The Seven Deadly Sins

Starting today, Ash Wednesday, we begin a Lenten series on the Seven Deadly Sins (7DS). In several blog posts during this series, we want to share with you additional perspectives we will not develop in the series as such. Our teachings will focus on the sins themselves as diagnosed by the Scriptures--and ultimately, treated by the Good News of the death and resurrection of Jesus. In this way, we hope this series leads us through a Lenten season of reflection and repentance--and preparation for Holy Week!

In this first post, I want to address the historical and spiritual background to the 7DS and conclude with some additional resources for the curious.

Where did the 7DS come from?

It is helpful to share here some of the history of the deadly sins tradition. It is rich and spiritually instructive on its own right.

Evagrius (ca 345-399)

A young deacon named Evagrius lived and served in Pontus, a city of modern day Turkey. He grew up in a Christian family and had a strong education. He was also a devout follower of two great theologians of the East, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Bishop Gregory ordained him a deacon.

Unfortunately, according to his later biographer Palladius, Evagrius got emotionally involved with a married woman. Palladius does not present this as a consummated affair, but rather an inappropriate attachment and a strong temptation. At the height of it, Evagrius was warned in a dream to flee town. So he first left for Jerusalem, then joined a monastic community in the Egyptian desert, where he lived out his days in a semi-solitary life of prayer, fasting and spiritual discipline.

From the episode with the married woman, Evagrius became especially attuned to the wayward tendencies of the human heart. For him the great battleground of the mind is where the struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil is won--and lost. And for a monk, the struggle is amplified, since he is left with so much time alone--with his thoughts. A devil's playground indeed!

So Evagrius was the first to identify 8 different thoughts (or logismoi) that warred against the love of God in the human soul (and then wrote about them in several instruction manuals to his fellow monks):

1. Gluttony

2. Lust

3. Greed

4. Sadness

5. Anger

6. Acedia (sloth)

7. Vainglory

8. Pride

For Evagrius, these were not isolated acts. They were deep-rooted patterns of disordered desire that generated further sins. They were the inner habits of heart and mind at the root of all sorts of other sin--the motivations behind hatred, deceit, impatience, lack of self-control, etc. Indeed, all other vices can be traced back to these fundamental 'thoughts.'

So the purpose in identifying these thoughts was pastoral, a kind of spiritual therapy:

If you can identify the root cause, you can treat the disease.

John Cassian (ca. 365-435)

Another monk named John Cassian carried Evagrius’s teaching from the East to the Latin West through his Institutes and Conferences. Cassian preserved the eightfold scheme and emphasized:

• the interconnection of the vices

• the special danger of acedia (or what we often call, sloth)

• the way pride grows even from spiritual success

Through Cassian, the desert psychology entered Western monasticism and shaped Benedictine spirituality--which profoundly influenced the Anglican spiritual tradition.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

Augustine did not write of any 'deadly sins' per se but contributed two key things to the tradition:

First, he gave the most compelling definition of sin as disordered love. Sin was a lack of love for what one ought to love, or in the way that one ought to love it. The right ordering of our loves (ordo amoris) is the constant struggle between sin and grace in the life of the believer.

So, for instance, food is indeed good and necessary for the human body...but the intemperate craving for food--as if it could ever satiate our deeper, spiritual desires--is gluttony.

Second, Augustine also argued powerfully that pride is the first of all sins. It was a desire to be equal with God that led Lucifer to rebel in heaven...and what led Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...and what leads us all, still, to assert our will above God's. That's what we then call: sin.

Gregory the Great (540-604)

Finally, we get to the seven in the 7DS!

That number and ordering was refined in the sixth century by Gregory the Great. Along the way envy had been added to the list, but Gregory merged “sadness” into acedia and “vainglory” into pride, thus reducing the list to seven:

1. Pride

2. Envy

3. Anger

4. Sloth

5. Greed

6. Gluttony

7. Lust

Gregory also made a decisive theological move:

Pride became the root of all the others. He's simply following Augustine here. The remaining six were its “offspring.”

This shifted the framework from psychological observation to moral theology. The sins were now understood not merely as temptations, but as capital vices (from caput, “head”), meaning: They are “headwaters” from which many other sins flow.

Why These Seven and Not Others?

Let's be really clear here: the tradition does not claim these are the “worst” sins in terms of severity. Murder and blasphemy are not on the list. Indeed, those can be incredibly deadly sins!

They are also not the worst sins in terms of scandal. Again, murder but also adultery or theft might be more notorious. The 7DS often lurk quite invisible in the human heart, since we all are experts at hiding our sin from others.

The 7DS are, however, core sins--easily accessible to the human heart and from which all others may grow. Murder grows out of anger or envy; adultery out of lust; theft out of greed; etc.

They are, ultimately, the most corrosive sins in your soul. They are varieties of soul cancer, if you will. They eat away progressively at whatever is good, holy or pure in your soul.

Let these seven go unchecked in your soul...and you shall find your love towards the LORD and others growing cold...your heart growing hard...and eventually dead to the work of the Holy Spirit.

That is why they are deadly.

They are ways of us becoming, if you will, the spiritually walking dead!

So these seven are deeply dysfunctional desires to which each of us can easily fall prey. They represent universal vulnerabilities, not exceptional crimes. They are perennial because they correspond to perennial human desires.

Put simply:

The Seven Deadly Sins are the seven fundamental ways love easily goes wrong...

a part from the grace of the LORD Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Additional Resources for the Curious

We are not recommending a particular Lenten devotional this year, but here are some resources you might find useful as we together preach and teach on the 7DS:

A ministry called Groundwork--Biblical Foundsations for Life has a solid, online study series including audio and other resources available here:

https://groundworkonline.com/series/7-deadly-sins

There is also a pdf study guide that goes along with it. Some might find this useful as a kind of Lenten study to go along with our sermon series.

Those of you who are really gluttons for punishment (pun intended) might want to read some books!

An excellent book which I used to teach in my collegiate level Christian ethics class is Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung's Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and their Remedies. DeYoung is a philosopher who specializes in the work of medieval philosopher and theologian, Thomas Aquinas. But don't be put off by the philosopher part, y'all. She writes practically and accessibly, applying the ancient and medieval wisdom of the 7DS tradition to our spiritual maladies today.

Anglican bishop Graham Tomlin's The Seven Deadly Sins: How to Overcome Life's Most Toxic Habits is a more popular and pastoral level treatment. Again, good practical applications to us today. Tomlin is a Bristish Evangelical Anglican, a former disciple and collaborator of John Stott's. So while I confess I have not read this work (only previewed it for this recommendation), he comes with impeccable credentials!

One more recommendation: John Piper's Desiring God ministry has published Killjoys: The Seven Deadly Sins and it is available as a free online pdf. The authors all appear to be faculty at Piper's Bethlehem College & Seminary, all writing from Piper's well-known Reformed view of the Gospel. The central idea is right there in the title: The 7DS kill our joy. That's why they are deadly...but the Gospel frees us from the icy grip!

There will be more resources on this blog in the days and weeks ahead. Please come back for more specific resources pertaining to each of the 7DS as we treat them!