Chapter 14, on the incarnation, described Jesus Christ as the central event in human history. Of course, people can understand the importance of Christ in better or worse ways. In perhaps the most powerful quote in an extraordinary book, C. S. Lewis tries to stave off a false view of Jesus as simply a great moral teacher when he writes:

I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ This is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said [namely, that He was the Messiah, the Son of God] would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come away with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 52. For an example of Jesus “saying the sorts of things he said,” see John 5:17–30.

Why Jesus is more than simply an ethical role model—although he is of course that, too—was explained in detail in that chapter’s discussion of the incarnation and how it definitively changed the relationship between God and humanity.

Yet this is not the only reason why Jesus Christ was more than a great moral teacher. The incarnation did not simply have backward-looking impact. In other words, it did not simply wipe the slate clean so humanity could be back on track, in right relationship with God. The incarnation is also a forward-looking event that can be lived out in the ways described at the end of chapter 14 and in chapter 15. And not only does such life in Christ proceed with the incarnation as a model of how to follow Jesus, the incarnate Christ also provides the fuel, if you will, for that journey. Through Jesus Christ, God gives humanity, communally and individually, real help in living lives in Christ. This help is called grace, and explaining its importance in the virtuous life is the point of this chapter.

The chapter proceeds in two sections. The first section defines grace, explains how it works, and offers the famous and powerful autobiographical account of St. Augustine’s conversion as an example of grace in action. The second section reexamines the different categories of virtue with the Christian teaching on grace in mind. It clarifies the difference between acquired and infused virtue, and explains the importance of an oft-neglected category of virtue, the infused cardinal virtues. An accurate understanding of these virtues reveals how God’s grace not only provides humanity with the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, but also transforms how people do innerworldly activities to reflect how they live in Christ.

Christian teaching on grace is one of the most distinctive, challenging, and often underappreciated and unrecognized parts of the Christian story about the way things are. Really an extension of Christian teaching on the incarnation, it is not only clearly opposed to secular views of the way things are, it also distinguishes Christianity from other faith traditions. The first part of this section will present exactly what the Christian tradition teaches about grace. The second part recounts the famous conversion story of St. Augustine as an example of grace in action.

Defining and Describing Grace

Christians commonly claim that they live “in Christ,” or that Christ lives in them (Gal. 2:20, Rom. 8:2). What does this mean? The past two chapters examined some of the central activities of one who lives in Christ: the works of mercy, genuine holiness over wholesomeness, forgiveness, love of enemy, and love of God and all things in God. Much has been said of what a person living in Christ does. Less has been said on how it is done. Explicit and important discussion of grace has been missing.

As Lewis says aptly, Christians do not “act on their own steam.”C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 63. The Christian is “nourishing and protecting a life that he could never have acquired through his own efforts.”Ibid. The source and sustenance of that life is Christ. It is tempting to think that living out Christian discipleship is acting in accordance with Christian beliefs, and in a manner that mimics how Jesus Christ lived on earth. This is certainly true. But Christians think something more happens as well.

Put right out of your head the idea that these [claims about living in Christ] are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out—as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in the very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self, killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge, and eternity.Ibid., 190 (emphasis added).

The difference between a great moral teacher (such as, say, Plato) and Christ should now be more completely understood. A great moral teacher does not actively help one in the present to live out what is taught, whereas Christians believe Christ does exactly this. Jesus Christ is the definitive event in human history, not only in a backward-looking way because he cleaned the slate, but also in a forward-looking way in that he lives on, assisting real people to live in Christ.

Grace is the term for this help that God gives people to know and live a more truthful, holy, and virtuous life, directed ultimately toward union with God. The grace of God has always been associated with the Holy Spirit, as when Jesus encountered his disciples after the Resurrection, “breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ ” (John 20:22). The association of grace and the Holy Spirit can be seen in the traditional prayer. “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Lord, send forth your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” It is also seen in the seven traditional “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” which are God’s grace in helping a person to be docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. These seven gifts, derived from Isaiah 1:1–2, are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. Grace can be difficult to specify, for many reasons. One such reason is that if the Christian claim is true—that God is the ultimate source of all that is—what is not grace? First of all, anything that is not a help to live more holy and truthful lives is not help from God. So any expressions of our sinfulness, for example, are not in themselves works of God’s grace. Second, grace should not be equated simply with goodness. There are indeed many good things that are from God, such as our capacities of reason and will. These things may be crucial on our journey toward our supernatural destiny, or union with God. But the more precise meaning of grace used here is not only what is good or done by God in some sense, but rather what is done by God that directs us to supernatural happiness in union with God. Grace is God’s help to do things that are not possible with natural human capacities alone, since they direct us toward our supernatural destiny. Therefore, living a life in Christ, a life of grace, is not simply a matter of being our better selves rather than our sinful selves, and following a rightly formed conscience. It is receiving help from beyond us to direct us toward the ultimate purpose of union with God. “God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work” (Phil. 2:13).

One of the primary Christian claims about grace is that God is truly an agent when people live in Christ. This help from God is received in countless ways. One of the more obvious is through other people. Think of all the ways we receive this assistance through others. None of us could have the faith we do without having heard about God from others. Our friends often sustain us in living holy lives. Reading the scriptures, inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit and yet enfleshed in human language written by human authors, is another source of grace. The sacraments are excellent examples of God’s real assistance in transforming our lives to be more Christlike. In times of prayer, as Lewis says, God works on us. It is perhaps easier to see how God’s assistance comes concretely through prayer, the scriptures, and sacraments, since these are churchy activities. But we should not neglect the importance of how God works on us through other avenues, be they more exalted moments of inspiration from natural beauty, or in the everyday ways that those around us support and encourage us in living holy lives. This is a main reason why friendship is such an essential part of the virtuous life in Christ.

It is easy for the skeptic to see things differently, of course. Why label all of these influences as God’s real agency on us? Why not just call them “good influences”? In one sense this is of course correct. All of these occasions are good influences on our lives. But their origin is God and not simply those persons who act as instruments of God’s grace in our lives. To use another analogy from Lewis:

At first it is natural for a baby to take its mother’s milk without knowing its mother. It is equally natural for us to see the man who helps us without seeing Christ behind him. But we must not remain babies. We must go on to recognize the real Giver. Ibid., 190–91.

Why must there be a real giver behind these influences? If the central claims of the Christian story as presented so far in this book are true, then the life and destiny to which we are called is beyond our human capacities. We could not understand it without help from beyond us, and we could not live in accordance with it without God’s help. This life could not be known and lived on our own, understanding “our” not just in individual but also in corporate terms.

In sum, God’s grace is at work when we receive help from God to know and do particular things we could not know and do on our own, things that reveal to us and lead us toward our destiny of complete happiness in union with God. It must be acknowledged by Christians that though grace can be described in an intellectually sound manner, the best proof of its existence is not theological discourse, but the real lived experiences of people caught up in the life of God. It is for that reason that we will examine precisely such an autobiographical account below, through the story of St. Augustine. But before proceeding to that story, three further observations about grace will help illuminate that account.

First, what is the relationship between grace and human freedom? In other words, if God is working on us, does that mean that God impedes or usurps our freedom? This is an extraordinarily difficult question, one that Christians have always struggled to articulate in a nuanced manner. A brief answer will have to suffice here. Grace does not usurp or even lessen human freedom. Grace should not be understood to operate in the manner of a possession, such as that depicted in the classic movie The Exorcist, where a young girl suffers, against her will, the internal presence of a supernatural being moving her to do involuntary things. Though it is true that we cannot live lives of holiness without God’s help, and that even turning to accept that help is a gift from God, it is also true, on the one hand, that we can refuse that help, and on the other hand that when we accept that help it is truly we who are acting. Even though we are being acted on from the outside, we are also cooperating with that influence, and thus our actions under this influence are not only God’s but our own.

Consider an imperfect analogy.The analogy is helpful in showing how help from the outside can enable rather than impede our freedom. The analogy is imperfect, because skills such as piano playing, basketball, and writing are accessible to humanity as a race on our own, even if individuals require the help of others to obtain them. Actions that lead us to the supernatural destiny of union with God, however, are only attainable with God’s help. The second section further addresses this point. What skills and good qualities do you possess? Perhaps you play piano or basketball, or write well. These skills are truly your own. They are qualities that mark who you are. But none of them would be possible without the help of others. When a piano teacher holds a child’s hands to play keys correctly, or a father teaches a child to shoot foul shots, or a mother assists a child to learn to write, there is real help, or outside agency, at work. The child could not have done it on his own. In fact, the child can resist and never take on the skill. But nonetheless, if the child eventually takes on the skill, it is truly his own even if he is not the origin of the skill. The same is true of grace. God assists us to become the persons who we truly are, but could not be without God’s help.

This recalls the second chapter’s discussion of freedom, and the difference between freedom for excellence and freedom of indifference. If freedom is understood as simply your ability to choose no matter what is chosen (freedom of indifference), then any outside influence on your choice lessens your own contribution to the choice. Acts of freedom are zero-sum gains, in that the more God helps you in some act, the less free agency is left over for you. From a freedom-of-indifference perspective, therefore, grace is actually an intrusion on your freedom.

But if we understand true freedom as the ability to act well where the action truly comes from us (freedom for excellence), then it is possible to receive help from the outside to live well, and yet still be fully free, since the action is truly from us. In fact, since that external help (grace) enables us to act well, such help makes us more, not less, free than we otherwise would be on our own.

Consider again the example of a piano teacher. Does the teacher impede the child’s freedom in teaching him to strike the keys well? At first it is basically all the teacher, moving the child’s hands to play. The action is not yet the child’s own. But once the skill is gained, the action is genuinely the child’s own, and only possible with help from outside. The teacher and student’s agencies are not rivals operating in a zero-sum gain. The more and better help the teacher gives, the more the child becomes free to play well. Just as it would be foolish to insist that the young pianist’s skill is only his own if he developed it without any help, so too is it erroneous to think that God’s grace in helping us live holy lives makes our action less our own. Grace heals and enables, rather than usurps, true human freedom.

The second observation concerns the difficulty of life in Christ, and is once again beautifully described by Lewis. Is such life hard or easy, he asks?See Lewis, Mere Christianity, 195–200, for an excellent discussion of this topic. On the one hand, Christ continually says the disciple must take up his cross and follow Christ. Followers must lay down their lives, and be willing to lose them. This sounds hard. On the other hand, Christ also says “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30). But yet he still calls it a yoke and a burden! Which is it, a yoke and a burden, or easy and light? Lewis says both. It is extraordinarily difficult to lay down our lives, to die to our prideful selves. It is a cross. This can be seen by the many times in our lives when we try to quit a bad habit, or do something difficult we know to be good. Even when we ourselves know it is best to change, or to do what we know is best, so often we resist! We basically try to stay the old selves we have become accustomed to, to remain in charge, but with a change or two around the edges of who we are. This compromise, of wanting to be better persons while staying our old selves, may result in occasional successes but always leads to frustrating failures or the daunting realization that more remains to be done. So we give up or live miserably. By refusing to do the very difficult thing of surrendering ourselves fully to God’s direction in grace, we block God’s assistance to help us live more holy lives.

But if we take the difficult step of surrendering ourselves to God’s grace, life in Christ is easy. God wants our whole selves to be transformed so as to live most fully. If we get out of the way, and let Christ transform us, the grace is there to do so. Too often, like petulant children, we want to do it on our own, and in our way. But when we lay down our lives and allow the life of Christ to blossom in us, not only can we do what seems hopeless on our own; we find that we are living more fully, and are more truly ourselves. Indeed, we find we are living more truthfully, more happily. It is in this sense that Christ meant “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

This talk of total transformation leads us to the last observation, again through a question posed by Lewis. Does Christ really call us to be perfect (Matt. 5:48)?See ibid., 201–6. The answer is yes. Again, in our pride we prefer a little help here and there, but would rather remain firmly at the helm, in control of our lives. Lewis says we are like the person who is afraid to go to the dentist to be relieved of a toothache, since she knows that if she goes the dentist will not simply treat the immediate problem at hand, but will also want to do all sorts of other things that may in the long run be best for her but really uncomfortable in the short run.See ibid., 201–2. Similarly, we often turn to God to help us with a pressing need. But we only want God’s help with that need. We don’t want any tinkering around with the rest of our lives! But Lewis says God is ready to help, yet not interested in fine-tuning our old wayward selves. God wants us completely, and has plans for us that will no doubt take us way beyond the miniscule surrenders we are willing to endure to improve a bit without giving up control. God intends to transform us completely: “You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come live in it Himself.” Lewis continues:

The command “be ye perfect” is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. This process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.Ibid., 205–6. How easy it is for people of faith to resonate with these words! Though our personal reasons and backgrounds may be different, how easy it is for us to sympathize with knowing and wanting to follow Christ wholeheartedly, but yet being still divided and holding back.

As Lewis also notes, the process will not be completed in this life, though God intends to complete it as much as possible before we die.

To summarize this part’s depiction of grace, grace is the help that God gives people to know and live more truthful, holy, and virtuous lives in a manner directed ultimately toward union with God. It enables us to do things we could not otherwise do, since they are directed ultimately to our union with God. It is really God acting on us—and not just our better selves—even though it does not defy our freedom. We can resist. If we do not, we will actually become more, not less, free. Though it is extraordinarily difficult in that it entails surrendering our old selves, it is also easy in that God will do the hard work if we only get out of the way and let him. Finally, the goal of our transformation is indeed perfection. This need not discourage us when we fail, but rather serve as a reminder of God’s mercy and love in sticking with us to get the job done.

Grace in St. Augustine’s Conversion

St. Augustine’s autobiographical book Confessions is one of the classic works of Western literature for many reasons. We examine it here for only one, albeit important, reason. It is a powerful account of how God’s grace works in someone’s life. The focal point here will be the eighth chapter (called Book Eight) of his story, where he recounts his definitive conversion to the Christian life. We see beautifully depicted in this account the most central features of grace described above.

At the beginning of Book Eight, Augustine has already been convinced of the truth and wisdom of Christianity. Yet though he has intellectually grasped the persuasiveness of Christianity’s story of the way things are, he has not yet allowed his life to be transformed accordingly.

Concerning your eternal life I was now quite certain. . . . What I now longed for was not greater certainty about you, but a more steadfast abiding in you. In my daily life everything seemed to be teetering, and my heart needed to be cleansed of old leaven. I was attracted to the Way, which is our Savior Himself, but the narrowness of the path daunted me and I still could not walk in it.Augustine, Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding, OSB (New York: Random House, 1997), 145.

What was it that held Augustine back? There were several facets of his old self that he had trouble surrendering, but the one he describes most poignantly is his battle with lust. He was restrained from full conversion with the force of an iron chain. Yet it was no external chain that bound him, but rather “the iron of my own will.” In a vivid description of the formation and power of habit (unfortunately here a vice), Augustine claims, “The truth is that a disordered lust springs from a perverted will; when lust is pandered to, a habit is formed; when habit is not checked, it hardens into compulsion.”Ibid., 153. Therefore his newfound will to follow Christ was initially unable to dislodge the earlier habit of lust.

A new will had begun to emerge in me, the will to worship you disinterestedly and enjoy you, O God, our only sure happiness; but it was not yet capable of surmounting that earlier will strengthened by inveterate custom. And so the two wills fought it out.Ibid., 153–54. Boulding’s translation is modified here. Though she uses “felicity” to translate the Latin felicitas, “happiness” is substituted here.

Augustine powerfully describes this common experience of being inwardly torn. He notes how we often speak of there being two wills in us, but claims in reality that what may appear to be two wills are really both our own.

I was the one who wanted to follow [Christ]; and I was the one who wanted not to. I was the only one involved. I neither wanted it wholeheartedly, nor turned from it wholeheartedly. I was at odds with myself, and fragmenting myself.Ibid., 163.

In an analogy we can all understand, Augustine likens himself at this time to a person awaking from sleep, who knows it is time to get up and even wants to get up, and yet sinks back into sleep as if to say, “one more minute! Let me have a little longer!” (Today we might imagine hitting the snooze bar.) We know from chapter 4 that Augustine is here caught in a state of incontinence. He knew it was time for him to change his lustful ways, but also felt unready and unwilling to do so. At one point he even pleads to God, “Give me chastity and self-control, but not yet!”Ibid., 159. The problem, Augustine recognized, was “these ‘minutes’ never diminished, and my ‘little longer’ lasted inordinately long.”Ibid., 155.

So at this point in his life story, Augustine felt enslaved, although the source of the chains was his own self, and the bad habits he had willingly developed. Despite a real longing to change his life and follow Christ wholeheartedly, these chains bound him. Augustine’s account from the inside of what it feels like to change our old ways is haunting.

Then I would make a fresh attempt, and now I was almost there, almost there . . . I was touching the goal, grasping it . . . and then I was not there, not touching, not grasping it. I shrank from dying to death and living to life, for ingrained evil was more powerful in me than new-grafted good.Ibid., 165.

It was as if he were being taunted by his old self, with his wayward desires warning,

Do you mean to get rid of us? Shall we never be your companions again after that moment . . . never . . .never again? From that time onward so-and-so will be forbidden to you, all your life long.Ibid., 166.

What person who has struggled to change a bad habit cannot relate to this situation, where in one sense we know it is best for us to change, but in another sense are terrified that by changing we will have to definitively let go of the sinful activity, that former life, that has seemingly become a part of who we are? Augustine reports fearing conversion: “the prospect of being free of all these encumbrances frightened me as much as the encumbrances themselves ought to have done.”Ibid., 154. See Rom. 7:24–25.

The point of Book Eight is not primarily to describe the state Augustine was in, which has been our focus so far. Rather it is to see how God’s grace was at work in his conversion. This leads us to a first question regarding grace: does God work on Augustine at his conversion? There can be no doubt that this is how Augustine understands what happens to him. He reports feeling left hanging in the state he was in, unable to fully convert on his own. How would he change? Reminiscent of St. Paul (Rom. 7:24–25), Augustine cries:

You set me free from a craving for sexual gratification which fettered me like a tight-drawn chain, and from my enslavement to worldly affairs: I will confess your name, O Lord, my helper and redeemer.Augustine, Confessions, 155. See Rom. 7:15–25.

Augustine is quite clear on this point. It was God who was at work in his conversion: “Let me offer a sacrifice of praise, for you have snapped my bonds. How you broke them I will relate.”Augustine, Confessions, 145 (emphasis added). To that next question of how grace works in Augustine’s story we now turn.

The ways God’s grace works on Augustine in these pages range from the mundane to the extraordinary. Augustine reports hearing the conversion stories of some contemporaries, and all the while thinking that God was at work inspiring him to do the same.See, for example, ibid., 158. He reports the steady, silent support of his friend Alypius at his moment of crisis, an influence that no doubt contributed to his conversion. He recounts the longtime prayers of his mother, who is overjoyed at Augustine’s eventual conversion. And he details the precise occasion of his actual conversion, which contains more extraordinary moments of grace: moments of intense, heart-pounding, tearful prayer; being led to the scriptures by overhearing children sing a song; God’s seeming to speak to him directly through the passage he opens to in the Bible; and, even a vision in which he is assured by “Lady Continence” that he need not change his life on his own but can rely on the Lord for help:

Why try to stand yourself, only to lose your footing? Cast yourself on him [Christ] and do not be afraid; he will not step back and let you fall. Cast yourself upon him trustfully; he will support and heal you.Ibid., 167.

This brief overview of Augustine’s conversion is full of events, some mundane and some rather extraordinary, where God’s grace was at work on him. But all these events are reported by Augustine to be vehicles of God’s grace, since through them God led Augustine to himself, and helped him do things he could have done on his own.

Is Augustine free when he converts? His story is a vivid response to the more general question about the relationship between grace and freedom. He clearly describes himself as bound and enslaved before his conversion. He becomes more free, not less, when he finally surrenders and lets God’s grace go to work on him. This is true in two senses. First, with the help of God’s grace he is able to live out that new will to follow Christ that had sprung up in him. He is freed to do what he wants to do, rather than be enslaved by his old habits. Second, in another sense he is more free because he becomes able to do what is truly best for him. After all, since not only his new will but also his old habits were born in his own will, there really is never a time in his story when he is not doing what he wants. The change is from his wanting two different things (namely, to follow Christ and to remain in lust), but neither wholeheartedly, to wanting what will make him truly happy even when it entails in some sense a loss of his old self. Thus, it is wrong to assume that Augustine’s conversion makes him more free if we hold a freedom-of-indifference perspective, since his pre-conversion fragmented will was indeed his own will. Yet from a freedom-for-excellence perspective, it is clear that Augustine grew in freedom by being able to choose to live more fully with God’s help.

It should also be clear from Augustine’s story that life in Christ is both hard and easy, in the senses described by Lewis. In one sense Augustine’s full conversion is tortuous. This entire chapter depicts how difficult it is for him to let go of his old self, to surrender and let’s God’s life live more fully in him. Then the entreaty of Lady Continence sets him straight. He need not—in fact, cannot—do it on his own. But if he simply trusts in Christ, it will be done for him. One thing that often strikes the reader about the climax of Augustine’s conversion is that, in a certain sense, he does not do anything. He simply reports that “the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shades of doubt fled away.”Ibid., 168. He tells his friend what happened, and describes himself as suddenly peaceful—that’s it. But knowing what Lewis says about life in Christ also being easy, this does not surprise us. Once Augustine surrenders and gets out of the way, the grace of God accomplishes the work. Also reminiscent of Lewis, the work being accomplished is the transformation of Augustine into someone living in Christ, into greater perfection. The process will not come to completion in this life, but God will take it as far Augustine allows.

The impact that the preceding section’s discussion of grace has on moral theology is obvious. Through Christ God actually helps people to live more holy lives. Yet more specifically, what difference does grace have on how we understand the virtues? Answering this question is the purpose of this second section. One of the best ways to understand some entity is to categorize its different manifestations. So when this book first described the meaning of virtue in chapter 3, distinctions such as “cardinal vs. theological” virtue were offered to help us better understand what virtue is. However, at that point the big-picture claims of the second half of this book had not yet been considered. Therefore, some categories of virtue were not addressed. In fact, these omissions led to some misleading assumptions about virtue that can now be corrected. The first part of this section will revisit the different categories of virtue. The second part will explain why one type of virtue that has been neglected thus far in this book, “infused cardinal virtue,” is actually a crucial part of moral theology and of living a virtuous life.

Revisiting, and Supplementing, the Categories of Virtue

A habit is a stable disposition in a person that disposes that person to act in a certain manner, with corresponding intentions. Virtues dispose us to act well, whereas vices dispose us to act poorly. One way of categorizing habits is by the sort of activity they concern. For instance, we did this in chapter 12 with the seven deadly sins. When these sins are habits, or vices, they dispose us to consistently act poorly with regard to a certain type of activity (eating and drinking for gluttony, or rectifying injustice with anger, etc.). The same may be said about virtue. In fact, this book is structured by the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues. Each of these seven virtues disposes a person to do a certain sort of activity well (believing things about God for faith, or right relations with others for justice, etc.). As we learned in chapter 3, all of these types of activity can be placed into two groups: innerworldly activities, or those that concern God directly. Innerworldly activities are encapsulated in those four main areas—practical decision-making, right relations with others, facing difficulties, or sensual pleasures—that are the basis of the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, respectively. The theological virtues faith, hope, and love concern God directly.

We now need to revisit more completely how both of these types of virtues are obtained. The most obvious way the cardinal virtues are obtained is through repetitive, intentional action, as described in chapter 3. If you want to become a generous person, you must repeatedly, and for the right reasons, help those in need with what resources are available to you. By continually performing such actions, a habit develops such that you will be disposed to do more such actions (automatically, with proper intentions) in the future. When virtues are obtained in this manner, that is, by repeated actions we are able to do on our own, they are called acquired virtues.

When one obtains an acquired cardinal virtue, one performs innerworldly acts well with an eye toward how they contribute to human happiness. In other words, I drink moderately because I want to maintain bodily health and consistently enjoy this sensual good in its proper place in my life. I am generous because I want to contribute not only to my own well-being, but that of others in my community, since I understand the two as intertwined. People are able to understand, through the use of their reason, natural human happiness as it includes things like bodily health and the common good. These activities concern created human nature, and thus we can figure them out by using our human reasoning (observations, understanding how these activities work, etc.). When we obtain virtues that concern our natural human happiness in this way, we call them acquired virtues. Of course, we can use our reasoning poorly—and in fact Christians who understand the pervasiveness of sin know that this happens quite often—but nonetheless people can in principle on their own, as individuals and communities, arrive at truly virtuous ways of doing these activities that serve natural human happiness. It is natural to us, not in the sense everyone does it and does it easily, or even in everyone fully understanding what constitutes natural happiness, but rather in the sense that it concerns human flourishing on matters accessible to our unaided human reasoning.

Yet, as already reiterated throughout the second half of this book, Christians believe that humans are invited by God to share in a greater destiny. This destiny is called, literally, a supernatural happiness, and is constituted by union with the triune God of Jesus Christ, who became man for us to reconcile us with God and make us sharers in the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). This is a destiny that far transcends our unaided created nature and unaided powers of reasoning. We could not get there on our own. In fact, we cannot even begin to comprehend this invitation, let alone live it out, without the assistance of God called grace.

So how can this supernatural happiness be understood or achieved? It requires us to become the sorts of people who act in certain ways (i.e., have certain virtues), but we are unable to obtain these virtues on our own. Therefore, God gives us the grace to truthfully understand who God is, and his plan for humanity (faith). He fills us with a longing for union with God, tasted in this life and completed in the next, even when it is not fully available to us now (hope). He bestows on us a love of God and others in God, such that we seek to be unified with God in communion with others (charity). Therefore, people can possess virtues that enable them to pursue their supernatural destiny of union with God thanks to God’s help, or grace. Virtues that are given to us by God, and indeed are only possible by the grace of God—since they concern our supernatural happiness—are called infused virtues. The three theological virtues faith, hope, and love are all infused virtues.

But what does grace have to do with the cardinal virtues? Christians, like all human persons, live in this created world and continue to engage in innerworldly activities. To do these well they, like all others, need the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. At this point it would seem that the only thing distinguishing Christians from non-Christians is the presence of faith, hope, and love. Christians have the infused theological virtues in order to guide them to union with God, a supernatural destiny. But all persons—Christian or not—can have the cardinal virtues that are acquired by the process of habituation and that direct us to do innerworldly activities well for the sake of natural human flourishing. On this reading, in fact, there really is no difference between how Christians act well in the world, and how virtuous non-Christians act well. There is simply a human ethic for innerworldly activities, and so the cardinal virtues incline all people toward the same sorts of action.

There are kernels of truth in saying that Christians and non-Christians both have these acquired cardinal virtues. First of all, for many innerworldly activities, it simply does not matter whether or not one is Christian. If you want to go to a good exercise trainer, it is probably not necessary to ask if he or she is Christian! Physical training is an innerworldly activity, accessible to unaided human reason, that basically looks the same for Christians and non-Christians alike. The same is true of many questions of justice. A non-Christian judge can be just as knowledgeable in American law and render judgments as just as a Christian judge. Second, it is true that Christians can work hard to obtain cardinal virtues concerning innerworldly activities. So Christians can work hard to diet so as to be physically fit, or try to be more patient with people that may annoy them.

However, sometimes innerworldly activities look different for Christians because of their Christian faith. Thomas Aquinas uses the example of fasting. See Aquinas Summa Theologiae I–II 63,4. During Lent a Christian may fast and eat less than three square meals a day on, say, Good Friday. To make a sacrifice joining us to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, and to subordinate our more basic desires for the sake of our deeper desire for the Lord, we forgo eating as much as we normally do. This action concerns an innerworldly activity (eating), and thus is a matter of the cardinal virtue temperance. So the fasting Christian is said to be temperate. But on that same day a virtuous nonbeliever may eat her standard three square meals. She, too, is eating temperately. How to explain this difference?

Some different virtuous actions are explainable due to different circumstances. One person’s temperance may entail more food than another’s, simply due to a larger body size. But that is not the case here. Both actions are temperate, but they differ, not due to circumstances, but in their very meaning. The nonbeliever is temperate for the sake of natural human flourishing. The Christian is temperate for the sake of union with God. The goal of the former person’s temperance is natural human happiness. The goal of the latter person’s temperance is the supernatural destiny of humanity’s union with God. So the actions differ in meaning, or ultimate goal.

They also differ in source. Though the Christian may work hard to fast, ultimately that temperate act requires the assistance of God’s grace. Since we are incapable of acting for the sake of union with God on our own, this temperance is rightly called infused, since eating in this way would not be possible without God’s grace. Hence in this example we have two different types of virtue: the infused cardinal virtue of temperance (in the one fasting during Lent), and the acquired cardinal virtue of temperance (in the nonbeliever eating three squares a day).

Eating is certainly not the only innerworldly activity that is transformed by Christians’ call to union with God, and assisted by God’s infused grace. Many of the worldly activities of Christians are transformed by our relationship with God, and so are done differently. Consider the cardinal virtue fortitude. Firefighters and other first responders can develop this acquired virtue, risking their lives to help citizens in danger. Christians can do this as well, but see the ultimate act of fortitude to be laying down one’s life for one’s faith in God, which is called martyrdom. The early church martyrs are fine examples of infused fortitude, as are contemporary examples such as St. Maximilian Kolbe or Martin Luther King Jr. Kolbe was willing to lay down his life in place of a fellow prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, not simply to save a person with a family, but also in imitation of Christ’s willingness to die for us and in hope of future union with God beyond this life.

As for the cardinal virtue justice, surely a virtuous non-Christian can be willing to lay down his life for social justice (e.g., racial or economic equality). But a Christian might do this differently. Anyone who has read Martin Luther King Jr.’s work knows that he was committed to racial equality not only for the sake of humanity’s natural happiness (social justice), but also for the sake of his and humanity’s ultimate union with God. He pursued justice in a manner shaped by Christ’s injunction to love the enemy, and turn the other cheek. Archbishop Oscar Romero spoke out for economic justice on behalf of the poor not simply because the conditions of his society impeded natural human happiness—which they did—but also because they violated the dignity of people created in God’s image, and particularly the poor, for whom God has a special love.

These examples reveal that cardinal virtues, while always concerning innerworldly activities, actually come in two different stripes. And therefore there are ultimately three types of virtues. First, there are infused theological virtues. These concern God directly, and thus are only obtained with God’s grace. Second, there are acquired cardinal virtues. They concern innerworldly activities. They are accessible to unaided human reason and acquired by our own efforts. They direct us toward happiness considered simply at the level of our created human nature. Finally, there are also infused cardinal virtues. These concern innerworldly activities as well, but they incline us to do innerworldly activities well in the larger perspective of our supernatural destiny. They give a different meaning to those activities (commonly leading to different particular actions), and are possible only with God’s grace.

The Importance of the Infused Cardinal Virtues

Why is it important to recognize these three—not two—categories of virtue? Is it simply an abstract theological claim that there are not only infused theological and acquired cardinal virtues, but also infused cardinal virtues? Categorizations are often helpful ways to better understand more about what is being categorized. This is certainly the case with the infused cardinal virtues. People who neglect the existence of this type of virtue fail to see accurately a crucial facet of the Christian life. They may rightly note that people can acquire on their own certain cardinal virtues concerning innerworldly activities. And they might even recognize that God helps people to be in right relationship with him by infusing the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. But if these two categories of virtue were all that existed, something important would be missing. This is true for three reasons.

First, Christian faith transforms not just a person’s relationship with God, but also a person’s innerworldly activities. The problem with a two-fold categorization of virtue, which attends only to infused theological virtue and acquired cardinal virtue, is its failure to account for how our worldly activities are transformed by grace. Simply put, Christian faith matters for how we live, including those activities that nonbelievers can do virtuously. We have already considered the case of fasting, which provides an obvious example of Christian faith transforming how one goes about an innerworldly activity. There are many other such examples. Consider the political example of St. Thomas More, who refused to acquiesce to King Henry VIII’s demand that he recognize an illegitimate marriage. More’s infused justice precluded him from doing so, and his infused fortitude gave him the grace to endure martyrdom because of it. Or consider the contemporary example of the United States bishops, whose stances on political issues differ from our prevailing Republican and Democratic views on justice, in their respect for life at all stages and their preferential option for the poor. This infused justice is not simply another secular form of justice; rather, it is transformed by Christian beliefs. Infused justice leads to, in this case, political actions that are distinctive as compared to acquired justice.

As noted above, sometimes the action performed by someone with an acquired cardinal virtue does look the same as one performed by someone with an infused cardinal virtue. If you want a good fitness trainer, his or her faith commitment is probably of less importance than competence in physical training. And surely people with either infused cardinal virtues or acquired cardinal virtues can pursue racial equality in the manner espoused by Martin Luther King Jr. That said, even in these cases where the external act may be the same, the meaning of the action is still importantly different (for reasons explained in chapters 2 and 15 on the importance of our ultimate goal for how we do all activities that are lower on our triangles). The Christian trainer may understand her work as a way of honoring the bodies God gave us—really as a form of worship. The nonbeliever would not consciously share this perspective. Similarly with King, he understood his work for social justice to be directly related to his own faith and the larger Christian project of helping to further instatiate the kingdom of God. A socially just atheist could surely join King in performing particular actions, and these actions would truly be called just. But the overall meaning of the act, and thus the type of justice, would be different.

Therefore, the first reason why we must attend to infused cardinal virtue is that this category of virtue enables us to explain how Christian faith transforms a person’s innerworldly activities. At times, this leads the believer to different sorts of actions. Different sorts of happiness—natural or supernatural—can lead to different understandings of what constitutes truly just, temperate, brave, and prudent action. This is exactly why this book has had to attend to big-picture beliefs about the way things are, in order to fully understand how to live morally in this world. Even when the one with infused cardinal virtue performs acts that appear the same to the external observer as the ones performed by someone with acquired cardinal virtues, those acts nonetheless possess a different overall meaning due to their relation to the supernatural destiny of the person.

The second reason why we must attend to the infused cardinal virtues is that Christians believe people can receive God’s grace to help them become virtuous, not just directly in their relationships with God (faith, hope, and love) but also in their innerworldly activities. This is readily seen in our liturgical and prayer lives. We commonly pray for God’s help in being more just, temperate, brave, and prudent people. We trust that God’s grace also works in these areas. Consider the example of St. Paul from Acts 9. He ceased his unjust persecution of Christians due to God’s direct intervention. Or consider St. Augustine’s story from earlier in this chapter. He begged for God’s assistance to rid himself of lustful desires, and was granted that help, in the famous story of his conversion in the garden.

These are obvious—and dramatic—examples of God’s grace helping people with innerworldly activities. Unfortunately, due to the term “infused,” and due to the existence of such extraordinary stories of God’s grace, people too often assume that infused cardinal virtue is only present when someone has been obviously “zapped” by God’s grace in the manner of Paul or Augustine. But God’s grace can be just as present and efficacious for people who have less dramatic stories of God’s transforming impact on their lives. That grace can be present in the upbringing provided by holy parents, the challenging advice of a close friend, or the helpful example provided by a mentor. We say grace is present anytime someone receives God’s help to live in a manner that is ultimately pointed toward his supernatural destiny. Such meaning and ultimate direction for our virtuous action could not be present without God’s help, even when that help comes in less dramatic forms.

Differing from Paul and Augustine, Saints Peter and Thomas Aquinas are examples of people who clearly exhibited infused cardinal virtues without extraordinary stories of being zapped by God’s grace. That does not mean God’s grace did not transform their lives—it most certainly did. What makes their cardinal virtues infused was that they came from God, and led to actions the ultimate purpose of which was to unite them to God and to neighbors in and through God, which is of course their supernatural happiness, a destiny unknowable, let alone achievable, without God’s help. Acquired cardinal virtues may entail actions that look the same, but the ultimate source and ultimate goal of those activities (and hence their meaning) is nonetheless different.

The third and final reason we must attend to the infused cardinal virtues is encapsulated in the famous theological dictum, “grace perfects nature,”rather than takes away or leaves it untouched. There has been a great deal of talk in this section about natural and supernatural happiness. But there are two mistakes that are easy to make when discussing these two distinct forms of happiness. First, some assume that they both persist as parallel tracks, with no relationship between the two. This chapter has been very explicit thus far in asserting that this is not the case. Even seemingly nonreligious activities like physical training, eating, and racial equality are indeed transformed in the context of one’s supernatural destiny. We do not live natural (or innerworldly) lives sealed off from our supernatural lives. Grace perfects nature, rather than leaving it untouched.

There is also a second error in attending to humanity’s two distinct types of happiness. Some recognize that attention to our supernatural destiny impacts our innerworldly activities, but go further and claim that believers actually no longer can be said to seek and experience natural happiness. The natural destiny is taken away and replaced by the supernatural end. Yet this opposite extreme also defies the scholastic dictum that grace perfects nature.

Some examples might help make this clear. Aquinas again uses the example of fasting. Here is a case where infused temperance makes what one eats (e.g., during Lent) different for the believer. The natural end of eating is not taken away; rather, it is fulfilled and transcended in the broader context of one’s supernatural destiny. How does fasting respect natural happiness while transcending it? Doesn’t it actually defy our natural happiness, since three square meals a day is the path to natural human flourishing, as it concerns eating? Generally, we should eat three square meals a day. But just as we might fast a day before surgery, or “carbo-load” the day before a marathon, three square meals a day is not the only way of achieving natural happiness. Larger goals can shape what constitutes eating well. Furthermore, Aquinas insists that if we were to fast so stringently that it actually harmed our natural bodily health, then we are fasting inappropriately.See Aquinas Summa Theologiae II–II 147, 1–2. Jean Porter discusses this text in her Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 390. Thus, grace fulfills and transcends, but does not destroy or leave unfulfilled, our nature.

In fact, Christians have consistently maintained that though natural human happiness is in principle accessible to unaided human understanding and action, in reality people are not able to live naturally flourishing lives, due to the reality and pervasiveness of sin. Aquinas claims it is possible to act well in pursuit of natural happiness, but only occasionally and with much error, primarily due to our sinful human condition. Therefore, since God’s grace perfects human nature even while transcending it, ironically, complete natural happiness is only possible for those who are assisted by God’s grace, even though those same persons are not acting toward natural happiness as their ultimate goal, but rather toward their further goal of an even greater (supernatural) happiness of union with God.

A good example of this is the relationship between love and justice. It is in principle possible to be a just person and have a just society without the theological virtue of charity, or love. However, as the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes and the Pope Benedict XVI encyclical Deus Caritas Est both make clear, charity enables one to more perfectly see the beauty and dignity of other persons. This perfects (rather than leaves untouched, or destroys) our ability to be just, giving other persons their due. Thus the person with charity has a different sort of justice. It is still justice, since it concerns innerworldly relations with others. Yet it is transformed by God’s grace, and thus rightly called infused rather than acquired justice.

One more example may help illuminate this. Consider two believers who are married. As part of their shared life, they go to church and understand their marriage to be a sacramental bond sustained by God’s grace. But that same grace also sustains them in natural aspects of their marriage, aspects of marriage shared by believers and nonbelievers alike. So one spouse may be granted infused virtue to be patient in times of strife, and generous in time and attention. The other spouse may be granted infused virtue to be just in the handling of finances, and chaste in interactions with others. All of these virtues are in principle accessible to unaided reason, and indeed may be acquired by repeated actions and without further reference to any supernatural destiny. But these Christian spouses are granted not only the infused theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, but also infused cardinal virtues to assist them in the natural facets of their marriage, and to transform how those aspects are done in light of their supernatural destiny. In this case grace has clearly perfected—rather than taken away or left untouched— nature in a manner that is more complete with God’s grace.

It is fitting that the climax of a book on living virtuously should come in a chapter on grace, since it is grace that elevates our lives to be directed toward supernatural happiness, and grace that enables us to act well, not only concerning that destiny directly (theological virtue), but also in our inner-worldly activities (cardinal virtue) in light of that destiny. In a sense, this chapter could have come first in the book, since grace is the source and sustenance of the Christian life. Modeling the dictum “grace perfects nature,” however, this book instead built its way up to grace, to first show how created human persons “work” (first half of book), and then show how that human nature is perfected and transcended by God’s action toward us in grace (second half of the book). We are now prepared to examine two more test cases (concerning having sex and caring for the dying) in light of the claims that the infused theological and cardinal virtues transform our lives in light of the Christian story. But before proceeding to those cases, one more word on the book’s structure is in order.

Now that the infused cardinal virtues have been presented, earlier claims need to be understood in an importantly different manner. The presentation of the cardinal virtues in the beginning of this book is by no means inaccurate, but by appearing before this subsequent material on grace it may appear to be unrelated to graced life in Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. In ways mentioned repeatedly in the second section of this chapter through examples of the saints, the cardinal virtues are only fully understood and lived in the context of graced life in Christ. They are indeed possible for non-Christians, and can be acquired. When they are, they are genuine virtues. But they are not complete, or perfect. For that completion and perfection, they must be understood in reference to humanity’s completion and perfection, which is life in union with God, a very participation in God’s divine being. This chapter on grace has sought to explain how that is possible. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:25).

1. Define grace. How does it complete reflection on the persistent theme in this book that for Christians, Christ is not simply a great moral teacher?

2. Who is at work when we receive grace? Are humans free when we are given grace?

3. In what ways is living life in Christ hard? In what ways it is easy?

4. Does God call us to be perfect? Explain.

5. State three things that are true about the Christian understanding of God’s grace. Give an example of each from the story of Augustine’s conversion.

6. In what different ways may virtues be obtained? Give an example of each way.

7. Define infused cardinal virtue and give an example of one. Give three reasons why Christians like Thomas Aquinas have found this category of virtue so important.

grace, infused virtue, acquired virtue, infused cardinal virtue, grace perfects nature

1. How might you respond to a skeptic who thinks that all evidence Christians offer for the reality of grace can easily be otherwise explained?

2. What difference does it make whether you hold a freedom for excellence vs. freedom-of-indifference view of freedom when describing whether someone who receives grace is free or not?

3. When Augustine converts, he is assisted by a vision from Lady Continence. We know what this means from chapter 4; Augustine is given help to contain, or not act upon, his wayward sexual desires. We also know from chapter 4 that continence is good, but is not complete virtue (which would be temperance, or chastity). Should it concern us that God gives Augustine only continence and not, say, a vision from Lady Temperance? What does this say about the grace that God gives? Is it deficient?

4. Why is it important that there is not only one way to obtain virtue? What realities are Christians trying to recognize in saying there are different ways?

5. Can Christians who live in Christ ever have and act out of acquired cardinal virtues? Explain.

Once again it should be clear how formative C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity has been on this discussion of grace, though also once again he is simply stating with typical lucidly the crux of the Christian tradition on this topic. See also the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1965–2011, and 1803–45. A far more in-depth and enormously influential presentation of (the new law and) grace may be found in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae I–II 106–14. Augustine’s Confessions is a must-read in general, and it certainly deserves a reading in conjunction with this chapter. The basis of the argument on the infused cardinal virtues is a close reading of Aquinas’s thought on virtue and grace, especially Summa Theologiae I–II 55, 63.