Fear of Sin
Hamartophobia
Hamartophobia is a fear of committing an error or a sin, and the reference definition takes those as one thing rather than two. The Greek is what makes that possible.
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What the Greek hamartia covers
The encyclopedia of phobias, in its third edition of 2008, gives hamartophobia as a fear of committing an error or sin, derives it from hamartia, glossed simply as sin, and records enosiophobia as another word for the same thing. That is the entry in full.
Hamartia is doing more work than the gloss suggests. Its senses run together without the word changing form:
- in archery, a shot that misses the mark
- a mistake
- a failure
- a moral fault Aristotle used it in the Poetics for the error that undoes a tragic hero, which is why the term is usually translated into English as a flaw and is usually mistranslated, since the Greek describes an act rather than a character.
A fear built on that root is therefore genuinely ambiguous, and the ambiguity is not the reference book's fault. In the language the word came from, missing and sinning are the same event at different scales.
Which condition it is reaching for
A persistent, distressing fear of having sinned is a recognised presentation, and it is called scrupulosity. It is treated as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder in which the intrusive content is religious or moral, it has a literature, and it has a practical problem the literature is honest about: the person needs both a clinician and a religious adviser, and the two can work against each other if the reassurance one offers feeds the doubt the other is trying to break.
Hamartophobia has none of that. Scrupulosity was described in the clinical literature long before 2008 and the Greek name never entered it. No case has been published under the name, no prevalence measured and no manual carries it. What it has is a Greek root that describes the phenomenon precisely, which is a poor substitute for evidence and is the reason the word survives on lists.
Why a second name exists
The encyclopedia gives enosiophobia as an alternative and does not distinguish it. Two Greek names for one undocumented condition is a familiar pattern in this vocabulary: where a word is coined to fill a slot rather than to describe a patient, nothing stops a second person coining another.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Sin
- Fear of Religious SinScrupulosity is the documented condition. Hamartophobia is a name for it with no evidence attached, and a clinician meeting the presentation would use the first.
- Fear of ImperfectionAtelophobia covers the error half of the definition without the moral half, and the reference literature gives anankastia as the clinical term for the underlying trait.
- Fear of Making DecisionsA fear of committing an error attaches to the act of choosing, which is decidophobia's object, and the two names cover the same anxiety from before and after the decision.
Common questions
Questions about Hamartophobia
- Why does one word cover error and sin?
- Because the Greek does. Hamartia began as an archery term for a shot that misses the mark and covers a mistake, a failure and a moral fault in the same form. Aristotle used it in the Poetics for the act that destroys a tragic hero. A fear built on that root inherits the whole range.
- What is the condition actually called?
- Scrupulosity, where the fear of having sinned is persistent and distressing. It is treated as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder with religious or moral intrusive content.
- What is enosiophobia?
- The alternative name the same reference entry gives, without distinguishing it. Two Greek names for one undocumented condition is what happens when a word is coined to fill a place in a list rather than to describe a patient: nothing prevents somebody coining a second.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
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Related entries
- Fear of Religious SinOnly somebody inside the tradition can tell devout practice from compulsion, so clinicians work with clergy. Its prognosis is worse than other OCD cases.
- Fear of ImperfectionMaladaptive perfectionism has a name most people have not met, and a dated trend: rising among young people in higher education since the late 1980s.
- Fear of Making DecisionsWalter Kaufmann coined it in 1973, and the argument comes from Kierkegaard: the freedom to make a decision that may change us is what breeds the anxiety.
- CounterphobiaThe minority response to anxiety seeks the feared thing out. Fenichel's warning is the useful part: dismantling the defence is only the first step of treatment.
- Eco-AnxietyNot a diagnosis, and the researchers say so before anything else. Two people are credited with the name, and every figure in circulation is self-described.
- Existential DreadMarcel coined existentialism and later abandoned it, Sartre rejected it before adopting it in 1945, and the nineteenth-century figures died before the word existed.