Theological Virtues Research Articles

Why Hope is not a Moral Virtue: Aquinas's Insight

AbstractThere is a growing consensus among philosophers that hope is a moral virtue: the virtuously hopeful person experiences the right amount of hope for the right things. This moralization of hope presents us with a puzzle. The historical consensus is that hope is a passion and hope is a theological virtue, not a moral virtue. Thomas Aquinas, the philosopher who wrote most extensively on hope, offers an explanation for why hope is not a moral virtue. The aim of this paper is argue that Aquinas is right in thinking that hope is not a moral virtue.1

Fiometa's Wrathful Suicide in Juan de Flores's Grimalte y Gradisa

Fiometa's Wrathful Suicide in Juan de Flores's Grimalte y Gradisa Luis F. López González Fiometa's suicide in Juan de Flores's fifteenth-century romance, Grimalte y Gradisa, underscores the dire consequences of allowing unbridled passions to override reason.1 Fiometa's character, as the etymological meaning of her name suggests, embodies the flames of unrestrained passions that separate her from any form of rational behavior and discourse. Fiometa's impulsive fits of rage trigger an ontological alienation that propels her to lose control of her actions, her reactions, and her perception of that which takes place around her. When Fiometa feels that things do not go her way, her natural response, conditioned by her skewed worldview as observed from her oblique prism of an entitled elite, is to revile those who oppose her willful desire and to attempt to blackmail them by threatening self-harm. Although she often uses anger as a defense mechanism to protect herself from the external world, Fiometa responds to (perceived) adverse events by fending off the disappointment through the conduit of rage. When Pánfilo, her former lover, does not respond to her request to visit her, Fiometa reacts with extreme anger rather than sadness or resignation. Her response is both impulsive and unbecoming. As Pamela Waley points out, Fiometa "is beside herself with fury" ("Introduction" xxxiv). Just a few days later, Pánfilo comes to see her, resolving to abandon her. If his lack of compliance with her request to visit her made her furious, his final rejection drives her to a wrathful suicide. The cause of Fiometa's death has been a source of debate among scholars of Juan de Flores, as the author himself never explicitly labels her death a suicide or merely a case of amor hereos. The scholarship falls into one of three categories. The first group grosso modo denies Fiometa's suicide, arguing that her death is a natural effect of the intensity of her lovesick passion for the ungrateful Pánfilo (Barbara Matulka 264, marina S. Brownlee 211, Dorothy S. Severin Religious 41, Robert Folger 177). The second group neither confirms nor denies her suicide, adducing the aura of mystery and ambiguity in which Flores enshrouds her death [End Page 31] (Regula Rohland de Langbehn "Los conversos" 140, Lillian von der Walde moheno 82, Julio Rodríguez Puértolas 121-139, Isabel de sena 341, Valentín Núñez Rivera 115-139). The third group ascertains that Fiometa's death constitutes an active suicide, and they adduce Fiometa's avowal to end her life, the violent imagery, Grimalte's explicit assertion that she killed herself, and her final punishment in Hell in the dénouement of the novel (Waley "Introduction" xxxvii, Patricia Grieve 82, 85, Vera Castro Lingl, Louise Haywood "Gradissa" 85-99, Rina Walthaus 9, Tobias Branderberger 369). My hermeneutic conclusions espouse me with the third group. The scope of this study is not merely to show that Fiometa committed suicide, since Castro Lingl has forcefully argued this thesis. Rather, this paper seeks to demonstrate that Fiometa is led to her death by what María Rosa Lida de Malkiel (169) and Cándido ayllón call: "Ira suicida" (160-4). The interplay between suicide and wrath became a leitmotif in the spanish Middle Ages after the diffusion of the allegorical epic poem Psychomachia, written by the Ibero-Roman poet Prudentius in the fourth century. Prudentius personifies seneca's concept of "ira" into an allegorical character filled with irrational passion, always willing to self-destruct so long as the object of the wrath is also destroyed ("dum alteri noceat sui neglegens").2 In Seneca's tragedy Medea, the eponymous heroine embodies this furious passion willing to destroy herself, provided that she also destroys everything around her.3 Fiometa, true to her name, incarnates flammable passion, irrationality, and irascibility against her true-opposite, Patientia (reason, equanimity and theological virtues). In an agonistic battle between Ira and Patientia, which foreshadows the pseudo-Senecan Stoic treatises (De remediis fortvitorvm), as well as Íñigo López de mendoza, Marqués de Santillana's Bías contra Fortuna and Diego de San Pedro's Desprecio de...

Caritas Begins at Home: Virtue and Domesticity in Chrétien’s Yvain

This article argues that Chretien de Troyes’ Yvain serves as an exemplum of Christian virtue through which the author explores caritas —love directed toward a higher purpose than oneself—as the theological virtue under which all others are ordered and which the hero Yvain must work to perfect.

The Silence of God and the Theological Virtue of Hope

The Silence of God and the Theological Virtue of Hope

LOVE IN A TIME OF SCARCITY: AN EVENT-HERMENEUTICAL INTERPRETATION

Love as a theological virtue raises difficult questions. How can love be a gift from God, and yet at the same time human beings can be praised for the love of others? How can love be infused by God, and also be an act of free will? An event-hermeneutical approach can help us to find answers to these questions. This article presents an event-hermeneutical reading of the parable of the prodigal son, and the phenomenological analysis of love by Harry Frankfurt. The fact that a person comes to love the object of his love implies a deep transformation of the will. But love is a risk: it may happen, but it need not. The (im)possibility of transformation is deepened by looking at the phenomenon of scarcity. At the end of the article, the author summarises five elements of a theological theory on the virtue of love in a time of scarcity

Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381–883 by David Wagschal

Reviewed by: Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381–883 by David Wagschal Paul Magdalino David Wagschal Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381–883 Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 Pp. xx + 331. $125.00. This is an important book, which makes the Byzantine canonical tradition more interesting to Byzantinists and more respectable to legal historians, while contextualizing its uniqueness for those who still live it in the Orthodox churches. Law and legality do not excite most people who are drawn to study Byzantium for its material culture, its intellectual legacy, and its imperial politics, while Byzantine legal literature is difficult to mine for evidence of Byzantine norms. Legal historians, with the partial exception of the “Frankfurt School,” have treated the Byzantine legal tradition as a degenerate residue of Roman Law, with a canonical component that is beneath consideration. This is in contrast to the medieval West, where canon lawyers were at the cutting edge of jurisprudence, and indeed of systematic thought, in the “twelfth-century Renaissance.” Interpreters of Byzantine canon law within the Orthodox tradition have either tried to fit it into a formalist, jurisprudential straitjacket, or they have made a theological virtue out of its lack of legal formalism, seeing the canons as only the superficial aspect of a divine, spiritual jurisdiction that transcends mere rules and regulations. The four chapters of David Wagschal’s closely argued and meticulously crafted book present the “divine and sacred canons” as a Weberian “substantive law.” They show that the Byzantine canonical corpus, an accretion of conciliar canons from the fourth to the ninth centuries augmented with pseudo-apostolic, patristic and imperial material, was a normative and authoritative body of legislation; however, it cannot be studied according to the same criteria as other legislative systems in the Roman or post-Roman world. It was coherent, stable, self-contained, and internally consistent, but its cohesion lay in its biblical frame of reference and its adherence to tradition, rather than in a systematic application of forensic method, technical language, and comprehensive thematic treatment. It was programmatic, but its program was embedded in the texts of the canons themselves rather than being imposed by a strategy of legislation. It shows many recognisable features of a legalistic mentality, but these do not add up to a legal system. There is a massive, authoritative canonical edifice, but there is no canon law. The dominant discourse is normative, but juridical argument is only a part of it; apart from the appeal to tradition and the Bible, the canons are marked by a pedagogical manner and a tendency to emotive persuasion. In Wagschal’s words, “it remains difficult not to read Byzantine canon law as a very real counterpoint to the formalist instincts of mainstream civil-legal culture as it has developed in Europe since the high middle ages . . . . Very broadly, the one is ‘mechanical,’ almost technological, in operation and orientation, while the other is much more literary” (281). The significance of Wagschal’s conclusion is that it exhaustively confirms, for the Byzantine canonical tradition, Dieter Simon’s reading, over forty years ago, [End Page 655] of a civil judgment by the eleventh-century judge Eustathios Romaios. As the judge’s anonymous admirer recorded, Eustathios “also cited laws” in reaching a verdict that he justified mainly by rhetorical argument seasoned with philosophical concepts and literary allusions. The law, Simon concluded, was just one of the intellectual tools in the Byzantine application of justice. Wagschal’s book-length development of this thesis has profound implications not only for Byzantine legal history, but for Byzantine studies in general, because it demonstrates that Byzantine law has to be studied as a function of Byzantine logos, a polysemic word that can be roughly rendered, in this context, as “learning” or “intellectual/literary discourse” or “reasoning eloquence.” This reviewer was particularly struck by the proximity of Wagschal’s discussion of the manuscript tradition of the canons (24–32) to the approach now adopted by scholars examining the transmission of literary, particularly anonymous texts: an approach that respects the autonomy and integrity of each manuscript witness and starts from the principle...

The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas by Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

Reviewed by: The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas by Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P. Justin Shaun Coyle The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas by Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015), xxxiii + 495 pp. The dionysian pedigree of high medieval mysticism is often noted but seldom detailed. Bernhard Blankenhorn’s debut The Mystery of Union with God meets this lack with an accomplished analysis of Dionysian mystical union as adopted and adapted by the most prominent of its Dominican inheritors, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. The book bills itself as a work of historical theology; it is the right description, after all, just to the extent that Blankenhorn advances an argument by curating a section of the theological archive without becoming entombed therein. The section is, as the title suggests, [End Page 679] Dionysian mystical union in the thought of two of its thirteenth-century Dominican scions. And the argument? Attention to Blankenhorn’s archival redisplay reveals that he thinks the intellectualist representation of Dionysian mysticism embroidered by Albert and Thomas—for whom Dionysius’s “union beyond mind” is finally and principally intellective, as opposed to affective—the most elegant. The Mystery of Union with God unfolds in three asymmetrical parts. The first part begins with an expositional engagement with the Corpus Dionysiacum (hereafter, CD) on themes of anthropology, epistemology, divine naming, and mystical union. These are the nodes around which subsequent chapters on the Dominican Dionysius will coil. Among the book’s greatest virtues (there are many) is the historiography displayed in the second chapter. There Blankenhorn lucidly traces the CD’s migration from its early Byzantine commentators—namely John of Scythopolis and Maximus Confessor—westward to its Latin translators and glossers. It is here that the book’s argument, until now slinking in the subtext, begins to surface. Following others, Blankenhorn argues that Eriugena’s translation of the CD into Latin (inadvertently?) inaugurates the affective reading that will come to typify the Victorine-Franciscan axis. “None of this can be found in Dionysius,” Blankenhorn hastens to add. This “major transformation” acts to “radically reshape” the Mystical Theology in particular and “sharply contrasts with the historical Dionysius” in general (43; 46; 45; 444). Enter Albert the Great, whose thought occupies part II. Chapter 3 assays doctrines apposite to mystical union in the Parisian Albert’s work, itself a vertigo-inducing synthesis of Aristotelian, Augustinian, Dionysian, Avicennian, and Averroist patterns of thought. Forged in the heat of polemics issuing from the 1241 condemnations at Paris, Albert’s position on the visio Dei integrates Dionysian axioms into a broadly Augustinian frame. This introduces the category of created theophany and, so, a created lumen gloriae, “the keystone that fuses what he holds to be of lasting value in the Greek and Latin patristic traditions” (106). This innovation, along with his emphasis on created grace, allows the early Albert to interpolate active modes of cooperation into Dionysius’s largely passive grammar of union. Blankenhorn next arranges an exhaustive analysis of mystical union texts within Albert’s Cologne-era commentaries on the CD. A deeper conversion to Dionysian theology marks this era—and this “in conscious opposition to the dominant, more kataphatic Augustinianism of [Albert’s] day” (206). But Albert’s commentaries foreground human cooperation [End Page 680] by means of the theological virtues and collapse “union beyond mind” into divine naming. To that extent, the argument runs, Albert’s interpretation still indulges a chastened kataphaticism. With Albert in full view, Blankenhorn turns to Thomas. The first chapter of part III treats pillars of Thomistic anthropology, epistemology, and psychology. Playing Averroës to Albert’s Avicenna, Thomas de-Platonizes many of his teacher’s doctrines, even as he systematizes his own. Chapter 6 considers grace and its concomitants in Aquinas, and Blankenhorn stresses the fundamentally Trinitarian shape of mysticism in Thomas, whose defense of the intellect’s stayed presence in union is of a piece with his defense of filioque. The next chapter contributes to the literature on question 13 of the prima pars of the Summa theologiae with a...

Hope, faith, and charity: foundations for a (new) nation in Soraya Juncal’s Jacinta y la violencia

In this article I analyze Soraya Juncal’s Jacinta y la violencia and its arrangement of matters of class, race, and gender. I argue that it conveys a conservativepartisan idea, and I find that whereas it is feasible to link the novel to a Feminist aesthetics, it is really hard to go any further, politically wise, because the story is dedicated to perpetuate oppressive systems. I chose the Theological Virtues (Faith, Charity, and Hope) as deconstruction devices because it is not possible to trace intersectional matters in Jacinta y la violencia, without understanding them in a context of an utterly Catholicized nation that sees everything in essentialist ways.

Pedro Sánchez de Acre, “filósofo moral”

Pedro Sanchez de Acre, born at the beginning of the 16th century, was a prebendary of the cathedral of Toledo. He wrote three books about moral philosophy: Tree of Consultation and Varied Teaching in 1584, Moral and Philosophical Histor y in 1590 and Triangle of the Three Theological Virtues in 1595. These three books, representative of Miscellany (the Miscellaneous ), one of the most editorially successful literary genres of the 16th century, have become completely unknown with the passing of time. Besides the rare quotation, used mostly in writings of a bibliographic nature, the presence of these books in Spanish philosophy is almost nonexistent

What the Church Means by 'Faith'; What Eric Voegelin Meant by 'Faith'

In a familiar passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They answered: “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Then Jesus asked: “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The faith of Peter implicit in his declaration, which Christ recognized as revealed to Peter by the Father, is the faith of the Church, which Christ founded on Peter by virtue of his answer. It is a faith “by hearing,” as in “hearing the Gospel,” passed down from the disciples through all the generations to the present through the Church. It is the only faith possible, this side of Christian mysticism, for those who did not know Christ when He walked the earth, that He was Who He said He was, who Peter understood Him to be. We might imagine the question “But who do you say that I am?” put to Eric Voegelin. Would his answer be: “You are the differentiation of soteriological truth?”; “You are what Paul will behold in his ‘Vision of the Resurrected’”?; or something else? These sorts of answers would not have gotten Voegelin promoted to first Pope. Voegelin, who hated to be labeled, spoke of himself, perhaps with tongue in cheek, as a “pre-Nicene Christian.” The Council of Nicea rejected Arianism, the doctrine that Christ was the Son of God in the sense that He was created by God the Father, and therefore subordinate to the Father, in favor of a Christology holding that the Father and Christ were consubstantial, the first two Persons of the Trinity. Did Voegelin view Jesus as just a man who came to the full realization that he was God’s son in the sense in which we all are in some sense God’s sons, thereby emphasizing Christ’s humanity at the expense of what the Church considers to be His divinity as well? Voegelin’s Christology, and his approach to Christianity generally, is notoriously controversial, and much has been written on it. In particular, Voegelin rejected the concept of reason as it appears in the theology of the Church as definitive of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural. On the other hand, Voegelin did have a concept of faith that was central to his work. His concept of faith was not limited to Christianity, and can be found independent of it. It is not the faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, passed on “by hearing” through the mediation of the Church, although Voegelin may have accepted that faith as well. It is rather faith “by experience,” specifically the experience of tension toward transcendence which, Voegelin would say, constitutes the meaning of human existence. Voegelin found faith in this sense expressed not only in Christianity, but in Greek philosophy, and whenever and wherever a sufficient degree of “differentiation” had been achieved in human history. Voegelin would say that the “tension” in “tension toward transcendence” can also be rendered as the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Two related questions appear: Was Voegelin open to the “faith” of the Church, and does the Church recognize “faith” in the Voegelinian sense? The paper explores these concepts and issues by comparing Voegelin on faith with Thomas Aquinas, the paradigmatic orthodox Christian theologian-philosopher.

THREATS TO LOVE: FR. JÓZEF TISCHNER’S REFLECTIONS

In his reflections, Father Jozef Tischner devoted much attention to love – one of the theological virtues, which constitute the foundations of the Christian life. He wrote not only about what love and its characteristics are, but also about threats to love. This paper discusses the various dangers associated with love, and concludes that the only thing that can conquer these dangers is love itself. Therefore, we should cherish love all the time, following the example of evangelical love.

The Theological Virtues According to Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen’s relationship to his Roman Catholic background is complex and multifaceted. This paper seeks to analyze the artist’s understanding of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love as seen in the album Wrecking Ball (2012). By juxtaposing Springsteen’s understanding of these virtues with Catholicism’s Thomistic tradition, scholars can see how he draws upon this tradition while creating a more robust role for the virtue of hope. This analysis of Springsteen’s engagement in a theological discourse around the virtues of faith, hope, and love offers a fuller understanding of the artist’s commitment to visions of the American Dream.

Penal Measures and Policies Governing the Phenomenon of Human Trafficking with a Look at International Documents

Human dignity, and respect and commitment to it, is considered as one of fundamental principles of divine religions and international instruments on human rights. Benefit from valuable moral and theological virtues in order to provide of human growth and development exclusively is in the light of fundamental rights and the principle of preserving human dignity. Accordingly, today the concept of human rights and commitment to follow it in the international and national legal systems has a very important position. Rejection of all forms of exploitation humiliation and torture is one of the first underlying layer of human rights which known as negative human rights or social Don'ts. Although as the interpretation of the famous French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century, human is born free but in the process of social life and adapting to social situations in different ways to be distracted from their pure nature. Countless people in the world today are subject to oppression, even are subject to varying degrees of slavery instances including humiliation and degradation and prostitution. This research attempts to analyze the irreparable consequences of this phenomenon on human society, and also to look beyond national and transnational criminal measures and policies on this phenomenon.

« Se laisser emporter par l’Esprit » à la suite du bienheureux père Marie-Eugène de l’Enfant-Jésus

In accordance with his charism : « Guiding souls to divine union », blessed Fr. Marie-Eugene of the Child-Jesus explains that it is necessary for all the baptized to become more and more docile to the Spirit both in contemplation and in action in order to reach the heights of holiness. This spiritual growth requires a constant nurturing of faith in the active presence of the Spirit. Fr. Marie-Eugene’s pratical experience of the theology of the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit enables him to bring to light the active and receptive (mystical) aspects of baptismal grace. Within the dynamics of the mystical life, the progressive domination of the Spirit brings out the numerous « antinomies », the « nights » which always accompany spiritual growth. For the newly Beatified, the essential reality is « to be seized by God, transformed by the Spirit ».

Teologalna cnota miłości w kształtowaniu rodzin

Zaprezentowane w artykule treści ukazują rolę i znaczenie rodziny w kształtowaniu teologalnej cnoty miłości. W pierwszej części artykułu przedstawiono krótką analizę współczesnego świata i jego wpływ na rodzinę. Następnie podjęto problematykę rozumienia cnoty miłości i jej rolę w konstruowaniu poszczególnych postaw w rodzinie. W pozostałych częściach pracy przedstawiono integralną wizję człowieka rozumianego jako struktura cielesno-psychiczno-duchowa. To pozwoliło na przestawienie modelu wychowania rodzinnego opartego na teologalnej cnocie miłości. Artykuł nie wyczerpuje całości zagadnienia, ale może stanowić punkt wyjścia do bardziej szczegółowych opracowań w zakresie roli teologalnej cnoty miłości w kształtowaniu zasad wychowania ku miłości w środowisku rodzinnym.

Ratio est fides: contemporary philosophy as virtuous thought

ABSTRACTUnquestionably, philosophy has acquired a somewhat new register lately. First, I discuss the appearance of the theological virtues in contemporary (continental) philosophy. This appearance is heralded in Nietzsche’s famous preface to The Gay Science. The event remains at this point curious and without explanation. In a second step, I explore current French philosophy and culture as the frame and/or the effect of this appearance. At this point, I still cannot find the philosophical meaning of the virtues, only the condition of possibility of their ‘extra-theological’ relevance. At most, I can reopen the religious nature, element or register of thought, of philosophy. I will do that by introducing eschatology and desecularisation, implying that modern rationalist allegedly areligious atheism is actually a hyper-religious theism. Desecularisation can only be understood within the frame of an ‘open world’, within a world-as-opening. World then becomes the event of meaning and the thought that thinks the opening, open thought as it were, is philosophical charity or philosophy-as-charity (instead of philosophy of charity). The effect of all this is precisely philosophy turning into virtuous thought. Philosophy becomes, in ‘fact’, hope, faith and charity.

Aquinas and the Democratic Virtues: An Introduction

AbstractCan the theology of Thomas Aquinas serve as a resource for reflection on democratic civic virtue? That is the central question taken up by Mark Jordan, Adam Eitel, John Bowlin, and Michael Lamb in this focus issue. The four authors agree on one thing: Aquinas himself was no fan of democracy. They disagree, though, over whether Aquinas can offer resources for theorizing democratic virtues. Bowlin, Eitel, and Lamb believe he can, and propose Thomistic accounts of tolerance, civic friendship, and democratic hope, respectively. Jordan, in contrast, issues a cautionary note against such enterprises. This divergence is due in part to different judgments about what it would mean to claim certain resources as “Thomistic.” In part, too, it flows from a disagreement about whether Aquinas himself countenances genuine virtues among non‐Christian citizens, and about whether Christians and non‐Christians can be said to share even proximate ends. This conversation is an important one, since accounts of the democratic virtues constructed using Thomistic resources have the potential to move discussions of democratic and theological virtues beyond common impasses.

Aquinas and the Virtues of Hope: Theological and Democratic

AbstractA prominent political historian has recently identified unwarranted optimism and unwarranted pessimism as democracy's “dual dangers.” While this historical analysis highlights the difficulties that accompany democratic hope, our prevailing conceptual vocabulary obscures the resources needed to address them. This essay attempts to recover these resources by excavating insights from Thomas Aquinas, who supplies one of the most systematic accounts of hope in the history of religious and political thought. By appropriating the conceptual structure of Thomas's theological virtue of hope, this essay reconstructs a democratic virtue that perfects acts of hoping in fellow citizens to achieve democratic goods and thereby enables citizens to respond properly to difficulties that tempt presumption and despair.

Book Review: Faith, Hope, and Charity: Benedict XVI on the Theological Virtues. Thomas P. Rausch, SJ

Book Review: Faith, Hope, and Charity: Benedict XVI on the Theological Virtues. Thomas P. Rausch, SJ

The Theological Virtue of Hope and the Art of Dying

This article discusses the nature of and challenges to the theological virtue of hope in the Ars moriendi or ‘art of dying’. It proposes a renewed ascesis of hope whose shared eschatological vision and set of practices help sustain from despair and prepare Christians for a hopeful and ‘good death’.