Deadly Sins, Addiction, the Demonic, and Spirituality

In this essay, I argue that the classical Christian teaching on the seven deadly sins, and a particular theological understanding of the demonic, can help clarify the power of addiction which begins with the corruption of thoughts about desires. If not rechanneled in the direction of a life of charity toward others and God, these desires can be overcome by perverted aims and goals. In the process, a person struggles against an adversarial imposition of destructive thoughts, and consequently, the best correction and remedy to this process is the restoration of one's mind and life purpose. The practice of habitual prayer and fasting can renew the mind with that of the Spirit, and thus enable a person to regain charity and a life lived in communion with God, and to fulfill one's created purpose.

To accomplish this, I first present a brief overview of the main teachings on the deadly sins, emphasizing insights found in Evagrius of Pontus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. This is followed by an analysis of several explanations of why people become addicts, and in particular, why they enter the state of a deadly sin. I also discuss the possible role of the demonic in understanding deadly sins and addiction by gleaning from three theological accounts (Evagrius, Saint Thomas, and Karl Barth) several relevant conclusions. I close with a theological account of prayer and fasting as ways to prevent and possibly remedy the corrupting effects that the deadly sins and addiction can have on thought processes.

DEADLY SINS

Teachings on the deadly sins date back to the fourth century, and though it appeared they had been forgotten starting around the 18th century with the Enlightenment, within the last thirty years there has been a renewed interest in them, not only for what they tell us about the Byzantine and medieval periods but also for their insights into human nature and the various problems we perennially face.¹

The concept of sin is more comprehensive than a deadly sin. Many sins would not be considered deadly. For instance, adultery is a sin but lust is considered a deadly sin. Even though the particular act of adultery may cause great harm to people, a life captured by lust is more ruinous to the person. A deadly sin is a vice, a perverse way of living that not only harms human life, it imperils it. For example, if we are gluttonous with our appetitive drives, we destroy our health and chance to achieve our life goal.

Moreover, the vices do not directly cause us to die, rather, they lead to death. While gluttony does not kill a person, the resulting heart disease or diabetes can cause death. Gluttony is a perverse thought process and will that prevents people from rightly ordering their lives toward proper aims that lead to fulfilling lives. They can be called capital vices. The word capitis (from which the English translation "deadly" comes) refers to the head. That is, vices begin in people's head, in their thinking, in their aims and intentions. They corrupt human life because they involve perverse aims.

Perhaps the first teaching found comes from the fourth century theologian and monk Evagrius of Pontus. He describes eight deadly thoughts: gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory, and pride.² They distort the natural thought processes toward ruinous consequences. "The mind receives naturally the mental representations of sensible objects and their impressions through the instrumentality of [the mind's ability]."³ The mind takes the form of the external object and records it as a copy of the experience. There are three kinds of thoughts: human, angelic, and demonic. The mere mental construction of a representation of an experience is a human thought. An angelic thought clarifies the goodness and divinely given purpose of the objects of experience; however, a demonic thought corrodes a mental representation and consequently leads to a destructive way of thinking about the world, ourselves, others, and God. These thoughts are not mere misunderstandings or reflections on actual objects or features of the world, instead, they are perversions of mental representations and thus are...