A friend emailed a list of seven paradoxical sins without mentioning my peccadillos. Was his list a hint to cleanup my act? Here are the seven paradoxical sins:
- Truth—if it becomes a weapon against persons
- Beauty—if it becomes a vanity
- Love—if it becomes possessive
- Loyalty—if it becomes blind trust
- Tolerance—if it becomes indifferent
- Self-confidence—it it becomes arrogance
- Faith—if it becomes self-righteous
Come to think of it I have been guilty of all the paradoxical sins sometime in my 72 years and I most likely suffer from a few right now.
As I was considering which paradoxical sins currently condemn me I began to ponder the seven deadly sins. I thought of five: pride, wrath, sloth, gluttony and lust. Had to look up the other two—envy and covetousness.
Then I thought of purgatory. (The mind races to strange places when one has bipolar illness.)
Purgatory was a Roman Catholic Church invention to increase the Church coffers through indulgences, a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins. The theory proposes that sinful Catholics on the way to paradise take a detour to a place of repentance called purgatory. By praying hard enough family and friends can help the sinner exit quickly from purgatory. Prayers supplemented with gold, silver and other lucre can speed an entry into paradise.
In 1245 at the First Council of Lyon purgatory became a formal doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses of 1517 a dispute against indulgences and subsequently purgatory led to the Protestant Reformation.
According to my theological friend the purgatory interpretation came from a passage in the Apocrypha a section of history, stories and aphorisms found in the Roman Catholic Bible but omitted from Protestant Bibles. The purgatory proposal can be read in Chapter 12: 39-46 in the Apocrypha’s Book of Maccabees II, a history of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Empire around 200 BC.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) dramatized the purgatory concept in the Divine Comedy, the epic that Cliff Notes saved us from reading in college. The eighth deadly sin—using Cliff Notes—will keep most of us in purgatory.
According to Dante purgatory is a huge mountain on a small island that contains seven ascending terraces providing atonement for the seven deadly sins:
- Terrace I, the proud are bowed down by rocks that must be carried up the mountain.
- Terrace II, the envious have their eye lids sewed shut
- Terrace III, the wrathful breathe smoke
- Terrace IV, the slothful run without rest
- Terrace V, the avaricious (covetous, rapacious, materialistic) grovel face down
- Terrace VI, the gluttons starve
- Terrace VII, the lustful walk in a river of fire
Anyone who took Great Books of the Western Literary Tradition 101 knows the Divine Comedy is divided into three books of which Purgatorio is one. The other two are Inferno and Paradiso.
The carnage and savagery in Inferno remind me of George R. R. Martin’s A Story of Ice and Fire. The law of retribution determines punishment in the Inferno. A river of blood drowns the violent. Flatterers are bogged in excrement. Hurricane winds bombard carnal sinners tempted by passion’s tempest.
In Paradiso virtues are rewarded with the most meritorious circling closest to God. All the souls in paradise are perfectly contented with whatever degree of blessedness God has willed for them.
I’m aiming for Paradiso but to get there I must atone for those paradoxical sins. Dante here I come.