mortal sin

Origin

Since some baptized members denied Christ to avoid persecutions, the Church fathers realized it was "possible to lose the grace of salvation after baptism", requiring repentance to be saved from eternal punishment. In this case, those predestined with God's grace were not "predestined to remain with him until glory". Many of the earlier leaders of the Church believed in the concept of mortal sin with this reasoning. The Catholic Church believes that "mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law", dividing between mortal and venial sins:When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object . . . whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbor, such as homicide or adultery.... But when the sinner's will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbor, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.The concept of mortal sin is hinted at in some works of the early Fathers of the Church and explicit in others. In AD 385, Pacian of Barcelona, in his Sermon Exhorting to Penance, gives contempt of God, murder, and fornication as examples of "mortal" or "capital sins". In AD 393, St. Jerome writes:

There are venial sins and there are mortal sins. It is one thing to owe ten thousand talents, another to owe but a farthing. We shall have to give an accounting for an idle word no less than for adultery. But to be made to blush and to be tortured are not the same thing; not the same thing to grow red in the face and to be in agony for a long time. [...] If we entreat for lesser sins we are granted pardon, but for greater sins, it is difficult to obtain our request. There is a great difference between one sin and another.

New Testament

The term mortal sin is thought to be derived from the New Testament of the Bible. Specifically, it has been suggested by Jimmy Buehler from Theocast that the term comes from 1 John 5:16–17. In this particular verse, the author of the epistle writes "There is a sin that leads to death."

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, Idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, Envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God. -Galatians 5:19-21 in the public domain Douai-Rheims Bible

Catholicism

In the moral theology of Catholicism, a mortal sin requires that all of the following conditions are met:

Its subject matter must be grave. (The term grave sin is used at times to indicate grave matter, and at times to indicate mortal sin. But it always remains true that the following two conditions are requisite for mortal sin.)

It must be committed with full knowledge (and awareness) of the sinful action and the gravity of the offense.

It must be committed with deliberate and complete consent.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grave matter:

Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother." The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

Although the Church itself does not provide a precise list of grave sins or divide actions into grave and venial categories, Church documents do name certain "grave sins" as well as "offenses" and "actions" whose subject-matter is considered to be grave. For example, in the area of human sexuality, the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that the following actions can involve increased gravity: extramarital sex, divorce (but not legitimate separation), and masturbation. The sins against the Holy Spirit and the sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance are considered especially serious. Further, Pope Francis and many bishops privately regarded certain sins as mortal, for example child abuse or neglect of one's parents.

With respect to a person's full knowledge of a certain act being a grave sin, the Catholic Church teaches that "unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders (mental illness). Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest." Furthermore, Catholic teaching also holds that "imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors."

Eastern Catholic churches

Autonomous, self-governing (Latin: sui iuris), Catholic particular churches and liturgical rites in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, that accept the dogmas of Papal Supremacy and Infallibility, are known as the Eastern Catholic churches. They derive their theology and spirituality from some of the same sources as the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, yet use the Latin Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin. However, names other than mortal and venial are often used.

Examples

The following is a partial alphabetical list of actions that are defined as constituting grave matter, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church or like sources (such as declarations by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Apostolic Letters, or other sources printed by Church authorities).

Lutheranism

In Lutheranism, sins are of two classes:

As to their effect, sins are divided into mortal sins and venial sins. Mortal sins are those which result in the death of the sinner. This term takes in all the sins of the unbelievers. In the case of the believers those sins are called mortal which force the Holy Spirit to depart from one's heart, which destroy faith. Venial sins are sins which, though they in themselves merit eternal death, are daily forgiven to the believer. They are also called sins of weakness. They do not drive the Holy Spirit from the heart, do not extinguish faith.

Venial sins are sins of weakness; they are limited to believers, and do not kill faith, because they are not done intentionally. In themselves they are real sins and are worthy of death, but through faith Christians have forgiveness for them. Mortal sins are such as kill faith and drive the Holy Spirit from the heart, because no man can sin willfully intentionally and at the same time believe in Christ for the forgiveness of his sins.

The Smalcald Articles of Lutheranism teach that apostasy from the Christian faith can occur through loss of faith or through falling into a lifestyle characterized by mortal sin:

It is, accordingly, necessary to know and to teach that when holy men, still having and feeling original sin, also daily repenting of and striving with it, happen to fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy Ghost has departed from them [they cast out faith and the Holy Ghost]. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be accomplished, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it does what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are [certainly] not present. For St. John says, 1 John 3:9: Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin [...] and he cannot sin. And yet it is also the truth when the same St. John says, 1:8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

The Lutheran divine Martin Chemnitz, who contributed to the development of Lutheran systematic theology, delineated what are considered mortal sins:

Eastern Orthodoxy

According to Father Allyne Smith: "While the Roman Catholic tradition has identified particular acts as 'mortal' sins, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition we see that only a sin for which we don't repent is 'mortal.'"

According to the Mission of The Orthodox Church in America, in answer to a parishioner's query:

In the Orthodox Church there are no "categories" of sin as found in the Christian West. In the pre–Vatican II Catholic catechism, sins were categorized as "mortal" and "venial". In this definition, a "mortal" sin was one which would prevent someone from entering heaven unless one confessed it before death. [...] These categories do not exist in the Orthodox Church. Sin is sin. Concerning Confession, having a list of deadly sins could, in fact, become an obstacle to genuine repentance. For example, imagine that you commit a sin. You look on the list and do not find it listed. It would be very easy to take the attitude that, since it is not on a list of deadly sins, it is not too serious. Hence, you do not feel the need to seek God's forgiveness right away. A week passes and you have completely forgotten about what you had done. You never sought God's forgiveness; as a result, you did not receive it, either. We should go to Confession when we sin – at the very least, we should ask God to forgive us daily in our personal prayers. We should not see Confession as a time to confess only those sins which may be found on a list.

Though not part of the dogma of the Orthodox Church, the mortal–venial distinction is assumed by some Orthodox authors and saints as a theologoumenon. For example, Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807–1867), who wrote primarily for monks, says in his book A Word on Death, in a chapter entitled "Mortal sin":

It has been said earlier that mortal sin of an Orthodox Christian, not being cured by repentance, submits him to eternal suffering; it has also been said that the unbelievers, Muslims, and other non-orthodox, even here are the possession of hell, and are deprived of any hope of salvation, being deprived of Christ, the only means of salvation. Mortal sins for Christians are the next: heresy, schism, blasphemy, apostasy, witchery, despair, suicide, fornication, adultery, unnatural carnal sins, incest, drunkenness, sacrilege, murder, theft, robbery, and every cruel and brutal injury. Only one of these sins – suicide – cannot be healed by repentance, and every one of them slays the soul and makes the soul incapable of eternal bliss, until he/she cleans himself/herself with due repentance. If a man falls but once in any of these sins, he dies by soul: For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. (James 2:10,11)