Deadly sins - list of 7, 8 and 13

Mortal sins were determined from the commandments according to the Bible. Mortal sins mean very serious sins that entail the loss of the salvation of the soul. Any sin signifies the triumph of a person’s ego over his essence, over his true self. And any ego of any size is nothing more than a lack of love for one’s neighbor and the environment. Therefore, the nature of sin is not so difficult to understand. A person who has love, compassion, and knows the nature of karmic laws will never indulge in the antics of the ego, and will not apply mortal sins in life.

Of course, this is very difficult work on oneself, but life changes for the better. The most common way in which mortal sins cannot manifest themselves is asceticism. It is applicable in many religions, including Orthodoxy. Asceticism, although difficult to implement, nevertheless exposes the spiritual essence of a person to the maximum. It is customary to divide mortal sins into 7 main ones

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Deadly sins in Orthodoxy

Deadly sins of Orthodoxy

Mortal sins in Orthodoxy are divided into eight main ones. Orthodox books also indicate ways to combat them. However, you should not indulge in abstruse statements if the answer lies on the surface, as mentioned above. It is enough just to love, and the manifestation of these mortal sins will essentially be impossible. But for this, knowledge alone, theory alone is not enough. You need to practice this every day in your life, make it a rule, or even better, make it a habit. Therefore, mortal sins in Orthodoxy are almost the basis of the religion itself; they are a good reminder to any person and instantly trigger awareness.

In church life we often hear about the seven or eight deadly sins. To what extent is the teaching about them Orthodox, based on Holy Scripture or Tradition?

The “seven deadly sins” are not some seven actions that can be called the most difficult. The number “seven” only indicates the conditional grouping of these sins into seven main groups. For the first time such a classification was proposed by St. Gregory the Great in 590. This:

Pride.
Envy (“Envy is sadness because of the well-being of one’s neighbor, which seeks not good for oneself, but evil for one’s neighbor” (St. Elijah Minyatiy)).
Gluttony.
Fornication.
Anger (malice).
Greed.
Dejection.

This is how the modern St. Petersburg artist Vladimir Vereshchagin depicted sins. Painting “Citizens of the World. The Seven Deadly Sins"

These sins were called mortal because they lead to the soul’s falling away from God – and this is the death of the soul. “It is disastrous to remain in mortal sin; it is disastrous when mortal sin turns into a habit. If a person dies in mortal sin without bringing proper repentance, then demons kidnap his soul and bring it down to the underground, dark and stuffy abysses, to hell, to eternal torment, wrote St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), giving his list of mortal sins : – Mortal sins are the following: heresy, schism, apostasy from the Christian faith, blasphemy, sorcery and witchcraft, homicide and suicide, fornication, drunkenness, sacrilege, robbery, theft and any cruel inhuman offense. Of the mortal sins, suicide is the only one without repentance; other mortal sins, due to the great, ineffable mercy of God towards fallen humanity, are healed by repentance.”

More common in Orthodoxy is the conventional scheme of eight deadly sins.

They are divided into “carnal” and “spiritual”. The division is conditional, because there are no sins in the commission of which only the body or only the soul participated. Any sin is committed by a whole person and manifests itself when a person abuses his body. Moreover, one sin turns into another: greed for food excites lustful passion.

Gluttony (voluptuousness) “is divided into three types: one type encourages eating before a certain hour; another loves only to be satiated with any kind of food; the third wants tasty food” (St. John Cassian the Roman).
Fornication (fornication) includes all manifestations of human sexual activity contrary to the natural way of their implementation. But although this is a bodily passion, its origins lie in the sphere of the mind and imagination.
The love of money, which opens the list of “mental” vices, is the love of money, of property, as well as the unbridled desire for accumulation and wealth. “The sea does not fill, accepting many rivers,” writes St. Nile of Sinai - and the lust of the money-lover is not satisfied with the property already collected; he doubled it, and what was doubled again wants to double it, and never ceases to strive for this until death stops his useless labor.” A lover of money can also be someone who does not have wealth, but has a will that thirsts for wealth.
Anger is insults to other people, swearing, insults, screaming, fighting, killing. Destructive in its consequences, it does not arise on its own; it is fueled by pride. The consequences of anger are resentment and sadness. Anger and sadness in ascetic literature sometimes appear as positive qualities of the soul: in such cases, anger is usually called “righteous”, and sadness – “sorrow for God.”
Sadness is the opposite state of joy; grief caused by external reasons, “cutting off hope in God, doubt in the promises of God, ingratitude to God for everything that happens, cowardice, impatience, lack of self-reproach, sorrow for one’s neighbor, grumbling, renunciation of the cross, attempt to descend from it” (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov) .
Dejection is “a prolonged and simultaneous movement of the furious and lustful parts of the soul. The first is furious about what is at its disposal, the second, on the contrary, yearns for what it lacks” (Evagrius of Pontus). It can be caused by a person’s passivity in spiritual life; it paralyzes his good intentions and spiritual aspirations.
Vanity is the desire to look better in the eyes of the outside world, the thirst for honor and praise. This is inherent in everyone and can only be overcome by humility, repentance and exaltation of the role of God in one’s life; the fight against this sin lasts until death.
Pride is intoxication with one’s own merits, real or imaginary. Having taken possession of a person, she cuts him off first from people he barely knows, then from family and friends, and, finally, from God Himself.

Vanity and pride represent two stages of a person’s false orientation in spiritual life. Such a person performs spiritual work “for the sake of his own, and not Divine glory” (St. Maximus the Confessor). St. John Cassian the Roman calls these sins “subtle evil,” which can find nourishment not only in a person’s sinfulness, but also in his righteousness.

* * *

Now let us present the point of view on the “deadly sins” of the professor of the Theological Faculty of the University of Thessaloniki, Chrysostomos Stamoulis.

Professor of the University of Thessaloniki Chrysostomos Stamoulis

It has been rightly noted that in Christianity we often talk about sins rather than virtues. Therefore, it is perceived as a path of hardship, the goal of which is not the search for good, but, first and foremost, the avoidance of evil.

Such a point of view gives sin more weight than it actually has, gives rise to a guilt complex and turns the world of God into a Manichean world, for dominance in which the forces of good fight with the forces of evil. All this happens in a civilization that truly demonstrates with manic persistence, and sometimes even creates, deviant - that is, deviating from social norms - behavior: goodness is relegated to the background, its existence is remembered only on certain dates, such as the Christmas holidays and Easter, the space and time of which has long been associated with a bucolic idea of the positive side of life, its humanity.

Let us note from the outset that the theological doctrine of the seven deadly sins has no origins in the Bible. The words from the First Epistle of the holy Apostle John about “sin unto death,” often quoted in support of the doctrine of the so-called mortal sins, do not refer to any specific sin, but, as is quite clear from the context, refer to the denial of the fact of the incarnation. So, according to the New Testament, the only sin leading to death is the denial of the incarnation of the Word of God, that is, therefore, the denial of the Resurrection of Christ.

* * *

The founder of the doctrine of the seven deadly sins, which arose in Western Christianity in the 6th century, was Pope Gregory the Great, also called the Double-Speaker. It was he who placed the doctrine of “purifying fire” at the center of his theological concept, which marked the beginning of the “gloomy Middle Ages with the fear of hell,” based on a “legal” and extremely moralistic understanding of the relationship between God and man. These relationships are built according to the scheme of crime and punishment. Sin is understood as the crime of a person who violates the Law of God, Divine justice, and its overcoming is carried out through punishment.

The origins of the doctrine of the seven deadly sins, in other words, the first attempts to systematize sins with all the ensuing consequences, were lists compiled in the 4th century. Evagrius of Pontus and a little later John Cassian. In particular, Evagrius’s list includes eight grave sins, eight thoughts: gluttony, fornication, love of money, sadness, anger, despondency, vanity and pride. The list of seven deadly sins resulted from the fusion of vanity and pride. “Some have the habit of writing about vanity in a special chapter and separating it from pride,” wrote John Climacus, “that’s why they say that there are eight initial and main sinful thoughts. But Gregory the Theologian and others count them seven. I agree with them more; for who, having conquered vanity, can have pride?”

There is no doubt that the doctrine of the seven deadly sins did not appear out of nowhere, but is a unique interpretation of the above lists, the “Ten Commandments” of the Jewish tradition, as well as the theological division of sins into “heavy” and “light”. This division prevailed in the Church almost from its very foundation and was associated both with confession and repentance, and with the practice of absolution, which varied in each specific case.

Thus, grave sins, such as murder or debauchery, which were never included in these lists, could once lead to the complete exclusion of the believer from the bosom of the Church and therefore were not subject to public confession. Let us remember here the enthusiastic ideas of that time, when people believed that the Second Coming of Christ was coming soon or even had already arrived and that, therefore, the Church had no authority to make decisions regarding grave sins, for soon this issue would be decided by the Lord Himself. But sometimes, in special cases, these sins were forgiven by the apostles and the believer was again accepted into the bosom of the Church.

The Church’s rejection of the view that those who have gravely sinned will receive forgiveness only after the Second Coming first received legal formalization in the XXII Rule of the Council of Ancyra in 314. It specifically emphasized that penance is imposed on those who commit deliberate murder and that they are awarded the communion of the Holy Mysteries on their deathbed at the end of their earthly life, and not at the Last Judgment.

* * *

While the West was compiling lists of sins, as well as dividing them into serious and light and interpreting them in legal and church aspects, placing fear of the Lord the Judge at the center of a Christian’s life and giving rise to psychological guilt complexes, the East took a different path.

Guided mainly by the importance of the human personality, which does not fit into closed systems of laws and rules, the Eastern Fathers of the Church stubbornly refused to divide sins into mortal and non-mortal and, therefore, did not recognize any systematization of them.

Thus, the only “sin leading to death” remained blasphemy as conscious and unrepentant opposition to obvious truth, in other words, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And therefore, even the prayers of a saint for such a sinner will not be heard. Or, as Simeon the New Theologian said much more beautifully about the same thing, the ulcer leading to death is any unrepentant and unconfessed sin, without any division into small and large, mortal and immortal, serious and insignificant. In such a perspective of understanding church life, it becomes obvious that at the center of Eastern theology, within the framework of its highly creative civilization, is man. A weak man, and not a criminal, a man eager to receive healing, and not punishment, from the hands of the Lord, the Lover of Mankind, from the hands of the God of Love.

It is especially interesting that in Eastern Christianity, even with an attempt to systematize sins that goes against the general tradition, in no case was there any talk about mortal sins, but only about passions and thoughts that afflict monks in the battle with demons, from which one can be cured by cultivating there are eight medicines in the soul - one for each thought - leading the monk to dispassion and, finally, to the desired love.

* * *

From all that has been said, it is obvious that, despite the fact that the East and West relied on the same traditions of early Christianity, they interpreted them in completely different ways. Social, economic, political and cultural factors create the space, the womb in which theology develops, and influence its development.

The “legal” and extremely moralistic concept of salvation in the West, at the center of which is the formal regulation of human behavior, inevitably led pastoral repressions into a means of subordination, a means of control over the freedom and conscience of members of the church community.

On the contrary, in the East, where the healing spirit of salvation in Christ reigns, despite all the numerous influences of Western scholasticism, even the systematization of sins did not lead to their division into mortal and non-mortal, forgiven and unforgivable, for, according to Maximus the Confessor, “weakness is forgivable, and not worthy of punishment.”

* * *

The God of Justice in one case appears through His representatives as the absolute defender of order and law. In another case, the God of Love is waiting, according to Elder Paisius, for an opportune moment in order to boldly put into action a plan for the salvation of a person who strives with curiosity.

The elder writes, simply and at the same time exhaustively defining the world of the incarnation of the Church of Love and Peace, the Church created for man:

“God will not leave a person who struggles to the best of his ability, who is not disposed to excesses - sometimes defeated, sometimes victorious in his struggle. Anyone who is at least a little inclined to not grieve God will go to heaven “in galoshes.” God, who is good by His nature, will boldly “push” him into heaven. He gives him much more than a person deserves, He will arrange everything in such a way as to take his soul at that hour when he is in repentance. A person can struggle all his life, but God will not leave him, he will take him away at the most opportune time. The Lord is merciful, He desires salvation for all of us. If only a few could be saved, then why did Christ die on the cross? The gates of heaven are not narrow, they are wide open for everyone who humbly bows their heads, for those who are not bursting with pride. If only they would repent, give the Lord the burden of their sins, and then they would freely enter these gates.”

“There is no unforgivable sin except unrepentant sin” (St. Isaac the Syrian).

Prepared by I. Ivanov

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The mortal sin of despondency

Some consider the mortal sin of despondency to be the most terrible and there is some truth in this. After all, despondency is a refusal to live, a reluctance to act and discover new facets of life. Not a single life circumstance can be a cause of despondency, because something bad is always quickly replaced by something good. This is all to keep us in balance, and once again speaks of the harmony and perfection of the structure of the universe. For greater understanding, the mortal sin of despondency can be replaced with words like melancholy, sadness, sadness. These are very destructive emotions, a state in which a person seems to turn away from life and does not want to see all its versatility and diversity. And if you look at it, we make all the colors of life ourselves. The manifestation of this or that life circumstance or its change is only in our hands.

Who shows the right path?

Yes, this is Christ: you can wander, seek, wander, but only He showed the right path, and there is no other road. Do you want the Lord to be an honest, kind, dear guide? To carry your luggage and bring you to the right place? Follow Him. The Holy Fathers, who have trodden this path and know all the potholes and holes on it, will tell you how to walk. With love and joy they will guide you to a place that many are looking for, but few find.

Suitcases full of stones

A heavy burden that prevents walking - suitcases filled with stones and sand. These are human passions and sins. Some carry them around all their lives, some periodically throw garbage out of them, some travel light. The Holy Fathers know the secret of how to do without the heavy load that prevents you from climbing the stairs leading to Heaven.

Deadly sins bible

The Bible mentions mortal sins more than once in its writings. However, modern Christians do not all consider the list of these sins correct with the only explanation that it is impossible to observe and not manifest in life. However, such statements serve only as an excuse and not as a desire to work spiritually on oneself, because this is not easy work. The Bible reveals mortal sins to every person in an accessible way, interprets their essence, and warns about the consequences of their manifestation in life. In no case are such references a moral lesson; they act as advice and help to a person.

Envy

Like all sinful thoughts, envy is a real torment. This is the unbearable sadness of the human heart because someone feels good or happy. Envy does not seek good either for itself or for another. She seeks only evil, to make her neighbor feel bad. Envy wants to see the rich poor, the famous unknown, and the happy unhappy.

Envy is an evil demon that keeps its victim on a short leash.

This vice is not included in the list of monk Evagrius. On the contrary, there is such a sin as despondency. And that's true. After all, discouragement is actually very closely related to such a feeling as envy. Envy generates joy from other people's failures and misfortunes, envy makes a person feel deeply unhappy when someone is happy and lucky. Gregory articulated this when he added envy to his list of vices, writing that envy produces “rejoicing at one’s neighbor’s misfortunes and grief at his prosperity.”

Gluttony

Gluttony does not always mean overeating.

Gluttony does not always mean disordered consumption. Often this is a desire to eat earlier than expected, or to eat to satiety, or to consume exclusively treats. The Christian must be extremely careful about this.

Early Christian theologians understood gluttony as excessive drinking and the desire to have too much good food in addition to overeating. “If I just need to have the finest, most expensive food, that can be a form of gluttony,” Clark says.