Sin as Inflation

Edinger reads the biblical and Christian theology of sin as the religious tradition’s own vocabulary for ego inflation. The diagnosis is structural, not moral. “Christianity also practically equates sin with inflation of the ego … The seven deadly sins — pride, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, avarice, and sloth — are all symptoms of inflation. By being labelled sins, which require confession and penance, the individual is protected against them” (Edinger 1972).

The lineage runs deeper than the Christian formulation. Edinger traces the logic to Hebrew taboo psychology: “That which is taboo is considered unclean, but it also has the additional implications of being sacred, holy, and charged with an excess of dangerous energy. Initially, sin was the breach of a taboo, touching something that should not be touched because the tabooed object carried suprapersonal energies … Taboo can be seen as a protection against inflation” (Edinger 1972). The tabooed object carries what the ego cannot safely assimilate. To touch it without mediation is to claim a power that is not the ego’s to claim.

The inversion is the Beatitudes. “The basic message of the beatitudes of Jesus is that blessing will come to the non-inflated personality” (Edinger 1972). The poor in spirit, the meek, the mourners — these are the non-inflated egos whose restraint preserves the ego-Self axis. Augustine’s Confessions, which Edinger cites for the psychology of pride, makes the pattern explicit in the voice of the inflated ego’s retrospective self-knowledge.

The classical counterpart is the Greek pair hubris and ate: the mortal’s overreach and the blindness the gods send to the overreacher. The depth tradition inherits both vocabularies. Sin does not name what religion uniquely sees; it names what every serious tradition for the maintenance of the ego-Self axis has had to catalogue.

Relationships

Primary sources

edinger-ego-and-archetype (Edinger 1972, pp. 33–34, 63–64)
augustine-confessions