Peter Jones

Yeah, I think what they wanted was to induce self-awareness.

They wanted you to talk through these seven and recognize these and work on them.

I don't think they wanted you to eradicate them at all.

And I think that that's kind of the surprise.

Medieval Christianity wasn't a system for making perfect souls.

Only angels are perfect, is the idea, or saints.

In fact, it's actually just a system for raising people's awareness and getting them to work on their kind of quirks.

I mean, they're still there.

They're still there in literature and plays in the 1400s.

The Reformation, I think, generally speaking, is kind of where they lose some of their power.

Although there's a great emphasis on interiority in the Reformation, confession doesn't have the same kind of role.

Someone like Luther will still use these words.

And I think that they still apply, but yeah, they're not...

They're part of that architecture that gets ripped away in the Reformation.

And all that we said earlier about the mythology of Christianity that went beyond the text, that's being taken away.

So seven deadly sins are part of that.

I am.

It's rigorously scientific.

It's heavily footnoted.

So if listeners want to, if they want to know, I can give you detailed footnotes on why these all make sense as medieval questions.