By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN
The Seven Deadly Sins, by Kevin Vost, Psy.D. (Sophia Institute Press: Manchester, NH, 2015), 207 pp.; $18.95. Available through www.SophiaInstitute.com.
Always a topic of universal human interest, the seven deadly sins — no matter the number of treatises or books on the subject — continue to capture attention because they apply to all human beings both in the past and present. To some degree or another, every person’s moral struggle strives to combat one or several of these sins.
Who in positions of power or authority is not prone to pride, or how many people who protest “it’s not fair” are ruled by envy rather than justice? Who is not tempted by avarice, gluttony, or lust in a hedonist culture of consumerism and materialism where happiness is measured by possessions or pleasures? Who is not overcome by displays of wrath in times of war or occasions of competition where injustices provoke retaliation? How does the comfort and ease of an affluent society not lure many into the complacency of the sin of sloth?
Dr. Vost’s enlightening book, enriched by its review of the ancient literature about the deadly sins in works like St. John Climacus’ The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Evagrius Ponticus’ Practical Treatise, St. John Cassian’s The Conferences, Prudentius’ Psychomachia, St. Gregory the Great’s The Book of Morals, and St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, also applies these capital vices to the contemporary world to show, once again, how human nature and the human condition do not change.
In whatever century, place, or culture human beings exist, the contest between good and evil and reason and will persist, and these battles always involve the combat between the deadly sins and the virtues that oppose and conquer them.
For example, the sin of sloth that affected the monks of the Middle Ages as “a spiritual apathy, a sadness or boredom about the divine good of God,” afflicts contemporary man with endless diversions and distractions that interfere with a spiritual life. Sports mania, time wasted on social media, attachment to electronic devices, compulsive work habits that allow no time for leisure, and immersion in too many organizations and activities all deprive a person of an interior life and spiritual joys.
Citing St. Thomas, Vost explains that sloth weakens the virtue of charity: “God gives us so much that is good, starting with our very existence, and promises us so much more, that to allow ourselves to become mired in sloth would also seem the height of ingratitude.”
Because sloth shows indifference to prayer, worship, and love of God and neighbor, the medicine that cures this disease is “the joy that comes from charity” and “virtues such as diligence, gratitude, piety, and religion” — the habits that cultivate good works like the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and honor of God’s Commandments.
The sin of envy that breeds sadness at the good fortune of others and joy over their sufferings afflicts the eyes. “The green-eyed monster” covets the possessions of others and in Dante’s Purgatory endures metal wires shutting the eyelids.
The vice of invidious comparisons depreciating the virtues of others rather than praising them assumes many old and new shapes in the 21st century. Gossiping, damning with faint praise, and imagining that another person’s achievements mean a sense of failure or loss of self-esteem, the envious nowadays react with discomfort at “something simple and material such as getting a raise at the office, or acquiring a new house or car, or being honored for something noble and spiritual such as good works performed for one’s community.”
The perversity or unnaturalness of envy in commiserating at the happiness of others needs the reasonableness and naturalness of love of neighbor to, in St. Paul’s words, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” In their blindness the envious need to see that “God provides plenty of goodness to go around” and “One person’s gain is not another person’s loss.”
The sin of avarice, the insatiable desire for riches and possessions without limit and the miserly hoarding of wealth that prohibits acts of charity on behalf of the poor or suffering, continues to haunt the human race now as in the days of King Midas or the worship of Mammon. A more modern version of the vice has these symptoms: “How much time do we devote to striving to obtain more money, to getting a better-paying job, to stacking on overtime hours or part-time jobs, or perhaps delaying retirement to allow the pot to grow bigger?”
Like all of the deadly sins, avarice has “daughters,” offspring or byproducts of the capital vice — children like “restlessness that comes from never being satisfied and always wanting to possess more, thinking of ways to get more and putting them into action.” Instead of resting in God, the restless miser or prodigal fantasizes about the multiplication of money.
Liberality cures this vice by releasing the tight fist to spend in charitable giving for noble causes, and munificence counters avarice by doing great things through generous donations to build schools, hospitals, and cathedrals: “How it unclenches the fingers of tightfistedness with its openhanded largesse!”
Fallen human nature worships other false gods besides Mammon as St. Paul refers not only to greed as the root of all evil but also to the worshipers of the belly.
While the ancient world provides many images of gluttony like the bacchanal or the Cyclops and doctrines like Epicureanism to eat, drink, and be merry, in its contemporary form gluttony is especially manifest in eating disorders that have become as prevalent as Alcoholics Anonymous, from the “impairments of anorexia nervosa and bulimia to the veritable epidemic of adulthood and childhood obesity.” Eating “too daintily” is as much a symptom of gluttony as “eating too sumptuously” because it reveals a fetish about food.
In a consumerist, hedonist society the restless ingesting of food and drink in immoderate quantities reflects a spiritual impoverishment that seeks satisfaction by pandering to the body.
In the words of the Stoic philosopher Seneca cited by Vost, “He will have many masters who makes his body his master.” Some of the “daughters” of gluttony that follow from overindulgence are a sluggish mind and a loose tongue that engages in scurrility. The remedy to gluttony, like all the cures to the deadly vices, depends on the exercise of the will and demands the virtues of fasting, mortification, and temperance.
As all the spiritual writers teach, the taming of the body’s urges and appetites awakens the life of the soul. Vost, citing Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s commentary on the seven deadly sins, explains that Christ’s words (“I thirst”) on the cross “were spoken in reparation for the sin of gluttony.”
Joy In Spiritual Things
While many examples of lust appear in literature like the stories of Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s Inferno, the story of Eloise and Abelard, and Paris and Helen of Troy, the form of lust in contemporary society goes beyond adulterous affairs to the legalized slaughter of the unborn:
“Perhaps the most deadly consequence of lust in our modern world is the mind-boggling number of abortions performed in the nation today. Sex itself has become a god like Moloch, with innocent babes plucked from their mothers’ wombs for sacrifice upon its altar.”
The temptations of lust nowadays are not the songs of the Sirens or of Calypso in Homer but the pornography of the entertainment industry. To combat this sin in the midst of a sexualized popular culture, the virtue of chastity demands custody of the eyes, resistance to books and media that glamorize lust, and avoidance of occasions of sin that undermine self-control.
Again citing Sheen, Vost acknowledges that Christ’s sacrifice of His body offered “reparation for the world’s sins of the flesh.” Without a spiritual life, in the words of St. Thomas, “those who find no joy in spiritual things have recourse to the pleasures of the body.”
While a world of difference separates just anger as a response to injustice and deadly wrath as a reaction to provocation, this vice especially transforms man into a beast resembling a vicious dog or a furious lion. When anger is not directed to the guilty person or at the right moment or for just reasons, it becomes like a raging fire that wantonly destroys anything in its path.
A person checks wrath by guarding the tongue to avoid vulgarity, contumely, and blasphemy, by overcoming peevishness over small slights, and by not harboring resentments, grudges, and thoughts of revenge.
A soul learns the virtues of meekness and patience that combat wrath by delaying action to punish out of spite, by giving the accused the benefit of the doubt or some excuse despite the insult, and by acquiring the Stoic virtue of equanimity, the strategy of “forgiving your transgressors in advance.” To defeat the demon of wrath requires mental preparation, a knowledge of the enemy who appears, in the words of Marcus Aurelius, as “the busybody, the thankless, the overbearing, the treacherous, the envious, the unneighborly.”
The Christian virtues of patience, clemency, and meekness also comprise the armor against the enemy of wrath.
The Arbiter Of Life And Death
Two chapters in the book deal with the chief of the deadly sins, pride. In the classical world the prideful are guilty of hubris, the belief that man is the measure of all things, not God, and Greek tragedy portrays kings like Oedipus and Creon who tragically fall from high to low because they presume to be all-knowing and all-powerful. They lack self-knowledge, the truth that man is below the gods and above the animals. The prideful hold that man-made laws are above divine law.
In Vost’s words, pride is “an inordinate desire for one’s own excellence and to have things one’s own way, rather than God’s way.”
In its most vicious modern form, pride makes man the arbiter of life and death as abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage defy divine law, the Ten Commandments., and Christian tradition.
Pride also parades as vainglory, an air of superiority based on a person’s family, wealth, social status, beauty, education, or professional accomplishments. This pursuit of glory seeks vain things not based on merit:
“If any glory is due, shouldn’t it truly go to the God, who gave those good things to me, so that I could do good deeds for His glory?” The mother of the virtues, charity, is the remedy for the queen of the vices. Whereas pride and all the deadly sins cry “me, myself, and I,” charity and humility reply, “God, neighbor, and then, yes, me too.”
This book is a superb review and synthesis of the rich literature and history of the deadly sins, combining fresh insights with old ideas to make the truth ever ancient and ever new, venerable and timely. To understand the perennial teachings in this book about the vices and their cures is medicine for the soul and fortitude for moral battle.
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(Dr. Kalpakgian is a professor emeritus of humanities.)
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