Forgotten Vices, Forgotten Virtues: Reclaiming a Christian Tradition
Pride. Greed. Wrath. Envy. Lust. Gluttony. Sloth. The Seven Deadly Sins.
These words no doubt ring a bell, maybe even a very noisy and unpleasant bell. So perhaps the names of these vices have not been forgotten, but I will suggest their true meaning and significance largely have been. And what may be an even more distant memory are the Seven Heavenly Virtues. More on that later.
First, a quick history lesson.
The Desert Fathers
In the first few hundred years of Christianity, persecution was the norm. Martyrdom was an everyday reality for Christians—and this willingness to die for one’s faith became the strongest testimony to the life-changing truth of Jesus Christ. As the early church father Tertullian famously said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” [1]. But after it was legalized in the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine in 313 AD, Christianity became the norm and Christian martyrdom virtually disappeared.
Around this time, some became disillusioned with the complacent Christianity they started to see around them. They longed for a purity in faith that their persecuted ancestors had demonstrated.
So they headed into the desert.
These Desert Fathers recognized that, since they no longer faced persecution from society, they needed to turn their focus inward. In this harsh landscape, they saw with greater clarity the spiritual sicknesses that had infected their souls. In identifying these spiritual sicknesses, pursuing healing from them, and communicating their findings, the Desert Fathers became extremely influential on Christian spiritual formation for centuries to come.
With this context, we begin to understand the significance of the internal realities—the vices and virtues—that the Desert Fathers studied.
What Is a Vice?
A vice might best be understood as a habit to sin, not the sin itself. Consider wrath as opposed to murder. While committing murder is an exceedingly horrendous act, and quite literally deadly, you will not find it among the Seven Deadly Sins. There instead you will find the vice of wrath, which when left unchecked, can eventually lead to the sin of murder.
Another way to put it: vices are the diseases in our soul, and the sins we commit are the symptoms of these diseases. This is why we can’t settle for sin management in our efforts to follow Christ; we must get to the root cause of the sickness.
Rightly Ordered Love
Augustine of Hippo spoke of virtue as “rightly ordered love” [2]. Practicing the habit of loving in the right way is how we acquire virtue. And this is ultimately how we, along with prayer and God’s grace, find healing for the vices that seek to destroy our souls.
So what does it mean to love in the right way? Let’s use the Seven Deadly Sins, and their counterparts, the Seven Heavenly Virtues, to illustrate [3]:
Pride is the love of self more than God; Humility is the love of God above self.
Greed is the excessive love of riches and power; Charity is the love of God and neighbor above one’s own security.
Wrath is a love of self more than God and neighbor, where one demands immediate justice; Patience is a love of God and neighbor that is long-suffering.
Envy is a failure to love neighbor and a failure to love what God has provided; Gratitude is the appropriate love for what God has given.
Lust is the excessive love of sexual pleasure; Chastity is the appropriate love of sexual pleasure as something to experience with one’s spouse.
Gluttony is the excessive love for food and drink; Temperance is the appropriate love of these things.
Sloth is a failure to love enough that which is good; Diligence is loving what is good enough to fight for it.
An Invitation to Healing
What stands out to you in the vices and virtues? Do any hit close to home? In which are you strong? Or weak?
Join me for the rest of this series as we take some deeper dives into these vices and virtues. With God’s help, I hope that you will be able to diagnose which vices have taken root in your heart and find practical ways to develop the virtues that will serve as medicine for your soul.
[1] Tertullian. Apologeticum.
[2] Augustine. City of God.
[3] The inspiration from this section came from Heidi White’s excellent lecture on vices and virtues which you can find here: https://circeinstitute.org/product/vices-and-virtuesspiritual-formation-in-the-classical-tradition/
