Seven sins

Month, Day: Words, Questions (Perfection)

We just had Speech as the month winds down toward Perfection, still in the Teleological.

Speaking of that, Frank McCourt brought some humor to the topic of religion which allows us a moment for reflection on some teachings. Take the seven sins, for example. That the cardinality of the sins is seven is significant; we see that number occur in many contexts. The main one is that the weekly cycle has 7 days.

The Writings include the 7 Valleys which are a central theme, even to cognition. So, one might think about how these relate to the sin/virtue pairings.

What order there is in these pairings is not usually explained, yet we can easily make some sense like the following listing shows.

• 1 - Search -- Sloth/Diligence
• 2 - Love -- Gluttony/Temperance
  
• 3 - Knowledge --Lust/Chastity
• 4 - Unity-- Greed/Charity
• 5 - Contentment -- Envy/Kindness
  
• 6 - Wonderment -- Wrath/Patience
  
• 7 - True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness -- Pride/Humility

Some of these seem obvious, such as #1 and #7. Some of the others are debatable, some more than others, naturally. It might be worthwhile to ponder this somewhat.

There are many types of sins beyond these seven. They're of interest due to the cardinality.

But, a look at these and the virtues is not complete without considering sinlessness.

Modified: 07/30/2009