The Seven Deadly Sins and Original Sin: A Comparative Look

Sin is a social construct, and on this basis, according to the geography of sin in a social system, one can to some extent judge the institutional structures and the flows of power and meaning that circulate in the arteries of its human relations.

The Seven Deadly Sins and Original Sin: A Comparative Look

Shervin Vakili

Sin is a social construct, and on this basis, according to the geography of sin in a social system, one can to some extent judge the institutional structures and the flows of power and meaning that circulate in the arteries of its human relations.

Sin is a negative feeling, of the kind of emotions and passions, that arises because of committing a forbidden act or failing to perform a necessary one. In this respect, sin resembles shame, which is a universal and pervasive feeling, pre-wired into the psychological systems of humans, and is experienced more or less in the same way everywhere. Shame also arises from the perception of one's self-image being ugly, improper, or inadequate in the eyes of others, but it is more related to "the form of my being," and less to an act that has or has not been done. Anthropological data shows that shame is universal, and all people, regardless of the state of their culture, race, language, and the complexity of their society, experience a form of shame with a similar behavioral-motor pattern. Blood rushing to the face and blushing, bending the back and lowering the head, avoiding eye contact and looking down, and trying to hide the hands or face are universal manifestations of shame, which seem to have a pre-wired structure in the human neural network, much like anger, fear, and joy.

Sin resembles shame in that it is a negative feeling and similarly signifies the inadequacy and unpleasantness of one's self-image. But the similarity between the two ends at this limit. Sin has a thoughtful texture, dependent on introspection and reflection, and unlike shame, it is felt even in the absence of another. Shame refers to a social situation and sin to a moral condition, and therefore their complexity and dependence on context differ. Sin is a more complex, language-mediated, thoughtful, and abstract form of shame, tied to the internalization of moral standards and the constant monitoring and measuring of the self based on them. For this reason, sin, unlike shame, does not create a similar and uniform behavioral pattern, and may lead to a very wide range of reactions. Freud was the first to show that the reaction to sin can have no logical or reasonable connection to the subject of the sin itself and can manifest as an emotional explosion in a completely unrelated arena of human relations. An example is that someone might, because they feel guilty, show kindness to someone who has no connection to the subject of their guilt, or conversely, resort to expressing violence in an unrelated context.

Sin, in this way, is a learned matter, and in this respect, it resembles diffidence (azarm), which is also a learned derivative of shame, with the difference that it has an antecedent position on the time axis and signifies the avoidance of committing an improper act or accepting an unpleasant notion, whereas shame is posterior to this situation and appears after an act has been done and a notion has been formed.

Sin differs from shame and diffidence (which are psychological states) in that it is rooted in cultural beliefs and convictions. That is, sin is more tied to language, text, and learned beliefs. For this reason, the subject of sin does not have a universal state and is formulated differently in every society, or sometimes may not be formulated at all. As, for example, in the Japanese language, we do not have an exact equivalent for sin, and what is seen in its place is a socialized and extreme form of that same shame.

In the same way, some of the reasons for the emergence of a sense of guilt that seem obvious and natural in one society may appear completely irrelevant and strange if viewed from the perspective of another. In the Middle Ages, eating fish on Christian days of abstinence and fasting was an act that generated an immense amount of guilt for gluttonous believers, while on those same days, in other lands, people ate their fish with a clear conscience and felt no guilt. Similarly, it seems that in the ancient world (such as among the Canaanites and Aztecs, as Eastern and Western examples), if someone did not hand over their child to the priests for sacrifice to the gods, they felt guilt. Whereas today, the descendants of those same people would feel guilt if they handed a child over to be killed in a religious ceremony.

The relativity governing guilt and its dependence on cultural context is therefore a valuable opportunity for comparing civilizational spheres and examining the patterns of the configuration and formation of the "self" within them. In particular, the lists of cardinal sins that have taken shape in various societies are very expressive and illuminating in this regard. Most famously, in the Christian world, these seven sins are greed, envy, wrath, sloth, gluttony, lust, and pride, which have been represented in the form of seven demons or seven beasts (respectively, in Christian iconography: toad, snake, lion, snail, pig, goat, and peacock).

The seven Christian sins bear a resemblance to the seven Buddhist cardinal sins, and this perhaps relates to a common source from which both religions borrowed. Today, the Dalai Lama's interpretation of the seven important Buddhist sins is more famous. The Dalai Lama says the well-known prayer "Om Mani Padme Hum" signifies six virtues and their six opposing sins, and those sins are pride, envy, desire, ignorance, greed, and malice. These six, together with the great sin of attachment to life and its pleasures, which is manifested in the form of the demon Mara, constitute the seven important sins of Buddhists. We see a similar pattern in the Hindu religion as well. Hindus call their six great sins Arishadvarga, and these are lust, anger, greed, delusion, pride, and envy. We see a similar pattern in Jainism and other Indian religions, all of which were most likely borrowed from Buddhism.

The seven Christian and Buddhist sins are ascetic and world-renouncing versions of a more ancient theoretical system that evolved in the Iranian lands. The first signs of the concept of the seven sins in Buddhism date back to the second and first centuries BCE, a time when the center of Buddhist compilation and development was located in Eastern Iran (present-day Khorasan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). In Christianity as well, the concept of the seven sins in its early form evolved in the first and second centuries CE in Asuristan and Anatolia, and the oldest Christian reference to it can be found in the Epistle to the Galatians (5:19-21). The first list of this kind is also read in the treatise "On the Eight Evil Thoughts" by Evagrius Ponticus, a native of Anatolia who lived in the fourth century CE. In contrast, we see the oldest textual reference to this concept in the Avesta, which is several centuries older than this era and was undoubtedly the origin and common source for both of these religions. In fact, a form of the list of sins (which, of course, numbers more than seven) is seen in the Gathas of Zoroaster, whose date goes back to the twelfth century BCE, meaning it is a thousand years older than the seven Buddhist sins and fifteen hundred years older than the seven Christian sins.

It seems that the formulation of the origins of sin in a sevenfold format and in connection with demons also first evolved in the Zoroastrian religion. Ancient Zoroastrians believed in a sevenfold group of holy forces consisting of Ahura Mazda and the six Amesha Spentas. This holy sevenfold group was the adversary of the seven evil forces, which consisted of Ahriman and six powerful demons, each of which incited a sin in humans and were collectively called the Kamaleh Divan. Thus, the seven deadly sins for orthodox Zoroastrians were malevolence and evil thought, weakness and feebleness, unnatural lust, wrath, thirst, and hunger, which are respectively embodied in the demons Akoman, Savul, Jahi or Varan, Indra or Aeshma, Triz, and Zariz, and are considered the adversaries and enemies of these angels: Bahman, Ardibehesht, Esfand, Shahrivar, Amordad, and Khordad, although various patterns of confrontation and rivalry have been narrated in this regard.

These six sins were accompanied by the great sin of destruction and impairing the law governing nature (Asha), whose representative was Ahriman, and the sin associated with it was called Ashmoghi, meaning the breaking of Asha. This ancient form of the capital sins, consolidated within Zoroastrian demonology, was later revised and edited many times up to the Sasanian era, yielding different lists of capital sins; by aggregating all of them, it becomes clear that malevolence, lying, greed, wrath, envy, injustice, and harming animals and plants or polluting nature were more prominent among them.

The path of borrowing the concept of the seven capital sins from the Zoroastrian context into its Christian mold is more or less clear. For in the Book of Proverbs of Solomon, which is part of the Old Testament and was most likely compiled at the beginning of the Achaemenid period, we read this sentence: "There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community." (Book of Proverbs, 6, 16-19).

By comparing these lists of sins, it becomes clear that the Jewish mold, which is closer to the Zoroastrian context, acquired an ascetic and world-renouncing nature over the five or six centuries that passed before it transformed into the Christian seven deadly sins, and became intermingled with a part of Greek Stoic ethics. The Christian and Buddhist seven sins resemble each other in this respect, in that they deem natural and everyday matters to be wrong, and generally arise from a pleasure-averse and austerity-oriented morality. In Christianity, gluttony and sexual desire are considered reprehensible, and this is more or less the inverse of Zoroastrian ethics, which praises and permits natural sexual desire and counts hunger and thirst as sins. Similarly, in Buddhism, satiation (both in terms of food and sex) is considered illusory and deceptive, and the desire to satisfy these natural urges is regarded as a kind of sin, which we find in the Dalai Lama's language in the form of desirousness and excessive wanting.

It is interesting that the Iranian form of the capital sins indicates deviation from normal and natural life and is centered on praising and recognizing joy and pleasure. This is why Spandarmad (Sepandārmaz), an angel from the group of Amesha Spentas, also represents the intimate relationship between man and woman, and in contrast, we see that hunger and thirst (probably to confront the ascetic morality of Christianity and Manichaeism) were considered a kind of sin. In Iranian religions, it is especially the harming of others (malevolence, wrath, lying) and damaging nature that is condemned and considered a great sin.

It is interesting that in both Buddhism and Christianity, pride is considered a great sin, whereas "magnanimity" and considering oneself sacred and powerful is accepted and good in the Iranian context, and is only considered a sin when it leads to lying (like the example of Jamshid Shah).

We see the same pattern in the narratives concerning original sin. These narratives consider the commission of a sinful act in eternity as the basis for the transformation of the history of existence. In Christian and Hebrew narratives, this original sin is "eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge" that grew in paradise and God had forbidden. Whereas in Iranian sources, the enjoyment of wisdom and partaking of the "fruit of the knowledge of good and evil" is considered the foundation of morality, and Zoroaster, who is regarded as the first prophet, is considered holy for partaking of it. It is interesting that in ancient Iranian sources we also have the concept of the first sin, but its content is entirely different from what we see in Semitic texts. In Iranian sources, lying, eating human flesh (i.e., murder), and killing a beneficial animal, namely the cow, is the original sin that leads to the fall and corruption of existence. Jamshid committed such a sin by lying and claiming divinity, Mashya and Mashyana by killing and eating their children, and Ahriman by killing Gayomard and the uniquely-created bull.

Sin is a powerful and decisive sense in human behaviors, one that demands the acceptance of social laws and rituals, their internalization, and the avoidance of transgressing them. For this reason, it has evolved in every civilizational context according to the cultural foundation and surrounding social structures. Sin thus resembles a clue that makes it possible to compare the temperaments and dispositions of peoples belonging to different civilizations and illuminates the fabric of distinguishing good from evil within their meaning systems.

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PDF file of the article The Seven Deadly Sins and Original Sin

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The Seven Deadly Sins and Original Sin: A Comparative Look

Shervin Vakili

Kargadan Weekly, Issue No. 8, 14 June 2016

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