The Virtue of Humility

Abstract

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PRoviNCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York City VoL. VII APRIL, 1944 No.2 THE VIRTUE OF HUMILITY T HE sin of pride which ruined man and his world at the beginning of time was a gloomy portent of the evil that would wreck civilization after civilization down the ages. And God's first curse, that the earth should bring forth thorns and thistles to sweating man, presaged all too well the effects of this vice on the course of history. The terrible plight of the world today is a just punishment for its share in a sin of pride; we are reaping the thorns and thistles sowed by the " Reformers ." of the sixteenth century. The innocent must suffer with the guilty, till the' nations return to God. But how can the nations return to God? Only by subjecting themselves once more to Hi~;~ will in Faith and Hope and Love; and this is impossible unless they learn the humility taught by the Son of God in His incarnation and on Calvary, and substitute Christian magnanimity for the pride of Lucifer. These are the two antidotes for the poison that hardens the mind and the heart against Christ: magnanimity, by which the extraordinarily gifted man, confident in the God-given talents he pos135 136 SEBASTIAN CARLSON sesses, dares to accomplish great things for his fellow-men or the Mystical Body of Christ; humility~ by which every man, considering the depth of his nothingness and sin, and God's excellence as his Creator and Redeemer, is restrained from attempting anything beyond the measure of his nature and of the grace given him, yet at the same time from acting beneath that measure. Humility is not the outmoded and stiff-corseted virtue of a happily dead era, but a vital and active force to be promoted by the Church today as never before. In an age when she must struggle so against the world's pride, when she needs characters developed to utter perfection naturally and supernaturally, and when she still has the schools and seminaries to effect such a development in her laity, religious, and clergy-in such an age, humility is absolutely indispensable. It will foster in every individual either the self-assertion or the self-suppression proportionate to the talents he has received, and thus bring about fruitful cooperation of the Mystical Body and its visible head on earth. If this need is so urgent today, we may ask ourselves, what has the Church to teach about Christ's legacy of humility? In particular, what does her greatest theologian say of it? And from the principles he enunciates, what further can we deduce about it? These are the questions we will attempt to answer in these pages. In his study of humility in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa Theologiva, St. Thomas follows the method and order best suited for the speculative treatment of any virtue. Is humility something virtuous or vicious? Is it a special virtue with its own formal object? How can it best be defined? What is its subject, its extent, and its place among the other virtues? What is its rank and relation to them? What, finally, are its degrees? The present study will follow the same general plan, but a section on the interior acts of humility will be inserted between the consideration of its objects and subject. Following the saint's procedure elsewhere, the final section will be devoted to the Gift of the Holy Ghost corresponding to it. In THE VIRTUE OF HUMILITY 137 conclusion, an attempt will be made to determine what development Aquinas made of the doctrine handed down to him by the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers of the Western Church. Every exponent of Thomas' doctrine is confronted by a fundamental problem. He realizes that, if the order of the Summa be adopted, what must be presented first of all is the basic part of the matter under discussion, its technical and hence more difficult aspects. For Thomas insists on first things first, on starting at the bottom of things...