Religion dictionary
the seven deadly sins
or cardinal sins
黑料网 are the seven deadly sins?
Originating in Christian theology, the seven deadly sins are pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and wrath. Pride is sometimes referred to as vanity or vainglory, greed as avarice or covetousness, and wrath as anger. Gluttony covers self-indulgent excess more generally, including drunkenness.
Where does the seven deadly sins come from?
While the concept of an inventory of moral offenses has roots in antiquity, Pope Gregory I of the Catholic Church first enumerated the seven deadly sins in the late sixth century. For his list, Gregory drew from the ideas of Evagrius Ponticus, a fourth century Christian monk who identified eight evils humans should resist. Broadly speaking, the seven deadly sins function as ethical guidelines.
In his influential 13th-century text Summa Theologica, Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas further expounded on the seven deadly sins, which he called 鈥渃apital vices.鈥� To Aquinas, the seven deadly sins were the cause of all other offenses: 鈥淚n this way a capital vice is one from which other vices arise.鈥� Capital comes from the Latin caput, 鈥渉ead,鈥� Aquinas explains. The head leads the body just as the capital vices, chief among them pride and greed, lead to further immorality. It was often believed that the seven deadly sins could compel Christians to commit mortal sins, grave sins that a person voluntarily committed knowing that they defied the word of God.
About a century after Aquinas published Summa Theologica, capital meant 鈥渄eadly鈥� in English. A capital crime or punishment, for instance, involved the loss of life, or the head, metaphorically. A 鈥渄eadly鈥� sin thus suggests a grave and destructive act. The seven deadly sins are also called capital sins or cardinal sins, with cardinal meaning 鈥渇undamental鈥� and echoing capital鈥檚 sense of causation.
The seven deadly sins also have counterparts, the seven heavenly virtues: humility (opposed to pride), kindness (envy), temperance (gluttony), charity (greed), chastity (lust), diligence (sloth), and patience (wrath).
Many great works of literature have explored the seven deadly sins, including Chaucer鈥檚 Canterbury Tales, Dante鈥檚 Purgatorio, and Edmund Spenser鈥檚 The Fairie Queene. 16th-century Dutch-Flemish Renaissance master Brueghel the Elder strikingly painted all seven deadly sins, as did American painter Paul Cadmus some 400 years later. In popular culture, the seven deadly sins inspired the plot of the 1995 thriller Seven and a manga/anime series, The Seven Deadly Sins.
WATCH: Who Invented The 7 Deadly Sins?
Examples of the seven deadly sins
Who uses the seven deadly sins?
Outside of art, literature, and theology, writers, and presenters often employ all the sins as a device to advise against poor practices in a particular line of work, activity, or phenomenon. For instance: the Seven Deadly Sins of American Politics, the Seven Deadly Sins of Punctuation, the Seven Deadly Sins of PowerPoint Presentations, the Seven Deadly Sins of Financial Management. The seven deadly sins also enjoy wide use as a common cultural reference, often with playful variations on the classic sins, across a variety of registers.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of the seven deadly sins like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of the seven deadly sins that will help our users expand their word mastery.