On the Theological Virtues

The First Sunday in Epiphanytide

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epiphany of our Lord

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, who know thee now by faith, may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

Epiphanytide is a season of growth, and if there is to be a summary of what we ought to grow in, it would probably be given by St Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” (1 Cor 13. 13). These virtues have been spoken of time and again by many Christian authors. As CS Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity, “The "Cardinal" [virtues] are those which all civilised people recognise: the “Theological” are those which, as a rule, only Christians know about.” Taken along with the four cardinal virtues, of which temperance is one, they are known as the seven heavenly virtues and held in opposition to the seven deadly sins.

The three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, which in the previous citation was rendered as love, have particular meanings in this context. CS Lewis did not mean, for example, to imply that a non-Christian could not have faith of any type or that non-Christians are all bereft of hope, indeed it is possible for Christians to experience elements of these non-Christian virtues. They are, as Lewis notes, peculiar, to Christianity. Someone might easily expound the virtue of temperance, which was considered a virtue in antiquity by Greeks and other non-Christians, yet they would not speak of the virtue of, for instance, charity, at least not as it is understood and presented here in its Christian context.

Much like how Lewis decried the linguistic change of meaning for the word temperance, he decries its narrowed definition for charity. In modern English, if you ask anyone of the meaning of charity, its definition would be some variation on alms giving or giving to the poor and less fortunate. This is why, as in the example given above from the English Standard Version - Anglicized, the term charity is sometimes rendered as love. The definition of the theological virtue of charity is most simply given as Christian love or agape love.

Agape love is the self-sacrificing love of God towards man (Jn 3. 16) and our desire to reciprocate that love back towards God. It is a love that even in its human context stems from God, and runs through him. In his Four Loves, Lewis creates distinctions between love, dividing it into affection, friendship, eros and charity (agape). He describes the first three as natural loves, and makes the statement that, “the natural loves are not self-sufficient,” in that they can be exhausted; as Lewis goes on to put it, “Something else, at first vaguely described as “decency and common sense,” but later revealed as goodness, and finally as the whole Christian life in one particular relation, must come to the help of the mere feeling if the feeling is to be kept sweet.” Put another way, God's love must be lived and supported through relationship with God if it is to be sustained.

The second theological virtue is hope. It is not hope in a secular sense. Anyone can hope there will be good weather, but in this sense they are merely expressing a preference. Christian hope is a certainty that is given to us by God’s presence in our lives and the promise of redemption made through Jesus Christ that will lead to true life with God. It stands in opposition to certain forms of secular nihilism that see pointlessness and necessarily despair as inherent parts of the human condition. This dichotomy is truly realised when you ask if such a thing as Christian nihilism is possible, and by definition it is not. Christianity is a religion of hope; hope for a future in which the sin and destruction of the world will be no more.

Holding this hope in our hearts and minds is one of the great virtues of Christianity. Not simply because it can help lead to a more positive outlook on life, but also because of the inspiration such hope provides to lead a good life in the present while we aspire to the greatness of the future. It is the Christian hope that was inspiration for many great reforms throughout the centuries as CS Lewis notes:

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.

It is this desire to live the Godly life that is encapsulated in the virtue of Christian hope. Not mere hope, but a transforming demeanour that encourages Christians to do good and bring the King of Heaven nearer to perfection on Earth.

The final theological virtue is faith. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes it:

Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith “man freely commits his entire self to God.” For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work[s] through charity.”

Lewis notes that there is something deeper to faith that purely belief in God, and the Catechism begins to note this as well. In speaking of believing in God and what he has said, the Catechism refers in one manner or another to a decision of faith based on reason. You weigh the evidence for and against faith in God and come to your conclusion. While it is possible new evidence may ultimately occur that challenges your faith, it is not reason that is the primary opponent of faith, but generally our emotions and personal desires. Consider for a moment someone for whom tragedy strikes. In a moment of anger over what has happened, they may convince themselves that their faith was misplaced. Or even if there is some situation in which their faith is inconvenient, they may be tempted to simply say it is so. Lewis describes this as the challenge of holding on to your faith, once decided by reason, in the face of changing moods. “That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.” In this, he speaks to a truth which can also be particularly difficult for Christians, for whom they can accept God, but ultimately only on their own terms in which their faith conforms God to what they find comfortable, easy or preferable. If your doctrines are not sound, if you allow them to waver based on mood and ease and preference, your faith is weak; it is only partially there in that you accept only in some form that God exists, but perhaps miss the second part noted in the Catechism, that you accept what he has said and revealed to us.

It is for this reason that true faith, as described in the Catechism and by Lewis, is so essential as a Christian virtue. In this treatment of the virtues, it has been approached in the reverse order from that provided by St Paul, even though he cites agape love as the greatest of the three. The virtues build upon one another. It is possible to have some form of faith without hope, but it is not possible to have hope without faith. In presenting them in reverse order, the hope is that it is easier to see the essential need for a foundation in firm faith, in order to allow hope and charity to flourish.

On the Evils of Contract Bridge

The Epiphany of our Lord

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, who know thee now by faith, may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Baptism of our Lord

O HEAVENLY Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ did take our nature upon him, and was baptized for our sakes in the river Jordan: Mercifully grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may also be partakers of thy Holy Spirit; through him whom thou didst send to be our Saviour and Redeemer, even the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epiphany of our Lord is actually the 6th of January, but is often transferred to the preceding Sunday. It is a continuation of a season that includes the Nativity, Circumcision, and Baptism of the Lord. In secular terms, it is also the first Sunday after New Year’s Day, which caps off the secular ‘Holiday Season’ of Christmas and New Year’s. For the Americans, this is a season which begins after their Thanksgiving in the end of November. This year in particular, the American shopping holiday of Black Friday--which truly does speak to the supremacy of materialism in modern Western culture--was larger in places like Canada and the United Kingdom than any time previously, despite the fact that Thanksgiving is not celebrated in the United Kingdom and is celebrated as Harvest Thanksgiving in October in Canada.

It is a season in which consumerism and consumption are foremost in the minds of many. In its secular context, even the best messages to come out of Christmas are consumerist and materialist, speaking to the joy of giving things and even ensuring that all receive something and are able to have a feast on Christmas. At worst, it is a season in which we show off. We consume giant feasts, and treat all our relations and friends with gifts and we drink considerable amounts of alcohol, particularly on New Year's Eve. Even for those of us who focus our celebrations on Advent and the Nativity of Christ, there is a strong pressure to conform to these pressures. Santa Clause is just as prominent in Christian households as non-Christian households.

The pressure of secular culture can be overwhelming and it's not surprising that it infiltrates even Christian households, and it’s something that detracts from what CS Lewis describes as one of the cardinal virtues of Christianity in his Mere Christianity. He later goes on to describe and define temperance in a section that gives the title to this blog post:

One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as “intemperate” as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals.

The point Lewis makes is two-fold. First, the great piece of mischief he refers to is the fact that in modern English, temperance has come to be associated with the abstinence from drink, rather than, “all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further.” Second, and perhaps more importantly, he points out that it is the substituting of the excess of things for God in our lives.

When we allow the influence of the world to affect our views of Christmas and how it should be celebrated, however imperceptibly, we are shifting our focus away from Christ. Whenever we allow something--be it consumerism or a love of contract bridge, as Lewis notes--to replace the focus of our lives, albeit temporarily, from Christ to that other thing, we run the risk that Christ will be completely supplanted in our lives.

In his epistle to the Romans, St Paul reminds us that, “you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves to righteousness,” (Rm 6. 17-18). In this, he reinforces the words of Christ who is recorded in the Gospel of John as saying, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free... Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin... So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” (Jn 8. 31-35).

Intemperance here refers to the sins of lust and gluttony. Holy Scripture’s prohibitions (Prv 6; Gal 5) are clear and many Christians over the centuries have spoken to the impact of the sins of intemperance on our lives. In his Summa Theologica, St Thomas Aquinas wrote on the nature of both lust and temperance. His work remains one of the most influential in Western Christianity, indeed CS Lewis’s own writings on the cardinal virtues in Mere Christianity are based on the definitions of the cardinal and theological virtues.

Epiphany is a time in which we remember Christ's manifestation to the gentiles, and it caps of a time when we celebrate God's love for mankind: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” (Jn 3. 16). It is a time when we are meant to be fully focused on the one who saves us from slavery to sin, yet the secular world is telling us instead to focus on something which will lead to sin. 

This is a season in which we are meant to contemplate the importance of the incarnation. It is a time when we are reminded of the joy of the personal relationship we can have with God which is enabled through Christ. Instead, for many it is a season in which they are encouraged to view it as positive we buy gifts, eat giant feasts and, in the case of New Year’s, drink. These are presented as virtues: generosity, peace and joyfulness. 

As we enter Epiphanytide, a time of growth and renewal when we are reminded of these truths of the incarnation, we should seek to grow truly in faith, the freedom of Christ, and in true virtue, temperance.