Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6192846-20160505033846/@comment-4112782-20160510170555

Hi ! The french guy again ! About the Sorrow thing (I will call it Sorrow like everyone refers to it), let me explain... I don't know if that interest you but I do it anyway :P

So... It's true that Sorrow was merged with Sloth, and it's also true that it gave birth to Envy.

In the Eight list, there was Sorrow with the meaning I told you earlier, and there was Sloth, but it wasn't exactly Sloth - it was Acedia. While Sloth is a lack of effort and work caused by a great love of pleasure and rest, Acedia was more a "spiritual" sloth. In Acedia, you were not doing anything because it was pointless - it was a sin that afflicted in particular the monks. After doing a thing you love or important to you (pray in the desert for exemple) 24 hours per day for a long time, you get fed up and tired of it. You don't have energy to do it, you don't see the point in that or the utility of what you're doing. And this depression-like state where you can't see the point and utility of everything was Acedia, the first "form" of Sloth.

When the Seven list was made, the one who did it (was it Evagrius ? I don't remember his name) saw the similarities between Sorrow and Acedia. So he took out Sorrow, and merged it's "despair/sadness" side with Acedia. And with the "jealous/insatisfied by seeing other well being" side, he created a "new" sin : Envy.

But there is still clue of the fact that Envy was Sadness/Sorrow/Despair before. Today, Envy is considered to be a sin which gives its sinner the desire to stole from other the object of their envy, or at least deprive the envied personne of the envied object. And we are told that, if the sinner succed into depriving it's, let's say victim, from the object of envy, the sinner will take a great pleasure in the suffering of the victim. And so the Deadly Sin will lead into Sadism/Cruelty. But, if the sinner fails to deprive it's victim, then he will always compare himself to the "victim" and always feel sad. And so the Deadly Sin will lead into Despair, and a total loss of hope.

Actually, I don't know if you can call the two resolutions of Envy as "Mortal Sins" because "Mortal Sins" are more acts, like murder, suicide or rape, but like the Deadly Sins are the sins that give birth to Mortal and Venial sins, I think I can call Despair and Sadism/Cruelty Mortal Sins...

Well, I think that's all I have to say for the moment. Finaly I had an occasion to expose my studying of the Seven Deadly Sins ~