Sin as Addiction

According to Terry D. Cooper (pg. 66), "Patrick McCormick believes that contemporary studies of addiction offer a new paradigm for understanding sin as concupiscence."

The following is a section of Patrick McCormick's (pp. 161-63) Sin as Addiction, "Employing an Addiction Model for Sin."

"Now the question confronts us: In what way(s) is sin like an addiction? How may the moral illness of sin be understood as an addiction? Let me suggest a number of responses.

"In its basic structure human sinfulness has been described as a twofold movement, beginning with an aversion to God.²² In sin we struggle to supplant God, aspiring, as the addict does, to an impossible perfection and driven by delusions of grandiosity. A core element of both sin and addiction is the refusal to accept our own limitations, our own imperfections, our own creatureliness. The serpent knows well how to tempts us. We want to be godlike, but in such an awful way.

"The second movement of sin has also been referred to as a conversion to some part of creation.²³ Having refused God's offer to be God, the suddenly frightened and alone sinner struggles to find a replacement in a small piece of creation. This idolatry is an addiction to that which is neither God nor life-giving. The prophets mocked such faith in clay figurines much as Thompson's hound reminds us of the vanity of finding salvation in some parcel of creation. The folly of these addictions is that "all things betrayest thee who betrayest me."

"With a growing immersion in sin we experience not a gain but a loss in freedom. Sin, like addiction, seems to involve a progressive enslavement to our compulsions. The sinner continues to suffer from the illusion that the "liberty" to rebel is authentic human freedom, thinking it better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. However, the fundamental freedom to give oneself away as gift, to care about others, or to love continues to deteriorate. With the growth of sin's power the sinner becomes less able to change, grow, or repent. Instead there is a sort of hardening of the heart, a deadening of one's soul.

"Sin also leads to disintegration. The sinner experiences an ongoing loss of meaning, an inability to commit oneself or give direction to one's life. Within, the self becomes a mass of contradictions. The emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical and mental integrity of the person is progressively destroyed by sin.

"Sin is alienating. It systematically undermines and distorts all significant relationships. Alienation, oppression, domination and dependency replace relationships of peacefulness, harmony and justice. The sinner, like the addict, is at odds with self, with neighbor, with creation and with God. In this way sin operates as an addiction and as an addictive system by alienating the addict and distorting all the relationships around him/her.

"Furthermore, sin, like all addictions, is based on and fed by lies. John reminds us how sin hates the light of truth, while Satan is called the prince of lies. Genesis gives us a haunting tale of the half-truths of the serpent along with the deceptions (hiding in the forest), denials and projections of the first couple. Anne Schaef's assertion that an addiction is anything you need to lie about could serve just as well as a litmus test for sin.

"And, finally, the process of sin, paralleling the pathology of every addiction, is death-bearing. Sin leads inevitably to death, releasing all sorts of violence upon the self, the neighbor and the created order. Indeed, even the traditional language about "mortal" sin underscored the fact that authors were referring to a conversion unto death.

"It would seem therefore that structurally sin operates as an addiction in a number of ways. The sinner is like an addict—denying his/her creatureliness, refusing to let God be God, creating a delusional world through deception, denial and projection, becoming alienated from all others and destroying the self in a spiral of disintegration ending in death."

["Notes," pg. 176]

"22. 'Aversio voluntaria a Deo per conversionem illicitam ad creaturas' represents a basic grasp of sin found in Augustine in Contra Faustum, XXII, 28 (PL 42, 419) as well as Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae q. 87, art. 4.

"23. Ibid."

Terry D. Cooper (2003). Sin, Pride, and Self-Acceptance: The Problem of Identity in Theology and Psychology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Patrick McCormick (1989). Sin as Addiction. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

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