In the context of the Old Covenant, the term "the wicked" (rasha in Hebrew) is not a simple binary label for "unbelievers" in the modern sense. Both Catholic and Protestant scholarship generally recognize that the biblical authors use this term in a nuanced, relational way. Whether it refers to an outsider or an insider depends heavily on the genre and specific historical context of the passage.
1. The Covenantal Context
In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were in a covenantal relationship with God. Therefore, the "wicked" are often not people who have never heard of God (the pagan nations), but rather members of the covenant community who have turned against the moral and spiritual demands of that covenant.
The Internal Threat: Much of the prophetic literature (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos) is directed toward the Israelites themselves. When these prophets decry the "wicked," they are often addressing those within the covenant who practice injustice, idolatry, or exploitation of the poor. In this context, the "wicked" are covenant-breakers—people who possess the outward markers of belonging to God’s people but whose hearts and actions are in rebellion against His law.
The Wisdom Literature: In books like Proverbs and Psalms, the "wicked" are contrasted with the "righteous." While this can describe external enemies, it is primarily a moral distinction. The "wicked" here are those who reject divine wisdom and moral order, choosing instead to live as though God does not hold them accountable. This can apply to anyone—Israelite or otherwise—who acts in defiance of God’s established order.
2. Scholarly Perspectives
Protestant View: Many Protestant theologians emphasize the heart-condition aspect of the "wicked." They point out that because all have sinned, the category of "wicked" can be universal. However, within the Old Covenant, the emphasis is often on the hardening of the heart against the revealed Word of God. A person is considered "wicked" when they are actively, persistently, and unrepentantly set against God’s character and commandments, regardless of their religious status.
Catholic View: Catholic scholarship often frames this through the lens of fidelity. To be "wicked" is to break the bonds of the Covenant. The Catholic perspective frequently emphasizes that the covenant was a life-giving relationship; thus, to be "wicked" is to choose "death" (sin) over that relationship. It acknowledges that even within the visible community of Israel, a person could be "wicked" if they failed to live according to the spirit of the Law, not just the letter.
3. Summary of the Distinction
When you encounter the "wicked" in the Old Testament, it is helpful to look for these three categories:
The Covenant-Breaker: Often an Israelite who maintains the facade of religion but lives in direct violation of the Torah (e.g., the corrupt priests or exploitative leaders).
The Persistent Defier: Someone—inside or outside Israel—who mocks God, ignores His justice, and delights in malice.
The Enemy of the Faithful: Occasionally, the term is used to describe the external nations or oppressors who target God’s people. Even then, the "wickedness" is defined by their hostility toward God’s chosen instruments or their own acts of cruelty that violate the natural law given by God.
In short, the Bible rarely uses "the wicked" to denote a group of people who simply haven't heard the "gospel" in the New Testament sense. Instead, it typically identifies people—often those who should know better—who have made an active, willful choice to live apart from, or in rebellion against, the revealed authority and character of God.
From the perspective of both mainstream Catholic and Protestant biblical scholarship, the short answer is yes, a person can fall into a state of wickedness temporarily, and this is exactly what the Old Testament identifies as "turning back," "straying," or what later church tradition termed backsliding.
However, the biblical writers look at this through a relational lens rather than just a legal checklist. To understand how someone can "temporarily live in wickedness," it helps to look at how Hebrew thought and subsequent theological traditions view the movement of the human heart.
1. The Hebrew Concept: Dynamic Movement, Not a Fixed State
In the Old Covenant, righteousness (tsedeq) and wickedness (rasha) are often treated not as static, unchanging identities, but as directions a person is actively walking.
The most explicit blueprint for this is found in the Prophet Ezekiel. The text directly addresses the reality that a person's status before God can change based on their ongoing choices:
"But if a righteous person turns away from their righteousness and commits sin and does the same detestable things the wicked person does, will they live? None of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered..."
— Ezekiel 18:24
Conversely, Ezekiel notes that a wicked person can turn away from their wickedness and do what is just and right, thereby saving their life. Because the Covenant is a living relationship, a person can walk away from it (entering a state of wickedness) and, through repentance (teshuvah, meaning "to return"), walk back into it.
2. "Backsliding" vs. "Living in Wickedness"
The word backsliding is a heavily Protestant colloquialism, but its roots are thoroughly Old Testament. The Hebrew prophets frequently use terms like meshubah (backsliding, turning away) or sur (to turn aside).
Scholars generally distinguish between two different spiritual states when a believer slips:
Acts of Weakness (Stumbling): Every righteous person in the Old Testament stumbles. King David commits adultery and murder. He acts wickedly in those moments, but his core identity remains tethered to God because, when confronted, he immediately breaks into deep, unrepentant sorrow (Psalm 51).
Living in Wickedness (Backsliding): This is a deeper, more prolonged state. It occurs when a person who once walked with God suppresses their conscience, hardens their heart, and settles into a lifestyle that defies God’s covenant. For a season, they are functioning as the wicked. They are exploiting others, ignoring the Torah, or engaging in idolatry.
To the biblical writers, if you are living like the wicked, you are temporarily wicked in terms of your covenantal standing and your current relationship with God, regardless of your history.
3. How Catholic and Protestant Scholars Frame This
While both agree that a person can temporarily live in wickedness and return, they explain the mechanics differently based on their theology of salvation.
The Catholic Perspective: Mortal Sin and Loss of Grace
Catholic theology aligns very closely with the Ezekiel dynamic.
The Loss of Justification: When a person willfully, knowingly chooses to commit a grave offense (what Catholicism calls mortal sin), they radically turn away from God. In that moment, sanctifying grace is lost.
Temporary Wickedness: If a believer enters a state of mortal sin and stays there for a period, they are living in a state of spiritual death (wickedness).
The Return: It is entirely temporary if the person cooperates with God's grace, experiences contrition, and returns to fellowship through repentance (sacramentally experienced in Reconciliation).
The Protestant Perspective: Covenant Discipline and Assurance
Protestant scholars are divided into two main camps on this, depending on their view of eternal security.
The Reformed (Calvinist) View: This view argues that a true believer can never lose their ultimate salvation, but they can fall into severe, prolonged seasons of sin (backsliding). During this time, they may look, act, and suffer the earthly consequences of the wicked. God will use heavy discipline to eventually bring them to repentance. If they never repent, it proves they were never truly changed to begin with.
The Arminian/Wesleyan View: This camp is closer to the Catholic view. It emphasizes that human free will remains active. A believer can genuinely backslide to the point of completely abandoning their faith and turning back into a "wicked" person. If they remain in that state, they forfeit their relationship with God, though the door to repent and return is always open as long as they live.
The Takeaway: In the Old Covenant, "wickedness" is a description of a person's current alignment. Just as an abstract legal status doesn't capture a human relationship, a single label doesn't capture a biblical life. A person can belong to God's community, turn their back on Him to live in wickedness for a season, and—as the prophets relentlessly pleaded—turn around and come home.
To see how ancient biblical concepts overlap with modern clinical psychology, we have to look closely at the precise definitions of antisocial personality disorder and the clinical concept of sociopathy.
1. Defining ASPD and Sociopathy
In modern clinical practice, these two terms are deeply intertwined, but they carry distinct nuances in behavioral science.
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)
ASPD is a formal, diagnostic category defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR). It is characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others, beginning in childhood or early adolescence and continuing into adulthood.
To meet the diagnostic criteria for ASPD, an individual must exhibit a persistent pattern of at least three of the following behaviors:
Deceitfulness: Repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
Impulsivity: Failure to plan ahead or acting on whims without considering consequences.
Irritability and Aggressiveness: Repeated physical fights or assaults.
Reckless Disregard: Irresponsible behavior that endangers the safety of oneself or others.
Consistent Irresponsibility: Repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations.
Lack of Remorse: Showing indifference to, or rationalizing, having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
Sociopathy
Unlike ASPD, "sociopathy" is not an official clinical diagnosis in the DSM. Instead, it is a behavioral term used by clinicians and researchers to describe a specific subtype or presentation of antisocial behavior.
In clinical literature, a sociopathic presentation is generally understood to be environmentally driven—meaning it is often the product of severe childhood trauma, neglect, abuse, or socialization within a deeply dysfunctional subculture.
Feature |
Sociopathy (Behavioral Construct) |
Origin |
Primarily environmental (trauma, upbringing, socio-cultural conditioning). |
Affect/Empathy |
Capable of forming erratic, limited attachments to specific individuals or groups, though general empathy is severely impaired. |
Behavioral Style |
Tends to be disorganized, volatile, easily agitated, and prone to emotional outbursts or impulsive aggression. |
Conscience |
Possesses a weak or highly compartmentalized conscience; they may know an action is "wrong" but rationalize it to justify their desires. |
2. Correlating ASPD/Sociopathy with "The Wicked"
When we overlay these clinical definitions onto the Old Covenant concept of the "wicked" (rasha), the correlations are striking. Ancient biblical writers lacked modern neurological and psychological vocabulary, but they were astute observers of human behavior. They described the exact same behavioral patterns through a moral and covenantal lens.
The Erasure of Remorse vs. The Hardened Heart
The defining characteristic of both ASPD and biblical wickedness is the absence of remorse.
The Clinical View: An individual with ASPD rationalizes their harmful behavior (e.g., "They deserved it," or "If they were stupid enough to get conned, that's their problem").
The Biblical View: The Old Testament describes this as a "hardened heart" or a seared conscience. In the Psalms, the wicked person is explicitly described as someone who says in their heart, "God has forgotten; He hides His face; He will never see it" (Psalm 10:11). Both frameworks describe a person who has completely decoupled their actions from any sense of ultimate accountability or empathy for their victims.
Exploitation of the Vulnerable
A diagnostic marker for ASPD is the violation of others' rights for personal gain. This directly mirrors the primary behavioral expression of the wicked under the Old Covenant.
The Clinical View: People with ASPD/sociopathic traits view others instrumentally—as tools to be used, conned, or manipulated for power, money, or pleasure.
The Biblical View: In the Prophets and the Wisdom literature, the "wicked" are rarely defined by abstract theological errors; they are defined by predatory behavior. They are those who "drive away the donkey of the fatherless" and "take the widow's ox in pledge" (Job 24:3). The biblical rasha uses systemic or personal power to exploit the vulnerable (the widow, the orphan, the poor) for personal advancement, completely blind to the relational damage they cause.
Deceitfulness and Irresponsibility
The DSM emphasizes repeated lying, conning, and a failure to honor financial or social obligations.
The Clinical View: Pathological lying and manipulation are used to navigate social systems without adhering to the rules of those systems.
The Biblical View: The Psalms consistently note that "the words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful" (Psalm 36:3) and that "the wicked borrows and does not repay" (Psalm 37:21). The ancient text identifies a lifestyle of chronic irresponsibility and systemic deceit as a core fruit of wickedness.
3. The Crucial Variance: Relational Capacity and "Backsliding"
While the behavioral profiles overlap significantly, a key tension emerges when we introduce the concept of "temporary wickedness" or backsliding.
In the biblical framework, a person can fall into a state of living like the wicked temporarily and later experience deep, transformative repentance (teshuvah). King David, for example, exhibited predatory, deceitful, and aggressive behaviors during the Uriah and Bathsheba crisis that perfectly mirror ASPD traits. Yet, when confronted, his capacity for profound remorse and relational restoration proved his core personality was not completely sociopathic.
In contrast, true clinical ASPD is characterized by a pervasive, enduring personality structure. It is notoriously difficult to treat because the deficit in empathy and the lack of an internal desire to change are ego-syntonic—meaning the individual sees their behavior as a normal, justifiable, and even superior way of navigating the world.
From a theological perspective, one might say that a "backslider" is a person with a functioning conscience who has temporarily chosen to suppress it and act like a sociopath, whereas a true clinical psychopath or severe ASPD individual experiences a profound, structural deficit in that relational and moral machinery altogether.
It is incredibly striking how the ancient, raw question Jeremiah leveled at God in Jeremiah 12:1 ("Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are faithless live at ease?") perfectly anticipates a frustrating reality observed in modern behavioral science and corporate psychology.
From both a clinical and historical-theological perspective, individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) and sociopathic presentations do frequently prosper in specific environments, and they use highly predictable behavioral mechanisms to get away with it—at least for a season.
Here is how modern psychology answers Jeremiah's ancient question.
1. How They Prosper: The "Corporate Psychopath" and the Instrumental Edge
In clinical psychology, researchers frequently distinguish between unsuccessful individuals with ASPD (those whose impulsivity and overt aggression land them in the correctional system) and successful individuals with ASPD (those with higher IQs, greater impulse control, or socioeconomic advantages who navigate social systems to gain immense power).
They prosper not in spite of their deficits, but because their deficits function as professional advantages in highly competitive, cutthroat systems.
The Charisma and Chameleon Effect
The Clinical Reality: Individuals with ASPD and sociopathic traits are often master mimics. Because they do not naturally experience genuine emotional connections, they study social interactions cognitively. They know exactly what empathy, warmth, and leadership look like, and they can project a highly convincing facade of superficial charm and confidence.
The Ancient Mirror: The biblical writers noted this deceptive veneer. The Psalms describe the wicked as those whose "speech is smooth as butter, yet war is in their heart;
their words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords" (Psalm 55:21).
Ruthless Utility (The "Ego-Syntonic" Advantage)
The Clinical Reality: In a corporate, political, or highly competitive environment, an individual with ASPD is completely unburdened by guilt, anxiety, or the moral friction of harming others. If maximizing profit or climbing the ladder requires mass layoffs, betraying a loyal colleague, or taking credit for someone else's work, they execute the task with surgical, cold efficiency. What a healthy person would avoid due to conscience, the ASPD individual views as standard operating procedure.
The Ancient Mirror: Jeremiah noted this exact unbothered, thriving state: "You have planted them, and they have taken root; they grow and bear fruit. You are always on their lips but far from their hearts" (Jeremiah 12:2).
2. How They "Get Away With It"
The mechanics of how predatory individuals evade accountability rely on gaslighting, systemic manipulation, and exploiting the natural good faith of healthy people.
1. Exploiting the "Good Faith" of Healthy People
Most human beings operate on a baseline of empathy and truthfulness; we naturally assume others do too. When an individual with ASPD lies or manipulates, they exploit this social contract. Healthy people will often doubt their own perception or extend a second, third, or fourth chance before accepting that someone is operating with pure malice or zero remorse.
2. Strategic Impression Management and "Kiss Up, Kick Down"
In organizational psychology, successful antisocial individuals are adept at "impression management." They are exceptionally skilled at managing the perceptions of those above them in power (bosses, board members, supervisors) while ruthlessly exploiting, bullying, or undermining those below them. If a subordinate complains, the antisocial individual uses their established superficial charm with leadership to frame the victim as incompetent, overly sensitive, or uncooperative.
3. Impression Management of Systems
They do not just manipulate people; they manipulate systems. An ASPD individual often thrives in environments with vague accountability structures, high chaos, or high turnover. They ensure that by the time their deceit or destructive choices catch up to the organization, they have already secured a promotion, jumped to another company, or shifted the blame onto a scapegoat.
The Theological and Psychological Catch: "The Slippery Slope"
While Jeremiah’s question acknowledges their immediate prosperity, both biblical theology and modern longitudinal psychological data suggest that this prosperity is often built on an incredibly unstable foundation.
THE ILLUSION OF THE UNTOUCHABLE WICKEDCLINICAL TRUTH
Chronic deceit, overconfidence, and a total lack of empathy eventually alienate allies,
While a highly intelligent, controlled individual with ASPD can maintain the illusion of success for decades, their internal landscape is often hollow. Psychologically, they are prone to chronic boredom, an inability to experience genuine joy or deep relational intimacy, and an escalation of risky behaviors to achieve the same internal "high."
Just as the Psalmist in Psalm 73 struggled deeply with envy over the prosperity of the wicked until he looked at their ultimate end, modern organizational psychology notes that "successful" sociopaths almost always leave a long trail of scorched earth behind them—and eventually, the friction of that scorched earth catches up to them.
