Aquinas, Summa I-II Q.65, Arts. 2–3: Can the Moral Virtues Exist Without Charity, and Charity Without Them? (Acquired vs. Infused Virtue)

Orientation #

He begins “Article 2” of Question 65 and refers back to “the distinction we met last night,” simpliciter vs. secundum quid (prev. lecture). At the end he announces the “last two articles,” whether faith and hope can be without charity and whether charity can be without faith and hope, and gets only into his remarks on the word “faith.” Verified sources: the class treats ST I-II q. 65, a. 2 and a. 3, with a short opening of a. 4. The previous class concluded the question on a mean in the theological virtues and began q. 65 on the connection of the moral virtues; the next continues with faith, hope and charity and then the equality of virtues.

The class, in order #

1. The question and the working distinction (“Thomas is going to distinguish in the article again”) #

Point: Article 2 asks whether the moral virtues can be without charity; the whole answer turns on distinguishing the acquired moral virtues Aristotle talked about (from repeated acts) from the infused moral virtues.

• Opening prayer (Father, Son, Holy Spirit; guardian angels; Thomas Aquinas) precedes the reading.

2. Objections and sed contra of Article 2 (“every virtue, apart from charity”) #

He reads the three objections and the sed contra, adding his glosses.

1. Book of the Sentences of Prosper: every virtue apart from charity can be common to good and bad; charity only in the good; so the others can be without charity. His gloss: this uses “virtue” loosely, since virtue is what makes its haver good and its activity good. Knife example: the virtue of a knife is sharpness, its vice dullness, which makes a bad knife and its activity bad.
2. Moral virtues are acquired from human acts (Ethics II, where Aristotle asks whether virtues are by nature; they are complete only by repeated acts); charity only by infusion, “flowing in” (Romans 5:5, the charity of God diffused in our hearts by the Holy Spirit).
3. The moral virtues are connected through prudence; charity does not depend on prudence but exceeds it (Ephesians 3:19, the charity of Christ exceeding all knowledge); so they are not connected with charity. Sed contra: 1 John 3:14, who does not love remains in death; the virtues are that by which one lives rightly (Augustine, On Free Will II); so they cannot be without charity. He calls this “a nice objection.”

3. The body: why infused prudence needs charity (“contradictories are not able to be true”) #

Point: acquired moral virtues, ordered to an end not exceeding man’s natural ability, can be without charity, as in many Gentiles; the infused ones, ordered to the supernatural last end, “perfectly and truly” have the notion of virtue and cannot be without charity. His reconstruction of Thomas’s reason:

1. Moral virtues cannot be without prudence, and prudence cannot be without moral virtues, because the moral virtues make one well disposed to the end, from which prudence’s reasoning proceeds. Gloss: you must both know the natural end of man and be well disposed in the desiring powers toward it, or you cannot find what is really suitable to achieve it.
2. Much more does right prudence require being well disposed about the last end, which comes not through the moral virtues (they concern more particular ends) but through charity.
3. Comparison to speculative reason: it most of all needs the indemonstrable first beginning, that contradictories cannot both be true; Aristotle cannot demonstrate it but manifests it in “the fourth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IV], the starting point of all thinking. Hamlet’s “to be or not to be, that is the question”: it is a question only because you cannot both be and not be, whereas “to be healthy or to listen to music” is no question, you can do both. Odd and even: an even number is divisible into two equal parts, an odd not, so an odd number cannot be even; that follows from the first beginning.
4. Conclusion: infused prudence cannot be without charity, and therefore neither the infused moral virtues, since they all depend on prudence. Student exchange: a student notes prudence is an intellectual virtue; he agrees but says Aristotle’s definition of moral virtue (“a habit with choice, existing in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason”) includes prudence, since choice involves the use of reason, which is the use of prudence. So the link: infused prudence needs charity, infused moral virtues need infused prudence; the acquired ones can be without charity, as “some of the Gentiles had, simply human.”

4. Simpliciter and secundum quid; the notion of virtue (“only the infused virtues are perfect”) #

Distinction: infused virtues are perfect and are virtues simpliciter, because they order man to the ultimate end simply, vs. acquired virtues, which are virtues secundum quid, ordering man well to the last end “in some genus” but not simply. Romans 14:23, “everything that is not from faith is sin” (peccatum est, “awfully strong”), with Augustine’s gloss: where knowledge of the truth is lacking, virtue is false even in good morals. Back to objection 1: virtues in the bad “seems like a contradiction,” since even Aristotle’s definition says virtue makes its haver good and its activity good. Examples of the common meaning of virtue: his eyes, the left more “virtuous” for distance, the right for reading, because each better does the eye’s own act of seeing (not that he looks at girls with one eye); a friend’s kitchen sign, “much virtue in herbs, little in men”; an old herb that has “lost its virtue”; our Lord’s salt that loses its virtue and is thrown out. So always go back to the idea that virtue makes its haver good; one must find what is to man as sharpness is to the knife, “a little more complicated.”

5. Replies of Article 2 (“taken according to a what imperfect notion”) #

• Ad 1: those virtues are taken according to an imperfect notion of virtue; in the perfect definition virtue makes its haver good, so cannot be in the bad.
• Ad 2: he admits the acquired moral virtues are from human acts and can be without charity; it is the infused ones that cannot.
• Ad 3: although charity exceeds knowledge and prudence, prudence depends on charity, and consequently all the infused moral virtues, because they depend on prudence.

6. Article 3, the reverse question, and its objections (“charity is able to be had without the other”) #

Point: Article 3 asks whether charity can be without the moral virtues, “a more difficult question,” since it is not strange that the lower depend on the higher, but why should the higher depend on the lower?

1. To that for which one thing suffices, it is unfitting that many be ordered; charity alone suffices for all the works of virtue (1 Corinthians 13, charity is patient, benign…); so the other virtues are superfluous. “A good objection.”
2. Who has a habit does its works easily and with pleasure; Aristotle: the sign of the habit is the pleasure in the work. Digression: the problem in Aristotle, that by doing brave things we become brave and by doing just things just; must we not already be brave and just? Answer reached with students: at first the acts are done imperfectly and with difficulty; once the habit is acquired it becomes easy and pleasing (“practice makes perfect”). His examples: eating and drinking moderately, paying debts, putting the plate or bottle away without struggle; even speculative habits, if you enjoy doing Euclid you have the habit of geometry, though not at the first moment. But many having charity and without mortal sin still suffer difficulty in the works of the virtues (as in the lives of the saints, a man with charity still struggling with his temper), and the works please them only as referred to charity; so many have charity without the other virtues.
3. Charity is in all the saints, but some saints lack some virtues (Jerome had a temper); Bede: the saints are more humbled about the virtues they lack than they glory in those they have. Sed contra: Romans 13:8, who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law; the whole law cannot be fulfilled except by all the moral virtues, since the law commands the acts of all the virtues (Ethics V); Augustine in a letter: charity includes in itself all the cardinal virtues. Aside: look at how many quotes in the Catechism of the Catholic Church are from Augustine, even more than from Thomas; “so Augustine says so; it is probable.”

7. The body: all the moral virtues are poured in with charity (“God does not less perfectly act”) #

Argument as Thomas gives it:

1. God does not act less perfectly in the works of grace than in the works of nature.
2. In nature we never find the beginning of some deeds in a thing without also finding what is necessary to perfect them: animals have the organs by which they can perform the works the soul has power to do.
3. Charity, ordering man to the last end, is the beginning of all good works orderable to that end.
4. So with charity all the infused moral virtues are poured in at once; they are connected not only through prudence but also through charity; and who loses charity through mortal sin loses all the infused moral virtues. His stress (“a serious thing,” “what I was mentioning before”): this is why the acquired moral virtues are needed too. One overeating does not lose acquired temperance; you have to overeat for a while before it goes. So the acquired virtues have a stability the infused lack, being tied to charity: lose charity, lose them all. The infused are more perfect, “but not, in one sense, as stable.” Examples of acquired stability: brought up to be just, he “just can’t” take somebody else’s money; the billfold found at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis, taken to the concession stand, then home, the owner found through the paper, and his parents refusing any reward; Aristotle in the Ethics: how you are brought up makes a great deal of difference, “or rather all the difference”; no bad music tolerated in the house by his brother Richard Marcus.

8. Reply 1: the lower power must be perfect too (“the act of a lower power be perfect”) #

Point: for the act of a lower power to be perfect, perfection is required not only in the higher but in the lower; if the tool is not well disposed, a perfect action does not follow from the chief agent. Michelangelo could not make the Pietà with a bad chisel; the wrong-size screwdriver just does not work. So man must have the virtue about the end (charity, chief and mover) and the virtues about what is toward the end; hence charity requires the other moral virtues. Student exchange: a student suggests the soul’s being made for the lower virtues is “a safety feature” giving stability when we sin gravely; he corrects that Thomas is speaking here of the infused virtues, and repeats his own point: one act, “poor David with Bathsheba,” loses charity and the infused moral virtues together, which is why one must also seek the acquired ones. Another student: the infused dispose the lower powers to obey the higher, while the acquired give a basis for seeking a confessor and reacquiring the infused virtues; he agrees, “a symmetry.” Asides: popular Christianity does not teach the distinction between acquired and infused, and the necessity of both for different reasons; “distinction is the most fundamental thing the mind sees.” Thomas on the Son of God: he can do nothing from himself (his operation is his substance, which he has from the Father) but everything through himself (having received the infinite divine nature). Boethius amazed at Aristotle’s seeing the ten highest genera under which everything falls.

9. Replies 2 and 3: difficulty from extrinsic impediments (“undergoes difficulty in operating”) #

• Ad 2: one having a habit may have difficulty, and so no pleasure, because of some extrinsic impediment, as the one with the habit of science understands with difficulty because of sleepiness or infirmity. The infused moral virtues sometimes operate with difficulty because of contrary dispositions left from preceding acts; this does not happen in the same way with the acquired virtues, which by their repeated exercise take away the contrary dispositions. His gloss: this may also have to do with not having the acquired virtues. Benedict at Monte Cassino (where he and Scholastica are buried, where he probably finished the Rule), tempted in early days and jumping into the thorn bush. Augustine’s toothache in the Confessions: bothersome enough to interfere with thinking even in one well disposed to think.
• Ad 3: saints said to lack some virtues, that is the infused ones, only in so far as they have difficulty in their acts for the reason just given; in fact they have the habit of all the virtues.

10. Looking ahead: “faith” or “belief”? (“whether faith and hope can be without”) #

He introduces the last two articles, faith and hope without charity, and charity without faith and hope, then remarks on the word: he prefers “belief” to “faith,” since we say “I believe” in the creed, and people confuse faith with hope by using it as trust (“I have faith in you”). Trust is hope; in the Divine Mercy prayer “I trust in you,” trust is hope, not belief; mercy is the object of hope, as God’s justice is the object of fear. He ends noting the confusion.

His words #

• virtue: what makes its haver good and its activity good (knife: sharpness vs. dullness).
• acquired moral virtues: from repeated acts, “simply human,” ordered to an end within man’s natural ability.
• infused moral virtues: poured in by God with charity, ordered to the supernatural last end.
• infusion: “flowing in.”
• prudence: the art that directs us toward the end, finding what is suitable to achieve it.
• Aristotle’s definition of moral virtue: a habit with choice, existing in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason.
• the “fourth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IV].
• simpliciter vs. secundum quid: virtues simply vs. virtues in a respect.
• peccatum est: “is sin” (Romans 14:23).
• chief agent vs. instrument (tool): charity as “chief and mover” of the virtues about the means.
• “distinction is the most fundamental thing the mind sees.”
• faith / belief / trust: belief the more accurate word for faith; trust is hope.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 65, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 65, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 65, a. 4 (opening; the questions of aa. 4-5 announced)

Mentioned

• Book of the Sentences of Prosper (obj. 1, a. 2)
• Aristotle, Ethics II (virtues acquired by acts; upbringing makes all the difference); Ethics V (law commands all acts of virtue); the sign of a habit is pleasure in the work
• Romans 5:5; Ephesians 3:19; 1 John 3:14; Romans 14:23 with Augustine’s gloss; Romans 13:8; 1 Corinthians 13
• Augustine, On Free Will II; a letter (charity includes all the cardinal virtues); Confessions (toothache)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IV (principle of contradiction)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet, “to be or not to be”
• Bede (saints humbled about virtues they lack)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church (many Augustine quotations)
• Thomas on the Son of God doing nothing from himself but all through himself (no locus given)
• Boethius on Aristotle’s ten highest genera; Benedict’s Rule; Euclid; the Divine Mercy prayer; David and Bathsheba

His questions #

• What is the virtue of a knife, and its vice? Sharpness; dullness, which makes a bad knife and its activity bad.
• Why is “to be or not to be” a question? Because you cannot both be and not be; healthy-or-music is no question.
• Can an odd number be even? No: it is not divisible into two equal parts, which follows from the first indemonstrable beginning.
• How can we become brave by doing brave things, if we must already be brave? At first we do them imperfectly and with difficulty; once the habit is there the acts are easy and pleasing.
• Why should the higher (charity) depend on the lower (moral virtues)? Because the lower power must be perfect to obey the higher, as a chief agent needs a well-disposed instrument.
• Why do you need the acquired moral virtues if the infused are more perfect? Because they are more stable; the infused are all lost with charity in one mortal sin.
• Why can the Son of God do nothing from himself but everything through himself? His operation is his substance, which he has from the Father; having the divine nature he has infinite power.
• Why not call faith “belief”? Because we say “I believe” in the creed, and “faith” gets confused with trust, which is hope.