Virtue Remains

Nearly half a century ago, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre released his book After Virtue. It was a true rarity: a work of contemporary philosophy that managed to break through the confining walls of interdisciplinary debate and enter the general cultural discourse. MacIntyre’s argument that Western society had moved from its traditional championing of virtue to a reliance on emotivism found a wide audience among more conservatively inclined academics in the English-speaking world, and through three editions it has become required reading for aspiring evangelical intellectuals today.

After Virtue is often presented as one of the best texts for explaining our present cultural moment, although its format—a sort of meander through more than two millennia of Western thought that employs heavy academic jargon—is enough to scare away most lay readers and frustrate the wide-eyed undergraduate. As with thinkers like Jacques Ellul or Charles Taylor, who tend to get quoted ad nauseum in evangelical circles, the number of people with a deep and nuanced understanding of MacIntyre’s argument are far fewer than those who simply know virtue is dead and culture is degraded.

Thus, we hear people lamenting the loss of virtue in modern society. As many of these individuals tend to belong to the more conservative end of the ideological spectrum, the chief blame is cast upon ideological Progressives. However, it is notable that MacIntyre’s critique envelops all Western society with its observations about emotivism and managerialism, and MacIntyre himself has historically been as much on the political Left as the Right. But again, the specifics of his argument are less understood than the basic point: we are living after virtue. 

The word virtue derives from the Latin virtus. The root vir means man, so virtus for the ancient Romans was character befitting a man. Christians borrowed the term to refer to characteristics that should be sought not only by Christian men, but women as well. The concept was developed by centuries of theologians drawing upon the biblical text, most influentially St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas. 

For Christians, to say we are living “after virtue” is generally to say we are living after Christianity. It is code for the process of secularization that has taken place over the last five hundred years. We have not only lost congregants, church buildings, and cultural influence: we have lost virtue itself.

But when we mourn the loss of virtue in these days, what are we really mourning? We often judge by personal morality, which we define chiefly in terms of outward behavior. Morality is a somewhat looser term than virtue, easier to apply across philosophical boundaries, but ultimately less useful for the same reason.

Virtue as it was understood by our forebears was a deeper concept: an integrity of the whole person, a consistency of character across various situations. God is the only being in which there is no contradiction, but to become godly, it was taught one should increase in personal consistency, bringing the constituent parts of one’s character into ever greater accord by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Here we reach the key point. The Church has always divided the virtues between those that are cardinal (fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence) and theological (faith, hope, love). The former can be cultivated even by the irreligious. The latter are gifts of God to his children, infused in them by the Holy Spirit. It is the Apostle Paul who assigns these virtues their special status and promises they will remain. “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

However, to divide the virtues in this way obscures the full reality, for no one can hope to be perfected in justice without having love, or in fortitude without having faith, or in temperance without having hope. If virtue is an integrity of the person, in which there is minimal contradiction and maximum harmony, then the theological virtues must support and enable the cardinal virtues.

Martin Luther taught that even the good deeds of the unjustified person are mortal sins, for they are motivated not by a pure love of God and neighbor, but a prideful hope to be justified by law keeping. The justification of the sinner therefore precedes the true exercise of faith, hope, and love. It is dependent on the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, who then indwells the justified sinner, enabling him or her to increase in sanctification, including the development of cardinal virtues.

This is an understanding of virtue far different from that of Aristotle. It is puzzling then to see Christians implying that all society’s ills can be cured through the application of Aristotelian virtues. (MacIntyre himself does not make such a sweeping claim.) Certainly, Aristotle can teach us how to be good citizens, but he cannot teach us how to love God and neighbor, for the philosophy of Aristotle has no place for the cross of Christ. Though the ancient Greeks and Romans may have seen virtus as a path toward man’s ultimate telos, they were mistaken in their definition of that telos.

Is MacIntyre then in error when he suggests a return to virtue would benefit society? Certainly not. After all, good citizens are preferable to bad citizens. If we follow MacIntyre’s lead all the way to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, we will be even closer to the mark. But we must continue to Luther if we want to fully understand the human condition.

The only true hope for reconciliation on this earth is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he came not merely to make us better citizens of our present kingdom, but to transfer us to the kingdom of heaven.

What then if the kingdom where we presently reside commits itself to evil? In such times, the traditional choice is to fight, faint, or flee. But there is another option: the path of virtue.

No, I am not suggesting that if a few of us act more virtuously, it will magically transform our society into a utopia. I have no expectation of a perfect world this side of Christ’s return. In fact, I am not urging virtue for the sake of changing other people’s minds so much as preserving ourselves. 

In times of great societal division, there is a danger that our love will grow cold: that we will become so afraid of our neighbors that we can no longer move outward in forgiveness and love, but instead turn inward in bitterness and resentment. As time goes by, our bitterness solidifies into hate, until we are consumed by anger and emptied of joy.

This is a miserable existence without virtue, in which we become the thing we despise. What we truly need in such a difficult hour is faith, hope, and love. Like fish in a bowl, we are soaking in polluted water which grows darker and more toxic by the day, and only if we move upward toward the light will we be able to breathe again. Faith, hope, and love are the oxygen that keeps our joy alive.

Faith is not blind trust, but a God-given confidence in the perfect work of Christ applied to us. Hope is not wishful thinking, but the knowledge that Christ will return to set up his kingdom. Love is not weakness as the world defines it, but the weakness of Christ’s cross, which by faith we understand is the height of glory.

The saints of old who endured persecution did so not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of God who sustained them in faith, hope, and love. They placed no confidence in the flesh, in powers and principalities, in riches of this world, but wandered the earth as pilgrims forsaken, seeking the kingdom that has foundations. For in spite of the evidence before them, they believed the kingdoms of this age would pass away, but faith, hope, and love would remain.

In hope against hope they believed that God would fulfill his promises. They knew their true citizenship was in heaven, where the Lord Jesus sits in judgment over every ruler until that day when all earthly authority is returned to him and God becomes all in all.

The path of our spiritual forbears was that of faith, hope, and love. The theological virtues were the oxygen they breathed, enabling them to develop the cardinal virtues. These were ones of whom the world was not worthy, prophets without honor who were faithful unto death. Their glory was that of the cross alone, and their only boast was Christ.

This is not to say there is never a time to fight, that fleeing is never justified, or that we are damned if we faint. But whatever else we do, it must be motivated by faith, hope, and love, or it will be no more useful than a clanging gong. Our callings will differ, our paths will diverge, but in virtue we will be joined forever. This is our prophetic word to a watching world and our protest against the evils of this present age, which we will overcome only by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.

The world will never see the cross as we see it. They look at the path of faith, hope, and love and declare it the way of weakness. Even those who claim Christ’s name often see virtue as an obstacle to the end goal of societal righteousness. 

Someone told me recently, “When it is a battle between good and evil, you have to break the law.” Which is to say, virtue is only for times of peace, not moments of crisis. It cannot be the means to the end we seek. At which point I can only ask, “What sort of end are we seeking? What is our telos?” I am reminded of the words of Jane Eyre. “Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour…”

Luther wrote that the theologian of glory can only see the cross as weakness—an ugly abomination. Such a theologian calls evil good and good evil. Only a theologian of the cross can comprehend the glory of God revealed in suffering and the cross, and this allows him to call the thing what it is.

The theologian of glory says faith, hope, and love are liabilities, dangerous weaknesses, an albatross around our necks. I say they are our strength, our deliverance, our joy amid grief. 

Freedom has no value except when it allows us to grasp virtue. Power has no value expect when it is used to further virtue. And neither words nor actions have value except when they are joined to faith, hope, and love. For these alone remain, and the greatest of them is love.

Greatest then is the one who acts upon love of God and neighbor. They will have treasure in the kingdom of God. But least is the one who would build a kingdom with their own hands, for their own glory, and who hates both neighbors and a God who commands they be loved.

Without love, suffering is nothing, striving is nothing, martyrdom is nothing. They are wasted breath, meaningless effort, the remnants of last year’s chaff. What good to crown a king on earth and trample the King of Kings underfoot? We may as well spit upon Christ if we would do all these things without love, or worse, claim virtue itself is an evil, a weakness, a besetting sin.

No, let the King of Kings reign, and the whole earth be his footstool. For he must reign until he has placed all his enemies under his feet.

Fear not. Virtue remains.