Seven Virtues: Grecian Four and Three Triune

For this semester’s curriculum, I decided not to include Peter J. Gomes’ speech “Civic Virtue and the Character of Followership: A New Take on an Old Hope” in our assigned readings. Specifically Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University, is addressing an energetic crowd at the University of Texas on March 24, 1997, and a large portion of his speech has been transcribed in The Presence of Others. His speech is a model of effective rhetoric, though something seems lost when translated to text, not to mention it at times comes across a little stronger than many students find tenable. (No matter how powerfully we may believe something is true, we do not win many converts when those to whom we would communicate—rightly or wrongly—feel that they are being force fed; in fact, the journal entry cited in Perishing for Lack of Communication from the missionary’s daughter is actually excerpted from a student response to this very speech; she acknowledged that in spite of her indifferent reaction, being present at the event would undoubtedly lend a different ambience, given the nature of the spoken versus the written word.) Gomes’ central idea is that in order for a nation to be strong and healthy, one needs not only leaders but followers, and he equates the virtue of “followership” with Christian ethics. None of these factors particularly interest me; cutting the piece from the readings cost me no grief in these regards. What I do regret, however, is not having a natural segue to tie together thoughts about Greco-Roman and Christian virtues in the subsequent class discussion.

Specifically, the classes seem to respond very positively to an introduction to the seven cardinal virtues, both in terms of general interest as well as feeling personally challenged to be more mindful of their lives, something I am convinced many young persons, particularly those who care enough to seek out a university education, long to find. In keeping with the idea in the previous issue that all persons desire purpose and meaning, this seems especially pronounced in young adults, many of whom are dissatisfied with the mindless distractions so prevalent in our culture. Sure, they may relish the idea of legally drinking at the age of twenty-one, they may revel in the relative freedom of life away from home, but such things can only titillate for so long before they begin to lose their appeal, not to mention that being so many miles away from home leads to a lot more loneliness and emptiness than many would care to admit. Someone who is courageous enough to seek out the level upon which students live and who genuinely strives to enter into their lives is capable of leaving a lasting impact. Case in point, this semester a young woman in one of my classes was not turning in any of her homework. I wrote her a respectful e-mail, expressing my concern, inquiring if there was anything going on in her life or if she had an extreme phobia—I was being deadly serious—about other people reading her writing. She spoke with me after class the following day, assuring me that there was nothing wrong, she was reasonably comfortable with other people reading her writing, but that she just skipped a lot. My reply was to smile and thank her simply and sincerely for her candor and tell her: “That puts my mind at ease. I was concerned that there might be some deep underlying issue, but as it is, you are an adult and as such you are fully aware of your actions and prepared to accept the consequences.” She has never missed a class since nor failed to turn in her homework; what is more, she is fast becoming one of the best students in the class. Why? She was dying for somebody to notice, for somebody to give her just a little push, for somebody to believe in her and communicate to her that she had a valuable contribution to make to society. People are really far more simple than we sometimes would like to make out; we underestimate the power of our own kindness sometimes.

Now then, a natural way to start a lecture on the seven cardinal virtues is to explore the etymology of the word “cardinal.” The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that the word comes from the Latin cardo, the genitive of which is cardinis and concerns “that on which something turns or depends.” More to the point, cardo originally referred to a door hinge. The seven cardinal virtues, then, are cardinal in the sense that from them hinge—hang from and pivot upon—all other virtues. Our good friend the ambulating Greek, otherwise known as Aristotle, identifies four of these seven in his Politics, where he traces (or rather his students’ lecture notes trace) what an ideal citizenry looks like. (Perhaps you already see how this discussion would tie into a speech about civic virtue and of what the ideal citizen consists and to which he or she ought to aspire?) For that matter, the question of the politics has long concerned itself with the question of “the good,” not of the good of the isolated individual but of the people collectively. The word “politics” itself, of course, comes to us from Greek, for the politēs was the citizen and the polis was his city-state. The similarity of the words alone suggest to us that politēs and polis were concepts intimately tied together in Greek thought, so we should not be surprised at the contours Aristotle’s Politics traces as it attempts to uncover what “the good” involves in terms of the ideal citizen, for to ask the question of the ideal citizen is at once to ask what is “the good” in terms of the polis, the two being tightly woven together.

The model Aristotle envisions is that of the enlisted man in the rank and file of military service, both governing and being governed. For to Aristotle’s mind, virtue is something that could not be separated from community and could ideally only be learned in community; he would agree with the author of the Proverbs when the latter suggests that “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). He also reverses this principle: that just as iron can dull iron, so one man can corrupt another. More to the point, he argues that above humanity are the gods, below are the beasts, and people may either ascend toward the one or left to their own devices plummet to the other but rarely if ever will remain as they are. The barbarians (read “non-Greeks”) suffer from the baser fate, but this element can be avoided when a mutually self-sustaining system is in place: virtuous citizens together establish virtuous societies and the one reinforces the other, the virtuous citizen within is supported by and supports the virtuous city-state without. What is involved in this process is men who are both ruled by others and who in turn themselves rule. In the course of being ruled in a just regime—Gomes’ conception of “followership,” often conceived as an overtly Christian virtue, nevertheless applies here—a man may learn three of these four cardinal Greek virtues.

A man who is being ruled may learn, for example, (1) fortitude, or, as we often say today, courage. The word fortitude comes to us from the Latin word fortis (“strong”) and supplies us with words like “fortress” and “fortified,” all originally military terms that imply impenetrability, endurance, strong defense against attack. This particular virtue serves him well, for it helps him temper and employ his pathos—his passionate nature—in a way that serves his interests and those of his fellows. His convictions are strong enough that he is willing to stand up for noble causes, and this courageousness is both his honor and his virtue. Thus, in being ruled, in serving his polis, he learns courage. This virtue is truly a hinge, for without courage, one lacks the initiative to carry through with one’s actions. Some have even located fortitude as the most elemental virtue of all for the very fact that it acts as a base of power animating the other virtues; we will here argue that no one of the four Greek virtues can function without the others, each a vital part of the other, each interlocking and interconnecting, each a hinge onto and from the others.

So a man who is being ruled may learn fortitude. He may also learn (2) justice. He understands that some things are expedient for himself and his fellows, that some things are, by the very principle of the matter, clearly the proper thing to do whereas other things, on the very principle of the matter, are not. He learns justice, then, by seeing how “the good” plays out for the collective whole and not merely his individual self. For if it were just “the good” for himself, what is expedient, pleasant, and beneficial to himself might not be expedient, pleasant, and beneficial for his fellows. But learning “the good” in the large in this sense, he acquires a sense of equity: a sense of justice. This sense of justice guides and tempers his actions, giving them a sense of properness, a sense of propriety. Without justice serving as a corrective to his courage, for example, he might display a perverted heroism in the most destructive of ways. Even among thieves, there must be a collective agreement not to take advantage of one another and work together: a sense of justice must at the very least guide their own actions even so that they might effectively take advantage of others. How much more, then, when one is not among thieves but among his fellow citizens, looking to see that all are benefited and that a sense of stability and order—a sense of justice—is enacted. Justice then, is “the good” writ large.

A man, then, may learn justice as he is being ruled. He may also learn (3) temperance. Those familiar with the Temperance Movement of the nineteenth century tend to associate temperance with abstinence, particularly abstinence from alcohol. Perhaps to avoid confusion, we are more apt to translate temperance as “moderation,” which is basically one in the same thing, even if the two have slightly different shades of meaning. Toward this end, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics develops the idea of the “Golden Mean.” According to this conception, when a man is very timid and turns foot and flees at the slightest provocation, particularly if this man is a military man, we call this cowardice. There is a lack of a particular characteristic, a deficit. By contrast, if a man charges headlong at anything and everything at the slightest provocation, we call this man rash, impudent, reckless. In this case, there is an excess of passion, too much of a good thing. Between these two extremes we find a happy medium—a Golden Mean—none other than the virtue of fortitude. We can quite easily see, then, how temperance is threaded with the other virtues, for, as with justice, it keeps them between the lines. For there can certainly be too much of a good thing just as there can be too little.

A citizen taking his turn being ruled, then, may learn these three cardinal virtues: fortitude, justice, and temperance. However, for Aristotle, it is only when he becomes a ruler himself that he begins to fully appreciate the fourth and final cardinal virtue: when he learns (4) prudence. Wisdom is another word we often use to mean the same thing as prudence: it has to do with discretion, with being in tune with one’s surroundings and the presence of others and knowing when to say and do what, knowing how to say or do it, and where, and in what way. It is applied knowledge gained largely through real-world experience. And because he is wise and rules well, the man who gains prudence creates an environment in which those citizens being ruled learn courage, justice, and temperance, thus completing the circle. My temptation is to designate temperance as the most foundational and prudence as the pinnacle of the virtues, but there is a sense in which these and the others are all part and parcel of the same tendency and cannot ideally be separated, except to give us a conceptual understanding as we have attempted to do here.

Now these virtues served the Greeks well and continue to serve us well today. Yet with the advent of Christianity, three other virtues were added to these four, making for a total of seven cardinal virtues. We have spoken of these latter three often in recent mailings.

The first of these three Christian virtues, in the order familiar to our ear, is (5) faith. Faith, we are told in Hebrews 11:1, is the evidence of things unseen, which immediately sets it apart from something purely empirical. It, as we have said of all of these latter three virtues, is a transformative virtue: it transforms the one who is in possession of it; the one in possession of it is thereby able to transform even as he or she is transformed. Faith is the key by which new levels are obtained, and as St. Anselm, St. Augustine, and others have suggested, we do not understand so that we may believe, but we believe so that we may understand: see Innate Knowledge: God as Man’s Beatitude. The very beginnings of faith include the conviction that there is a God and that He is good—one must move beyond seeing God as a null hypothesis if one would see His face. The area in which so many stumble, however, is in failing to recognize that faith is not the evidence of things seen: many seek proof before they procure, whereas the teachings of Christ suggest “Try it and see”: “My teaching is not mine, but His who sent me. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from myself” (John 7:16–17). The only true test—the only true proof—is to taste for oneself, to touch and feel: eating is the proof of the pudding. You cannot have personal proof without investing the effort; only after you have invested the effort may you determine, what, if anything, has been gained by all your efforts. Faith, then, is and remains the evidence of things unseen, for it is by faith that the evidence is obtained. Were the evidence seen without faith, all would remain the same: nothing higher would have been invoked and one would remain essentially the same as before, not growing, not attaining to levels previously untold. Faith is a paradoxical virtue; faith is a key that unlocks; faith is a transformative virtue that begins with a mustard seed and results in a billowing tree. Faith impregnates and reproduces itself in harvests ten, twenty, an hundred fold. Faith transforms.

The second of the Christian virtues—the sixth of the contemporary cardinal virtues—is (6) hope. For lack of such vision, people perish. We have hope, at least in part, because our faith has revealed worlds hitherto unseen. That new vision has shown us, at times unmistakably, at others darkly, that there is real reason to hope. We have tested and tried and have not been turned away empty. The hope within our breast for what has not yet taken place burns brightly because of what already has. Hope likewise is forward-looking and transformative, seeing light and color ahead where other see but murky shadows and darkness. Hope lifts our hearts to the realms of possibilities, enlarging our vision, and filling us with a positive energy that transforms us and those around us. Like faith, hope also impregnates, often making possible its own offspring. It is infectious, it edifies, it builds up, it elevates, it looks despair in the eye and does not flinch. It is the difference between life and death, whether quietly as when something inside that once was has died, or whether in a much more literal sense as is evidenced by those who have endured the most harrowing of circumstances by its presence and perished in relatively favorable ones in its absence. When hope dies, so too does life. And hope for the believer goes beyond even this will to live, for he or she has learned that we do not have to go through life alone and there really is one who sticketh closer than a brother, one who, being glorified and exalted, is not bound by sin, death, or the grave and therefore is not subject to the inevitable loss of mortal friendships, for even the most loyal of mortal friends must, for a time, leave this world and say their goodbyes. That such partings are only temporary is the great hope: hope is life giving, life sustaining, and at its most hearty life everlasting. Hope is the hand of God that holds our own in the dark.

The third of the Christian virtues and the seventh of the cardinal is (7) charity, or, as we often say, love. Charity, too, is a transformative virtue that impregnates, reproducing itself and transforming giver, gift, and those to whom the same is given. And how can we possibly and in good conscious neglect one of the most eloquent portraits ever painted of this virtue? Nay, we shall not be unjust; we shall utter those familiar words again, for they ne’er grow old:

Charity takes us apart from ourselves and transforms us in ways that no other virtue does. It, like all of the Christian virtues, looks forward to things not yet seen; it transforms by drawing us ever upward and higher. George MacDonald captures this beautifully in his Unspoken Sermon series: if a husband who cares for his wife cannot even love her as he ought, what is he to do with those whom he cares nothing for at all, those who by every right should be his sworn enemies?

As MacDonald suggests, virtue culminates in God, the origin of all that is and ought to be. From God flows all good things and to God they shall return. The way to rise to God is to open our hearts and allow His love to pour into us; the flame of His awful love to purify us. Faith, hope, and charity not only fulfill the law, but constitute its very life-force, its soul, its spirit. We do indeed live between worlds, above the beasts below and God above. Fortitude, justice, temperance, and prudence can carry us a very long way toward human-sized perfectibility, but only faith, hope, and charity can transform us into the very sons and daughters of God. No less than earth and heaven come together as the seven virtues co-exist and interpenetrate one another in increasing degree. The four Greek virtues bring forth the very best that is natural within our human frames; faith, hope, and charity open us to receive riches over and above those that we currently possess: they transform us, change us, strengthen us, sustain us, cause our lives to blossom, fully bloom, and ripen into fruit that in turn transforms, changes, strengthens, and sustains those who drink in its beauty, breathe in its fragrance, and taste of its sweetness, reproducing itself in the most winsome of ways, drawing together inward and upward, enacting the ministry of reconciliation on earth of person to person and of heaven of child to Father. Taken together, we not only become fully and beautifully human in the most robust sense, but we also become increasingly like the firstfruits of many brothers, Christ Himself, one body, one family, one tree, one whole that transcends the sum of its parts: a heavenly city and a heavenly earth. Fortitude, justice, temperance, and prudence give the best of earth to our actions; faith, hope, and charity infuse them with heavenly light, binding all together and drawing taut with the ribbon of love.

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