99: The Eight Tempting Thoughts

Hi, and welcome to Classical Stuff You Should Know, a podcast about the classical world, ancient books, classical education, how to teach, and they all podcast. Sounds like you're picking that up in real time. It's early in the morning. I think it's the issue.

I mean, for me, it's almost 10 o'clock. It's summer. Okay. Anyway, I'm suggesting early things and you just want to ruin my summer.

We just have love. We're trying to wean you off of your summer schedule back onto a school schedule. You're not my real mom. You don't have to do that.

So day one is not. I'm a real man. I can sleep in how I want to. My name is Graham Donaldson, and I am joined by the illustrious Thomas Magby.

Hello. And the ever-vescent A.J. Hanenberg. All right.

Don't look right at him. Wasn't that a band in the 90s? Evanescence. Evanescence.

That's Evanescence. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was a thing that happened.

I totally forgot about Evanescence. What was the song? Is that Wake Me Up Inside? No.

Wake me up. Wake me up. Is that Evanescence? I always get confused with the Christian version of them, which was P.O.D.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, P.O.D. Those were good times. Anyway, we are three classical educators.

We work at a school called Veritas Academy in sunny, sunny Austin, Texas. And boys, it is the height of August. The sun is at its angriest. And it's hot out there.

It's really hot. It's been cracking 105. I kind of want to try the frying pan egg thing. It probably could work.

If you have a mirror, it'll definitely work. You try the cookie dash thing? Oh, you can go on your dash? Is there a really thing?

Yeah, you can cook cookie dough on your dash. This doesn't seem like Sainsbury. Wow. I'm no prince, I mean.

I think it's more good for dash cookies. Your majesty. Sorry. I had to watch it on Sunday.

Very sorry. Anyway, so speaking about virtue advice, today we are going to be learning about virtue, but mostly advice. Is that correct, Anberg? Yeah, yeah.

Virtue, but mostly advice. Awesome. So I'm going to give a version of the Pidea talk I gave for our little school conference a couple of days ago. I know.

I promised Plato book two. That's still coming. It really is. Is this like Plantea part 14 that we're still waiting on?

Hey, I hit the end of Plantea. Yeah, it's just an incredible round. The one on the British, I find. And we just lost some listening.

All right, so yeah, that's still coming. I'm just going to do the talk we worked on. And I know we've sort of done the Seven Deadly Sins before. Hopefully, I will add a little bit of color and information surrounding what those are and where they came from.

Because I think when we did it, didn't we just sort of focus on what the sins themselves were? I think. The Seven Deadly Sins, but it's not. Really, it's not.

And those aren't the virtues everybody thinks of. So I've done a little more research. So I'm going to start with a question. Can I watch the movie Seven to prepare myself for this?

Did you find out what was in the box? What's in the box? What's in the box? Sorry, I think it's like Iron Man's Wife.

Oh. All right, so I started. I know, Graham, you came to the talk that I gave. But I started with a question.

Does God see all sin as the same? No. Why do you guys say no? Or why do you say no?

Okay, so the reason people give for saying this is a verse in James that says that anyone who has committed a sin is guilty of all sin. But it's a separate point from saying that all sin is equal. Well, there's more than that. There's in Romans, no one is righteous.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There's no one righteous, no one not one. It's a funny fact about that verse. So there was a little tiny church in Northern Ontario that I went to in the summers when I worked at camp.

And they had, like, if you were a new visitor, they would give that little pencil, little thing to take away. And they never had new visitors. It was a tiny church. So they had a lot of pencils.

They had a lot of pencils. And I was kind of new, like, you know, so they gave me a pencil. But the best part about it was that that was the verse on the pencil. And so it said, like, the name of the church.

There was no one righteous, no, not one. And I thought that was hilarious. We're all sinners here. But, yeah, so it is a common thing to have our students say, all sin is equal.

God sees all sin the same. And I definitely had some strand of that in my Protestant upbringing. I can't remember. I don't think it was ever explicitly.

I don't think my parents ever taught me that. But definitely as I got older and I was in less liturgical circles of, or lower church circles of Christian Protestantism, that definitely was in there. So maybe it's, like, a reform thing? I don't know.

I don't think I was in there either. I think maybe it's, like, one of those Christian rumors, kind of like the... Christian rumors? Well, you know how there are student rumors.

Like, if the teacher doesn't show up to class after 10 minutes, you get to leave without punishment? No, there is a thing at UT. So I think it was 15 minutes. So there are places...

Are you sure? Did you actually check the bylaws, or was that something you heard from your fellow students? I heard from fellow students, and then hacked on, and then was not punished for it. So here we are.

Well, I mean, what professor wants to admit there were 15 minutes left of class? But I heard that from my fellow students. I don't think that's anywhere in the Whitworth bylaws. Yeah.

Just folklore. That's what I'm talking about. It just sort of gets into the culture. So it's awesome that you guys brought up those verses, because I think that's true.

And that's actually the motive behind giving this podcast and this talk, was that I've heard so many times from my students that God sees all sin the same. That he doesn't care what it is. All sin is the same in God's eyes. And you guys even named the right verses.

So Romans 3, 9 through 20, it's the... There is none righteous. No, not one. There is no one who understands.

There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good.

Not even one. Their throats are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips.

Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Cheery group, it sounds like. And then the rest of this verse also has to do with it. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world held accountable to God. Right?

So basically, we're all under the law, and if we get grace, it's for all of us. That's kind of what it's talking about. That's not the only verse, though, that talks kind of about this. There's also Galatians 3, 22.

But scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised to be given through faith in Christ Jesus might be given to those who believe. Everything locked up under sin. And then Romans 6, 23, the wages of sin is death. All have sinned and falsehood for the glory of God, that sort of thing.

Because of those things, because, and I like to refer to this as legal status, because of our legal status, right? If you sin, you have transgressed the whole law. That's the rule. Every sin is worthy of death, even a small one.

But that doesn't mean that they're all the same, right? Maybe a good analogy would be like, if we live in a really totalitarian society, wow, nailed that one. And stepping on the grass is punishable by life in prison, but then if you murder someone, you get like 12 lifetimes in prison. It's all pretty bad.

You're all going to end up in prison, but some are certainly worse than others. But you're saying, still in that situation, stepping on grass is less bad than murdering someone. Yeah, it does less damage to society. It's less of a problem.

Well, maybe that, that's why I was not at your talk, so I don't know, the question I'll eventually get to is how do we know which one is worse, right? So if there's a difference in them, yeah, you just pointed to a utilitarian, like, stepping on grass is not that bad compared to killing a person. Anyway, just how we'll figure out how we rank those things. I thought you were a disciple of Evagrius.

I'm so sorry. We can do deadly thoughts. You want to talk about desert fathers' deadly thoughts? Hey, whoa, spoilers.

Come on, man. Did you listen to my CD podcast? Anyway, sorry. So there are a bunch of verses that give evidence to the contrary, right?

That God does see sin in gradations, right? So Proverbs 6, 16, There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are testable to him. Hottie eyes, a lying tongue. I hate hottie eyes, too.

Me, too. Isn't that like a makeup shade? Hottie 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.

Those are bad things. Those are bad things. And then there's the Exodus passage you talked about where there was different punishments for if you knew that your bull was kind of a problem. Right?

From the last podcast. Those civil laws, yeah. Yeah, those civil laws, where some were punished more severely and some less. 1 Corinthians 6, 9, Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. And then he lists a whole bunch of sins. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slenders, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Matthew 11, 21-22 Woe to you, Chorzin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in Sacklot and Ashes.

But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. Right? Implying that there is a gradation of sin, even as we come to the day of judgment. Then there's the parable about the master and the servant, where he doesn't do the work he's ever done.

There's John 19, 11. I think this is the most telling. Jesus answered, and when he's talking to Pilate, You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore, the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.

Right? So there we have gradation and sin, straight from the mouth of Jesus. So what sort of benefits do you think having that be a, probably wrong, but nevertheless disseminated theological statement, saying that all sin was equal? Like, did that help in some sort of discussions of the gospel?

Or was that, like, I think you're right in saying that that is a theological mistake, to say that all sin is equal, legal status and everything else. But what sort of, did it have some kind of benefit that, like, why did we use it? Why did that be something that we fell into? I think there's a two-fold reason.

First, if I'm like, man, God can't save me, I've done some real messed up stuff in my life, then I, as an evangelical, I can say, actually, you can't. Like, there are, people can forgive just that. You're not too far gone. There's no pit, so deep.

And the other thing is convincing people who think they're pretty good, that there's still work to do, right? Yeah, that they, you know, one small sin, and you've messed up the whole thing, right? When they're like, I'm pretty good, I pay my taxes, I don't lie, like, I've never cheated on my wife, you know, that sort of thing. I think there's a truth in it of, when you're quoting Romans, that there is a condemnation, kind of for no matter what you do, but it doesn't, it works one way, but it doesn't work the other way.

So it works to say that the punishments are equivalent, but it doesn't work the other way to say that the sins are equivalent. Yes. So it's helpful in one direction, and then unhelpful in the other direction. Yeah, we'll get there, we'll get to some takeaways, I'm going to try to blast through some content, and then we can sort of unpack it near the end.

But I wanted to talk about the seven deadly sins, as we have them today, because those are seen still by the church to be sort of a codification of human sin, right? But it doesn't appear anywhere in Scripture. We have lists of, as far as I know. You're saying that in the sense of, like, there's no list that says, these are the seven deadly sins.

Yes, that's my point. We have all sorts of lists. These are seven things that are condemned. Like, there's no story that says, let me be really good, or no story that says, I'm really good.

Yeah, but there's nothing counteracting to the fact that these are, in fact, sins. We just don't have, they're just not listed as headings. Yeah, and there's nowhere in the Bible that says, like, and these are the seven deadly sins. Yeah, totally, yeah.

All right, so where'd it come from? Well, it all started with a fellow named Evagrius, who you know about. His best father, he came up with four deadly thoughts, and then Aquinas summarized them into deadly sins. I think Aquinas might as well.

You are, you are, just full of information. I'm sorry. If you want to read the book, Ascedia, oh, I forgot the name of it. Just listen to our old episode on Ascedia, we talk about these deadly thoughts also.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, so I'm going to go through the deadly thoughts again. So Evagrius lived from 345 to 399.

He was a monk from 383 onward, and he put together a book called The Practicos, which was basically, here is how to be monk and how to be good at being monk. And he gives a list, gluttony, sexual immorality, love of money, sadness, anger, Ascedia, vainglory, and pride, right? Which is eight thoughts. So this is before we jump it down to seven.

There's a couple in there. Ascedia, we talked about in our previous podcast. Can you give me a quick definition of Ascedia? Laziness towards spiritual matters.

Sloth is how it's eventually translated, but what we think of as sloth is a combination of sadness, which doesn't appear in the deadly sins, and Ascedia. Yeah, for sure. It's a feeling that there can be no moral progress, so you might as well stop trying. A form of despair.

Yeah. Right. Okay, so he gives these eight, and he kind of gives a fun description of each. So gluttony is, it tempts you to suddenly reject your asceticism.

Like, you want new stuff. You're tempted to eat too much food. Well, if you don't eat food for five days, and then you have a little piece of bread, you'll be way more thankful for the piece of bread. You'll be less tempted to consume a lot.

Sexual immorality is the desire for other bodies, and the solution for that is avoid other bodies. It's real straightforward. If you don't see anybody, it's hard to be lustful. Love of money.

And this was, right, it's weird to think of a monk having a love of money, and so for them, it was you're attracted to a life of ease, health, and less shame from depending on others. So what money offered to the monk was a much easier life, a much healthier life, and then, you know, they didn't have to beg. And what's the solution? And I think this deserves a whole conversation in and of itself.

Love. And he says, love can't coexist with wealth. Love destroys wealth. Destroys wealth.

That's interesting. Any thoughts? So Aristotle puts magnanimity as the mean between giving all of your money away and giving no money away. So it almost feels like the big reason's definition is kind of going toward the extreme of giving everything away.

But that's, I mean, that feels better, right? Like, yeah, it does feel wrong. It feels wrong to hold on to wealth when there is poverty in the world, and that could be solved. This is, what's the guy's name?

There's a philosopher. I'll Google his name after I do this, where he says that because the cost, like, when you donated a few dollars, we could wipe out diseases in Africa. Since the cost to us is so minimal and the benefit to them is so great, it is immoral that we hoard essentially any of our money instead of providing it to the world. So I think there's something to it.

It kind of creates problems with, like, if he's wearing like a family, like, so if I were to give away all of our money, I'm wronging my wife and my child. So I have to think about that. Well, you're being charitable to some but not to others, right? And those others are people you're really supposed to have some charity for, your wife.

Right. Maybe that's good. So a part of the charity would involve them, so that means I couldn't give everything away. Like, I need enough for them to, like, I don't know, eat.

I just thought it was interesting that he put those two things as opposites, love and wealth. And if you think about it, the more I love someone else, if I want to give them something, that is straight up destruction of wealth, right? So having those as opposite, I thought was interesting. And then the next one is sadness.

Oh, just before we move on, I want to know if the word for love he's using is keratos. Is that sort of self-sacrificing charity love? I'm not sure. Then the next one is sadness, which he says comes from frustrated desires.

When you don't get something you want, you get sad. And he says, gloominess, since it's deprivation of pleasure, the solution is not to have pleasure in the first place. If you never have any fun, you won't be sad when the fun is gone. What?

That's insane. Sorry. The solution to sadness is to be sad all the time? No.

You won't be sad if you never lose something. So it's like if you never experience any pleasure, I don't know. That one doesn't seem to fit. Yeah.

Maybe I wonder if it's more similar to the food thing, where it's the solution. If you're sad all the time, you should go and be in a position where you're even more miserable. So I sometimes think about this. If I have a kid in class and he's real grumpy and he's sad and sort of moping around and he's saying those sort of self-appreciating things, like, man, you are a ray of flipping sunshine today.

I sometimes feel like if we go and have class outside in 105 degree and he doesn't get any shit, like if we go and we have something that is completely more uncomfortable, I wonder if then if you come back and then you're in a more comfortable place, if that, but I don't know, maybe that won't work. Like if you starve, if you, it's sort of like, you know, starve yourself of food and you get a little bit of food, you're like, I actually really love eggs or whatever. Like completely starve yourself of like an enjoyable situation when you come back and it's like, oh, actually, I should have appreciated this in the first place. I don't know.

Maybe more, I think the insight is interesting that the problem of sadness isn't, the sadness is that you are too used to pleasure, right? And so the problem isn't that you need more pleasure. The problem is that you've like grown accustomed to it and you expect that's how life is always supposed to be. And that seems to, maybe that's what I'm, like you're a little dopamine addict and the regular life doesn't interest you anymore.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I think it's fun. The next one is insidia and, oh sorry, the next one is anger. And basically he said, this is indignation.

against a wrongdoer or presumed wrongdoer you might get it wrong and if left it can become he actually uses the word I think manis or is this the next guy might be the next guy but he says it can change to rancor if it's rooted if it lasts over a few days it can get worse and worse and he said there are two solutions to this number one give him a gift if you're mad at somebody giving him gifts helps and number two don't do the thing where you imagine yourself telling them off or having a fight with them you know what I mean if you guys have been angry at somebody and you just imagine yourself really giving them what for he said don't do that and give him a gift it'll fix it acedia and then the next one is acedia and you know you've talked about this before but he ranks it as the noonday demon when you really want to get out of your cell and the passage is so fun that I'm going to read it if that's okay did you read it on the last one when you did it are you reading from Psalms or are you reading I'm reading from his practice so he says the demon of acedia which is also called the noonday demon is the most burdensome of all the demons it besets the monk at about the 4th hour 10am of the morning encircling his hour until about the 8th hour 2pm first it makes the sun appear to slow down or stop so the day seems to be 50 hours long then it forces the monk to keep looking out the window and rush from his cell to observe the sun in order to see how much longer it is until the 9th hour 3pm and to look about in every direction in case any of the brothers are there then it assails him with hatred of his place his way of life and the work of his hands that love has departed from the brethren and that there is no one to console him if anyone has recently caused the monk grief the demon adds this as well to amplify his hatred of these things it makes him desire other places where he can easily find all that he needs and practice an easier more convenient craft after all pleasing the Lord is not dependent on geography the demon adds God has to be worshipped everywhere it joins this to this the remembrance of the monk's family and his previous way of life and suggests to him that he still has a long time to live raising up before his eyes a vision of how burdensome the aesthetic life is so it employs as they say every possible means to remove the monk to abandon his cell and give up the race no other demon follows on immediately after this one but after its struggle the soul receives in return a peaceful condition and unspeakable joy basically it's just getting really antsy during the day I'd like to point out that it is 10.05am and we are now 5 minutes into the CD hour as you were reading I was looking outside I was checking my watch just staring over this podcast I was looking for monks outside boys hey boys alright what's the solution for this one he says tear your soul in two and encourage yourself persevere basically give yourself a real big pep talk like stand from the mirror and do affirmations yeah that's how you all start today right yeah so the next two vainglory and pride I think we usually use as synonyms but they're not vainglory is like wanting praise for yourself so he says it's like wanting to publish your efforts and gain glory among men and you have fantasies of famous healings like you heal a guy and everyone's like oh you're such a great monk because you heal this guy and that's sort of what you want and then he says do everything for God the aesthetic life is the answer to this one so the internet is vainglory yes pride is the worst and it's not in God's help soul is responsible for its own achievement and you disdain the brethren because they don't see all of this about you so whereas vainglory is wanting praise pride is saying they're not praising me as they should because I'm so great and I accomplished all these things so it's not necessarily but not completely yeah it's not necessarily wanting the glory it's being like detesting others because they're not giving you appropriate glory that you deserve because you're awesome and he says well remember your older life and how you were back then so vainglory deep down you can say I'm not worthy of all this praise but man I want it but pride is I'm leaving you more worthy of it yeah okay so the next step so we have a vagaries and the next step I love how practical a vagaries is can you imagine a student coming to you and they're describing something and you very quickly identify it as wrath or gluttony or whatever give me a gift buy me coffee yeah talk about it it's not essentially hard and there's value to identifying with it but I don't know if anyone's ever been that direct of you probably just need to cut out food or you love pleasure too much or I don't know he's just so practical yeah I really appreciate that it's born out of the seven deadly sins isn't some theological theory it's born out of this is a month it's lived a life and talk of the desert fathers and here's the sins that we typically deal with and here's how to fix them yeah it's practical counseling it's not we're going to talk about this for month and month it's something that actually needs to change like there's actually a problem that needs to be dealt with right so are you thinking Thomas that you will now like prescribe actions for the students to do when they come to you and they say certain things or they sort of say like man I'm I just can't I'm really mad at this other student and you're like well yeah usually action is a part of it yeah with it's like penance yeah I didn't know the right way to talk because like don't we go on a pilgrimage to like the stream down there's a long history of like the way you make things right is repentance like sorrow and sin and then usually you're told okay this is what you need to do to make that right so I do think it depends on the person in like the situation they're actually in because again with Assyria there's no action you have right there it's you need comfort you need encouragement but it depends on the student and it depends on what they're struggling with but very often people will come to be like looking for comfort and like you're actually kind of in the wrong like and I want to I don't know I care more about their like growing through that than feeling good at the end of the conversation there's hope and truth yes there is and the students will rarely hear that from other places like just think of your friends your friends want to make you feel good they want to make you confront your problems and they deep down know what's wrong and so to have somebody tell them the probably shameful or difficult thing but say it true they're going to feel sad but they're also going to be like okay finally somebody sees what's actually happening as opposed to if you're just like oh well everyone has struggles and everyone has you know these are just it's just part of growing up and they're like okay a lot of them know that is lying or it's dishonest to say there's nothing wrong with you the problem is only with the other person yeah I like a lot of this yeah I just like that it's born from real human experience right right okay the next fellow to sort of bring changes to the list is a guy named Cassian and Cassian lived between 360 and 435 he wrote the institutes and the conferences which is about conversations with the desert fathers he kind of criticized Augustine but not by name like he never said like Augustine's a hack and so I think they called him anti-Pelagianist or something like that but just sort of moderately anyway it's a fun little tidbit that he and Augustine kind of butt heads but his list is a little bit just barely different so he lists gluttony fornication a fantastic word philargeria which is greed so philar I guess love of argeria which apparently is money yeah gold oh there you go sadness yeah for money or anger sadness acedia cenodoxia which is another word for so these are in sequence they weren't with the vagaries they are with Cassian so this is a big change he brought some innovations and the first one is that there are four ways of operation so some are fulfilled with bodily action fornication and gluttony the only way to consummate those sins is actually act upon them some are fulfilled without action some are motivated from without like motivation comes from elsewhere like avarice and anger I can't really get angry if I'm just hanging out by myself and then some are from within sadness and acedia and he says there's carnal and spiritual sin carnal brings pleasure to the flesh and these require a two-fold cure you need to be abstinent from the thing that's wrong and meditate might want to avoid people for a while so if I'm dealing with lust I need to separate myself entirely from the temptation and then go through meditation he changes the solutions that vagaries gives a little bit and then he says for spiritual sins I love this definition he says they provide the sick soul with the food of miserable enjoyment like you just feed on a sin and anybody who's been angry or been envious or something like that you know how it feels to just sort of like cook in it and you're miserable and it's just if you enjoy it it's still pretty bad so he says the remedy the remedy is a simple heart to sort of get rid of that let that sort of don't think of yourself too highly and let go the biggest issue is that it's a progression that is the biggest change he brings to this list of eight is that each leads to the next and the only way to cure it is to assault the one before so let me read the list again gluttony fornication greed anger sadness and acedia the last two vainglory and pride are actually separate from the first six they are not part of that progression but they do go one into the other vainglory becomes pride so he's saying you can't be angry if you're not gluttonous first yeah so gluttony is I would say overindulgence and then you consummate it in fornication and then you want what other people have because you've gotten used to so much pleasure and then when you don't get it when you don't get what you want you don't have your greed fulfilled you get angry and then after your anger it kind of brings shame and sadness about your state in the world and then eventually what all of that leads to is despair which is acedia so anxiety of the heart so moving from just overindulgence all the way to soul anxiety he says if you want to get yourself out of it you've got to focus on like if you have an acedia problem you've got to deal with your sadness issue if you want to deal with your sadness you've got to get rid of that can you not just jump to the top and just stop eating for a while I don't think he really addresses that but I think he says you pretty much have to go in backwards order if you want to fix it I never knew the seven deadly sins were a progression I guess it makes sense because Dante will put them in a progression kind of and Aquinas kind of does so I guess it makes sense that's interesting and he doesn't think of them as being necessary for future ones this is going to tie in our next podcast are we doing yours next? are we doing yours next? yeah it's going to work together cool he also kind of breaks each into its subsets so each sin he says here are the different parts of it so for gluttony gluttony and fornication are a pair they are consummated with bodily action and motivated from without so gluttony is eating before the lawful hour and remember this is still for monks this is still like practical monk stuff eating before but I mean like it's where you're like snitching food you're like getting snacks eating glass yeah or it's when you eat everything available and you eat all the food or you have an inordinate desire for fine foods oh I got that he even says that's pretty bad like if you go to somebody else's house and you're like do you have better sauces oh I don't know yeah so that's bad he says all that's pretty rough and then fornication he says this can be actual sexy times so actual fornication is that what he says? that's in Greek sexy times then he says sexy times alone which he doesn't even really mention what that is he kind of references a verse that has to do with what's happening there but you know the sexual act alone and then sexy times and thoughts so those are the three different things you can do greed is kind of fun the first one is you're not permitting renunciants to be deprived of their wealth like if a monk comes and he's super rich you're like dude don't do it it sucks let me keep this stuff that's the first one you want to take back what was given to the poor like go and collect it back nope nope nope sorry man I need that or what we all think of as greed which is you want what you didn't have before right I want more stuff anger he says can be interior can break out in deed or can last for days sadness is after anger or because of a hurt or thwarted desire and he says this can also be unreasonable mental anguish or and he uses a strange phrase I don't really know what it means I think this is really interesting he said it makes the sad fall asleep or it gives you wanderlust which I think are the two reactions to sadness right you either like lay in bed or you gotta get out of there you feel like you gotta get out of there you like want to leave and you wanna run so I don't know the two reactions either you shut down or you run hate this place I will be happier in a different school or you just stop trying and let your grades totally take or you just get sad and let your grades totally take because you feel like it's not worth it I think this is so interesting as the two reactions to depression right like this is how people react you either want to leave or you want to fall asleep I mean there's a good there's a good theological treatise that needs to be written at some point that with someone that has a lot of not only maybe some clinical psychology or some real understanding of the chemicals of depression but then also the spiritual state or with a condition that the life of the soul also can influence the life of the body there needs to be a good a good treating of that to talk about you know how those two interact because I usually get at least in my experience it's usually you get one or the other depression is solely 100% chemical reactions and all you need to do is just somehow get those chemical reactions right and you'll now be happy or it's a complete or it completely discredits that and says it's purely a spiritual thing and you need to pray more and I've seen sort of damage done to people when both of those things were held in their extremes there needs to be some sort of good mixing of the two I'm sure it's out there I haven't really looked at it there's a book called Anatomy of the Soul by Dr.

Kurt Thompson and there's a book that gets at what you're talking about he would not call it the theological treatise because it's more about science but it's getting at some of the ideas you're talking about Anatomy of the Soul anyone wants that yeah I think there's a there's some causation fallacies happening here because the chemicals are different and therefore it must be caused by the chemicals I don't know if causation has improved and so I think your spiritual state could be changing the chemicals but the thing is I also have seasonal affective disorder so when it's cloudy outside I'm depressed like nothing in my life has changed from one day to the next except for the sun's gone and I all of a sudden hate everything and think all doom and gloom in my life is terrible and then growing up in the Pacific oh my gosh I was depressed every winter for the next six months and I came down to Austin and I'm way happier all the time especially because the sun's out all the time and that's true if you exercise and you get a little bit of IMD that can help and so it can't just be attitude of the heart right there's a training meditation and taking time to not have your brain be at the forefront acting but having some passive reflection on God is probably also healthy chemically at some point at some level it's just something to think about I don't think I have the answer on that one the last two Vanglorian pride again are separate from the first six oh my goodness Marian Robinson was right she's our leader I watch some of the clips of the debates always love push back to dark forces so Vanglorian is split down into you're uplifted by carnal and exterior things so what makes you happy is outside of you rather than what's inside and you desire empty praise and he has a fun note he says actually this is the only sin that might be a good thing because a desire for empty praise from all the other monks means that I'm less likely to commit the first six because I want them to think I'm the best monk ever I probably won't go around eating their food and getting angry at people so it actually might sort of stifle those first six but then it can grow in pride and he actually doesn't give any notes on pride he goes through the first seven and then pride he's just like and also pride exists and then he goes on to talk about some other things that's funny because you almost don't need to say anything I think we know what pride is yeah and that's how you fix it other than just humility does he say vainglory leads to pride yes so desire for empty praise okay the next huge step so so far we've had Evagrius we've had Cassian and then we have Gregory the first so this is a dude that thought way too much about the book of Job good for him so he's a pope he lived 540 to 604 this is Gregory the Great this is Gregory the Great do you guys know about Gregory the Great he um I think it's classical approaches to counseling Gregory the Great is brought in as like an early approach like a pastoral approach so yes he's the markation that I have for the beginning of the middle ages yeah sure he organized a huge large scale mission for Rome he combated the Donatist heresy which pretty much means that you have to be perfect as a priest for your sacraments your sacraments if you're true like if I'm going to do baptism I have to be completely spotless and then he also happened to write over 1100 8.5 by 11 pages on the book of Job it was huge I knew that the list the final seven that we have today was codified by Gregory in his book on Job so I had to try to find it in that 1100 pages thank heavens for finding control F all day So I found it, and this is the final list in order of occurrence in The Conquered Heart. So this is also in seven ways. Is that the name of the book? No, I think it's like Morals.

It's like something like that. I think I've got it here somewhere. But anyway, yeah, it's Books of the Morals, I think is what it's called. So here's the final list, and this is in order, just in sequence, just like the last one.

Vein glory, envy, anger, melancholy, avarice, gluttony, and lust. And that's, okay, and the order there is progression, same as before? Progression, same as before. So gluttony, which was our entryway before, is now second to last.

Yes, and lust is dead last. It's almost a complete flip of where it was. So vaing glory or pride is first leading to envy. That makes more sense to me, pride being early.

You think so? Yeah. Remember those last two were a progression on their own. They were separate from the first six.

In Cassian, but now they're all included together. Because pride is saying that, I know that I shouldn't pursue, gluttony pursue, envy pursue, whatever, but I'm going to do whatever I want to. It makes sense for pride to be the starting place for all future sins. Well, yeah, and especially leading to envy.

So I think I'm so great, why does somebody else have something more than me? And then you get angry about that, and then you get sad because you don't have it, leading to wanting what they have, and then just sinking into gluttony and lust. So it kind of makes sense. It's weird that those two progressions almost are completely opposite each other.

But I'm going to read you guys the passage where he actually talks about this progression, mostly just for the last sentence. So just hang with me. But they are, each of them, so closely connected with other that they spring only the one from the other. For the first offspring of pride is vaing glory.

And this, when it hath corrupted the oppressed mind, presently begets envy. Because doubtless, while it is seeking the power of an empty name, it feels envy against anyone else being able to obtain it. Envy also generates anger because the more the mind is pierced by the inward wound of envy, the more also is the gentleness of tranquility lost. And because a suffering member, as it were, is touched, the hand of opposition is therefore felt as if more heavily impressed.

Melancholy also arises from anger because the more extravagant the agitated mind strikes itself, the more it confounds itself by condemnation. And when it has lost the sweetness of tranquility, nothing supports it but the grief resulting from agitation. Melancholy also runs down into avarice because when the disturbed heart has lost the satisfaction of joy within, it seeks for sources of consolation without and is more anxious to possess external goods, the more it has no joy on which to fall back within. But after these, there remain two, or remain behind two carnal vices, so he still maintains that spiritual versus carnal, gluttony and lust.

But it is plain to all that lust springs from gluttony when in the very distribution of the members the genitals appear placed beneath the belly and hence when the one is inordinately pampered, the other is doubtless excited to wantonness. Wow, okay, awesome. That is the last sentence. That is the last sentence.

And so he's basically like, you eat too much in the body. Yeah, you eat too much and what's going to happen is just like, I think he's just a little confused about anatomy of what's going on. But the rest of your body just is envious. Oh.

Hello? I think someone is testing our piece. There you go, cool. Okay, and then he also lists under each sin all of the different sub-sins that can be a part of it.

So when vainglory comes disobedience, boasting, hypocrisy, contentions, omstinencies, discords, presumptions of novelties, there's a bunch of them he lists all. And I think the thought here, I just want to use it to impress upon the listener that this was thought to be a full list of the grand headings of sin. Any sin you can commit goes under one of these. Sure.

Right? So you'll sometimes get a list of the seven deadly sins and then there are children of each of their sins. Yes. And the children come under each of the seven headings.

And then even under the children are more forms of their sins. So what that means is if you hear this and you think there are more than seven ways to mess up, you're right. But they kind of fall into these categories. I want to say there are probably 40 if you get all the children under there.

So there are probably 40 categories beneath that and you can pretty easily fit most sin into those 40 categories. Yeah. So almost any of the sin you can think of the medieval church and the Catholic church have always pretty much thought that it slots into the seven deadly sins. All right.

So I'm going to switch to the virtues now. So where do those come from? The Fantastic Four virtues, the cardinal virtues, all come from Plato. So there's four.

Four Cardinal virtues. The movie's terrible. Which one? Fantastic Four.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. Didn't they have a reboot on that? Yeah, they're pretty bad too. Okay.

Yeah. So I'm kind of going to hustle through these especially because they don't really go through any big changes ever. So this all comes from the Republic and after comparing the human soul to pretty much the passage is right after he finishes building his like here's what the perfect city looks like. And he's like, all right, so we've got the perfect city.

What's happening? Oh, it's fun. Listen up, listen up. There's a test.

Oh my gosh, we have to evacuate. We're probably testing. That doesn't sound like a test. I'm going to pause the podcast and we're going to leave the building.

All right, pause. And pause. Welcome back. For you, it was but mere seconds.

But for us, it was a nightmare of ash and smoke. Did you say nightmare? A nightmare is a liar too. No, a nightmare.

A nightmare. As opposed to what? A nightmare. A nightmare.

A nightmare. That's how you pronounce the word. Listen, guys, we just survived Inferno Holocaust and you're making fun of the way that I say nightmare. That's what I say.

Nightmare? Nightmare. Nightmare. Thank you.

Nightmare. A nightmare. A nightmare. Anyway, this is a whole other conversation.

No, it was just a test. This will is not on fire. Everything is okay. And we will be back to talking about virtues.

So he lists for prudence, which is wisdom or wise counsel. That's knowing the right course of action in any situation. And for Plato, this corresponded with the people running the state, right? The guardians.

And in person, reason, right? Reason runs prudence or wisdom. Courage. And I love the definition here.

He says, the preserving of the opinion produced by law through education about what and what sort of thing is terrible. And by preserving through everything, I meant preserving that opinion and not casting it out in pains and pleasures and desires and fears. Basically, it's maintaining an opinion about what is scary through every situation in life. And in the state, that corresponds to the warriors and for the person, that's your will and spirit.

That's the virtue of will. Temperance is basically a harmony among the many parts of your soul. So reason, will, and appetite. If they are all in accordance for how much you should indulge in something or how much you want something or what you should do, that is temperance.

We usually think of temperance as going only so far and no further in a pleasure. But that is when your appetites are in concert with your reason. That's what that means. So basically, harmony within the person producing a not too much, not too little with everything else.

Yes, definitely. You can be intemperate on both sides. So you can be intemperate in not ever doing anything, and you can be intemperate in indulging too much. Those are both violating temperance.

Exactly. The last is justice, which is, for Plato, it means pretty much doing your own thing, keeping your own stuff, not being a busybody. I'm not kidding. Basically, do your own dang job and no sticker knows in everybody else's business.

There have been sort of developments on our definition of justice, but that's for Plato what it is. And it's still justice. And that corresponds to the whole man and the whole city. Is that the definition we'll get to eventually in the Republic?

Is that where that comes from? Yeah. I mean, those all come from the public. And then Aristotle kind of talks about the golden mean, which we've talked about I don't know if he adds these or if they are added elsewhere and he just confirms it, but the three theological virtues to supplement the four cardinal ones, which is faith, hope, and love, or charity, right?

From Corinthians, right? So those seven together, justice, temperance, prudence, and courage, add to faith, hope, and love. Now, the first four are available to anyone, right? They come from the classists, the classists, like the pre-Christ, and they had nothing to do with the Hebrews, so it's available to everyone and the last three are given to us and available to us only through the divine.

I don't have time to go into it, but the catechism of the Catholic Church, the current catechism, confirms all of these and lists all seven by human experience to be these things. So you can go find it in current Catholic doctrine. So that is the whole sort of picture, where our virtues and vices come from. So why is this important to give to our students?

I'll give some basic thoughts and you guys can sound back to me. So when I was going through this and sort of studying all this as a way to respond to students who say all sins are the same, I basically think without a healthy understanding of sin, we make ourselves vulnerable to debilitating sin states, right? If I don't have a word for envy or even vain glory, which is a cool differentiation between pride, then I might be suffering from that sin and have no idea, right? I mean, I know something's wrong, but I don't have a name for it or any sort of remedy, which is dangerous, right?

If we don't teach something about sin, then we open ourselves up to issues. I actually had somebody ask after I gave this session, how should I tell a Calvinist about this, right? Somebody who is like fully seven point Calvinist. And I said, well, if they argue with you on one point, say, okay, what if instead of one Calvinist there were 50 and 10 of you were suffering from debilitating lust, 10 of you from wrath, 10 of you from envy, right?

Would you want to live in that community? Like even though every sin is forgiven and we are all depraved, a community that is sunk like irreparably into one of seven, these deadly sins means a busted community. And it seems like these are more, they can be more or less corrosive to like character and personality and, you know, like someone who is never gluttonous but sort of has a wild weekend of eating things and then feels really guilty has committed sin and has done some sort of damage to their body, but they haven't sunk so deep into it that it has become so interwoven with their character that it would take an immense amount of pious efforts to untangle that sin from who they are. So there is this idea that there is, yes, the status before God is all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but there is also a temporal progression that it gets worse with time.

You become vicious. Yeah, yeah. Vicious means full of vice. And I don't think there's anything in Calvinism that strongly holds against that.

No, I don't think so. I think it's just the notion of total depravity, right? Oh, I was wondering why it was specified that they're Calvinists. It's specified because they say all people are totally depraved, so it kind of doesn't matter what sin they have?

Yeah. I guess. Is the point you're making that there are worse sins to be, so if you're in a community, are some sins that are worse to be around than other sins? My point is that even if we are all totally depraved and all sin is fully redeemable, certain sins will have a more detrimental effect to the person and the community around them, right?

So if I'm a totally virtuous person and I have a habit of lying to my wife about how good she looks in a certain pair of jeans, I wouldn't call that person a vicious person, right? I lie every once in a while. It's a lie? Yeah, it's a lie, but it's different than having sunk deeply into envy and being envious all day.

That kind of person is far more broken. So which progression then do you agree with? I honestly don't know. I think Gregory's makes a lot of sense, beginning with pride and then falling elsewhere.

I think there are entanglements in there to plumb further. That's good. I think it's also helpful, and I appreciate the point that I think you said wasn't Gregory, but catch me before that, that whatever sin that you're dealing with or talking with a person about is usually not the sin that actually needs to be dealt with. There's something that goes even deeper than that.

The point that you're realizing the problems of your sadness, you probably haven't dealt with a problem of gluttony or lust or whatever. There's something else going on than just the presenting sin or situation. So I think that's helpful insight also. Yeah.

So I have a few other thoughts. The way to teach virtue, I think this is according to Aristotle, is teaching and experience, right? Education and experience. But the thing is, it's just how to teach something.

If you're going to teach about what it means to be virtuous and sinful, there has to be some content there. And you can teach scripture, sure. So if you hold sin to be very dire, then you commit some tiny sin and then you just fall to pieces. This was the problem with Martin Luther.

He, for at least in the beginning, every single sin would go and repent for two hours, right? Or you won't balk at the worst. So if you think all sins are the same and you're like, ah, I'm fine, like stealing someone's pencil, might as well steal the crown jewels because it's, you know, in God's eyes it's the same and I can repent just the same so who cares, right? I also think that in an absence of good nomenclature for the sins and virtues, kids will grab whatever virtue is the nearest and decry whatever sin is most decry in culture.

So they'll say, okay, what are the sins that my parents most talk about? Excellence in grades, maybe some hard work and so I've met kids that their virtue is that they work hard at everything and what happens is they usually end a nervous wreck because they can't do everything because they're being imprudent. Yeah, I thought you said that but industry or hard work is not one of the seven virtues that you just listed. I don't think it is a virtue.

I think hard work correctly applied is prudence, right? I think that's what that is. But not the hard work itself. Yeah, if someone goes and moves rocks from one pile to another but the piles don't matter, they work really hard and they accomplish anything.

That's useless work, right? I also think that running the human machine instinct or whatever. But all that language is just another way of for someone to say this action causes a rush of dopamine which makes us happy is no different than having said this action makes us happy. But that seems less binding than, the fact that you sort of reduced it to the mechanical means that it seems less binding than if I said good men are courageous.

If I said when you are done being courageous you're going to have a rush of dopamine and they'd be like well I can also get a rush of dopamine if I hold my breath. So it's also descriptive versus prescriptive. Good men are courageous means this is how you become a good man and you should be one. Science is always descriptive meaning that I can tell you that the dopamine is happening but as you pointed out why do I care?

What if I don't want me dopamine today? Then I don't have to be courageous. If I say if you're not a courageous person you will be ruled by the fears by your swaying fears and your opinions about what is fearsome and that you'll be ruled by that and your life will be a terror that is a very different thing than saying courage is beneficial to the society unit because it means that we won't die to other society units. It's a completely different statement.

At some point you are appealing to some conception of the good life and if the conception of the good life is just merely couched as a non-binding thing because of evolutionary forces then there's nothing really stopping somebody from point in point saying that's meaningless and then it's kind of steps away from nihilism. You become unlinked from any ought. It's not you ought to do this it's like you can do this and here are the things that will happen. And your ancestors have done this because of their biological necessities or whatever.

Yeah, I would feel almost compelled to say well heck with my biology why am I ruled by what my body wants me to do I'm going to transcend and do whatever I want which means all sorts of crazy things. And that's kind of Nietzsche's argument is that the thing is not the moral the thing is the will. And so then it kind of doesn't matter what you choose as long as you have the strength power or whatever to accomplish that thing. Cool.

So it's just one thing I always hit with my students all things are the same and I want to scream no they're not and then dealing with students who have problems because they've taken some virtue or some vice and really ramped it up to a thousand and not given appropriate attention to the real virtues and the real vices. So Plato's list has been going for like 2,000 years. Anyway, there you go. Cool, well do we have any classical stuff we got wrong?

No, I think so. Well I have one thing I'd like to point out. So what are some of the names of C.S. Lewis's greatest books?

Chronicles of Narnia. What about the one that we that sort of encapsulates the Christian faith? Near Christian. Near Christian.

Okay, how's that first word spelled? M-E-R-E. Okay, if you wake up in the night and you've had a terrible dream I had a nightmare. Is that called a what?

Nightmare. Can you spell that word please? M-A-R-E. Oh crap.

I'm so happy right now. You can contact us at classicalstuffinveritasacademy.net I'm trying to get rid of my pride so I don't have any of these vices in my end. Tell us all about your nightmares so we'd love to hear about them. So I've embarrassed myself in public.

Very publicly. Really nightmare? M-E-R-E. Yeah, you're right.

No one does M-E-R-E. Nightmare, yeah. Crap. Like the cow.

We have a website called classicalstuff.net and please email us with thoughts, episode ideas, funny doodles. We have a strange lack of memes in our inbox. I would like some good memes. If you also have lines of dialogue between us that you thought were hilarious in lines past, remind us of these things because we're cooking up maybe some ideas of ways that we can disseminate hilarious things that we've said.

Like Nightmare? Yeah, that can definitely be one. Oh my word. That can be embarrassing.

Alright, this is Graham, Thomas, and AJ signing off. Bye. Goodbye.