Reviewed by: Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue: The Theological Foundation of Ambrose's Ethics John Gavin S.J. J. Warren Smith Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue: The Theological Foundation of Ambrose's Ethics Oxford Studies in Historical Theology Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. J. Warren Smith, in his Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue, not only succeeds in presenting the foundation of Ambrose's ethical theory, but also indicates significant new areas for research. He demonstrates that Ambrose did not uncritically appropriate Plotinian dualism—a charge often laid against the Milanese bishop— but actually created a remarkable synthesis of classical ethics and a distinctly Christian anthropology. By focusing on the pre-lapsarian/post-lapsarian human condition and baptism, Smith clarifies the basis of Ambrose's ethical teachings. Part One examines Ambrose's understanding of the soul-body relationship and the state of post-lapsarian person. The "self," according to Ambrose, is the soul, since it alone is immortal, mirrors the divine image, and grows in the divine characteristics, the virtues. The true self emerges only when the soul is turned toward and participates in God, since this orientation allows the soul to reflect the divine image in itself. Here one sees evidence of Ambrose's adaptation of Plotinus. This teaching does not, however, disparage the body and the material world as a prison for the authentic spiritual self, as some interpreters maintain (e.g., John Cavadini, Patout Burns). Smith defends the essential soul-body unity in the thought of Ambrose by interpreting the anthropology within the greater context of the soul's "reformation and reorientation in baptism" (27). First, he notes Ambrose's use of Plotinus's hylomorphic theory that understands the soul as the animating principle of the body in a hierarchical relationship. The soul, in fact, gives life to the body when it is sufficiently detached from it, harmonizing the irrational impulses in a moral unity directed toward God. For Ambrose, the soul, when properly participating in God, divinizes the body by directing its appetites toward the authentic and fulfilling end. Second, Smith discusses the human state after the fall in Adam. In Adam all turned from God and chose to mirror the earth instead of the divine image. [End Page 656] Disoriented human nature becomes blinded to the vision of God and takes away the divine gift of faith and innate knowledge of the divine law. Humanity then becomes enslaved to the passions and material desires. Ambrose, therefore, considers the body as a corrupting influence only within humanity's state of fallen ignorance, in which the person seeks satisfaction for personal pleasures instead of a life of active virtues. While Ambrose's use of Plotinian concepts regarding the soul-body relationship has led some interpreters to charge him with dualism, Smith reveals that this misconception emerges from a failure to read the texts in light of the catechetical intention: the call to reorient the soul-body toward participation in God. This leads Smith, in Part Two, to a longer discussion of Ambrose's theology of baptism. In part, baptism restores the capacity of the mind "to moderate the nonrational appetites and actions of the body so that we may pursue the virtuous life of contemplative fellowship with God and service in the larger human family" (69). Yet, above all, it is a participation in the death and resurrection of Christ that justifies man and restores the essential gift of faith, "a prophetic knowledge of God as Trinity and as Incarnate Deity, whose authority commands the absolute obedience characteristic of devotio" (93). A changing of affections takes place through the rebirth of baptism in which the believer repents of and renounces the old corrupt life in order to direct the new life according to a harmony of rational and nonrational impulses. Baptism restores the soul's ability to partake in divine citizenship through participation in Christ's death and in the climax of the Incarnation, the Resurrection. Along the way Smith touches on many important themes involved in the theology of baptism: justification, merit, faith, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the nature of the resurrected body. One discovers that Ambrose had a truly rich and...