Posts Tagged ‘faith’

In the previous posts we examined the root sin of pride and then the sins of vainglory, anger, and sloth.  The next three deadly sins—greed or avarice, gluttony, and lust—represent a shift in perspective.  Traditionally they are denominated as sins of the flesh, whereas the previous ones are categorized as sins of the spirit.  Before discussing the specific sin of avarice, we need to clarify this distinction between types of sins and demonstrate its dangers and advantages. Read the rest of this entry »

Henry Fairlie wrote, “Envy is the one Deadly Sin to which no one readily confesses.”[1] Why is this so?  Pride is the root of all sins, and yet it can have a positive meaning and even in its sinfulness has a sort of perverted nobility.  What makes envy so nasty?  In order to answer this question, we’ll need to define envy carefully and distinguish it from two closely related words “covetousness” and “jealousy.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Christian tradition of the seven deadly sins firmly maintains that pride is the chief of all sins.   The title of the chapter on pride in C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is “The Great Sin.”  So strongly is the centrality and destructive force of pride felt that it is often listed separately from the seven sins as the source of the others.  Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) states that pride is the “queen of sins,” and that the seven are its “captains.” As pride’s “first progeny,” they “spring … from this poisonous root” (Moralia xxxi:45). Read the rest of this entry »

In 1973 the famed American psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote Whatever Became of Sin? In that book he provocatively argued against psychology’s watering down the concept of sin to sickness. Add to this the corroding effects of the denial of objective norms by moral relativism, and it is no surprise that over forty years later opposition to a thoroughgoing concept of sin has escalated dramatically. Read the rest of this entry »

A common misconception of the modern world is that one can separate technical training or the mastery of skills from moral formation.[1]  In this essay I will argue that good reading is not just a skill but is a moral or ethical act.  Why that is so will lead us into issues concerning the nature of truth and the existence of God.  Read the rest of this entry »