Seven

"Break one commandment, break them all," My pastor said. The Evangelical stance on sin is that "sin is sin." When Adam and Eve took the first bite of the forbidden fruit, they committed the first crime. Since then every human who has walked the face of the earth has died, for "The wages of sin is death." It is human nature to sin, so no one can avoid it. In the eyes of God, one cannot lie and it be counted as a lesser transgression than murder. All sin is the same, and all punishment is the same. This fundamental Bible rule is different than society's laws, and I'm wondering how much of Dante's descriptions of the different levels of Hell and different punishments for different sins help to define our societal rules for today. Dante expounds on the punishment for different sins in his fiction work, The Divine Comedy, but he wasn't the first to define mortal sin. 


The idea came from a monk, Evagrius of Pontus in 400 AD. He said that there were eight forms of self-love that separate us from God:



Gluttony and lust concern concupiscible appetites (the “body”). Sadness and anger, are associated with the irascible part of the soul; they concern things we don’t have, and finally there are temptations regarding ourselves (pride and vanity) or those which arise from the specifically human side (logistikon of ourselves (sadness, vain glory, and pride). Acedia arises from several parts of ourselves.

Gluttony. Anxiety about one’s health, leading to inordinate concern about food. When Evagrius’ own diet of uncooked foods made him sick, he switched to cooked food.

Fornication. Desire for imaginary bodies, as unreal as the sicknesses mentioned above. This vice like the preceding tries to seduce us from orderly moral regimen. •Greed. Futile planning for an unreal future.

Sadness, which often follows from indulging in foolish wants or not getting what we want.

Anger. Can ruin health and cause bad dreams. Rather than brooding on our wrongs, we should go out of our way to do good to the person who wronged us.

Acedia (melancholy; depression). Listlessness, weariness of heart, which tempts the monk to abandon his calling.

Vain glory: Vain glory is daydreaming about our greatness, holiness, etc. •Pride: supposing we can do anything without God.

According to the Skemmata (53) these eight all arise from self-love. They all involve the wrong notion about God. They trap us into an unreal world centered on ourselves and lead to a false God. Thus they make impossible the pure prayer which is our supreme goal.

John Cassian

John Cassian translated the Greek into Latin for Christian use, and it Pope Gregory I in the late sixth century who changed a few things around and came up with the list of the seven mortal sins we know of today: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. 


And I couldn't resist, but I had to put a link to the scene of "The Box" in the film Se7en just because Kevin Spacey is so awesomely creepy.