The Seven Deadly Sins

While the seven deadly sins as we know them did not originate with the Greeks or Romans, there were ancient precedents for them. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics lists several positive, healthy human qualities, excellences, or virtues. Aristotle argues that for each positive quality two negative vices are found on each extreme of the virtue. Courage, for example, is human excellence or virtue in facing fear and risk. Excessive courage makes one rash, while a deficiency of courage makes one cowardly. This principle of virtue found in the middle or "mean" between excess and deficiency is Aristotle's notion of the golden mean. Aristotle lists virtues like courage, temperance or self-control, generosity, "greatness of soul," proper response to anger, friendliness, and wit or charm.

Roman writers like Horace extolled the value of virtue while listing and warning 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."[7]

An allegorical image depicting the human heart subject to the seven deadly sins, each represented by an animal (clockwise: toad = avarice; snake = envy; lion = wrath; snail = sloth; pig = gluttony; goat = lust; peacock = pride).

Origin of the currently recognized seven deadly sins

The modern concept of the seven deadly sins is linked to the works of the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus, who listed eight evil thoughts in Greek as follows:[8][9]

1. Γαστριμαργία (gastrimargia) gluttony

2. Πορνεία (porneia) prostitution, fornication

3. Φιλαργυρία (philargyria) avarice (greed)

4. Ὑπερηφανία (hyperēphania) pride – sometimes rendered as self-overestimation, arrogance, grandiosity [10]

5. Λύπη (lypē) sadness – in the Philokalia, this term is rendered as envy, sadness at another's good fortune

6. Ὀργή (orgē) wrath

7. Κενοδοξία (kenodoxia) boasting

8. Ἀκηδία (akēdia) acedia – in the Philokalia, this term is rendered as dejection

They were translated into the Latin of Western Christianity (largely due to the writings of John Cassian),[11][12] thus becoming part of the Western tradition's spiritual pietas (or Catholic devotions), as follows:[13]

1. Gula (gluttony)

2. Luxuria/Fornicatio (lust, fornication)

3. Avaritia (avarice/greed)

4. Superbia (pride, hubris)

5. Tristitia (sorrow/despair/despondency)

6. Ira (wrath)

7. Vanagloria (vainglory)

8. Acedia (sloth)

These "evil thoughts" can be categorized into three types:[13]

• lustful appetite (gluttony, fornication, and avarice)

• irascibility (wrath)

• mind corruption (vainglory, sorrow, pride, and discouragement)

In AD 590 Pope Gregory I revised this list to form the more common list. Gregory combined tristitia with acedia, and vanagloria with superbia, and added envy, in Latin, invidia.[14][15] Gregory's list became the standard list of sins. 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 others.[16] The Anglican Communion,[17] Lutheran Church,[18] and Methodist Church,[19][20] among other Christian denominations, continue to retain this list. Moreover, modern day evangelists, such as Billy Graham have explicated the seven deadly sins.[21]