Sermon 14– On Pride - I
This sermon is inspired by a need to convey a personal message to a loved one. I recently gave a sermon on music that was written (or rather compiled) for a visiting student of mine, but this is the first message I have composed in which I have a personal axe to grind—this is the first time I have felt the need to PREACH at someone. I do not apologize for this, because the work I have done on this subject has yielded two sermons worth of material, and has given me the opportunity to look into several perspectives on pride of which I was unaware. This first installment will review some general definitions of “pride”, some scriptural reflections on “pride” and a lengthy excerpt from the Summe Thelogica of St. Thomas Acquinas. Next week we will review some on the subject from a few more modern authors.
So, to begin at the beginning: “pride” is one of those words that have multiple contradictory meanings: apparently there is good pride and bad pride. When I did my initial internet search for “pride” I found a lot of positive expressions like “Alaska Pride”, “Gay Pride”, “Twin Cities Pride”, “Pride Inc”, etc.; all these prides involve an exultant cherishing of some positive quality of excellence, mostly SELF-EXCELLENCE. On the other hand, the Biblical use of the word Pride is almost always pejorative, and involves the idea of self-cherishing gone too far; remember this was Satan’s problem—he loved God TOO MUCH, and identified with God too much, such that he lost sight of his own humbler place in the cosmic hierarchy. So, how do we feel good about something without going too far into the domain of self-obsession? We shall begin an exploration of this question by perusing a collection of general definitions:
The Old Testament. While pride is sometimes used in the Old Testament in a positive sense (i.e., the "pride" of the land of Israel or, God's "pride/majesty/excellency"), its negative sense predominates, occurring in sixty-one texts. "Pride" is found mainly in the prophets and the books of poetry.
The main Hebrew root is gh; the most common term is gaon, which occurs a total of twenty-three times. Included are the ideas of arrogance, cynical insensitivity to the needs of others, and presumption. Pride is both a disposition/attitude and a type of conduct.
A synonym gaba means "to be high." While used in a variety of senses, the normal meaning is pride or arrogance, in particular "an inner attitude of pride," often linked with parts of the human body. There is pride of the eyes; of the heart; of the spirit; and of one's mouth/speech. A classic text includes the words "pride," "conceit," "arrogance," and "haughtiness" ( Jer 48:29 ).
Fifteen Old Testament texts (NIV) contain the word "arrogance, " nearly half of them (7) in the prophets ( Isa 2:17 ; 9:9 ; 13:11 ; Jer 13:15 ; 48:29 ; Ezek 7:10 ; Hosea 5:5 ; 7:10 ). Five references are in poetical texts ( Job 35:12 ; Psalm 10:2 ; 17:10 ; 73:8 ; Prov 8:13 ), and three others are found in Deuteronomy 1:43; 1 Samuel 2:3; 15:23.
What constitutes a "proud" person? The negative sense points to a sinful individual who shifts ultimate confidence from God to self. In the Wisdom literature, "the proud" are distinct from "the righteous" and "the humble." Here the term is applied to non-Israelites, rather than to Israel. The Septuagint uses hyperephanos, meaning one who is insolent, presumptuous, or arrogant, a scoffer or a mocker. When the prophets accuse Israel of pride, the word hybristes connotes a wanton, insolent person. Thus, in the Old Testament books, the prideful are generally associated with the wicked, the arrogant, the presumptuous, and those who are insolent toward God.
Proverbs 11:2:
“When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.”
Jeremiah 13:17:
“But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the LORD'S flock is carried away captive.”
Daniel 5:20:
“But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him.”
Proverbs 29:23:
“A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit.”
The New Testament. In the New Testament, the abstract use of hybris (pride) is completely absent. Rather, it refers to ill-treatment, hardship, disaster, or a violent or insolent person (Acts 27:10 Acts 27:21 ; 2 Cor 12:10 ; 1 Tim 1:13 ). The word hyperephanos and its derivatives occur six times; twice in the Gospels ( Mark 7:22 ; Luke 1:51 ) and four times in the Epistles ( Rom 1:30 ; 2 Tim 3:2 ; James 4:6 ; 1 Peter 5:5 ). In its Greek background, the word meant overweening, arrogant, haughty.
Mark 7:22 includes arrogance in a list of vices, the only such example in the Gospel texts. (Two other lists are found in Paul's letters (1:29-31 ; Gal 5:19-23).
God opposes the proud (Prov 3:34 ). Both James (4:6 ) and Peter ( 1 Peter 5:5 ) cite this Old Testament text, including the word hyperephanos the "proud/arrogant" person. It stands in contrast to the word "humble", a quality that God honors. Paul's list (Rom 1:30 ) includes hybristes, one who behaves arrogantly toward those who are too weak to retaliate.
Finally, a remarkable example of hyperephanos occurs in the Magnificat (Luke 1:51 ). Using language largely from the Old Testament, Mary tells how God will scatter the proud possibly a reference to a specific group in society and political life. They are characterized by suppressing the masses, the poor and humble in Israel. God will overthrow them and exalt the lowly. While his wrath is upon the proud, he will visit the humble in grace.
James 4:6:
“But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.”
1 Timothy 6:3-5:
“6:3 If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;
6:4 He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
6:5 Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.”
[Sidebar: Notice the expression, “knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings.” This sentence attributes pride to the vanity and insubstantiality of WORDS; we have spoken many times of the deception of words: words so often engender cases of mistaken identity--lies disguised as truth, sent by Satan to distract us from the real truth clothed in the Cloud of Unknowing. Pride, in service of the ego, pumps up our self-image into a grotesque parody of its true self, its divine self; an egotistical person may be thought of as strong and self-confident, but more often an egotist appears as a deluded bully, who wields power over those of lesser strength, condemning them and himself to a lower vibrational spiritual frequency. This bully extols pride as an index of excellence, but it is really a mere comedy of errors, a pretend play produced on the stage of an ego starved for, but somehow denied the excellence and affirmation of, higher mind.
Back to Baker’s Dictionary:]
“Definitions of the results of Pride from the Bible.
Definition of pride: the absence of humility as darkness is the absence of light and a vacuum is the absence of atmosphere.
Definition of pride: Pride is a failure to accept and perceive the reality of our utter dependence on God.
Definition of pride: If there is contention, there is pride behind it. It is difficult to hurt the feelings of a humble person but easy to hurt the feelings of the proud.
Definition of pride: Pride is a peculiar kind of insanity caused by a lack of Humility.
Walter M. Dunnett”
We can see, from the foregoing, that “pride”, in the negative sense, is a major impediment to forward progress on the spiritual path. There is so much said today about “standing up for yourself”, and “self-affirmation”, like these are good things, when what we really see, behind the high-flown Shakespearean rhetoric, is a battleground of egos fighting each other for pre-eminence in a struggle in which one false self competes for supremacy over other false selves in an arena that only exists in the perverse fantasies of patriotism, feminism, stoicism, and every other “ism” that 20th century popular psychology has inflicted on the undiscriminating public.
Indeed, the omni-presence of isms, in our daily lives and language, is a symptom of pride gone mad in the collective mind, and is largely derived from the human need to express in WORDS things which are not adequately expressed in words; by this I mean that an “ism” is
1 : a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory
2 : an oppressive and especially discriminatory attitude or belief ;
Such a belief or doctrine can only be expressed in words; and if we fall for this deception we can find ourselves battling for a distinction we don’t really want or need.
Thus, From Timeless Truths Online we read:
“Pride, then, is a mental attitude; it is not attainment itself. An individual was once told, “I don’t see how you can keep from being proud because you read so much.” But it wasn’t the amount of reading or retention that mattered; it was the attitude of the heart toward the acquisition of knowledge.”
It is the WORDS involved in reading that feed the left brain’s appetite for truisms, and promotes self-centered behavior in the service of the ego, that is not even ultimately in service of the self.
Some people confuse the attitude of pride for the attitude known as “self-respect”. How can we have self-love without self-respect, you say? I say, again, the word “respect” is often based on outward signs, definitions, requirements, and, moreover, the conditioning of our attitudes toward ourselves by social (moral?) conventions, conventions which may have once been based on truth, but which have often become perverted traditions whose vitality has been drained out, over the centuries, by false pictures of the self—pictures generated by mundane concepts which are no longer illuminated by personal spiritual truth. Thus, self-respect is nothing more than PRIDE parading around in a dinner jacket. Moreover, self-respect often does not come from a sense of self, but from an outer false ego formulation that is defined by society, not by an inner self perception.
The following section from The Purification of the Soul in Beginners—Ch 28: The Healing of Pride, reviews some basic concepts of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas on the subject of Pride:
“THE TRUE NATURE OF PRIDE
To know the true nature of pride, we should first note that it is a spiritual sin, in itself less shameful and less debasing, but more grievous, says St. Thomas,
(1) than the sins of the flesh, because it turns us more away from God. The sins of the flesh could not be in the demon who was irremediably lost through pride. Scripture on several occasions says that "pride is the beginning of all sin,"
(2) because it does away with the humble submission and obedience of the creature to God. The first sin of the first man was a sin of pride,
(3) the desire of the knowledge of good and evil,
(4) that he might be his own guide and not have to obey. In the opinion of St. Thomas,
(5) pride is more than a capital sin; it is the source of the capital sins, and particularly of vainglory, which is one of its first effects. Some are deceived, at least practically, about the true nature of pride, and as a result, without wishing to do so, may commend false humility, which is a form of hidden pride more dangerous than that which displays itself and makes itself ridiculous.
In determining exactly the true nature of pride, the difficulty comes from the fact that it is opposed not only to humility, but also to magnanimity, which is sometimes confounded with it.
(6) We should be at pains not to confound practically the magnanimity of others with pride, and not to mistake our pusillanimity (lack of courage) or timidity for true humility. Sometimes the inspiration of the gift of counsel is needed to discern these things in a really practical manner, to see how the truly humble soul must be magnanimous, and how false humility is distinguished from the true. The Jansenists saw a lack of humility in the desire for frequent Communion.
St. Thomas, who was exceedingly humble and magnanimous, established very well the exact definition of these two virtues, which should be united, and that of the defects opposed to them. He defined pride as the inordinate love of our own excellence. The proud man wishes, in fact, to appear superior to what he really is: there is falsity in his life. When this inordinate love of our own excellence is concerned with sensible goods, for example, pride in our physical strength, it belongs to that part of the sensibility called the irascible appetite. It is in the will when it is concerned with goods of the spiritual order, such as intellectual pride and spiritual pride. This defect of the will presupposes that our intellect considers our own merits and the insufficiencies of our neighbors more than it ought, and that it exaggerates in order to raise us above them.
Love of our own excellence is said to be inordinate as it is contrary to right reason and divine law. It is directly opposed to the humble submission of the defectible and deficient creature before the majesty of God. It differs exceedingly from the legitimate desire of great things conformable to our vocation: for example, a magnanimous soldier can and ought to desire victory for his country without pride entering into his wish. Whereas the proud man immoderately desires his own excellence, the magnanimous man devotes himself to a great cause, superior to himself, and accepts in advance all humiliations in order to accomplish what is in his estimation a great duty.
Pride is therefore, as St. Augustine says,
(7) a perverse love of greatness; it leads us to imitate God in a wrong way, by not bearing with the equality of our fellow men and by wishing to impose our domination on them, instead of living with them in humble submission to the divine law.
(8)Pride is thus more directly opposed to humility than to magnanimity; the inverse holds true for pusillanimity, which is more directly opposed to nobility of soul. In addition, whereas humility and magnanimity are connected virtues which complete and balance each other like the two arches of an ogive, pride and pusillanimity are contradictory vices, like temerity and cowardice.
What we have said shows that pride is a bandage over the eyes of the spirit, which hinders us from seeing the truth, especially that relative to the majesty of God and the excellence of those who surpass us. It prevents us from wishing to be instructed by them, or it prompts us not to accept direction without argument. Pride thus perverts our life as one would bend a spring; it hinders us from asking light from God, who consequently hides His truth from the proud. Pride turns us away, therefore, from the affective knowledge of divine truth, from contemplation, to which humility, on the contrary, disposes us. Therefore Christ says: "I confess to Thee, a Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to little ones."
(9) Spiritual pride is most powerful in turning us away, from the contemplation of divine things. With this meaning, St. Paul writes: "Knowledge puffeth up; but charity edifieth."”
The following is a selection from Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Summe Theologica: 162 Pride. Remember that Thomas Aquinas always plays devil’s advocate with himself offering counter propositions before committing to what he really thinks.
“Article 1. Whether pride is a sin?
Objection 1. It would seem that pride is not a sin. For no sin is the object of God's promise. For God's promises refer to what He will do; and He is not the author of sin. Now pride is numbered among the Divine promises: for it is written (Isaiah 60:15): "I will make thee to be an everlasting pride (glory), a joy unto generation and generation." Therefore pride is not a sin.
Objection 2. Further, it is not a sin to wish to be like unto God: for every creature has a natural desire for this; and especially does this become the rational creature which is made to God's image and likeness. Now it is said that "pride is love of one's own excellence, whereby one is likened to God who is supremely excellent." Hence Augustine says (Confess. ii, 6): "Pride imitates exaltedness; whereas Thou alone art God exalted over all." Therefore pride is not a sin.”
[Sidebar: Notice the expression, “Pride imitates exaltedness”. This idea has a direct bearing on the idea of pride as a false ego definition, in that an IMITATION always lacks some dimension of veracity when put to the test. The image in a glass darkly is never as true as the meeting face to face.
Back to Thomas:]
“ On the contrary, It is written (Tobit 4:14): "Never suffer pride to reign in thy mind or in thy words."
I answer that, Pride [superbia] is so called because a man thereby aims higher [supra] than he is; wherefore Isidore says: "A man is said to be proud, because he wishes to appear above (super) what he really is"; for he who wishes to overstep beyond what he is, is proud.”
[Sidebar: Why, then, does man so often miscalculate his own importance, and derive a false self-image from the verbal structures running rampant in mundane language? The expression below, “right reason” appears in Saint Thomas’ arguments many times; the idea of RIGHT REASON must be a difficult concept to define, and we must merely approximate it in this discussion. Nevertheless, as we have declared many times, our attitudes are formed, in spiritual truth, by exercise of reason, an exercise that must include a transcendent quality that ultimately leaves reason behind, on the outskirts of the Cloud of Unknowing.
The following section expands on the idea of right reasoning, and also brings back the idea that there is good pride and bad pride:
Back to Thomas:]
“Now right reason requires that every man's will should tend to that which is proportionate to him. Therefore it is evident that pride denotes something opposed to right reason, and this shows it to have the character of sin, because according to Dionysius, "the soul's evil is to be opposed to reason." Therefore it is evident that pride is a sin.
Reply to Objection 1. Pride [superbia] may be understood in two ways. First, as overpassing [supergreditur] the rule of reason, and in this sense we say that it is a sin. Secondly, it may simply denominate "super-abundance"; in which sense any super-abundant thing may be called pride: and it is thus that God promises pride as significant of super-abundant good. Hence a gloss of Jerome on the same passage (Isaiah 61:6) says that "there is a good and an evil pride"; or "a sinful pride which God resists, and a pride that denotes the glory which He bestows."
It may also be replied that pride there signifies abundance of those things in which men may take pride.
Reply to Objection 2. Reason has the direction of those things for which man has a natural appetite; so that if the appetite wander from the rule of reason, whether by excess or by default, it will be sinful, as is the case with the appetite for food which man desires naturally. Now pride is the appetite for excellence in excess of right reason. Wherefore Augustine says (De Civitate Dei (The City of God) xiv: 13) that pride is the "desire for inordinate exaltation": and hence it is that, as he asserts "pride imitates God inordinately: for it hath equality of fellowship under Him, and wishes to usurp His dominion over our fellow-creatures."
[Sidebar: In the next section Thomas nominates pride as the root of all evil, just as Satan’s Pride brought him low and gave birth to all the other evils of which he was the author. Note the constant reference to EXCESS, as the villain in this scenario; indeed, self-respect is not the sin, it is EXCESS of self-respect that is the sin.
Back to Thomas:]
“I answer that, The sin of pride may be considered in two ways. First with regard to its proper species, which it has under the aspect of its proper object. On this way pride is a special sin, because it has a special object: for it is inordinate desire of one's own excellence, as stated.
Secondly, it may be considered as having a certain influence towards other sins. On this way it has somewhat of a generic character, inasmuch as all sins may arise from pride, in two ways. First directly, through other sins being directed to the end of pride which is one's own excellence, to which may be directed anything that is inordinately desired. Secondly, indirectly and accidentally as it were, that is by removing an obstacle, since pride makes a man despise the Divine law which hinders him from sinning, according to Jeremiah 2:20, "Thou hast broken My yoke, thou hast burst My bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve."
It must, however, be observed that this generic character of pride admits of the possibility of all vices arising from pride sometimes, but it does not imply that all vices originate from pride always. For though one may break the commandments of the Law by any kind of sin, through contempt which pertains to pride, yet one does not always break the Divine commandments through contempt, but sometimes through ignorance, and sometimes through weakness: and for this reason Augustine says (De natura et gratia (On Nature and Grace) xxix) that "many things are done amiss which are not done through pride."
On the contrary, A gloss on Psalm 118:51, "The proud did iniquitously," says: "The greatest sin in man is pride."
I answer that, Two things are to be observed in sin, conversion to a mutable good, and this is the material part of sin; and aversion from the immutable good, and this gives sin its formal aspect and complement. Now on the part of the conversion, there is no reason for pride being the greatest of sins, because uplifting which pride covets inordinately, is not essentially most incompatible with the good of virtue. But on the part of the aversion, pride has extreme gravity, because in other sins man turns away from God, either through ignorance or through weakness, or through desire for any other good whatever; whereas pride denotes aversion from God simply through being unwilling to be subject to God and His rule. Hence Boethius says that "while all vices flee from God, pride alone withstands God"; for which reason it is specially stated (James 4:6) that "God resisteth the proud." Wherefore aversion from God and His commandments, which is a consequence as it were in other sins, belongs to pride by its very nature, for its act is the contempt of God. And since that which belongs to a thing by its nature is always of greater weight than that which belongs to it through something else, it follows that pride is the most grievous of sins by its genus, because it exceeds in aversion which is the formal complement of sin.
I answer that, The first thing in every genus is that which is essential. Now it has been stated above (Article 6) that aversion from God, which is the formal complement of sin, belongs to pride essentially, and to other sins, consequently. Hence it is that pride fulfils the conditions of a first thing, and is "the beginning of all sins," as stated above (I-II, 84, 2), when we were treating of the causes of sin on the part of the aversion which is the chief part of sin.”
This one tricky little point is very important: “aversion from God, which is the formal complement of sin, belongs to pride essentially, and to other sins, consequently.” It was a self-serving passion for the absolute supremacy of God that drew Satan into disobedience of God, (I refuse to bow down before MAN), thereby resulting in his ultimate separation from God. Thus, all the sins promoted and encouraged by Satan have their origin in that first passion of pride, the ESSENTIAL sin, from which all other consequent sins emerge.
Thus, we can see from the foregoing material that the positive attributes of pride are far outweighed by the negative aspects of pride. The self-affirming quality of pride, or self-respect, tends to become an illusion-- a subterfuge of the ego in its desperate attempt to cling to ego-consciousness as the ultimate reality-- when, more often, self-respect turns out to be another word for self-deception. All attempts to hang on to consciousness, in service the ego, work to defeat true subjective self-consciousness by limiting the definition of self-consciousness to something that can be contained by the constraints of verbal structures. Thank God that we as Christians have learned that all that we know is amplified and glorified in the Cloud of Unknowing, and in the personality of Jesus the Christ.
Let us pray: Jesus, the humility of your sacrifice on the cross reduces to insignificance all our puny efforts to lose ourselves in God. Your extravagant demonstration of humility shames us and inspires us. Let us affirm our being by merging with Your Being, and forget all the tinsel glitter of worldly ego affirmation and find our niche in a higher temple of fame. Amen.
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