Abstract
In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in, and indeed awareness of, Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of the ‘infused’ virtues. Unlike the acquired virtues, which are habits brought about through repeated action, the infused virtues must be created in human persons directly by God. Such virtues are also called ‘supernatural’. For while the ‘natural’ or acquired virtues are habits proportionate to the human person’s natural end, the supernatural virtues are proportionate to the person’s supernatural end, which Aquinas argues is the beatific vision of and union with God.
It is well known that Aquinas numbers among the infused virtues faith, hope and charity. Less well known is that he believed there to be infused theological virtues parallel to the rest of the acquired natural moral virtues; thus, infused as well as acquired prudence, temperance, courage, and so on.
In Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues, Angela McKay Knobel suggests that Aquinas’s thought about the infused virtues is best approached, at least initially, by exploring the structural similarities between the two species of virtues. The first two chapters of her engaging book undertake this investigation.
Contemporary interest in the infused virtues predominantly concerns a further question: what is the relationship between the acquired and infused virtues in a person living in grace, who, Aquinas believed, is thereby infused with all the theological virtues?
Do the two species of virtues co-exist? Perhaps the acquired virtues continue to be operative in relation to some sphere proper to their natural end while the infused virtues concern matters necessary for salvation. Of course, grace perfects nature, so there must be some change in the acquired virtues. Some texts of Aquinas have led defenders of this view to hold that the acquired virtues remain directly ordered to the person’s natural end but are also indirectly ordered to supernatural beatitude by the infused virtues. Or perhaps the relationship is one of unification, with the infused virtues active in all the acts of a Christian, whether on their own, or with some contribution from the infused virtues.
After presenting the question of the relationship in Chapter 3, and accounts of these two main interpretative options in Chapters 4 and 5, Knobel concludes in Chapter 6 by offering a position that is identical to neither of the ‘traditional’ interpretive options nor to anything explicitly said by Aquinas. She argues that, in a person living in grace, only the infused virtues exist as virtues, and that ‘the cultivation of the infused virtues is the only coherent goal of the Christian moral life’ (p. 150). Acquired virtues no longer exist or operate precisely as virtues, although their characteristic dispositions continue to exist, dispositions that may be operative when we act in a less than perfectly Christian manner. But Christians are to single-mindedly pursue their supernatural end, and thus it ‘would be inappropriate for a Christian to deliberately cultivate the acquired moral virtues’ (p. 166).
Knobel asserts these claims as true, independent of whether they represent Aquinas’s explicit thought. For myself, I am sceptical about the strong separation of our life as a Christian from goods and flourishing proportionate to our nature. But Knobel presents her case with an admirable rigour and clarity, and I enthusiastically recommend her book to anyone with an interest in the infused moral virtues.