wrath

wrath, in Roman Catholic theology, one of the seven deadly sins. Wrath is defined as a strong feeling of hatred or resentment with a desire for vengeance. This overwhelming feeling and desire for revenge distinguishes wrath from anger that is balanced with reason, which is not a sin. Christian teaching also differentiates between God’s wrath and human wrath, in that the wrath of God is regarded as a manifestation of divine righteousness and justice. As a deadly sin, wrath is believed to generate other sins and further immoral behavior. Each deadly sin has a countering “heavenly virtue” that overcomes its opposing vice; the heavenly virtue that counters wrath is patience.

The seven deadly sins were first enumerated by Pope Gregory I (the Great) in the 6th century and later elaborated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Along with wrath, they include pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, and sloth. Although the seven deadly sins are not listed in the Bible, wrath and anger are frequently warned against in scripture. Psalm 37:8 advises, “Refrain from anger, and forsake from wrath…it leads only to evil.” In the Gospel According to Matthew, when Jesus is being seized for his arrest, he alludes to the dangers of wrath while admonishing one of his disciples for brandishing a sword against his captors: “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (26:52). In the Letter of Paul to the Galatians 5:19–21, St. Paul names anger in a list of “works of the flesh” that are warned against, for “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, anger is distinct from the sin of wrath and is discussed as one of the “passions,” or feelings that incline humans to act or not act in response to something that is perceived as good or evil. Along with anger, the principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, and joy and sadness. Passions are not considered good or evil in themselves, but they take on a moral quality relative to how effectively they engage with reason and will. Thus, passions are morally good when they lead to a good action and morally evil when they contribute to an evil action. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s campaign of protest against the injustice of racism during the American civil rights movement is an example of anger harnessed for good. Conversely, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in the Old Testament offers a parable on the destructive consequences of both envy and wrath.

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In art, wrath has been depicted through scenes of well-known Biblical and classical stories such as in Peter Paul Rubens’s paintings Cain Slaying Abel and The Wrath of Achilles from the 17th century. In the 14th-century work the Inferno, Dante assigned sinners who were guilty of wrath to the fifth circle of hell. While the wrathful attack each other in the muddy swamp of the Styx, the sullen, who have suppressed their anger, stew just below the water’s surface. Edmund Spenser’s epic 16th-century poem The Faerie Queene, a political-moral-religious allegory following the adventures of a knight, personifies the seven deadly sins as counselors to the evil queen Lucifera of the House of Pride. Wrath is described as riding a lion and brandishing a burning sword. His eyes hurl fiery red sparks, his hand trembles with “hasty rage,” and his clothes are bloody and torn.

In David Fincher’s neo-noir thriller Se7en (1995), in which two police detectives (played by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt) track a serial killer whose choice of victims and methods of killing reflect his obsession with the seven deadly sins, wrath is one of the final sins to be revealed. Unlike the grisly crime scenes of the other sins, it is embodied as an internal struggle waged by one of the detectives.