Aquinas's Ethics: Metaphysical Foundations, Moral Theory, and Theological Context

nine. Theologically Transformed Virtue and Vice

nine Theologically Transformed Virtue and Vice The ethical part of the Summa theologiae begins with the treatise on happiness but is not complete without the picture of human fulfillment that we find in the treatise on the virtue of charity. Aquinas thinks that human perfection requires union with God— both the intellectual vision he calls “beatitudo” and also the union of affections in the will, namely, the friendship he calls charity. Our union with God through intellect and will is Aquinas’s way of spelling out how we participate in God’s divine nature— both as his image-bearers and as his friends. As Aquinas makes clear, the friendship of charity is possible only because God communicates something of his nature to us.1 God’s nature as a person with intellect and will is thus reflected in our rational nature (the image of God), and these rational capacities make intellectual and loving union between us and God possible (beatitudo). In the previous two chapters we have learned that the dynamic connection between this beginning point and its supernatural telos requires virtue, law, and grace. Human beings achieve union with God and our capacities reach their perfection when grace implants the New Law of love in our intellects and shapes our wills by charity, which enables our actions to conform to the infused virtues. For Aquinas, the moral project is to conform our nature to God’s, and the virtues are his description of this process. 173 As we emphasized in chapter 7, all the virtues are formed and shaped by charity, their root. All acts of virtue are done, ultimately, for the sake of love of God—the love of friendship that unites us with God and conforms our nature to God’s own. To understand the role of charity is to grasp the point or end of the moral project as a whole, for Aquinas. This explains why he devotes so much time and effort to the virtues in his ethics , and why we should look to charity to understand his transformation of them beyond their Aristotelian origins. After discussing virtue, law, and grace in a general and preliminary way, Aquinas spends the rest of the ethical part of the Summa (the IIaIIae) considering the particular virtues and their opposing vices. They are at the heart of the process of moral formation, rooted in charity, and directed to fulfillment in God. In analyzing particular virtues and vices, Aquinas’s concern with the many practical details of the moral life is evident in questions such as these: • How should we pray, and how often? If we fall asleep during our prayers, are they still effective? (the virtue of religion) • If we steal something from someone and are unable to locate the victim later, how are we to make restitution? (justice) • If someone does us a favor and we are too poor to repay it, how are we to show our gratitude? (gratitude) • How do we draw the line between worrying about the future and making careful plans in case things go wrong? (prudence) • Is it morally better to love our enemies or to love our friends? (charity) • When it comes to handling money, is it better to be a saver or a spender, and under what conditions? (liberality, magnificence) • How much of Scripture, if any, does one have to understand to count as believing in God? (faith) • Is there anything that should regulate our choices of food and drink besides concerns about physical health? (temperance) In the answers to these questions and in the analysis of all these virtues, the marks of Aquinas’s Aristotelianism are also evident. The concept of a virtue as a habit, the psychology of the passions, the basic division of human capacities into intellect and appetites, the general struc174 Aquinas’s Ethics ture of human action in which the apprehension of the intellect precedes the movement of the will, and even specific moral virtues all have an Aristotelian pedigree. In contrast to Aristotle, however, for the virtuous character as advocated by Aquinas, love is the source of moral wisdom , humility is a moral virtue, and the greatest expression of courage is that of self-sacrifice for the sake of love and fidelity to God. How do we account for the difference between the two? Our study of virtue, law, and grace has shown that the aim...