From The Catholic Catechism: A Contemporary Catechism of the Teachings of the Catholic Church (1981)
By John A. Hardon, S.J.
Origin and Nature of Man
The history of Christian thought is not a straight line, but a waving curve, as the mysteries of faith move through time and adjust themselves (without collision) to new discoveries and ideas created by the human mind. Man’s origin and his nature are classic examples of such an adjustment without compromise of the known data of revelation.
Body of the First Man. Until modern times there were two principal areas of controversy about the origin of Adam’s body. One theory required angelic co-operation in the process; the other discussed the question of how precisely God formed the body of the first man, whether in an instant or progressively through different stages of development.
Mentioning the above is important because it clarifies what may still be unknown to some, that the theory of evolution is an ancient one in Catholic theological circles. Charles Darwin (1809-82) undoubtedly sparked a new era in anthropology and allied sciences, but Darwinism as such has only a minimal impact on Catholic thought, whereas it struck many believers in evangelical Protestantism like a tornado. The issue raised by latter-day evolutionists directly affected the interpretation of the Bible, notably the first three chapters of Genesis. Christians who had only the biblical texts as their guide, and no extrabiblical tradition or less an authoritative Church, were left with only the literal words of Scripture. It was not enough to cope with the rising tide of criticism from scientific quarters, which made the simple narrative of Genesis look like another cosmological myth.
The First Vatican Council made sure that total evolutionism, which included an evolving go, was condemned as only a more subtle form of pantheism. When it came to define man’s origin, it merely repeated what had been declared six centuries earlier against the resurgent Manichaeism of the Albigensians, namely that, after having made the angelic and material world, God “formed the creature man, who in a way belongs to both orders, as he is composed of spirit and body. [32]
There the subject still stands, doctrinally, except for two interventions by Pius XII generated by the controversy among Catholic theologians about the evolution of man’s body. The first declaration was made in 1941, when the Pope identified three “elements [that] must be retained as certainly attested by the sacred author [of Genesis], without any possibility of allegorical interpretation.”[33] These are:
1. The essential superiority of man in relation to other animals, by reason of his spiritual soul.
2. The derivation in some way of the first woman from the first man.
3. The impossibility that the immediate father or progenitor of man could have been the son of an animal, generated by the latter in the proper sense of the term. In context, the statement reads, “Only from a man can another man descend, whom he can call father and progenitor.”[34] On other questions concerning the origin of man, the Pontiff said, we must wait for more light from science, illumined and guided by revelation. The “other questions” still open for development include the degree in which a lower species may have co-operated in the formation of the first man, the way in which Eve was formed from Adam, and the age of the human race.
Ten years later, faced with rise of scientism and historicism, the Holy See expressed itself at length on the controversial subject of evolution. This was the first time in the Church’s history that papal authority entered at such length into the issue. It highlighted the growing tension between the findings and speculations of the natural sciences and the presuppositions of faith.
“The magisterium of the Church does not forbid that the theory of evolution concerning the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that human souls are immediately created by God—be investigated and discussed by experts as far as the present state of human science and sacred theology allow.
“However, this must be done in such a way that the arguments on both sides, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary gravity, moderation and discretion. And let all be prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of safeguarding the dogmas of faith.
“On the other hand, those go too far and transgress this liberty of discussion who act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already fully demonstrated by the facts discovered up to now and by the reasoning on them, and as if there nothing in the sources of revelation which demands the greatest reserve and caution in this controversy.”[35]
What is the position of Genesis on evolution? In the first narrative of human creation, the sacred author clearly excludes materialistic evolution, as though the soul of man derived naturally from the body. But nothing is directly affirmed as to how the body of Adam was formed. The second creation text about Adam, although very anthropomorphic, is too detailed and contrasts too strongly with the origin of other creatures (below man) not to imply that God acted in a special way when he brought the body of the first man into being.
Before modern evolutionary theories were in vogue, the ancient Fathers and later Doctors of the Church, along with theologians, held that some special action of God was operative in the formation of the first man’s body; this was distinct from the ordinary co-operation of the First Cause with the physical causes built into nature. Only two main questions were raised prior to modern evolutionism: whether and to what extent God used above natural agencies, like angelic, in the formation of Adam’s body; and whether the “dust from the soil” of Genesis implied a body divinely prepared beforehand to receive a rational soul before actual infusion, or whether the body was predisposed for receiving a spirit in the very act when God “breathed into his nostrils a breath of life and man became a living being" (Gn. 2:7).
But since the theories of evolution have been popularized, theologians have come to agree that transformism, or the evolution of the first man’s body from a lower species, is compatible with the faith. Two provisos are added, however: that the soul was immediately created by God out of nothing, and that somehow God exercised a special providence over whatever process preceded the origin of man’s body, so that the first man was not literally generated by a brute beast.
Evolutionary Theories. In view of the widespread evolutionary attitude in modern thought, and its impact on the Christian faith, something should be said to clarify this posture and place it into theological perspective. Deriving as it does from experiment and reflection, evolution is one of the main sources of apparent conflict between faith and reason about which the First Vatican Council made a memorable declaration:
“Although faith is above reason, yet there can never be any real disagreement between faith and reason, because it is the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith, and has put the light of reason into the human soul. Now God cannot deny himself any more than the truth can ever contradict the truth.
“However, the chief source of this apparent contradiction lies in the fact that dogmas of faith have not been understood and explained according to the mind of the Church, or that deceptive assertions of opinions are accepted as axioms of reason. Therefore, “We define that every assertion opposed to the enlightened truth of faith is entirely false.”
Anyone familiar with the trends of current thought recognizes the need for transparency in this matter of evolution, at the risk of either professing an unenlightened faith or of making unfounded assertions of reason in opposition to the faith.
We may summarily divide evolutionary theories into three categories: those dealing with the origin of the inanimate universe, those referring to the origin of organic life apart from man, and those concerned with the origin of man.
1. For the cosmogonist, there are numerous tentative explanations of how the elements of the material universe came into being. All of them postulate the pre-existence of some kind of material substance out of which, on evolutionary grounds, ever more complex substances evolved. The two most commonly held are the “big bang” and the stellar formation theories. According to the first hypothesis, the elements were formed when some of the neutrons (infinitesimally small uncharged particles), which then captured the remaining neutrons to form the heavier elements. This was to have taken place in the first half hour of the universe. According to the second hypothesis, the formation of the elements came about by a synthesis caused by nuclear reactions in the stars that had already been formed.
If one postulates an evolution of the elements, it generally implies the evolution of the stars and galaxies. Galaxies are composed of numerous stars, and stars change in their energy content by radiation. Some lose mass, some burn out, some undergo fission into two or three stars, some capture meteors, but they all lose mass and available energy by what is now called the universal law of entropy. Thus the cosmic energy from the stellar regions (including our sun) is “burning out” in the sense that there is an increase of unavailable energy in the universe.
Some scientists have speculated, on admittedly slight evidence, that this “burning out” of the universe is partly balanced by the formation of new stars out of a gas and dust and the explosive transformation of unstable stellar bodies. In either case, “evolution” means the only the continuous natural history of stellar bodies.
The origin of planets, including the earth, also has a variety of hypothetical explanations, but with one factor in common: The planets are derivatives from the stars. It is fairly agreed that the earth and the other planets are about four and a half billion years old, the age of samples of moon rock brought back to the earth. The oldest rocks on earth are estimated at a billions years below that figure.
2. About the origin of life there have been as many theories as about the beginnings of the universe. One is superseded by another. The case for spontaneous generation came to a dramatic close with the experiments of Louis Pasteur (1822-95). The cosmozoic theory claims that life existed from the beginning as minute spores, which were transported throughout the cosmos by way of meteorites. But the intense heat and cold in outer space make it virtually impossible that such spores could survive. The virus theory is based on the paradoxical nature of viruses, which have a simple chemical composition and no not respire; but they can reproduce and metabolize when joined with the host organism upon which they act as parasites. Some therefore argued that the virus must be at an advanced stage in the development of life because it depends on a living organism for its “life” as a parasite and cannot be at the beginning of the process of life’s origins. But most scholars, while agreeing that the virus is a unique combination of life and nonlife, concede that this is more of a description of what now strangely exists than of how life originally came into being.
The most commonly held theory among evolutionists is some form of biopoesis (from the Greek bios [life] and poiein [to make]). It was given prominence by the discovery that certain nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) appear to be the key materials in all terrestrial forms of life. Yet this too is recognized by research scientists to be most hypothetical, as reported to the Darwin Centennial Celebration, by comparison with the mounting evidence in favor of organic evolution below the human species.[37]
3. The origin of man in the evolutionary scheme must be immediately distinguished between two very different theories. One theory among scientists holds that the accumulating evidence for the evolutionary process of plant and animal life has also played its role in the origin of man from the physical or bodily side of his nature. But this theory insists there is equally strong evidence that man’s psychological; side, his mind and free will, is something new, unique, and of a different order than the products of the evolutionary process.
Another theory believes that the whole of man evolved by a process totally within nature, from the lower-animal organisms. Swept along by the converging arguments which suggest that man’s physical being is part of the ongoing development of life, those who favor this hypothesis rest their case with Darwin on some variant of his own confession of a difficulty and assertion of an unprovable claim.
“The high standard of our intellectual powers, and moral disposition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of man.
“But everyone who admits the principle of evolution must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement.”[38]
Certainly if we apply, as an axiom of philosophy, the theory of evolution to everything, then it is only a logical deduction that man’s body and soul evolved (in Darwin’s words) “from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arborial in its habits.”[39] But even scientific data from cultural anthropology do not support the theory. They rather indicate that man was man, and not a mere animal, from the earliest known archaeological remains that we have. He was capable of thought and had volitional powers completely unlike the pure animal instincts of the irrational species. The bridge between man and animal cannot be crossed by factual evidence. It can only be spanned by evolutionism, which denies that spirit is essentially distinct from matter and must be uniquely created by God.
Unity of the Human Race. Evolutionary thinking has also influenced the attitude toward unitary origin of the present human race from a single man. There had been scattered speculation in past centuries, like the theory that people had existed before Adam. Present-day human beings are the offspring of these pre-Adamites. But concerted challenges did not arise until Darwinism had taken root in Western thought. Polygenists, as they are called, believe that an evolutionary hypothesis of man’s origin requires the parallel belief that transition from the animal to the human body was accomplished not in one man and one woman, but in many.
As must seem immediately clear, there is more at stake than a mere question of historical fact, whether the human race actually descended from one man by natural generation. Nor is the Church concerned to prove anything from paleontology or other scientific data. It is to safeguard certain principles of revealed doctrine.
Thus if we are commonly descended from our first parents, we are brothers and sisters in the flesh, with consequences that affect human relations on every level of society. And in spite of numerous differences, we not only share the same human nature but are literally bound together by ties of blood, which our native instinct, elevated by grace, makes the basis of social justice and charity.
This in turn lays the ground for the supernatural kinship of spirit, which finds expression in the Mystical Body, where grace sublimates the natural bond of the human family by raising it to communion with God under the headship of Jesus Christ.
From still another point of view, our common descent from Adam affects and explains our inheritance of original sin. It is just because we are naturally the offspring of the first man who sinned that, what he contracted, we receive by paternal generation. Conversely, even as we inherit sin from the father of mankind in the flesh, we are redeemed by the passion and death of Christ because he, too, was a descendant of Adam. The human nature that Christ assumed was not by carnal intercourse, but through Mary it was truly human and therefore like to Adam’s and ours in all things but sin. Christ could therefore redeem what Adam had lost, because as man he was grafted into the same human tree, which had become infected by sin.
“Sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death. . . . Adam prefigured the One to come, but the gift itself outweighed the fall. If it is certain that through one man’s fall so many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. . . . Again as one man’s fall brought condemnation on everyone, so the good act of one man brings everyone life and makes them justified. As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rm. 5:12, 15, 18-19).
When speculation about man’s evolutionary origins reached a peak in the midtwentieth century, Pius XII reminded scholars that theorizing about the descent of man’s body from primates was one thing, but questioning whether the first parent of mankind was a single person is something else:
“As regards another theory, however, namely so-called Polygenism, sons of the Church by no means enjoy the same liberty. No Catholic can hold that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from the first parent of all, or that Adam was merely a symbol for a number of first parents. For it is unintelligible how such an opinion can be squared with what the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the magisterium of the Church teach on original sin, which proceeds from sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, passed on to all by way of generation, is in everyone as his own”[40]
As a matter of historical record, the possibility of evolution of man’s body was put forth already in the patristic age; so that evolution properly understood is not a modern innovation. According to Gregory of Nyssa, commenting on Genesis, when “Scripture says that man arose last of all the animated beings,” it “is simply giving us a philosophical lesson about souls, seeing the most complete perfection realized in the beings formed last of all, because of a certain necessary succession of order.” We are thus being taught that “nature is elevated by degrees as it were, that is through the varieties of life from the lower stages up to the perfect.”[41] There are similar passages in Augustine to the effect that “Adam was made from the earth, but in such a way that in the making, and the growth through the ages, the same periods of time would have been occupied which we now see required by the nature of the human species.”[42] Augustine personally favored the idea that Adam came into the world at once in full maturity, but Augustine left quite open the theory that Adam’s body could have been the end effect of a long process similar (on a large scale to the development of an embryo in the womb.[43]
Yet Augustine recognized the datum of revelation about the reality and not the mere symbolism, and the oneness, and not plurality, of the first ancestor of the human family. This suggests that the real irritant regarding the origin of man is not so much Monogenism or Polygenism. It is the mystery of original sin.
(pp. 91-99)
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Endnotes
32. Fourth Lateran Council, On the Catholic Faith: Denzinger 428 (800); First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, 1: Denzinger 1783 (3002).
33. Pius XII, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Nov. 30, 1941): Pius XII, encyclical Humani Generis: Denzinger 2327 (3896).
34. Pius XII, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Nov. 30, 1941).
35. Pius XII, encyclical Humani Generis: Denzinger 2327 (3896).
36. First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, 4: Denzinger 1797 (3017)
37. Evolution After Darwin, ed. Sol Tax (University of Chicago Press, 1960, Vol. I, 45.
38. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, III, 2.
39. Ibid.
40. Pius XII, encyclical Humani Generis: Denzinger 2328 (3897).
41. St. Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, 8.
42. St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, VI, 8.
43. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, II, passim.
One can read more regarding what Fr. Hardon says on evolution, and many other topics, by searching the Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives
By Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
UNTIL modern times the relationship of morals to religion was taken for granted, and writers as far different in philosophy as Plato and Avicenna, or in theology as Aquinas and Luther, never questioned the basic truth expressed on Mt. Sinai when Yahweh gave the Jews the decalogue whose first precepts were to honor God as a foundation for the secondary precepts of the moral law.
But something new has entered the stream of human thought, the concept of man's autonomy that wishes to dispense with religion in its bearing on morals, on the grounds that the very notion of religious values is only a mental construct. Whatever bearing they may have on ethical principles, it is not as though the concept of God was a necessary conation for being moral in the current, accepted sense of the term.
Where the fifth century monk Pelagius denied the existence of grace because he felt this encouraged lazy dependence on supernatural aid, latter day critics of religion would remove the existence of God for the same reason except that their Pelagianism is more complete, perhaps because their confidence in Man is so extreme.
Aristotle and Aquinas
To illustrate and examine the relation of religion and morality, I have chosen Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth century theologian whose principles were the standard of ethical teaching up to the Reformation and since then have become fundamental in Christian moral theology. Since Aquinas depended so heavily on Aristotle, it will pay to review the Aristotelian position on ethics, see its religious dimension, and then study Aquinas somewhat in depth - by way of contrast with Aristotle as the mainstay of an ethical system which believes that God and religious values are primary, and that true goodness is to be measured in terms of an ultimate finality, reasoned by man's natural intellect but fully possessed only on the basis of the Christian faith.
The broad outline of Aristotle's teaching is found in the Nichomachean and Eudemian Ethics, where he writes at great length of the human good. The good for man, according to Aristotle, is an active use or exercise of those faculties which are distinctively human, that is, the powers of mind and will, as distinct from the lower faculties of feeling, nutrition and growth.
Human excellence thus defined shows itself in two forms: the habitual subordination of the senses and lower tendencies to rational rule and principle, and in the exercise of reason in the search for the contemplation of truth. The former kind of excellence is described as moral, the latter is intellectual virtue.
A well-known feature of Aristotle's ethics which deeply influenced Aquinas is the theory that each of the moral virtues is a mean between excess and defect; thus courage is a mean between cowardice and rashness, and liberality is a mean between stinginess and prodigality.
In the Politics, Aristotle sets forth the importance of the political community as the source and sustainer of the typically human life. But for Aristotle the highest good for man is found not in the political life, nor even in the performance of the moral virtues as such. The highest good consists in the theoretical inquiry and contemplation of truth. This alone, he says, brings continuous and complete happiness because it is the activity of the highest part of man's complete nature, and of that part which is least dependent on externals, namely the intellect of intuitive reason. Therefore, contemplation of the first principles of knowledge and being man participates in that activity of pure thought which constitutes the eternal perfection of the divine nature, which is God.
In Thomas Aquinas, much of the structure of Aristotle and a great deal of his insight are retained, to the point that a superficial reader might suspect that Aquinas merely baptized the Stagirite or put Aristotelian concepts into a Christian mold. Actually the change from one to the other was radical and a correct understanding of Christian morality must take this mutation into account.
Aquinas believed what Aristotle never dreamed: that man is more than a composite of body and soul, that his is nothing less than elevated to a supernatural order which participates, as far as a creature can, in the' very nature of God. Accordingly a person in the state of grace, or divine friendship, possesses certain enduring powers, the infused virtues and gifts, that raise him to an orbit of existence as far above nature as heaven is above earth, and that give him abilities of thought and operation that are literally born, not of the will of flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. Nowhere else does the true character of the supernatural appear more evident than in the endowments of infused virtue which some people possess and others do not, and that make some capable of spiritual actions which others cannot perform.
In the Thomistic system, the soul is the substantial form of the body, which gives man all that is properly human and places him essentially into the natural order; sanctifying grace or justification, by analogy, is the accidental form of the soul, which gives the same man all that is properly divine and puts him habitually into the family of God. Comparing the two with each other, the soul is the foundation of natural existence, as sanctifying grace is the principle of supernatural life.
Yet we know that the soul is not all we have in the body, that the soul itself has powers through which it operates and by which it gives expression to its rational nature. Even so, by a divine consistency, the "soul of the soul," as sanctifying grace has been called, must have channels for the deiform life that God confers on the just. They are the virtues, theological and moral, according to their respective purposes; not unlike the native abilities through which mind and will come into contact with us.
Theological Virtues
Etymologically, Aquinas derived "virtue" from the same root as the Latin vir [man] and vis [power], suggesting that in its primitive sense virtue implied the possession of such masculine qualities as strength and courage and, in the moral order, of goodness and human perfection.
In the patristic period, theological virtues were the subject of frequent writing and, in Pelagian times, of controversy. The commentaries of the Fathers on St. Paul offer a complete treatise on every phase of faith, hope and charity; and St. Augustine's Enchiridion or Manual of the Christian Religion was always referred to by him as "a book on Faith, Hope, and Charity." For Augustine, therefore, a summary of these virtues was an epitome of the essentials of Christianity.
However a scientific study was not made until the Middle Ages, in the great Summa of Peter Lombard, Peter of Poitiers, William of Auxerre and Alexander of Hales, terminating in the definitive work of St. Thomas. His analysis of theological virtue remains standard, and figures extensively in all his major writings, especially the Summa Theologica.
St. Thomas defines virtue as "a good habit bearing on activity," or a good faculty-habit [habitus operativus bonus]. Generic to the concept of virtue, then, is the element of habit, which stands in a special relation to the soul, whether in the natural order or elevated to the divine life by grace.
The soul is the remote principle or source of all our activities; faculties are the proximate sources built into the soul by nature; habits are still more immediate principles added to the faculties either by personal endeavor or by supernatural infusion from God. Consequently the soul helps the man, faculties help the soul, and habits help the faculties.
Habits reside in the faculties as stable dispositions or "hard to eradicate" qualities that dispose the faculties to act in a certain way, depending on the type of habit. If the habit is acquired it gives the faculty power to act with ease and facility; if it is infused, it procures not readiness in supernatural activity, but the very activity itself. Natural or acquired habits result from repeated acts of some one kind; they give not the power to act, but the power to act readily and with dexterity. Thus in the natural order, the faculty without the habit is simple power to act, the faculty with the habit is power to act with perfection. Since custom is parent to habit, it is called second nature. Faculty is like first nature, and habit the second.
Not every habit is a virtue, but only one that so improves and perfects a rational faculty as to incline it towards good -- good for the faculty, for the will and for the whole man in terms of his ultimate destiny.
There is a broad sense in which we can speak of the natural dispositions of any of our powers as innate virtues, but this is a loose rendering and leads to confusion. More properly the infused virtues should be contrasted with the acquired habits, in which the autonomous will of the individual plays the dominant role. My consistent effort to concentrate on a given course of action, repeating the process over a long period of time and in spite of obstacles, gradually develops a tendency to perform the action spontaneously and almost without reflection, yet to a degree of perfection that someone else without the virtue cannot duplicate.
The infused virtues are independent of the process. They are directly produced by God in the operative faculties of a man, and differ mainly from the acquired because they do not imply the human effort which determines the faculty to a particular kind of activity, namely facility induced by repetition. God Himself pours in [infundere] the infused virtues, not by compulsion or overriding the free will of man, but without dependence on us, which Augustine says, "are produced in us by God without our assistance." They are supernatural gifts, freely conferred through the merits of Christ, and raise the activity of those who possess them to the divine level in the same way that sanctifying grace elevates their nature to a share in the life of God. They are supernatural precisely because they transcend the natural capacities of mind and will either to acquire or operate.
Among the infused virtues, however, some are concerned directly with God and operate in a field in which the unaided reason cannot work; they are called theological. Others have as their object not God Himself, the final end of all things, but human activities that are penultimate and subordinate to the final end; they are called moral and, because four of them [prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice] are primary, said to be cardinal [cardo, hinge] in human conduct.
Aquinas argued of the necessity for theological virtues from a simple analysis of man's elevation to the supernatural order. Our final happiness may be considered in two ways. One is commensurate with our human nature, and therefore a happiness obtainable by the use of our native powers of mind and will. The other is immeasurably higher, surpassing nature, and secured only from God by the merciful communication of His own divinity. To make it possible to attain this higher destiny in the beatific vision, we must have new principles of activity, which are called theological virtues because their object is God and not, as in moral virtues, merely things that lead to God; because they are infused in the mind and will by God alone, as opposed to the habits acquired by personal exercise; and because they would never be known to us, except through divine revelation.
Reflecting on the data of Scripture and tradition, Thomas finds a striking reasonableness in the kind of virtues that God infuses in the soul. They direct us to supernatural happiness in the same way that our natural inclinations lead to our connatural end, i.e. in two ways. First we must have light for the mind, both of principles and practical knowledge, and then rectitude for the will to have it tend naturally to the good as defined for us by reason.
Both of these, however, fall short of the order of supernatural happiness, where "the eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love Him." Consequently in both cases man had to receive something additional to lead him to a supernatural end.
For his intellect he receives supernatural principles, held by means of divine light, which are the articles of belief accepted on faith. His will is directed to the same end in two ways: as an intentional drive moving towards that destiny to attain it [which is hope], and as a kind of spiritual union that somehow transforms the will into the goal it is seeking [which is charity].
Theological virtues supply for the mind and will what neither faculty has of itself, the salutary knowledge, desire and love of God and of His will, without which there could be no supernatural order, which means voluntary choice of suitable means to reach the heavenly goal to which we are elevated. These virtues make us well adjusted to our last end, which is God Himself; hence they are called theological, because they not only go out to God -- as all virtue worthy of the name must do -- but they also reach Him. To be well adjusted to our destiny we must know and desire it; the desire demands that we are in love with the object to which we are tending and are confident of obtaining it. Faith makes us know the God to whom we are going, hope makes us look forward to joining Him, and charity makes us love Him.
Unlike the virtues known to philosophy, faith, hope, and charity are not applications of the golden mean between extremes. In Aristotle's language, a moral virtue is a certain habit of the faculty of choice, consisting of a mean [mesotes] suitable to our nature and fixed by reason in the manner in which a prudent man would fix it. It is a habit which consists in a mean between excess and defect. Courage keeps the balance between cowardice and reckless daring; sincerity between ironical deprecation and boastfulness; and modesty between shamelessness and bashfulness.
But a theological virtue can be measured by what the virtue demands or by what our capacity allows. There is a valid sense in which even the theological virtues observe a kind of mean, or better, a center of gravity to which they tend. As far as God is concerned, He can never be believed in, trusted or loved too much. But from our point of view, we should exercise these virtues according to the measure of our condition. Christian faith goes midway between heretical extremes, for instance between Pelagianism which dispenses with divine grace and Jansenism that denies a free will; Christian hope must choose a path among the numerous prospective means of salvation; and Christian charity must find a balance in the myriad opportunities for loving God.
Infused Moral Virtues
Besides the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, St. Thomas teaches that a person in divine friendship receives an infusion of the moral virtues whose immediate object is not God Himself but the practice of human actions conducive to man's final end. Just as faith, hope and charity correspond in the supernatural order to natural knowledge, hope and love, so there are other divinely infused habits to supplement and match these theological virtues; habits which are elevated counterparts of the acquired virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice.
Aristotle was again the basic source on which St. Thomas built the now familiar structure of the cardinal virtues which are reduced to four because of the objective order of morality. The mind must first discover this order and propose its commands to the will; prudence, or the habit of doing the right thing at the right time, is reason's helper. The will, in turn, must execute these commands in its own field; justice, or the habit of giving everybody his due, is helper to the will in its management of the appetite's aversions.
Just as there are four faculties which contribute to our moral acts, intellect, will, appetite of desire and appetite of aversion, so there must be four virtues to keep these faculties straight -- prudence for the mind, justice for the will, temperance for the urge to what is pleasant, and fortitude for the instinct away from what is painful. The Latins summarized their functions in the word, circumspice [look around], age [act], abstine [keep away from] and sustine [bear up with].
All other virtues in the moral order can be referred to this tetrad as their potential parts. In view of their practical value as possessions of nature [also infused by grace], it is worth examining in some detail.
The principal act of prudence is the practical executive command of right reason, and the following virtues come within its orbit; good counsel, sound judgment when the ordinary rules of conduct are concerned, and a flair for dealing with exceptional cases.
As regards justice, its classical type renders what is due between equals, but other virtues come under the general heading of justice. Some render what is owing to another, but not as to an equal. Others deal with a situation where both parties are equal, yet the due or debt, though demanded by decency, cannot be enforced by law, and so is not an affair of strict justice. In the first category of these phases of justice comes religion, which offers our service and worship to God, then piety and patriotism, which render our duty to parents and country, then observance, which shows reverence to superiors, and obedience to their commands. In the second category come gratitude for past favors, and vindication when injury has been done; also truthfulness, without which social decency is impossible, liberality in spending money, and friendliness or social good manners.
The respective parts of fortitude, on the attacking side, are confidence, carried out with magnificence, which reckons not the cost, and magnanimity, which does not shrink from glory. On the defensive side is patience, which keeps an unconquered spirit, and can be protracted into perseverance.
Finally the subordinated kinds of temperance are continence, which resists lustfulness and evil desires concerned with touch, clemency which tempers punishment, meekness that tempers anger, modesty in our deportment, including disciplined study, reasonable recreation and good taste in clothes.
Aquinas concluded with the necessity of infused moral virtues from the principle of consistency between the natural and supernatural. It is obvious, he reasoned, that a person in the state of grace performs actions of other virtues than just the theological, that is, of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude. These actions are essentially supernatural, and therefore require, besides the state of grace, moral habits that are equally supernatural. Otherwise we should postulate an imbalance in the moral order, since God's ordinary providence uses secondary causes of the same kind as the effects produced. If we are to have truly supernatural acts of justice and chastity, for example, we should have infused supernatural virtues that proximately bring these actions about. In the last analysis, there must be infused moral virtues, in addition to the theological, because of faith in the person justified. A moral virtue, by definition, avoids extremes. It does not offend against right reason by excess or by defect. But once the faith is had, there is not question of limiting the practice of moral virtue by reason alone. Faith sublimates reason as the standard of moderation; and just as prior to faith there are acquired virtues commensurate with reason to assist the natural mind and will in the performance of morally good acts, so with the advent of faith there should be corresponding supernatural virtues commensurate with the light of faith to assist the elevated human faculties in the performance of supernaturally good actions in the moral order.
A slight problem arises from the fact that the infused virtues are necessarily spiritual and the infusion must directly take place in the mind and will, in spite of the fact that two of the virtues, temperance and fortitude, involve the sense appetite. One explanation is to have the virtues immediately enter the spiritual faculties, and these in turn affect the less powers as called upon for moral action.
Here, if anywhere, the familiar dictum that "grace does not destroy but builds upon nature" is eminently true. All that we say about these virtues as naturally acquired qualities holds good for the infused, but much more. With reason enlightened by faith, the scope of virtuous operation is extended to immeasurably wider horizons. By the same token faith furnishes motives of which reason would never conceive, and theological charity offers inspiration that surpasses anything found in nature.
Epilogue
Aquinas and Aristotle both recognize that virtue is not its own reward and has little meaning apart from an ultimate goal. A man is virtuous because his actions correspond to an objective norm, which for Aristotle was knowable by reason and for Aquinas by reason and faith.
But where Aristotle almost identified morally good conduct with an aesthetic mean between opposite extremes, Aquinas saw the good man with a vision that Aristotle never enjoyed. For Aristotle a man was basically virtuous because he displayed a beautiful balance in his moral actions, not unlike the harmony displayed in a work of art. Hence the attractive aspect of virtue is often stressed by Aristotle and his modern imitators, at the expense of morality proper. What was missing were two dimensions of morality that only the Christian religion brought into full light: that internal dispositions and their consequent actions are virtuous not mainly because of an aesthetic harmony of agent, conduct and environment, but because they advance their possessor in the direction of his final destiny to eternal life after death; and that virtue is more than a reasonable balance between behavioristic extremes, since it postulates a primal obligation to a divine Lawgiver, whose will is manifest in conscience and faith, and to whom obedience is due as man's Creator and Lord.
--From the Great Catholic Books Newsletter, Vol. II, Num. 1.
