When Stanford M. Lyman authored The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil in 1978 it was hailed by Alasdair MacIntyre as "a book of absorbing interest and importance... that] places us all in his debt." By Nelson Hart as "a masterful and thought-provoking book... that] is the only scholarly treatment of sin that is so well-informed by the best of ancient through modern perspectives." By James A. Aho as a work whose "abstract hardly does...