The dictionary entries list gluttony as eating to excess, but how it is determined if what you eat is too much? How much is the difference between a lot and too much?
It’s also part of one of the seven deadly sins, but wouldn’t it fall under greed rather then needing it’s own catagory?
“If you’ve eaten enough, you’ve eaten too much.”
– Some guy in a corny Samurai movie.
I’d WAG a that Greed is the want of more than you need, and Gluttony is * having* too much.
Also, I’ve only ever seen Gluttony applied to eating, I have never seen it in the context of someone who owns 12 or 13 cars, for example, so maybe thats the difference.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is really useful for these types of questions.
On Gluttony
Is Gluttony a Sin?
Isn’t gluttony the official Bush administration policy?
The difference is that greed applies to money and material possessions; gluttony applies to food and drink.
If you want to compare the two from the Catholic Encyclopedia, greed is referenced as Avarice. It’s always worth bearing in mind that the online version of that encyclopedia dates from 1912.
1914 rather.
I always understood gluttony, as far as food goes, as eating so much that you are miserable and would either have to throw up to feel better or lay around in pain for a few hours.
You know, kinda like Thanksgiving.
I also understand gluttony to mean just being an excessive person. Examples: spending $16,000 on a purse (saw it on Oprah) is gluttony. Owning a half dozen houses is gluttony. Owning a car for every day of the week is gluttony. Basically, anything that is way excessive; the Bible encourages moderation.
I think greed is about wanting more, not necessarily having it. Gluttony to me is about actually having it. Lots of rich people are greedy, I suspect: they’re not happy with the vast wealth they have, they always want more more more more. (I guess they’re probably gluttons AND greedy, then.) I suppose you could be greedy and live modestly as well, if all you can think about is what you don’t have, how you’re going to get it, and when you do you repeat the cycle of looking at what you don’t have/how you’re going to get it and not appreciating what you already have.
Online since 1914? I’m impressed.:dubious:
Each of the “Deadly” sins takes an ordinary and perfectly natural tendency or appetite, and condemns its excess. A Deadly Sin is not an action unto itself, but is the underlying motive behind some other sin.
The desire to eat or drink is normal and healthy. Without it, obviously, you’ll die. But when your urge to eat or drink overpowers your sense of moderation and propriety (i.e., causes you to sin), you are guilty of gluttony.
So gluttony does not necessarily mean stuffing yourself with food (though a strict interpretation would include this). If you steal to support your drug habit, you are guilty of gluttony. If you neglect your family due to alcoholism, you are guilty of gluttony.
So when does stuffing yourself with food become gluttony? When you are willing to commit a sin in order to achieve it. Strict interpretations hold that the body is the “Temple of the Spirit” and that any unhealthy activity is an abuse. So according to this line of thought, eating more than you need at any time is sinful. Overstuffed yourself at Thankgiving? Go to confession, glutton!
Is it any wonder that so many Catholics walk around with a guilt complex?
What is the basis for your assumptions? Can you provide a cite that “spending $16,000 on a purse” is gluttony, because Oprah isn’t an authority on the subect and the dictionary specifically states that gluttony means eating to excess. The difference between gluttony and greed that means they are treated separately by theologians has already been explained here.
Obviously not. Although I got the date wrong (both times), the people who run the site just put an old version of the document online.
Ever read C.S. Lewis “Screwtape Letters”?
In it he makes an interesting point that initially gluttony only meant eating an excessive quantity because that was the only way to demonstrate arrogance and pride and superiority, all food was of the same general quality and a lot of people went around hungry, however in the modern world, relatively poor people can stuff themselves and not be demonstrating arrogance or pride,
so, in today’s context, the term should probably be more directly related to those people who will only eat a certain very expensive or very rare “organic food” or other food that demonstrates signs of membership in a cultural aristocracy.
From C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters”:
“The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great acheivements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient’s mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished — one day, I hope, will be — to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantites involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile ‘Oh please, please…all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast.’ You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, ‘Oh, that’s far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it.’ If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.
The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. The woman is in what may be called the ‘All-I-want’ state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servants or any friends who can do these simple things ‘properly’ — because her ‘properly’ conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as ‘the days when you could get good servants’ but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table. Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn’t mind what she eats herself but ‘does like to have things nice for her boy.’ In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years.
Now your patient is his mother’s son. While working your hardest, quite rightly, on other fronts, you must not neglect a little quiet infiltration in respect of gluttony. Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the ‘All I want’ camouflage. Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are ‘properly’ cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence — it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes — ‘puts him out,’ for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.
Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity. On that, as on every other subject, keep your man in a condition of false spirituality. Never let him notice the medical aspect. Keep him wondering what pride or lack of faith has delivered him into your hands when a simple enquiry into what he has been eating or drinking for the last twenty-four hours would show him whence your ammunition comes and thus enable him by a very little abstinence to imperil your lines of communication. If he must think of the medical side of chastity, feed him the grand lie which we have made the English humans believe, that physical exercise in excess and consequent fatigue are specially favourable to this virtue. How they can belive this, in face of the notorious lustfulness of sailors and soldiers, may well be asked. But we use the schoolmasters to put the story about — men who were really interested in chastity as an excuse for games and therefore recommended games as an aid to chastity. But this whole business is too large to deal with at the tail-end of a letter,”
i would have to say that gluttony is relative. Having food is a good thing without question, but being gluttonous relative to some people who have meager if not minimal amounts of food. Greed is different in the respect that you do not NEED material possessions to live, as greed is defined. Food, however, is something we MUST have, and it is a deadly sin because if we indulge in it, there is less to go around, thus shorting people of sustinance. Taking something away from somebody that is required to live, that is a deadly sin, greed is just an excessiveness, that i do not believe should be listed as a sin, but hey, i’m not Christian.