bible; etc.
Wrath is not just anger, either, but refers to inappropriate and excessive feelings of hatred, and revenge. Dante's description was "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite", which I think sums that up nicely. Incidentally, wrath is also known as hate.
Envy is loving someone else's traits more than your own and being dissatisfied with what God has give you. It goes against the Catholic understanding of showing love to God by loving one's neighbor, because how can you truly love your neighbor if you are envious of them?
Now. There we have list of the sins and a short-hand sketch of why they are sins in Catholicism, which of course, hinges on Catholic theology. This is really, really simplified; I didn't even bother, for example, to pull my 600 page copy of Thomas Aquinas On Evil off the shelf, but pulled this all off the top of my head. However, I think I made the point I wanted to make here.
The Sins in FMA are named after the seven cardinal sins in Catholic theology-- lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy and pride. Not only are there NOT eight sins, but furthermore, most of the Eighth Sin names do NOT even meet the qualifications of what comprises a cardinal sin and in fact show ignorance of what makes a sin a sin.
Betrayal is NOT a cardinal sin, no matter what Judas may or may not have done or how traitors were treated by Dante in the Inferno. Depending on the motivation for it, it'd fall under envy, wrath, or pride.
Suicide is NOT a cardinal sin. It could, actually, be collapsed under pride, I think.
Vengence is NOT a cardinal sin. It's simple another aspect of "Wrath"-- "a love of justice perverted to revenge".
Despair is NOT a cardinal sin. Traditionally, melancholy and gloominess were linked with sloth...something which anyone who's been unable to get out of bed because of major depression can understand, I think. *laughs* And further, despair is said to be the opposite of the theological virtue of hope. HOWEVER, despair is not really a misdirected love in and of itself, and if your going to use it, well... It's kind of like recycling sloth, really. No, try again.
Fear is NOT a cardinal sin. ...do I really need to explain this? Nah, I think you get the point.
Right.
Any questions?
And, for the real idiots in the audience, the seven cardinal sins are: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy and pride.
Now, what's so special about these seven?
Well, you have to know a little bit about classical Catholic theology, and in particular, what sin is.
In Greek philosophy, it was assumed that humans were logical creatures, and that we sinned because we didn't know any better; however, once we were told the right way to live and behave, we would all naturally do the right things, and then everyone would be happy.
St. Augustine of Hippo had different ideas about that. He understood that humans aren't always so logical, and that we have emotions, too, to take into consideration. We can know what's good and right and not do it because we don't love what's good and right; we love what's bad. We may know that cigarettes are bad for us, but we still smoke because we enjoy it. We may know that we should go to the gym and work out, but we like sitting at home and writing fanfiction better.
And so Augustine formulated this idea that all of our desires and loves are screwed up. Not that we have a lot of control about this-- we can't choose what we love, and he knew that-- but because we are born into an inherently screwed up world. (Remember, Augustine also fomulated Original Sin, too.) And because we are born into this screwed up world, we grow up with our desires twisted toward the wrong things. We love the created world with the kind of love properly reserved for God alone.
Really, Augustine thought, we are all searching deep in our hearts for God...but we get lost along the way and start substituting other, inferior things in to take God's place and love them instead of loving God. Again, this isn't really our fault; we are all victims of the Original Sin, and we are incapable on our own of changing our hearts around so that we love God as we should.
No, only God can reorganize our hearts and desires. Augustine picked out a verse in Romans, 5:5, which reads in Greek (in part): "he agape tou theou ekkexutai en tais kardiais hemon dia pneumatos hagiou". The literal translation of this is: "the love of God has been poured into our hearts in the Holy Spirit". Augustine chose to read "the love of God" NOT as "God's love for us" as many modern English translations have it, but as "our love for God"-- that is, the when the Holy Spirit enters our hearts, we feel a renewed love for God, and we are able to love God as we should instead of looking for Him in the material creation. This inpouring the Holy Spirit is grace, from the Latin gratia which means gift, because it is a freely given gift from God to us, and we can only be saved sola gratia-- by grace alone.
Now, there's a problem in radical monotheism. That is, the problem of evil. If you have benevolent and all-powerful God, it gets really tricky to explain evil and sin because there's no one to blame it all on.
Augustine's position was that evil was the result of the misuse of human freedom. Remember Adam, Even, the whole fruit thing? Yeah. Adam and Eve screwed up, and as a result they screwed up the whole human world, and we, being born into a screwed up world, are also screwed up and we love the wrong things all because our primal ancestors misused their free will and turned away from God.
And our misdirected loves? The fact that we love the world with the love reserved for God?
Well, that's sin, according to Augustine. (Actually, in City of God, he calls it "wicked love".)
You'll note that, as I said before, we aren't free to choose what we love, which means that we aren't free to choose not to sin... We need the saving grace of God to redirect our hearts and set us free from sin.
OK! Now we all know what sin is, right?
Now, let's go back to those seven: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy and pride.
This becomes pretty easy to boil down now. Lust is excessive love of carnal pleasure; gluttony that of food and hedonistic indulgence; avarice that of material goods, money, and power; pride is an excessive love of one's self.
Sloth, by the way, does not mean idleness or laziness in general-- although that's part of it-- but more specifically refers to spiritual sloth...that is, failing to prioritize God over one's own self. I love to sleep in more than I do getting up to go to church; I love reading porn more than reading the Bible; etc.
Wrath is not just anger, either, but refers to inappropriate and excessive feelings of hatred, and revenge. Dante's description was "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite", which I think sums that up nicely. Incidentally, wrath is also known as hate.
Envy is loving someone else's traits more than your own and being dissatisfied with what God has give you. It goes against the Catholic understanding of showing love to God by loving one's neighbor, because how can you truly love your neighbor if you are envious of them?
Now. There we have list of the sins and a short-hand sketch of why they are sins in Catholicism, which of course, hinges on Catholic theology. This is really, really simplified; I didn't even bother, for example, to pull my 600 page copy of Thomas Aquinas On Evil off the shelf, but pulled this all off the top of my head. However, I think I made the point I wanted to make here.
The Sins in FMA are named after the seven cardinal sins in Catholic theology-- lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy and pride. Not only are there NOT eight sins, but furthermore, most of the Eighth Sin names do NOT even meet the qualifications of what comprises a cardinal sin and in fact show ignorance of what makes a sin a sin.
Betrayal is NOT a cardinal sin, no matter what Judas may or may not have done or how traitors were treated by Dante in the Inferno. Depending on the motivation for it, it'd fall under envy, wrath, or pride.
Suicide is NOT a cardinal sin. It could, actually, be collapsed under pride, I think.
Vengence is NOT a cardinal sin. It's simple another aspect of "Wrath"-- "a love of justice perverted to revenge".
Despair is NOT a cardinal sin. Traditionally, melancholy and gloominess were linked with sloth...something which anyone who's been unable to get out of bed because of major depression can understand, I think. *laughs* And further, despair is said to be the opposite of the theological virtue of hope. HOWEVER, despair is not really a misdirected love in and of itself, and if your going to use it, well... It's kind of like recycling sloth, really. No, try again.
Fear is NOT a cardinal sin. ...do I really need to explain this? Nah, I think you get the point.
Right.
Any questions?
