Rethinking Happiness: the Role of Hope in Virtue Ethics

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RETHINKING HAPPINESS: THE ROLE OF HOPE IN VIRTUE ETHICS

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate School

of the University of Notre Dame

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

David Elliot

______

Dr. Jean Porter, Director

Graduate Program in Theology

Notre Dame, Indiana

July 2014

David M. Elliot

RETHINKING HAPPINESS: THE ROLE OF HOPE IN VIRTUE ETHICS

Abstract

David Elliot

The rise of virtue ethics has led to many treatments of the cardinal and theological virtues. But often due to fears that it is too “otherworldly,” the theological virtue of hope has languished in obscurity. Drawing upon St. Thomas Aquinas, I correct this oversight, arguing that hope makes a key contribution to happiness in the next life – and in this one.

In common with many virtue ethics and eudaimonist thinkers, I propose that the happy life is the characteristically enjoyable virtuous life. Yet as Aristotle and contemporary virtue ethics suggest, happiness is vulnerable to suffering, sickness, injustice, decline, and death. Limiting the extent to which even the virtuous may be happy, such ills constitute a somewhat depressing “eudaimonia gap.” Since the virtue of hope encourages the agent with the prospect of perfect and lasting beatitude, I argue that the gap leaves room for the virtue of hope to be recognized as “good news” rather than just “curious news” within virtue ethics and in human life generally.

Hope sustains us from the sloth, cynicism, and despair that threaten amid life’s trials, it provides an ultimate meaning and transcendent purpose to our lives, and it assures us that the desire for permanent and complete happiness can be fulfilled. David Elliot

Encouraged by the anticipation of perfect beatitude whose first fruits begin in this life, the Christian should therefore “rejoice in hope.” Yet many critics regard hope’s joyfulness as narcissistic and view hope as a “selfish” virtue which cares only about heaven and lets the world fester. In contrast, I argue that Thomistic hope partners with charity and is applied to justice, seeking virtue and happiness not just for the self but for the earthly city of which the hopeful remain committed members. Indeed, the vice of presumption opposed to hope consists precisely in the refusal to perform virtuous works of social justice and mercy in the “presumption” that promoting the common good is optional to those seeking eternal life. To give specific form to my claims, I turn to the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and argue that they represent the paradigmatic form of the happy life shaped by the virtue of hope. As a practical application of hope, I develop the ars moriendi or “art of dying” as a resource for end-of-life care in an aging society where death is often seen as unintelligible and approached with despair.

Dedicated in loving and grateful memory to my grandmother, Mary Lannigan, whose support and generosity made higher education a possibility for me.

“Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thanes and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new doctrine has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.” - The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England, Bk II

“And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it” - Rev 21:26

Nis Angelcynn bedæled Drihtnes halgena - Ælfric, Life of St. Edmund

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments...... v

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: Virtue, Happiness, and the Eudaimonia Gap ...... 25 1.1 Virtue and Happiness ...... 25 1.1.1 Desire, Appetite, and the Will...... 25 1.1.2 The Ultimate End of Happiness ...... 35 1.1.3 The Relationship Between Virtue and Happiness ...... 47 1.2 The Eudaimonia Gap ...... 55 1.2.1 Aristotle and the Limits of Happiness ...... 56 1.2.2 Philippa Foot ...... 64 1.2.3 Rosalind Hursthouse ...... 71 1.3 Conclusion ...... 83

Chapter 2: Thomistic Hope ...... 93 2.1 St. Thomas Aquinas on Grace ...... 93 2.2 Thomas Aquinas on Hope ...... 110 2.3 Is Hope a Liability? ...... 136 2.4 Conclusion ...... 168

Chapter 3: Contribution of Hope ...... 170 3.1 Rejoicing in Hope ...... 170 3.1.1 The Desire for Fuller or Ideal Happiness ...... 170 3.1.2 A Life of Praise and Thanksgiving ...... 196 3.2 Presumption, Merit, and the Gift of Fear ...... 202 3.2.1 Emersonian Piety and the Vice of Presumption ...... 204 3.2.2 Complacent Presumption ...... 217 3.2.2.1 The Gift of Fear ...... 233 3.3 Patient in Tribulation ...... 243 3.3.1 The Beatitudes and Imperfect Happiness ...... 243 3.3.2 Stoic Hope? ...... 255 3.3.3 The Consolation and Reliance of Hope ...... 263 3.4 Conclusion ...... 268

iii

Chapter 4: Homo Viator and the World ...... 271 4.1 “In” the World But Not “of It”? ...... 271 4.1.1 Worldliness and Gentle Despair ...... 276 4.1.2 Homo Viator as Dual Citizen ...... 295 4.1.3 Hope for the Earthly City ...... 310 4.2 Hope and the Art of Dying...... 337 4.2.1 The Traditional and Contemporary Ars Moriendi ...... 337 4.2.2 Christ the Hopeful Moriens? ...... 351 4.2.3 Practices of Hope ...... 358 4.2.4 The Christian Ars moriendi and Those without Hope ...... 370 4.3 Conclusion ...... 376

Bibliography ...... 384

Notes ...... 394

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to render grateful thanks to the many teachers who made an academic life and this dissertation possible. To Michael Horton, who first drew me into the life of the mind; and to Rabbi David Novak, whose great influence and inspiring example led me into Moral Theology. I am also immensely grateful to David Clairmont, who taught me the importance of community in practical reason; to Gerald McKenny, whose excellent criticisms and suggestions sharpened any iron I had with his much greater iron; and to Joseph Wawrykow, to whom I am indebted for almost all of my understanding of grace and whose teaching first inspired me to study the virtue of hope. I cannot possibly thank my adviser Jean Porter enough. Whatever I may know about virtue and happiness is thanks to her, and what more important things can be taught? I knew something of her extraordinary stature as a scholar before coming to Notre Dame. Only afterward and with enormous gratitude did I discover that these gifts were equalled by her own wisdom and kindness as an adviser, director, and tireless advocate.

I would also like to thank my family for their love, pains, encouragement, and support. To my mother and father, who gave me the gift of life and enabled my academic path; and to my grandmother, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. To my children, who dared without complaint and trusted in love to move to another country so that I could pursue scholarship. I particularly wish to thank my wife Sarah, who uprooted from

her homeland to come to Notre Dame, who gave me the gift of children and of herself, whose “veriness” is my favorite quality under heaven, and who has brought me greater joy than I ever believed our mortal lot. Finally, I would like to thank my patron saints and

Our Lord, to whom my own glad debts, here as elsewhere, are numberless.

INTRODUCTION

Project Summary

The rise of virtue ethics in past decades has led to many treatments of the cardinal and theological virtues. Justice, prudence, courage, charity, and the rest have inspired numerous dissertations, books, journal articles, and conference papers.1 But one virtue has not been lifted by this rising tide: the theological virtue of hope. This comparative neglect is easily diagnosed. While most want hope as an alternative to despair, many fear that hope’s focus on heaven is an opiate for earthly misery, a foothold for gloomy asceticism, a distraction from social justice, and a brake on human progress. But recently there has been a growing sense of need for renewed hope. With so much bad news in economics, politics, and society, the national mood has soured, and fears of permanent decline have set in. The social toxins of pessimism, apathy, and cynicism have spread, making the threat of despair very real in many quarters.

My aim in this thesis is to navigate the tension between the above concerns, and make a constructive argument that theological hope makes a genuine and rich contribution to happiness, flourishing, or eudaimonia. I will further claim that hope can be seen to do this even on naturalistic grounds, despite the fact that hope is derived from

theological premises. The benefit of this fact is that we will have identified an important respect in which the proposition “grace perfects rather than abolishes nature” can actually be shown rather than just told, with the implication that theological and naturalistic virtue ethics may have something to say to each other in their depictions of eudaimonia. The overall goal will be to relate hope to the desire for total happiness, and to explore how hope seen as theological virtue both contributes to the happy life and helps determine the shape in which it is lived out.

To this end I will turn to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose detailed and rigorous work on hope is a model. The revival in theological virtue ethics in the past decades has led to many partial and full-length treatments of the cardinal and infused virtues that draw upon Aquinas.2 But until recently, the virtue of hope languished in comparative obscurity, particularly in the English-speaking literature.3 Hope has received nowhere near the attention of the cardinal virtues, and rather less than charity and faith, its fellow theological virtues.4 Happily, some excellent treatments of hope have emerged recently,5 but many of these have focused on lacunae: on hope’s relationship to magnanimity,6 on the problem of hope’s certitude,7 on despair’s origins in acedia,8 on theological hope’s grounding of secular hopes,9 and so forth. While important topics in themselves, hope’s relationship to beatitude has not been explored as thoroughly as it demands, and the existing treatments of hope have not engaged nearly enough with contemporary virtue theory. Hence in treating of it as a virtue, I propose in this dissertation to focus on hope’s key relationship to happiness as it is pursued both for

oneself and reflexively for others. My thesis is that the virtue of hope plays an important role in the happy life which helps us better understand the full meaning of happiness and the relationship between grace and nature in an overall virtuous life.

Aquinas depicts the Christian as “on the way” (in via) or on a journey, with grace helping the “wayfarer” (viator) reach God as source of perfect happiness at the journey’s end.10 Hope regards this goal under the aspect of “possible but arduous to attain”11 The key themes of theological hope, therefore, are that it is a hope for happiness, and that this happiness can only be attained with difficulty and by supernatural help.

That very fact sets up the basic problematic to be explored in this study: namely, how can we say that the happiness at which hope aims is made known and possible by supernatural means without thereby making it a form of happiness basically unrecognizable to human nature? And if we say that this supernatural happiness

“elevates” or “perfects” the kind of happiness possible to human nature, how do we know this is not just stipulative? To answer this, there is a real need to show how the hopeful life conduces to the happy life in a recognizable way. Our concept of natural and supernatural happiness, and of hope as helping lead the former into the latter, need to be held in a certain tension. We need to see enough discontinuity and disanalogy for the relation to actually look supernatural, but not so much that the whole thing turns out to be one vast equivocation on the word “happiness”.

To do this it will be necessary to depict what the life of happiness or eudaimonia requires, and what its expression in the hopeful life would look like. To this end, I plan to

first explore how the desire for happiness relates to the virtuous life, and argue that hope contributes importantly to the fully virtuous and happy life.12 I will then set forth the virtue of hope in Aquinas, and argue that as a habit of grace it elevates the natural desire for happiness to a supernatural end, and allows us to rely upon the helping grace needed to attain that end. Hope ultimately seeks perfect happiness in the next life, but I will argue that it fosters a rich form of happiness in this life as well by helping sustain our lives in a world of varying fortunes, by providing an ultimate point and meaning to our lives, and by assuring us that the thirst for ultimate fulfillment is not in vain. To make this claim persuasive I will describe what the hopeful like looks like, and point to exemplary lives that illustrate it. A key move will be to show how the characterization of such lives as deeply happy is something that many naturalistic virtue ethicists recognize even while lacking the premises and narrative to ground such lives.

Since hope ultimately seeks eternal beatitude in a transcendent polis, this thesis will look at how hope alters the agent’s identity by conferring a certain “dual citizenship” in the earthly and heavenly cities. I will examine the archetype of the Christian as a

“wayfarer” or “pilgrim” passing through this world to the next. The claim will be that rather than just leading to a negation of the world, it could both help give our social particularities a transcendent niche and help us to engage the public realm more positively by providing a framework for ordinate hopefulness. I will further claim that hope intensifies and helps sustain the work of more this-worldly virtues such as justice

and charity, so that it is clearly relevant to secular concerns even though we do not hope for an earthly kingdom of God.

As a practical application of how hope for the eternal could help the earthly city in its pursuit of happiness, I will look at how hope might play a central role in a renewed ars moriendi or “art of dying” as a resource for end-of-life care in a culture where death is often approached with bewilderment or despair.

Method

My working method is a theological virtue ethic rooted in Thomistic thought.

This will involve three related principles: the first historical, the second theological, the third philosophical. The first will be to rely on historical scholarship that takes Aquinas’ cultural situatedness into account. The second will be that of accepting the main outlines of Thomistic hope while incorporating other sources of meaningful insight and making my own normative claims about hope in the course of engaging with contemporary thinkers. No case begins in mid-air, and my case assumes many Thomistic claims as a given as a methodological necessity. It is impossible in a work on hope to prove every

Thomistic presupposition which partly expresses and partly determines the basic features of hope as I am presenting it. Such proof would require full-length defenses of Thomism in general, and this task is outside my scope. Yet it is question-begging and naïve to treat

Aquinas as oracular. If one begins by treating Aquinas’ main positions as dogmas, it is

easy in one sense to refute all naysayers by simply rehearsing the appropriate respondeo.

But such exercises in circularity are predictable, uninteresting, and irrelevant to anyone not committed to a certain kind of Thomist groupthink. I will therefore adopt a middle path. Operating from broadly Thomistic premises, my working assumption will be that those premises are intellectually respectable enough to be the starting place for serious work on hope. To rigorously demonstrate this claim would require a wholesale change of topic and a different dissertation entirely. But at the same time I will address contemporary objections to Thomistic hope where my own claims meet relevant counter- claims in the scholarship, and I will reply to such objections in my own terms rather than falling back on arguments from authority. My goal is to argue that hope contributes to happiness and to show what the hopeful life looks like in contemporary terms while drawing upon Aquinas for my overall theological frame.

The third part of my method will be to engage in the philosophical issues underlying a discussion of hope in its pursuit of happiness. This will especially require putting Aquinas into with Aristotle and with contemporary moral philosophers - particularly those who take eudaimonism, virtue theory, naturalism, and the Aristotelian tradition seriously.13 We are fortunate to live in a period where Anglophone philosophy has seen the retrieval of an Aristotelian virtue ethics that is at least within shouting distance of Aquinas’ own. I will not therefore espouse what some have called an

“Analytic Thomism”.14 But I do think that the virtue ethics of Philippa Foot, Rosalind

Hursthouse, Elizabeth Anscombe and others has enough in common for serious

engagement to take place, especially with regard to “naturalism”, the centrality of the virtues, and in the concept of happiness or eudaimonia.

Granted these different goals, it will be seen that I have multiple audiences in mind. On the one hand, I am addressing not just theological but also philosophical ethicists whose research centers on virtue and eudaimonia. In this respect, I am putting in a good word for hope in virtue ethics as such, and trying to alert Athens to an important contribution from Jerusalem. On the other hand, I am addressing theologians and especially moral theologians. While I draw heavily upon Aquinas, my intended audience is not just Thomists. My goal is to present theological hope in such a way that it will be recognized as relevant by all who work in Christian ethics and who focus on topics from virtue to social ethics to end-of-life issues.

Outline of Chapters

Chapter One: Virtue, Happiness, and the Eudaimonia Gap

In the first chapter I will explore how the desire for happiness relates to the virtuous life. I will begin by examining the moral psychology presupposed when speaking of a desire for happiness. Since we can hope for only what we can desire, I will examine what “desire” means for Aquinas. This will lead to a discussion of goods and ends as desire’s object, and of happiness or perfection as the ultimate object of the will

and desire. Thomistic hope presupposes a natural desire for happiness or perfection which hope as a virtue of grace supernaturally clarifies and elevates in the manner of gratia naturum perficit.

I will next probe the concept of happiness itself that is the object of the above desire. The initial claim is that beatitude is central to Aquinas’ ethics, and the central move will be to spell out Aquinas’ own treatment of happiness and situate it in the context of related theories. This will involve important predecessors of Aquinas, especially Aristotle. It will also involve contemporary accounts which bear upon it, in particular neo-Aristotelians who retrieve eudaimonism and virtue theory. I will argue that there are important points of convergence between these sources in terms of some shared assumptions about what happiness is. These include the notion of happiness as an

“activity,” and of happiness as a “perfection” of the agent’s natural ends. Though

Aquinas believes that God confers beatitude upon us, I keep my language in this section more theologically neutral so as to address a philosophical audience. In subsequent chapters I fully ascribe the beatitude of the hopeful life to God, and do not simply describe it in neutral terms as an activity.

The third section of the chapter will identify why the virtues are needed for happiness so that when hope as a virtue is discussed, the relevance of the virtues to happiness will have been made clear. The final section is on the “depth” of both the desire for happiness, and the extent of happiness attainable. It is here that storms of controversy over a “natural desire for the supernatural” find their flashpoint around the

name of de Lubac. I will only touch on this enough to make clear why I assume that human nature cannot be defined with reference to a supernatural end, with the important qualification that human nature does not have two ends. The assumption will be that natural and supernatural beatitude represent two distinct ways of fulfilling one end viewed under the appropriate formality. 15 My later claim that hope supernaturally elevates the natural desire for happiness presupposes this.

More centrally, this section will probe what is perhaps the greatest lacuna of

Aristotelian eudaimonism, both ancient and modern: its insistence that happiness is the final end of human beings combined with its ambiguity about the extent to which this end can be achieved. Aquinas reads Aristotle as saying that even the best humans cannot achieve the perfect happiness they rightly desire, but only a partial and intermittent share in it.16 Aristotle also assumes that the vast majority of the human race is irreparably wicked and that only a select few are even candidates for this perturbable eudaimonia.17

The result is that the human race is, on the whole, a teleological failure in that it consists of natural beings largely failing to attain their due end. It is an almost catastrophist reading of the human predicament.

This bad news for eudaimonia is present in many neo-Aristotelians as well. For instance, against Bernard Williams’ “tragic despair”, Rosalind Hursthouse argues that eudaimonia is possible, and that a virtuous life is our best bet for it. But she qualifies this by saying that all her claims to this effect are highly contingent and defeasible.18 It is precisely this sort of shakiness about the extent and attainability of happiness in

naturalistic virtue ethics which I wish to highlight, agreeing that it is on to something. For if the theological virtue ethicist is right that perfect eudaimonia is hindered by original sin and only attained through grace, theologians should expect astute naturalists to sometimes describe perfect happiness as intelligible and desirable but just beyond their grasp - to betray something almost like St. Augustine’s restless heart. Because natural happiness is real and worthwhile but limited, I will argue that there exists a certain

“eudaimonia gap” which leaves room in human nature for the theological virtue of hope to make a key contribution to the happy life. This will help with the claim that naturalistic virtue ethics has left space for hope and supernatural happiness to “perfect” and “elevate” natural happiness in a way that is both beyond nature’s capacity to itself attain, and yet continuous with its needs.

Chapter Two: Thomistic Hope

This chapter will be divided into two sections. In the first section I will give an exposition of Aquinas’ doctrine of grace and theology of hope. Aquinas says that hope’s object is perfect happiness, that it consists in the beatific vision of God enjoyed by the blessed in Heaven, and that this goal of hope is “arduous but possible to attain”.19 This naturally raises the question of how it is possible, and why it is arduous. Without clarifying this, Aquinas’ concept of hope’s function will be unintelligible. In one way, this concern will dovetail with worries noted above over whether perfect happiness is

possible at all. In another, it will help answer a broader question: namely, even if one grants that the happy life is the virtuous life, why is there a need for supernatural virtues in that life? In other words: why should Athens have anything to do with Jerusalem, and not just see the Gospel as “curious news”?

To answer this we must situate Aquinas virtue ethic where he did: in the context of salvation history. Aquinas believes that perfect happiness coincides with the theological category of “salvation” made possible only by natural and supernatural providence working in tandem. Salvation has perfect friendship with God as its final end, and is consummated in the beatific vision. Made possible by grace,20 this friendship-in- charity requires the avoidance of grave sin against the law in order to be maintained.

(“You are my friends if you do what I command you”, John 15:14). But Aquinas believes that due to concupiscence and creaturely finitude this perseverance in grace to the point of glory is a precarious business requiring the staying power of a whole ensemble of supernatural habits. Hope regards perfect eudaimonia under just this aspect of precariousness: as possible but arduous.

To make this dynamic clear, I will therefore highlight the senses in which grace most directly informs hope. The first (gratia elevans) is that habitual grace elevates us to the supernatural end which alone can satisfy what our will structurally desires. The second (gratia sanans) is that grace heals us, enables us to merit or live virtuously,21 and makes possible perseverance in the journey to its final end despite our finitude and concupiscence. I will claim that while these aspects of grace can only be supernaturally

known and bestowed, they directly speak to problems which naturalistic virtues ethics found itself struggling to resolve. In that sense, Aquinas’ inclusion of these Pauline and

Augustinian elements into the Aristotelian structure of his virtue theory may be recognized as supernatural but not anti-natural.

I will then set forth Aquinas’ own theology of hope. This will involve paying attention to the trajectory of Aquinas’ developing views over his career while placing the focus upon his later works due to being both his final word on the topic and his fullest.22

The later Aquinas described hope as consisting in a “longing” for perfect beatitude combined with a “leaning” on the grace that enables its attainment. These comprise hope’s basic causality as a disposition and perfection of the will, and each will be explained in turn. The portion on “longing” will look to hope’s final causality. To unpack this, I will begin with an explanation of hope as a “theological” virtue. My particular focus here will be to show what grace does to desire, and how it both makes perfect beatitude possible and orients the desire for happiness to the Triune God as its specific object.

I will next relate hope to the other theological virtues, beginning with charity. I will claim that the “longing” of hope for personal perfection is not “selfish” in any morally suspect sense, but follows from the very ratio of the will, and can be turned into hope for another through charity’s key mediation. I will next turn to the question of how faith and hope relate to each other. Specifically, I will focus on how belief and desire, the cognitive and conative, mutually influence each other in conversion. The goal will be to

show how beliefs about the possible, and desire for the possible as attractive, importantly inform the decision to “commit” in a symbiosis of unformed faith and hope even prior to the infusion of charity.

I will then turn to the second major function of hope: that of “leaning”. This amounts to the efficient cause of hope as the means of grace for reaching the final end.

This topic is notably absent in work on Aquinas and hope, possibly because Aquinas is not explicit about what the “act” of leaning is, exactly.23 I will argue that it is primarily a prayerful dependence, understood in the broadest sense of relying upon and trusting in

God as the “friend” who helps one persevere in the journey and live a virtuous life commensurate with the qualified meriting of eternal reward. Epitomized in the Our

Father, hope’s leaning differs sharply from acquired magnanimity, which concerns what is within the agent’s own power to perform. This part will especially correspond to hope as a form of “healing grace” (gratia sanans) that overcomes the arduousness hope contends with, and which involves instrumental causes such as Christ’s Passion and the sacraments.

This section will conclude with a discussion of hope’s gift, beatitude, precepts, and to the vices of despair and presumption opposed to hope. Each will be related to hope’s leaning and longing action. Details about how hope informs and prompts more socially oriented virtues such as justice and charity will be reserved to the fourth chapter.

This is the major expository section on Thomistic hope.

Turning from the descriptive to the normative, in the second section of Chapter 2

I will seek to clarify the nature and object of hope, addressing misconceptions about its final cause or eschatological end. Much of it will address Timothy Jackson’s arguments in Love Disconsoled that hope characteristically sullies agape’s “purity of motive” with a mercenary interest, that it distracts from neighbor-love and the joys of this life, and that hope’s object is unnecessary anyway since agape and the possibilities of this world are sufficient for the good life. Such claims have been made before, but Jackson makes the best case for them in the contemporary literature. Moreover, as a Christian theologian

Jackson is not a “cultured despiser” whose critique of hope is meant to discredit

Christianity. (He has even played the role of Christian apologist in a debate with

Christopher Hitchens.) He is someone who knows and loves the tradition from the inside and believes that Christianity would benefit by pruning away the deadwood of traditional hope.

I insist with Aquinas that formed hope’s desire for union with God is virtuous. As informed by charity, hope desires consummate happiness through union with the divine friend. Communion with the friend is the proper reward of friendship, not an external or mercenary reward. I also insist with Aquinas that temporal projects can be “referred” by hope to our eternal end. Hope is therefore not a distraction from earthly causes and concern for neighbor, but ordains them to our eschatological goal. Lastly, I argue that hope should not be seen as a parasite or pollutant threatening charity’s purity of motive, but as a virtue which contributes to the operation of charity itself. By allowing us to

believe that the beloved is not extinguished at death, hope provides a greater extent and duration to charity’s good-will and beneficence toward our neighbors. Hope also comes to the aid of charity by promising that the divine beloved is not planning one’s imminent annihilation, but wishes to continue, increase, and perfect that loving friendship in a covenant love that is unbroken by death.

On the whole, this section is a ground-clearing exercise that addresses standard worries about the eschatological end of hope. It mostly seeks to defend Thomistic hope from characteristic objections which Jackson puts particularly well.

Chapter Three: The Contribution of Hope

This chapter is split into two sections, the first of which examines the positive and joyful contribution hope makes to the happy life, and the second of which examines the sustaining and persevering power of hope amid trials. Along with the work of hope proper, both sections address the vices that threaten hope. In the first section I examine presumption, and in the second I examine sloth and despair. The goal of this chapter is to give a textured account of what the hopeful life looks like, and show just how hope contributes to happiness.

The first section addresses hope’s anticipation of perfect beatitude. A deep existential yearning for complete fulfillment is expressed in various ways in countless media: in religion, philosophy, music, literature, art, films, and even political theories. I

regard this as the positive side of the eudaimonia gap: i.e., the that fact that even if we are happy we are never completely fulfilled. I draw on Aquinas and contemporary authors such as William Mattison to show that hope encourages us by promising that this desire of the “restless heart” is not idle, vain, or absurd. Trusting in God’s grace, we may confidently anticipate perfect beatitude, true healing, and lasting peace. Though its object is arduous, hope is therefore not just a virtue for life’s Lenten seasons. Encouraged by consideration of divine favors and the anticipation of perfect beatitude whose first fruits have begun in this life, the Christian should habitually “rejoice in hope.” This positive expression of hope with the praise and thanksgiving it gives rise to has been widely ignored in the literature. Often expressed in liturgy and hymns, this rejoicing should color the whole tenor of the Christian’s life: for Christ is Risen and has gone “to prepare a place” for us (John 14:3).

A life rejoicing in hope should not be confused with a life rejoicing in presumption. In the next section I caution that while hope rightfully kindles expectant joy, hope’s confidence and expectation should not lurch toward presumption. Hope should neither become self-reliant and self-righteous on the one hand; or complacent and morally lazy on the other. Combined with hope’s rejoicing I therefore examine presumption in various forms, from Emersonian self-reliance and Pelagian self-helpism to the complacent theology of moralistic therapeutic deism. Both forms of presumption get hope’s leaning wrong. Self-reliant presumption denies the need to acknowledge divine dependence, and complacent presumption lazily denies the need to repent and to

merit. The first leans not at all, and the second leans too much. Jackson and others wrongly think that hope strengthens the hand of moral presumption and quietist withdrawal. By contrast I argue that theological hope with some help from its neglected gift of fear is good at exposing and overcoming presumption in both of the above forms.

The rejoicing in hope which I recommend earlier thereby has solid internal safeguards to prevent a false rejoicing in presumption.

The second section addresses hope particularly in terms of its vulnerability to dejection and despair. I begin by talking about the fragility of the happy life, briefly recalling the “impediments” to it covered in the first chapter’s treatment of the

“eudaimonia gap.” I then look at the solace which Aquinas ascribes to hope: how it changes our perspective on suffering, injustice, personal decline, broken relationships, a flawed social order, etc. By making clear that our present situation is not permanent and by relying upon grace to sustain us, hope helps preclude undue dejection and despair. As

Isaiah says: “They that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall take wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Is 40:31).

But lest things appear too rosy, I distance my account of hope from the genre of naive consolatio. Hope does not guarantee perpetual emotional solace. Even the hope of psalmists and saints has been challenged by “the dark night.” Having nothing to fall back on when the slough of despond arrives, naïve hope can win only Pyrrhic victories in the moral life and is defenseless against despair. This is why it is necessary to emphasize that hope is a virtue of the will: one that keeps one going not until, but also amid, the loss of

characteristic enjoyment. Hence the characterization of hope as persevering toward an

“arduous good,” and of supernatural beatitude in this life as bittersweet. It is in relation to this bittersweet nature of the happy life that I discuss the centrality of hope the beatitudes in the Sermon of the Mount. Like hope, each of the beatitudes seeks a “future good possible but arduous to attain”: i.e., eternal happiness through the arduous road of spiritual poverty, mourning, hungering after justice, and so forth.24

In connection with this I examine John Bowlin’s view of hope as a “Stoic” virtue which is immune to fortune. I argue that this is both a misreading of Aquinas and a poor view of hope full stop. Hope is not invulnerable to fortune. To regard it as such is to reduce hope to a mere parade-ground exercise, and to deflate concern for one’s neighbors by regarding their trials as easily overcome by a superpowered hope. I agree that hope is apt to sustain and comfort us when fortune goes awry: to help us persevere and grow even amid tragedies, injustices, failures, dry spells, discouragement, personal decline, and a general sense of tedium vitae. But this process is not inevitable, guaranteed, or easy. At some point we may begin to view the arduous journey as impossible or fail to rely properly on grace for our strength. Whether by sudden existential shocks or the slow attrition of the years, we may come to hope poorly or lose hope altogether. We are then prey to sloth and despair. Bad luck and tragedy do not directly ruin hope, but they are occasions which may tempt to despair. It follows that hope is not invulnerable to fortune

– any more than it is invulnerable to temptation and sin. Belief that hope is invulnerable may even subvert it into a form of vicious presumption. In contrast to Bowlin’s Stoicized

hope with its serene invincibility, I therefore emphasize hope’s faithful, trusting, but also dogged reliance on grace to get one through life’s challenges. I conclude by discussing the particular form of consolation which is proper to hope, and which involves prayerful leaning upon God’s grace.

Chapter Four: Hope and the World

Since hope ultimately seeks a future and eternal good and presupposes membership in a transcendent polis, this final chapter examines the practical and social dimension of this virtue. I explore how hope affects the agent’s identity in this world as a

“dual citizen” who seeks happiness first in the earthly city but ultimately in the heavenly city. Since these cities often represent competing loyalties – most dramatically seen in martyrdom - this is pertinent to the perennial question of cultural and ecclesial alienation and integration.

Hope believes that “here we have no lasting city, but seek one which is to come”

(Heb 13:14). The wayfarer model of the journey derived from this has the power to make

Christians resist totalitarian or idolatrous demands of the State or society, and to that extent is a potentially subversive contra mundum. The model may thus sound like a mere negation of the world, and countless Christians have talked this way,25 paving the way for

“cultured despisers” from Celsus to Rousseau to claim that Christianity harbors an inner logic of otherworldliness and obscurantism.26

I concede that the homo viator model at its most Platonic and Stoic is guilty as charged, and make clear I have no stake in that variant. Aquinas takes embodiment seriously, which means taking local and social existence seriously. I argue that Thomistic hope makes clear that we wayfarers are dual citizens bound in piety to honor our native homeland. Moreover, hope invests itself in the social body and refers it to our ultimate end. So even if “here we have no lasting city,” it is false to infer from this that our social memberships in this life are morally and spiritually trifling. Indeed, if they were, it would make little sense to believe that “the glory and the honor of the nations” shall be brought into the heavenly city (Rev 21:26).

Nevertheless, the world in some sense has traditionally been seen as antagonistic to hope. Early Christians aimed to be “in the world but not of the world,” and Christ ominously told his disciples: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me first… because you are not of the world… therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19). The resulting tension between worldly affirmation and alienation flows from a real moral problem it is unwise to rush past. That problem is “worldly sin” or “worldliness:” a category which despite its contemporary neglect was a major figure in the older tradition.

Worldliness is the excessive attachment to external and this-worldly goods such as wealth, status, pomp, fame, reputation, honors, power, and influence. In short, it is undue concern for splendor and “success in the world’s eyes.”27 Often a symptom of theological despair and always fresh fodder for it, worldliness breeds the “here and now” mindset

which makes hope’s futurum bonum seem wildly vague, impalpable, and remote - a mere will o’ the wisp.

As a remedy for this worldliness I draw upon hope’s widely neglected beatitude, poverty of spirit. Spiritual poverty resists the feverish attachment to “honors and riches” that comprises a bloated “worldly love.” As such it makes us more amenable to the work of hope, and is an important remedy to worldliness. Given that worldliness itself is vicious and dehumanizing, hope’s opposition to it frees the wayfarer to be “for the world” with respect to virtuous earthly projects and the build-up of a truly good society.

The implication is that hope is contra mundum in a highly qualified sense that allows it to be pro mundo in another and much more important sense.28

Nevertheless, where worldly values, attitudes, and practices have bitten deeply into the social fabric, principled stands against them may threaten a degree of social alienation. But rather than socially withdrawing out of resentment, fear, or retaliatory pride, I argue that the hopeful should remain deeply committed to their homeland even when tensions discomfit. A principled and limited alienation co-exists with tenacity in trying to reconnect, reintregrate, hold responsible, and contribute to the social body of which one is a part. Such alienation as one must adopt is therefore itself a form of outreach and communication rather than a form of abandonment or refusal to communicate.

Practically and in terms of the interrelation of the virtues, I claim that hope prompts and gives greater motivation to the acts of other virtues whose work is more

obviously this-worldly and other-regarding. This is especially true of the virtues of fortitude, justice, and charity which hope is informed by and in turn reinforces.29 Hope does not directly rectify the public realm, but it does help sustain and intensify the work of justice, charity, and other infused virtues in their work for the earthly city. Hope in this vein still regards happiness, but with charity’s mediation, it properly regards the happiness of the whole community. Here I will engage with Dominic Doyle’s The

Promise of True Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope. I will argue that while Doyle rightly claims that temporal hopes can be referred to eschatological hopes, he fails to explain the limits of those hopes and therefore fails to create a brake on overly realized eschatologies.

Although the wayfaring model relativizes the claims which society makes upon the Christian, I would argue that by relativizing the claims of society somewhat we can help rehabilitate the public realm with an ordinate hopefulness. Christian hope pushes against the temptation to make the State or market a final end and so demand for it an almost messianic role – a role that inevitably foments cynicism and disillusionment when the results of economics and politics prove flawed. By relativizing the public order without thereby denigrating it, hope can help us engage in public life in a more frank and healthy way. Since the vice of despair has collective expressions which depress our national, social, and political life with the toxins of pessimism, apathy, and cynicism, such work on hope is urgently needed today.

As a practical application of hope in the earthly city, I explore how hope might play a central role in a renewed ars moriendi or “art of dying” as a resource for end-of- life care. We live in an aging society where the elderly are frequently marginalized, neglected, and spiritually abandoned. Moreover, death is an opaque concept in our youth, beauty, and consumer culture. The topic is almost neurotically avoided, it is dreaded as unintelligible, and its approach often heralds bewilderment or even despair. I examine the historical and contemporary ars moriendi tradition, and seek to show how the virtue of hope might contribute more richly to it. Since Christ’s dying is taken by the tradition as the model for dying well, I examine whether Christ possessed the virtue of hope and modeled it for us. I will follow with a consideration of hopeful practices in the ars moriendi such as visits to the sick, contemplation of God’s mercy, memento mori, examination of conscience, sacramental confession, and prayers at the bedside. The chapter concludes by examining what the Christian ars moriendi might have to say to

“people who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13). Throughout I stress that an ars moriendi should not be reserved to those near dying, but that it will do its best work if it is part of the moral, aesthetic, and spiritual education in hope which we should have from early adulthood onwards.

Concerning Sequence

A word is in order concerning the sequence and structure of the chapters. The first section of Chapter 1 mostly consists in an exposition of Aquinas whereas the second section first engages with philosophers, some of whom are contemporary, and then it makes a normative argument. Chapter 2 initially reverts to exposition of Aquinas, explaining what Thomistic hope is, and then I again engage contemporary interlocutors and make normative arguments. This is not aimless toing and froing; the progression is thematic. My overall goal is to show how hope makes a difference for the better in the virtuous and happy life. I therefore begin by describing the desire for happiness and then describe the nature of happiness, both natural and Christian, as virtuous activity. This clears the way for the claim that hope as a virtue plays an important role in happiness. I then argue that while natural happiness is real and admirable, it is somewhat ailing and hagridden. This eudaimonia gap, as I call it, makes hope of clear relevance. While hope contributes to the happiness of this life, it further and ultimately aims at the perfect beatitude of the next. In Chapters 3 and 4 I aim to show just what hope offers to those seeking the happy life. The order is therefore sequential and progressive in terms of the overall argument, and the shift to and from expository and normative exists for the sake of unfolding the various stages of this argument in their proper order.

CHAPTER 1:

VIRTUE, HAPPINESS, AND THE EUDAIMONIA GAP

1.1 Virtue and Happiness

1.1.1 Desire, Appetite, and the Will

The desire for happiness is a central topic for my thesis. This section will examine how Aquinas understands desire, appetite, and the will so as to explain how they aim at happiness. The conceptual gulf between Aquinas and ourselves on these matters is such that exegesis is impossible without an initial clarification of terms. For Aquinas and related thinkers, every substance has a form and anything with a form has appetite.30

Appetitus is the broadest term Aquinas has for describing everything we label as desires, conation, urges, drives, hungers, feelings, wantings, passions, volition, and seekings of any kind. Appetite shares this space of utmost generality with “inclination” (inclinatio) and “love” (amor), and the terms are often used interchangeably.31

Appetite denotes the “power” or capacity of a substance to seek or move toward an end (finis) in which it has rest. This end is its good, and the corresponding inclination is itself the act of appetite.32 The sequence is driven by a being’s “motion” (motus) toward its end point (terminus), attaining which it will rest (quies).33 The end or good 25

refers to the goal or end-point (the telos or finis) of the motion. Appetite is not an indifferent capacity, but the proper capacity for a substance to become or “actualize” what its natural form inclines it to be. This actualizing completes its development or

“perfects” it, and perfection or flourishing is the goal of the process.34

Perfection that is accomplished is actuality considered from the perspective of final causality. It is in rest or quies. Perfection unaccomplished is the natural potential (a

“could be and should be”) that remains to be reduced to act, or “made the case”. It is in motion or motus rather than rest.35 There is appetitus in both, but the difference between having and not yet having reached the terminus gives rise to almost all distinctions in our vocabulary of appetite: e.g., between desire and enjoyment, wanting and satisfaction, and so forth.

Since it belongs to a being’s form or nature, appetite is a nexus in which formal and final causality meet. This meeting gives rise to a being’s “natural inclination” or

“inclinations”. The idea is that the questions of what something’s nature is, and what that nature needs or seeks, cannot be answered independently. The inclination inclines the being toward a final causal “end” (finis) that is “suitable” (conveniens) to its nature or formal structure as perfecting and therefore “for” it.36 (As water inclines the duck.) This suitability arises from the due “proportion” (proportio) between a substance and an object. There is something in the object which marks it out as end for the substance

(differentiating it from the great mass of objects in general), and this something

corresponds to qualities which the substance inclines towards as perfective of it, and as a point of rest.37

This natural inclination or appetite occurs for Aquinas at four levels. The simplest is that of inanimate creation. Aquinas typically speaks of this as “natural appetite,” here using “natural” in the restricted sense of “inanimate.” Inclination at this level is produced within something like fire or a rock due to its “connaturalness (connaturalitas) with the thing to which it tends”.38

Beings with a principle of growth but no sensation (as with vegetables) partake in final causality in a structurally similar way, since they lack cognition. The difference is that they can develop or flourish through having their natural powers actualized. They are animate, and therefore have souls (animae). Anima has far less pretensions than the

English “soul.” To say “grass has a soul” sounds like language on holiday now, but to

Aquinas and his contemporaries it simply meant that grass had a principle of life.

The third grade of appetite occurs in beings with sensation. “Sensitive appetite”

(appetitus sensitivus), love, and inclination involve actual cognition, sentience, and feelings. This is the grade of being proper to animals. Here natural inclination involves a special kind of “connaturalness” between a creature and a suitable object: that in which the creature experiences a “complacency” (complacencia) in a particular thing revealed to it by the senses. It is cognitive in that sense perception discloses knowledge about the world. But this is knowledge of sense particulars rather than of universals, and so is not a form of understanding (intellectus). Here a great frontier has been crossed. The

connaturalness between the creature and object may now be cognitively apprehended and

“experienced” by the creature. When a suitable object is made known through the senses it elicits “the psychological experience of being taken, so to speak, by the object”.39 It is thus “elicited appetite” rather than the merely “natural appetite” of inanimate beings: the key difference being that the motion of appetite is experienced or felt as emergent.

With perfect consistency Aquinas makes these derivative passions track the basic logic of appetite as the motion toward an end in which rest is found. Sensitive appetite begins with love directed to a good simpliciter: regardless of whether the object is possessed or not. This love is a “complacency (complacentia) in the object”; a state of being well-pleased with it.40 It is the primary passion from which all others emerge. If the loved object is absent, there is desire (desiderium) for it. This in turn is “a motion (motus) toward that same object” on the part of the sensitive appetite.41 Desire as such is a kind of agitated attraction, as with a dog’s excitement and clamor when food is about to be put in the dish. If the loved object is attained, there is enjoyment, satisfaction, or delight

(delectatio). Importantly, delight is described as a rest (quies) in the thing desired.42 This shows that delight is not pleasure or enjoyment merely, but something which calms or lulls the agitation which supervened upon the original desire. This quietude of satisfied desire is the sensitive appetite’s equivalent to a stone “resting” on the earth: the motion produced by natural inclination has terminated in its proper end.

Delectatio contains both an element of gratification, and an element of desire lulled, relaxed, or quieted. In the sensitive soul it is sensual delight or enjoyment. As such

is to be distinguished from joy or gaudium, which is rational delight or enjoyment.43 Both hit upon a central aspect of appetite in rest. Later this sequence will be imported into the will where analogous motions will be located and charged with the storied overtones of

St. Augustine’s “restless heart” (cor inquietam) moving and seeking rest in God.

Delectatio and gaudium will both be important to describing forms of delight which the exercise of hope often gives rise to, as in “rejoicing in hope” (Rom 12:12).

From this rhythmic suite of movement and rest in the sensitive appetite all further passions arise as particular modifications. It is here that Aquinas introduces the distinction between concupiscible and irascible appetite. These two appetites exist only within the sensitive appetite, and divide it between them. The premise is that different capacities or powers (potentiae) have different objects. This is how we distinguish a power like sight from that of hearing.44 The object of concupiscible appetite is sensible good or evil apprehended as a source of pleasure or pain simpliciter. In addition to love, desire, and enjoyment, this includes the correlative and opposite passions of hatred

(odium) of an evil as such, aversion or flight (fuga) if it threatens to be present, and sorrow (tristitia, dolor) if it becomes present. There are thus six passions of the concupiscible appetite.

The irascible appetite likewise regards sensible goods or evil as sources of pleasure or pain, but it does so secundum quid: motion toward the good, and movement from evil, are experienced under the aspect of the difficulties and struggles such motions involve. Its proper object, therefore, is sensible good and evil as arduous rather than

sensible good and evil simply. As arduous but possible good, it elicits the passion of hope

(spes). As arduous and impossible good, it elicits despair (desperatio). As arduous and possible evil, it elicits fear (timor). As the same evil regarded as something to overcome, it elicits boldness (audacia).45 As arduous and present evil, it elicits anger (ira).46 It will be seen that the irascible appetite is a kind of tensing of the muscles, or a rush to arms, on behalf of the concupscible appetite. Wholly parasitic upon the concupiscible, Aquinas describes the irascible appetite as the “champion and defender of the concupiscible.”47 It has rightly been seen as a kind of successor concept to Plato’s “spirited element” of the soul. The theological virtue of hope belongs to the will or rational appetite rather than to the irascible appetite. But as will later be explained, theological hope is analogous to the passion of hope in how it regards its object (as a future, possible, arduous good) and the virtue and passion exert an important mutual influence in our overall expression of hope.

All of the above motions arise from love, but love conceived as a passion.

Emotions and felt desires thus arise from appetite, natural inclination, and love as instances of them within sentient beings. But the language of appetite, inclination, and love itself extends far beyond the world of sentience, and goes all the way up to the desires, intentions, and choices of rational beings. When it is of the latter sort we reach the utmost peak of appetite: that form of it which is peculiar to God, angels, and humans:

“rational appetite” or will.

Hope is a virtue of the will, and the will is construed by Aquinas and related thinkers as the form of appetite proper to rational beings. Aquinas’ views of the will,

voluntariness, and free choice (liber arbitrium) are so well known and covered that it would be redundant to give a full exposition of it here.48 But something must be said about what it means to call the will a “rational appetite” to show how the will relates to appetite generally, and how appetite can be rational.

Following Aristotle’s familiar maxim “the good is what all desire” (quod omnia appetunt), Aquinas asserts that: “The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable”.49 This statement does not imply that what is desirable is therefore choiceworthy. Such a suggestion could lead to Hobbes’ view that good is simply the name we give to whatever we desire.50 But for Aquinas, the concept of perfection fences this view out. The assertion “goodness is what all desire” must always be read in light of the correlative claim “All desire their own perfection (omnia appetunt suam perfectionem).51 This need not imply elicited desire for an ideal of perfection, obviously.

The claim amounts to saying that the natural inclinations of each substance move it toward those goods or end points which it requires for functioning properly as the kind of thing it is.

It remains to look at what this view means for creatures with a rational nature and will. As with all appetite, the will is proportionate to the form which gives rise to the appetite. Being rational in form, we therefore have a “rational appetite” (appetitus rationalis) or will (voluntas). This is appetite which follows rational rather than merely sensitive cognition. Since it is rational, the will’s object is “the end and the good in general”52. The notion that the will’s object is the good “in general” is the key difference

between it and other forms of appetite. Whereas the “sensitive” appetite occasions desires for sense particulars simply, the “rational” appetite occasions desires for objects under intelligible aspects. These correspond to universals such as “knowledge,” “friendship,”

“healthy,” “amusing,” and the like.53

In its purely intellectual mode, the will desires immaterial things or “intelligibles” such as knowledge and virtue; qualities one could never point to with one’s finger, examine under a microscope, or show to a dog.54 We therefore have a unique set of ends which animals and physical objects lack, and yet the movement of appetite in search of perfection proceeds analogously. Unlike angels and animals, humans as “rational animals” are a kind of frontier species. In addition to intelligible goods, we can desire the sensible goods proper to animals, and yet we desire them in a distinctively rational way.

We do not simply want something sweet, and that is all there is to it. We can conceive of it as sweet, and predicate “sweetness” both of it and innumerable other sensible particulars. Indeed, we might predicate “nourishing” and “healthy” of the same object, desiring it under multiple aspects that are rational, and could be explained in sentences.

Universals such as “knowledge” or “sweet” have an appetitive or attractive pull because they characterize ends proper to our natural inclinations at the physical, biological, and intellectual levels specific to our nature as rational animals. Each such universal falls under the formality of the good as such (sub ratione boni).55 This formality may be further divided into the categories of the honorable or fitting good, the pleasant

good, and the useful good; and these are further divisible into specifications such as fun, beautiful, interesting, soothing, graceful, and so forth.

Unlike sub-rational beings, we can understand the ends we desire, and explain why we find an action desirable through providing a reason. This hints at how will is an appetite which is rational. As Aquinas puts it: “For when I say: ‘I wish to take medicine for the sake of health,’ I signify no more than one movement of my will. And this is because the end is the reason for willing the means (ST I-II.12.4, emphasis mine).”

Health denotes the end, and the end is the reason (ratio) for willing the act as a means.

The end or finis is the reason for action. Aquinas’ language is roughly similar to our own here. When we talk of ends and means we rely heavily on the preposition for and on phrases such as in order to, for the sake of, and so as. For Aquinas and for us such phrases generally connect an act-term construed as a means, and an end-term characterized desirably, or under the ratio boni. Some A is proposed as an action, and it is proposed for, in order to, for the sake of, or so as to secure some B. Aquinas takes the end-term or B to be “the reason” for undertaking the means-term or A, so that “For the sake of health” is the reason for “Taking medicine”. The end is the “reason” both as cause and as explanation: as cause because the end is the final cause of the action which actually motivates the action, and as explanation because it explains why one chose to do one thing rather than another.56 Each is essential, since to lose the first would be to lose the will as a source of appetite, and to lose the second would be to forfeit claims to its rationality.

The consequence of this model is that nothing can be in the will unless it is first in the intellect. This fact does not entail that the will seeks only what one is conscious of.

Something can be in the intellect or will habitually without being constantly attended to.

One has language knowledge even when not using language. The intention to get somewhere while walking is present throughout the whole walk. If asked my intention in walking I could truthfully answer “to get home” even if at the moment I was not thinking

“I intend to get home.”57 Both the reason and motive for action would obtain, and so the intention would be present in the will according to its proper rational and desiderative mode. This fact is an important presupposition for theological hope. Hope is a virtue of the will, and so is present in the will as a habit. As particular kinds of long-term intentions, habits of the will may be present as rational and desiderative qualities which endure over time. Though often consciously expressed, they are often not consciously considered. Yet they are still present as rational and desiderative dispositions, and therefore as proper habits of the will.

Hope like faith and charity is a “theological” virtue in that it has God (theos) for its object.58 Since God is an intelligible rather than a physical being, God as an object of desire is sought by the rational appetite or will which regards intelligible goods. As I will later cover in detail, hope seeks God under the ratio boni of “my own happiness” or “my perfection.” Hope adds to this the further ratio of this happiness as “a future good possible but arduous to attain.” In that respect, hope as a volition is analogous to hope as a passion, and the will as hopeful is analogous to the irascible appetite. But the key point

is that hope answers to both the appetite or desire for perfection, and the rational characterization of that end as future, possible, and difficult. The first gives to hope the element of desire, and the second gives to it the quality of rationality.

1.1.2 The Ultimate End of Happiness

From the general structure of the will as rational appetite I turn to the question of what the will ultimately seeks. According to Aquinas the will naturally desires a final end or ultimate goal as its “rest” point or quies.59 Attainment of this end constitutes perfect happiness, and to lack this is to remain in “motion” (motus), still seeking for fulfillment and perfection.60 It will be argued in Chapter 2 that the virtue of hope supernaturally elevates this motion toward the final end of the beatific vision, in which perfect happiness and rest are found. Therefore the concept of this motion toward the rest point must itself be made clear.

As Julia Annas wrote: The question ‘In what does my happiness consist?’ is the most important and central question in ancient ethics.”61 The concept of eudaimonia and the later beatitudo was central to both classical and medieval ethics. Aristotle asked:

“What is the highest of all goods achievable by action?” Quite aware that the opinion of humanity is a hung jury on this, he scrabbles for some unarguable starting point or arche.

This is easily available, for “both the general run of men and people of superior refinement agree that it is happiness.”62 Aristotle takes this as so obvious that he makes

clear that this is arguing from, rather than to, first principles. Even “the general run of men” (whom Aristotle disdains as vicious) are said to grasp it, as someone might mutter

“even a fool knows that.” Happiness is called the “final end” or “final without qualification” (teleion haplos).63 In a similar vein, Augustine confidently proclaims that:

“All men agree in desiring the last end (ultimum finem), which is happiness.”64 This likewise is a starting point or principia: “all men agree” about it. Gregory of Nyssa, John

Chrysostom, Boethius, Anselm, Lombard, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and other representative sources of late antiquity and the Middle Ages certainly agreed about it.65

The final end was identified with happiness: with the eudaimonia of Hellenistic philosophy, the makarios of the Beatitudes, and the felicitas and beatitudo of Latin theology from before St. Augustine through and beyond St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

The following is perhaps Aquinas’ central claim about happiness:

Happiness is the perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether; else it would not be the last end, if something yet remained to be desired. Now the object of the will, i.e. of man's appetite, is the good in general; just as the object of the intellect is the true in general. Hence it is evident that naught can lull man's will, save the universal good. This is to be found, not in any creature, but in God alone.66

Aquinas believes there are not several ultimate ends which comprise happiness.

The ultimate end (finis ultimus) is said “to so fill man's appetite, that nothing is left besides it for him to desire… it would not be the last end, if something yet remained to be desired.”67 But not everyone agrees. Germain Grisez has recently argued that more than one ultimate end as Aquinas understands the term can be had by a single agent. The

implication is that there is no single finis ultimus. To illustrate this claim Grisez supposes an 11-year old boy named Joe who both plays baseball for its own sake, and who desires to go to heaven for its own sake. Since these are both done for their own sakes rather than as a means to some other end, Grisez claims that both occupy the role of what Aquinas would call an ultimate end.68 But since Aquinas thinks there can be only one ultimate end, his account contradicts itself when pressed to its conclusion. Scott MacDonald has called attention to Grisez’ exegetical mistake here.69 Aquinas says that “one desires as an ultimate end that which one desires as one’s perfect and complete good”.70 Such a good is said to “fulfill the whole desire of a human being in such a way that nothing remains to be desired”.71 It follows that unless Joe is hopelessly deluded about the scope of baseball’s delights, he cannot be desiring it as an ultimate end, and therefore his desire to play baseball for its own sake need not be in conflict with his desire for heaven as an ultimate end.

Glossing and defending Aquinas, MacDonald notes that while things may be desired for their own sakes, those with the concept of themselves as having a life as a whole will seek each end as a contributing part to “the overall goodness of his life.”72 For example, playing baseball and eating desert confer a certain satisfaction, but such satisfactions are sought as constituents in the temporally extended goal of a comprehensively good and satisfactory life. That good life itself is the finis ultimus, and discrete fulfillments are reasonably sought as contributors or ingredients in it. Provided I think of and value my life as a temporally extended whole, what I reasonably seek is not

just the happy moment, but the happy life. Temporal extension of agency coincides with the extension of one’s interests or goods. If I want to eat a piece of cake seven times a day for the satisfaction of it, but know that this conflicts with the needs of living a good and satisfying life on the whole, I will have reason not to eat the cake.

With respect to the will construed as rational appetite, Aquinas says the ultimate end would “so fill man's appetite, that nothing is left besides it for him to desire… it would not be the last end, if something yet remained to be desired”73. This builds upon the Aristotelian notion of happiness as “self-sufficient” (autarkes) and “lacking in nothing”. Perhaps due to the Augustinian influence (the cor inquietum), Aquinas is rather more preoccupied with desire and fruition in themselves when discussing happiness. But the belief that happiness perfectly satisfies desire does not mean that happiness consists in the satisfaction of all of one’s desires. As Bertrand Russell sensibly put it: “to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”74 The examples of David and Esau make precisely this point as cautionary tales. But Russell’s claim does not harm Aquinas’ case. The proposal that total satisfaction of human appetite is required for happiness does not entail that if all one’s desires were satisfied, the sum total would simply equal happiness. The claim is that the appetite itself must be fully satisfied for perfect happiness to have been attained, which is a different proposition altogether. One can speak of total satisfaction of human appetite without implying that every human desire has been satisfied to attain it. To give a rough parallel: I may look upon the dinner table in great hunger and desire to eat everything set before me. But this

does not mean that in order to leave the meal perfectly satisfied I must have eaten everything I initially desired. The relationship between overall satiation and the gratification of each desire aiming at it is not mathematically one-for-one. As Aquinas says, commenting on Aristotle’s claim that happiness is “self-sufficient” (autarkes):

The happiness about which he is now talking is self-sufficient because it contains in itself everything which is necessary, but not everything which could come to someone. So it can become better with any other addition. This does not mean that the person’s desire remains unsatisfied, since desire regulated by reason, such as the happy person’s must be, is not troubled about things which are unnecessary, even if they can be acquired.75

The will as an appetite in motus must attain complete fulfillment to be in quies, and this comes about through attaining the finis ultimus of happiness which is itself the distinctly human mode of perfection.

Aquinas believed that to attain one’s ultimate end, to be truly happy, and to achieve perfection were the same thing. He wrote: “by the name happiness is understood the ultimate perfection of a rational or intellectual nature; and hence it is something that is naturally desired, since everything naturally desires its own ultimate perfection.”76

The notion of perfection and therefore of happiness in Aquinas rests upon certain naturalistic foundations. The relevant details are as follows. Everything with a nature has an essence, such as humanity or catness, or human-life and cat-life. From this essence various capacities (potentiae) flow, and these capacities are differentiated based on having different objects and acts. Since the capacities are directed by the natural inclinations to certain ends, they are not just indifferent sources of potential; they are the

directed potential of a substance to become or “actualize” what its natural form inclines it to be. This actualizing completes its development or “perfects” it, and perfection is the ultimate end of every being’s motion, seeking, and development.77

The living substance is a form-matter composite, with the form or nature (the cat- life of a cat, the human-life of the human) configuring the matter as its organizing principle. This is why the body of a living thing is configured in a way proper to its nature and characteristic way of life, whether this means growing horns or weaving a web. This is the sense behind the claim that matter stands in potential with respect to the form, and that the form actualizes the matter.78

Aquinas follows Aristotle’s description of nature as: “what each thing is like when it is fully developed, that we call the nature of each thing, whether we are speaking of a man or a horse.”79 For Aristotle, the natural kinesis is the motion towards the actualization of the telos or end, and the attainment of this produces a flourishing specimen within a natural kind.80 In Aquinas’ scholastic language, a being is perfect if it has developed those capacities which its species-form inclines it to develop, and this process consists in the actualization of natural capacities which were potential.81 As Jean

Porter puts it: “For living creatures, including ourselves, perfection is expressed in a particular way of life developed through the exercise of the “ordered functional capacities” constituting the creature’s form”.82 Nature thus corresponds to “What each thing is like” in that sense, with the most representative specimen (i.e., for study of that nature) being one whose telos or finis has been fully developed or “perfected”: e.g., an

apple tree mature enough to grow apples, or a spider mature enough to spin webs.83

Hence the claim that something’s nature cannot be answered apart from the question of what that nature seeks or needs to flourish. The fact that the source of inclination is internal to the nature is what allows us to distinguish between changes that effect the development, actualization, or perfection of a being, on the one hand; and changes that are violent or merely indifferent to it, on the other.84

In its most basic form “perfection” for Aquinas therefore refers to the full maturation of a natural being such that it attains its proper ends and so flourishes according to its natural kind. In one respect we must therefore beware the word

“perfection”. It has high pretensions in English that do not exactly match Aquinas’ meaning. In particular, perfection does not refer to exception greatness or preeminence, but to the “completion” of a specimen’s natural development processes.85 A lion with proper food and social existence might achieve “perfection” in this sense. “A perfect lion” in modern terms might suggest a big cat of special magnificence to headline a zoo.

But in Aristotelian and Thomistic terms it could be applied to any flourishing lion in a good social fabric at the height of its powers.

For Aquinas, happiness just is the type of perfection proper to a rational being.

But how is this perfection brought about? Like all perfection, it is achieved through the actualization of potential: through making the case what could and should be the case.

This in turn occurs through certain activities or operations. Perfection as full development does not simply happen to an agent passively sitting there. It must be achieved by doing

the activities that perfect the person’s capacities. This hints at why the notions of achievement and success are often associated with happiness. It would be odd if the person who said “I have accomplished nothing in life” or “my life is a failure” simultaneously claimed to be happy. Aquinas latches onto this intuition to claim that happiness is not just a passive state - not even the state of having all the virtues. The primacy of act over potency means that doing x well is more perfect than just being able to do x. The implication is that virtuous activity is superior to possessing the virtues, even though one cannot act virtuously without possessing them. His gloss on a pithy example of Aristotle’s gives the sense of this:

In Macedonia there is a very high mountain called Olympus where certain competitive sports, called Olympic games, were held. In this, not the strongest and best looking athletes but only the winning contestants received the crown, for those who did not compete were ineligible for the prize. So also, of those who are good and best in virtuous living, only those are illustrious and happy who actually perform good deeds. Hence it is better to say that happiness is a virtuous operation than virtue itself.86

Aristotle’s intuition as explained by Aquinas certainly accords with Christian sensibilities. One is reminded of Scriptural passages such as: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it” (1 Cor 9:24). In his twilight period Paul claims: “The time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim 4:6-7). The most ringing injunction to this effect is surely: “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matt

5:48). The theological aspect of this claim will be more fully explored in the next chapter. 42

But we may already see that actually doing and achieving something – pictured above as success in the agon - are tied to the concept of happiness in both Aristotle and Christian sources. As will be discussed in the next chapter, the sin of presumption opposed to hope occurs when one declines to “run the race” and yet expects to “receive the prize”. But without asserting too great a continuity between Aristotle’s naturalistic perfection and

Christianity’s supernaturalistic perfection, we can see at this point certain shared assumptions about why happiness is connected with action and achievement.

Aquinas claims that perfection or happiness is attained through activity

(operatio).87 This follows from the metaphysics of perfection with its suite of movement from capacities in potential to capacities developed and in act. But his second substantive claim seems far more controversial. It is that perfection or happiness is itself a kind of activity. In this he thoroughly follows Aristotle who claimed that “happiness is an activity

(energeia) of soul in accordance with perfect virtue.”88 Aquinas agrees, and further explains the idea by saying that “being” and “goodness” are different aspects (rationes) of the same reality (res). He writes:

The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. i): "Goodness is what all desire." Now it is clear that a thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection. But everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists; for it is existence that makes all things actual.89

If something is perfect insofar as it is in act, then obviously perfection will be in act as well. This shows the conceptual link between perfection and activity. The reason

why perfection is in act is not too hard to see if we put it in more familiar terms. To do that we need to discern within the language about perfection two distinct but related senses: 1) the perfect as that which is developed, 2) the perfect as that which is fulfilling.90 The language about being made actual corresponds to the first, and the language of goodness and desire corresponds to the second. The capacities of a given nature are potentialities meant to be developed and fulfilled. Development is the aspect of perfection which characterizes my natural potential being put “in act” through activity.

Fulfillment is the aspect which characterizes the attainment of and resting in the desired good which perfects. So development exercises a certain constraint on what I may say is my good. If something is not perfective of me, it will be an apparent rather than a real good.

The process of development and attaining fulfillment may be the two sides of perfection, but they are aspects of the same process. As Aquinas puts it: they are two rationes of the same res. To give an example: as a baby my language use capacity was merely potential. It was slowly brought “into act” by repeated attempts that brought about cognitive and linguistic development. To the extent this development was successful my linguistic capacity was perfected. Had it never come into actuality, a good and desirable thing would have been missing, and my humanity would been radically imperfect. We see in this how the term perfection tracks both what we mean by development and by fulfillment.

It may be helpful to identify what criteria emerge when we parse the concept of perfection in this two-fold way. From what has been said about perfection achieved through activity, and whose attainment is supremely fulfilling, two clear criteria are already in place for evaluating what will count as happiness. The first is that to qualify as full happiness something must be a “perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether

(totaliter quietat appetitum)”.91 The second is that its attainment must occur through a virtuous form of life which perfects the agent him or herself. For convenience, I will abbreviate the first as the “fulfillment criterion” and the second as the “development criterion” for perfection or happiness.

To speak of happiness as an “activity” may sound ambiguous or abstract. But like

Aristotle, Aquinas correlates the activity of happiness with particular kinds of life which may be described to a significant degree. As J.L. Austin said, commenting on Aristotle:

“Though of course we can speak of a man as the substantive with which

naturally goes is or a similar word: a man is only called

because his life is so.”92 Aquinas agrees, and speaks of life in two senses. The first is as “the very being of the living” (ipsum esse viventis), the opposite of which is death. The second sense of vita is the relevant one here. According to it: “…life means the activity (operatio) of the living, by which operation the principle of life is made actual: thus we speak of active and contemplative life, or of a life of pleasure. And in this sense eternal life is said to be the last end.”93

I will abbreviate this second sense as meaning a “form” or “way of life”. The opposite of it is not death, but rival forms of life. But “living one’s life” refers to taking part in “the activity of the living.” I do not live a life by doing nothing; I must be engaged in something. What I am characteristically engaged in or intent upon will characterize my life as belonging to a certain kind of “activity” (e.g., contemplative or theoretical, active or productive, hedonistic, etc.) Aquinas writes: “Life signifies here the activity (operatio) on which a man is chiefly intent.” And: “the life of every man would seem to be that wherein he delights most, and on which he is most intent.”94 To characteristically engage in x kind of activity is to adopt the x “way of life” with its own stated or implied “rule of life” (vitae regulas). This “rule” stands as the means to the agent’s intended “ultimate end”, and the way of life is the activity or motion directed to that end or rest point. To grasp happiness as an activity we must construe it as the characteristic activity of a certain kind of life. Hence to live the happy life will be to characteristically engage in the right kind of activity, and the “activity” of happiness will be the activity of one’s life if it is of the right kind.95 But what is this “right kind”? As should come with no surprise,

Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that the right kind is virtuous activity. The happy life (at least, in its earthly form) just is the life of virtuous activity in which one’s capacities are developed in the pursuit of and while progressing toward perfection.

1.1.3 The Relationship Between Virtue and Happiness

Aquinas distinguishes between perfect and imperfect happiness. Perfect or completed happiness is the state of one fully actualized who needs no further perfecting.

As will be more fully explained later on, perfect happiness is reserved to the beatific vision.96 Agents in the process of perfecting themselves have imperfect happiness. This process of perfecting takes place by virtuous actions bringing the agent’s capacities from potential to act. Connaturally, this occurs through acts of the acquired moral virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, as well as the intellectual virtues.

Supernaturally, it occurs through the acts of the infused cardinal and theological virtues as well as the gifts of the Holy Spirit.97

Since virtuous actions are what perfect the agent, it follows that such perfection as the partially happy agent has is constituted by acting virtuously.98 It is important to see virtuous activity as constituting rather than merely effecting happiness. If virtuous acts were means which effected happiness as the end, and that is all there were to it, they would not constitute happiness. Even if they were the necessary means to happiness, that does not mean they would constitute it – any more than payment of cash constitutes the item that is purchased. If this latter relation were the true one, the virtues would be extrinsically related to happiness.

While virtuous acts as means do the perfecting, the happiness attained is not a bare, featureless, or abstract state. Since the virtuous acts are the constituents of

happiness, they partake in the character of that which they constitute. It is rather like saying that if my body parts are constituents in my human form, they participate in the form they help constitute. Perfection is therefore characterized by, rather than merely the result of, the properties particular to the virtues whose acts are doing the perfecting. We may therefore predicate symmetrical relations between the virtuous life and the happy life. The life of justice, temperance, fortitude, prudence, science, and understanding is the happy life, and vice-versa. Predominant exercise of some virtues would entail a predominant quality in the happiness of a given agent.

J.L. Ackrill has illustrated the sense in which virtuous activity relates to happiness as an intrinsic rather than extrinsic means. He goal was to debunk misreadings of

Aristotle, but his point would apply equally to Aquinas. Ackrill demonstrates the point with an analogy from golf. He notes that one putts the golf ball “for the sake” of playing golf, and one plays golf “for the sake of” having a good vacation.99 But putting is not a means to playing golf the way buying a golf club is. Putting is itself playing golf, and golfing is itself part of having a good vacation. Putting is to golf, and golfing is to my vacation, a constitutive rather than a merely instrumental means. Virtuous activity is likewise both the means to happiness and itself constitutes happiness. Concretely they overlap, yet analytically the constituent means-end relations can be discerned.

Virtuous acts are therefore done for their own sakes, and further and ultimately done for the sake of happiness. (As golfing is done “for its own sake” but also “for the sake of a good vacation” of which it is a constituent.) The first claim rules out a purely

instrumentalist attitude toward the virtues. The second makes clear that the virtues are internally rather than externally related to the happiness they comprise.

Like Aristotle, Aquinas believes that the happy life is characteristically enjoyable, and I have called this the “fulfillment criterion” for happiness. The virtuous person is said to habitually enjoy acting justly, temperately, bravely, and so forth. The one who simply

“grits his teeth” while doing what morality requires is not yet virtuous, and to say such grudging duties constituted happiness would be a cruel joke. To have a virtue is to characteristically do what belongs to that virtue habitually and with a certain ease, promptness, and pleasure that eludes the merely continent. As Aquinas puts it: “he that has a habit of virtue easily performs the works of that virtue, and those works are pleasing to him for their own sake: hence "pleasure taken in a work is a sign of habit".100

The qualification that the virtuous “characteristically” enjoy virtue and are pained by vice is important. Impediments hinder this facility: the sleepy may find their wisdom elusive, the sick may find their affability flagging. But this hindering occurs with all habits, and does not prove that they are either flimsy or absent. What marks the virtuous apart is not that they infallibly enjoy acting virtuously, but that they habitually do. To take just one illustration: many people have experienced the hospitality of two very different kinds of host. The first lacks a certain naturalness in playing the host, looks rather cramped or grudging about the whole situation, looks to the clock for it to be over, and smiles brightest when the guests rise to leave. The second overflows with delighted welcoming, an open larder, and the overall sense of “making us at home”. Only the

second has the virtue proper to the occasion, and this is a real difference of character.

Obviously the gracious host in fatigue, grief, or sickness might not brim over in the same way, and yet the reason why characteristic enjoyment is lacking differs from why it is lacking in the inhospitable host. The gracious host exercising the virtue of hospitality is more morally developed in this area, and this tracks the “development criterion” for happiness. The gracious host also finds the works of hospitality more enjoyable than the stingy host, and this tracks the “fulfillment criterion” for happiness. With regard to the latter, Hursthouse has described it as an analytically elusive but experientially discernable

“smile factor” present in the exercise of virtue.101

The pattern repeats itself in various virtues. As Jean Porter has noted, the virtue of honesty is not a neutral means to friendship. The mutual confidence the virtue inspires is both fulfilling and helps constitute the good of friendship. The character trait that makes me trusted as someone trustworthy, and that makes me trust my friend as trustworthy, is a constituent or ingredient in the good of friendship with its activities. Likewise, the virtue of fidelity is not just a neutral means to a stable marriage; the fidelity is itself an constituent in a good marriage. And so forth with the various virtues.102

If virtuous activities are characteristically enjoyable to the virtuous, what about a virtue like fortitude which confronts danger and death? The brave soldier may jump on a grenade to save his or her platoon. Are we really going to say that this act of fortitude is a constituent in the soldier’s happiness? When it comes to fortitude both Aristotle and

Aquinas lower our expectations of virtuous enjoyment.103 They fully note that in the debit

column danger and death give rise to acute pain. But they claim that in the credit column the courageous experience satisfaction at the level of the will and mind. Presumably this will consist in the will and intellect’s satisfaction in helping preserve a great and beloved good, whether it is one’s family, polis, the Church, or duty to God. Famous and stirring examples of this exist. Consider the death of Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar who defeated the fleet Napoleon had prepared for the invasion of England. On the eve of battle Nelson raised a flag with the words: “England expects that every man will do his duty.” At the moment of victory, Nelson was shot, fell to the deck, and said to his next-in-command:

“Hardy, I do believe they have done it at last… my backbone is shot through.” As he lay dying, Nelson repeatedly muttered "Thank God I have done my duty." His dying words were “God and my country.”104 One has the sense that duty tinged with patriotic sentiment but ultimately conceived as devotion to the common good and service to God was Nelson’s finis ultimus: one which made the regula vitae or standard by which he evaluated his life as successful in its final moments.

A similar example from the same period is General James Wolfe, long-regarded by English-speaking Canada as its founding figure. After scaling what were thought to be the inaccessible heights of Quebec City, Wolfe’s vastly outnumbered army decisively beat the celebrated Montcalm. Wolfe led from the front, was shot three times, and lay dying.

"See how they run." one of the officers exclaimed, as the French fled in confusion before the leveled bayonets. "Who run?" demanded Wolfe, opening his eyes like a man aroused from sleep. "The enemy, sir," was the reply; "they give way everywhere."

"Then," said the dying general, "tell Colonel River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge. Now, God be praised, I die contented," he murmured; and, turning on his side, he calmly breathed his last breath.105

Like Nelson, the concepts of duty, the common good, patriotism, and grateful service to God dominate the life of Wolfe. Both men “die contented” even though their deaths close the way to future contentment for them. Their last act of fortitude is itself regarded by them as the final if costly constituent in the kind of happy life they tried to lead.106 As the last and defining act of their lives, both men die thanking God that their life has been a success and they regard it as such because it has measured up to the comprehensive standard they judged it by.

Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that a unified, temporally extensive concept of one’s self is possible only if unity is embedded in a narrative that shows the persistence of the self over the vastly different phases of development, ages, and roles of one’s life.

Discrete actions are regarded as “episodes” in a narrative which has both a beginning, middle, and end, and which is characterized as belonging to a certain “genre”.107 That notion of “genre” in life roughly accords with what I see as the regula vitae conferred by one’s believed-in ultimate end. Certain features are required in a genre, and only a narrative that exhibits these can be regarded as a successful novel, poem, or drama. The soldier on the battlefield may take satisfaction in the act of fortitude to the extent that it fits into and gives definitive shape to his life as a “success” within the proper genre. (In this case, the “heroic” genre devoted to the higher good.)108 The point is not to make such 52

deaths look glamorous or pleasant. Obviously on the debit side enormous pain and loss will follow the courageous person dealing with danger and death. Aristotle and Aquinas both agree that pain may grip the agent so badly that the best he can do (without supernatural help, Aquinas adds) is to not be swamped by dejection.109 But even then some satisfaction in the act of virtue is possible. Likely this flows from the thought of benefitting the common good one loves and for which the sacrifice is being made, and from deeming one’s life a success or “lived well” partly in light of that last act.

The overall proposal is that virtuous acts are constituents in the good and happy life. This is so whether one’s life belongs more to the “active” genre, or to the

“contemplative” genre. Following Aristotle, Aquinas sees the virtuous life as being embedded in a form where either active or contemplative pursuits predominate. He therefore distinguishes between “active happiness” with the virtues that constitute it, and

“contemplative happiness” with its own virtues. The former is the life characteristically devoted to “external actions”, and the latter focuses upon “contemplation of truth”.110

The active is the form of life common to most people today: carpenters, farmers, policemen, engineers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, parents, and so forth. The happiness of this life is constituted especially by the moral or cardinal virtues: by acts of prudence, justice, and so forth, as exhibited in acts of working, building, buying, selling, planning, serving, etc. The contemplative is the life of leisure proper to scholars and contemplatives devoted to theoretical inquiry and research. Its happiness is constituted by virtues such as wisdom, science, and understanding. Aquinas also acknowledges that there is a “mixed

life” somewhere between active and contemplative, and that elements of the contemplative life may exist in the active and vice-versa.111 The consideration of active and contemplative happiness shows that Aquinas’ ethics is not just an abstract formula. It takes concrete shape in the sort of practical and theoretical lifestyles and vocations we recognize as both familiar and desirable. These are particular enough to show that virtue ethics can be concretely embedded in a certain kind of life, but general enough not to rule out human complexity through eccentric overdetermination of what the virtuous life should look like.

According to Aquinas, all forms of happiness are incomplete in this life. Only in future beatitude can we attain perfect happiness. He writes:

A certain participation of Happiness can be had in this life: but perfect and true Happiness cannot be had in this life. This may be seen from a twofold consideration. First, from the general notion of happiness. For since happiness is a "perfect and sufficient good," it excludes every evil, and fulfils every desire. But in this life every evil cannot be excluded…Likewise neither can the desire for good be satiated in this life… Wherefore it is impossible to have true Happiness in this life.112

Imperfect but not perfect happiness can be had in this life. But even as imperfect,

Aquinas thinks happiness varies in extent and quality, and can be diminished or even lost.

Contemplative happiness can be lost through grave sickness, mental decline, or a life so busy that research falls by the wayside. Active happiness can also be lost if the person falls from virtue into vice. Furthermore, it can be “disturbed” (perturbare) through forms of illness or misfortune which “hinder many acts of virtue.”113 This claim follows from the previous analysis. If virtuous acts constitute happiness, cessation of those acts will 54

correspondingly reduce or remove the kind of happiness those acts constituted. For

Aquinas, the happiness of this life is therefore rich and worthwhile, but it is also incomplete and perturbable. There thus exists what I will call a “eudaimonia gap.” In the next section I will explain the nature of this gap and argue that it is not just stipulated by

Aquinas, but that naturalistic philosophers also acknowledge it and regard it as a serious but insoluble problem. I will then argue that the eudaimonia gap leaves a clear place for hope to contribute to the happy life since hope promises that the gap can ultimately be overcome.

1.2 The Eudaimonia Gap

The last section proposed with Aquinas that the life of natural happiness consists in virtuous activity and is a rich, admirable, and worthwhile life. I therefore disagree with Augustine’s claim that “all men, so long as they are mortal, must necessarily also be wretched.”114 Nevertheless, this eudaimonia suffers from inevitable limitations which rankle, and these leave a certain gap, lacuna, or empty space within it. I will refer to this as the “eudaimonia gap.” By this term I mean that happiness is available but limited by significant impediments which seem inherent to our embodied finitude with its vulnerability to fortune. There is a gap we would be rid of, but which naturalistic ethics generally resigns itself to.115 To flesh this out I will draw upon Aristotle and two prominent contemporary neo-Aristotelians, Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse. Since my dissertation concerns happiness and virtue, these are natural philosophical 55

interlocutors. I will show that each of these philosophers acknowledges unfortunate limits to happiness from within the perspective of naturalism, and argue that they are correct to do so.

Granted this eudaimonia gap, theology’s proposal that a more perfect form of happiness is available is in an interesting position. The gap itself does not entail the existence of an object which could fill it (as Matthew Arnold wrote: “Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread”). But it does suggest that if a plausible candidate for filling the gap could be found that this would be “good news” rather than just “curious news” to us. Since theological hope proposes just this possibility, my argument is that the eudaimonia gap shows there to be real space in the human condition for hope to meaningfully occupy – that hope would make a recognizable contribution to the happy life if available. This makes it much more plausible to say that grace perfects nature, and to portray hope as a genuine virtue rather than an irrelevance or even a hindrance. Having sketched the eudaimonia gap and argued that it leaves space for hope to occupy, the next chapter will then detail how it is that hope fills that space, and what it is that hope contributes to happiness.

1.2.1 Aristotle and the Limits of Happiness

Aristotle believed that happiness does not consist in the goods of fortune, bodily goods, or even the possession of the virtues.116 Like Aquinas, he describes happiness as

“living in accordance with the virtues.”117 This requires some of the goods of fortune: minimally as raw material for exercising certain virtues, and maximally because certain goods are themselves needed for the happy life. The consequence is that eudaimonia must not suffer too much from what Aristotle calls impediments (empodia) to virtuous activity.118 The scope of eudaimonia itself is not just a favored year or decade, but a completed life.119 As Julia Annas puts it, eudaimonia for Aristotle is “a lifetime’s virtuous activity.”120 Happiness is thus not a future reward, like a happy retirement. As J.L.

Ackrill notes, eudaimonia is best thought of as “living well” in what amounts to “the best possible life” for a person.121

As an end of ends, eudaimonia is sought wholly for its own sake rather than as a means to any further end, and it is self-sufficient and most choiceworthy. One may seek something for the sake of happiness, but one does not seek happiness as a means to something else. So Aristotle does not regard as mistaken the popular view that happiness is deeply enjoyable and fulfilling.122 Unlike the merely continent, the virtuous characteristically enjoy acting virtuously. Pleasure is “unimpeded activity, or what perfects an activity.”123 Having the habit that disposes to virtuous activity, the virtuous therefore engage in those activities in a characteristically unimpeded and pleasurable way. “For a good man qua good delights in virtuous actions and is vexed at vicious ones, as a musical man enjoys beautiful tunes but is pained at bad ones.”124 As violinists characteristically enjoy the exercise of their skill and shudder at a false note, so the virtuous characteristically enjoy the exercise of virtue and feel repulsion toward vice.

From this is follows that the happy life is characteristically enjoyable, and that being virtuous, its enjoyments are of the best kind.125

Aristotle holds that goals, activities, and virtues are on a scale not just of good versus bad, but of good, better, and best. In the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics he seems to say that eudaimonia – or the best kind of it – will be in accord with the best kind of virtuous activity. This will correspond to the peculiar function (ergon) of humans as rational animals: a function preeminently noble (kalon) and even divine (theion). The peculiar ergon of humans is reason (nous). So the most complete (teleion) form of eudaimonia will be devoted to this function.126 What this amounts to depends upon a further distinction between theoretical and practical reason. Practical reason and its virtue of phronesis deliberate about means ordered to ends other than themselves. By contrast, theoretical reason with its virtue of sophia is “loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action.”127 In a much-debated passage of Nicomachean Ethics Book X,

Aristotle appears to conclude that the summit of eudaimonia is a life devoted to theoretical reason (theoretike energeia) or the contemplative life. As a genuine exercise of human virtue, the life of action and practical wisdom is also happy, but happy “in a secondary degree”.128

It is here that problems arise for the scope of eudaimonia. Unlike Plato, Aristotle thinks that the human is not a soul with a body, but that the substance of the human is a body-soul composite. Plato’s Socrates defiantly told his persecutors that “No one can

harm a good man either in life or death.”129 As is well-known, a certain mind-body dualism is behind this claim. Aristotle’s hylomorphic model of embodiment allows no such insulation from luck since it leaves the body and therefore the self vulnerable to fortune. It follows that the virtuous activity the happy person instantiates is likewise vulnerable; one who “meets with fortunes like Priam’s” really is harmed. Since eudaimonia is virtuous activity, it follows that possession of the virtues as such does not suffice for happiness.130

Not only is tragedy an impediment to eudaimonia. Our very nature as a body-soul

“composite” (synthetou) will not allow us to live an unhindered contemplative life.131 The body’s demandingness and the world it entangles us in are themselves impediments to the contemplative life. We need food, exercise, and various externals to pursue theoretical activity. As political animals our community imposes various duties upon us; so even the contemplative must perform many acts of the moral virtues “in so far as he is a man and lives with a number of people”.132 But Aristotle regards these are interruptions: “they are, one may say, even impediments (empodiai), at all events to his contemplation.”133 This is a live problem for someone living the contemplative life since for such a one “happiness extends just so far as contemplation does.”134 So even barring serious bad luck our composite nature means that contemplative happiness hits a certain ceiling. The chronic neediness and frailty of the body and the interruptions of ordinary life mean that contemplative activity will be intermittent, frequently hindered, and restricted in scope.135

As is well-known, there is a great deal of debate over just how privileged contemplation is in Aristotle’s overall account of eudaimonia, and whether Book X of the

Nicomachean Ethics may be in tension with the rest of the Aristotelian corpus on this point. I favor the view that Aristotle depicts contemplation as one part (i.e.: the best part) of eudaimonia (i.e.: the best form of eudaimonia).136 But it is important to note that resolving this dispute is not essential to my account since Aristotle is clear that the active or so-called “secondary” form of happiness is even more dependent upon externals and contingencies than contemplative happiness is. So however the contemplative and active questions are resolved, the impediments envisaged for eudaimonia will apply to both.137

It is therefore important to note that these impediments to eudaimonia exist in some degree even in the absence of tragedy. Aristotle notes that it is not just the person

“who meets with fortune’s like Priam’s” whose happy life has problems. Impediments to eudaimonia include more familiar and frequent woes than Priam’s or than “death on the rack.” Seeking to show how Aristotle differs from Plato in taking human vulnerability seriously, Martha Nussbaum has copiously documented those things which Aristotle regards as impeding eudaimonia. These include states such as contrary passions, weariness, sickness, diminishing enjoyments, political problems, and tensions or failures in one’s friendships and in one’s relationships generally.138 The fact that these impediments may in various ways afflict one’s family, friends, and polis implicates one to some degree in their misfortunes as well; for Aristotle regards it as a “very unfriendly doctrine” that misfortune to a person with whom the eudaimon is in community “should

not affect his happiness at all.”139 Not only does their misfortune mar my enjoyment, but hindrances to their virtuous activities hinder my own insofar as we engage in them together. The upshot is that impediments to a friend or fellow’s happiness may also hinder my own eudaimonia, yet without abolishing it.140 All of these “impediments”

(empodiai) are more familiar and frequent aspects of the eudaimonia gap, and show that one does not just have to be plunged in tragedy to have one’s eudaimonia regrettably cramped and pinched, even if it remains intact, admirable, and worthwhile on the whole.

Aristotle does not dwell upon the point, but the inevitability of aging, decline, and death both for oneself and one’s fellows also seems to be a serious problem to the eudaimon life. I will return to this point in the last chapter when discussing the art of dying.

The consequence of having a composite nature is that the happy and virtuous will at some point hit the downward trajectory of eudaimonia. Absent crippling debilitation, I am not suggesting that Aristotle sees happiness as in danger of being voided. But if eudaimonia is virtuous activity, then for the many who undergo significant mental and physical decline – especially near or at death – it would follow that impediments to eudaimonia would begin to quite problematically build up. As I will later flesh out, this makes pagan eudaimonia quite different from Christian beatitude with its eschatological telos. For in eschatological language, Aristotle’s is a fully rather than partly “realized” eudaimonia: the happy life is an “already” with no “not yet”.

Despite talk of impediments to happiness, and nods to what I have called the eudaimonia gap, Aristotle insists that we should not lower our aspirations. In the teeth of

limitations posed by our composite nature Aristotle flings out a kind of defiance: “We must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and being mortal, of mortal things, but we must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us.”141

This “best thing in us” is for Aristotle our theoretical reason (nous). In what can only be taken as exultant hyperbole Aristotle even claims that our nous “would seem actually to be each man, since it is the authoritative and better part of him.” By living the contemplative life we identify with theoretical reason, which is the part of our composite nature that is akin to the gods. Yet the life which a purely rational being would be capable of we are not fully capable of due to the noted impediments. “Such a life would be too high for man; for it is no in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present within him.” We can get much of the happiness possible to a rational being, but not all of it due to our composite nature.

Perfect eudaimonia itself is reserved to Aristotle’s purely contemplative gods.

Compared to their eudaimonia our own measure of happiness is rather modest. By identifying with our nous (“this would seem to actually be each man”) we are, so to speak, playing at being Aristotelian gods. The pretense of “immortalizing” will ultimately be shattered by our composite nature with its vulnerability and mortality, but the identification-exercise has an elevating effect. It leads us to “strain every nerve” to approximate something whose full attainment will ultimately elude us. Yet without this straining we would achieve less. It is analogous to a bit actor imitating a genius of the

stage to heighten his performance, or to the ascetic aspiration to live like an angel while knowing that we will remain “all too human.” Looking up to God and the gods as the paradigms of perfect eudaimonia, Aristotle concludes: “we are happy, but only as men”.142 At this point it is clear that this has the tone of a phrase such as “we are tall, but only as midgets”.

None of this is to imply that Aristotle’s account of happiness is tinged with regret.

He lacked the existentialist temperament and focused on the share of eudaimonia we could attain. That the eudaimonia gap does not make Aristotle give way to melancholy resignation fits in with the aspirations and exertions he sees as proper to the magnanimous person who rises to great and lofty occasions. Perfect eudaimonia may be

“too high for man” due to our composite nature.143 Nevertheless, Aristotle’s aspiration is to overcome the eudaimonia gap by “making ourselves immortal:” i.e., to overcome the gap “so far as we can.”144 The will to overcome the gap is there, even if the means are somewhat wanting.

1.5 Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and the Neo-Aristotelian Limits to

Happiness

I now turn to the characterization of the eudaimonia gap among neo-Aristotelians and virtue ethicists for whom Aristotle is – as he was for Aquinas – something like “the

Philosopher.” The story of the rise of virtue ethics over the past fifty years is well-known.

Elizabeth’s Anscombe’s 1958 “Modern Moral Philosophy” is usually seen as the first major modern summons for an Aristotelian alternative to Kantian and utilitarian dead- ends.145 The subsequent work of Peter Geach and Philippa Foot helped put virtue ethics on the map, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue solidified its status as a credible “third way” in moral philosophy. It has since been taken up by innumerable others, from philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum, Julia Annas, John McDowell, Rosalind

Hursthouse, and Michael Slote, to theologians from Servais Pinckaers and Stanley

Hauerwas to Jean Porter. There are Platonic, Stoic, and even Humean types of virtue theory, but my focus here is with the more common and in my opinion more cogent

Aristotelian kind.146 Rejecting dualistic immunities from fortune, neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists have likewise had to wrestle with the eudaimonia gap. In what follows I will examine the influential figures of Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse, probing why they thought happiness suffers from certain limits, and why they even consider something like Christian hope as a conceivable solution.

1.2.2 Philippa Foot

In the work of Philippa Foot the eudaimonia gap is frankly acknowledged as a problem. The story of how she gets to this conclusion is as follows. Foot’s 2001 Natural

Goodness is the culmination of decades of pioneering work in contemporary virtue ethics. It seeks to show how virtue conduces to the human flourishing or happiness. The

eudaimonia gap re-surfaces in her work, but now it is less about general impediments that limit happiness (these are taken as a given), and more about misfortunes which may destroy it. Since these hang on contingencies we cannot transcend, Foot’s melancholy conclusion is that the unlucky may have to forgo happiness. Still more interesting for my project are Foot’s cryptic hints that Christian hope, if it were available, might have resources to help address the eudaimonia gap in a more satisfactory manner.

The core of Foot’s later work is the return of a qualified teleology to virtue ethics and eudaimonism. She argues that our moral judgments as to whether something is good or bad for a person require a kind of naturalism according to which terms like “good” and

“bad” are known as such with reference to what benefits our species or life-form. The so- called “naturalistic fallacy” of G.E. Moore made this avenue seem a dead-end, but Foot draws on the logical work of Peter Geach to claim that Moore was mistaken. Moore spoke of “goodness” as an abstract property. In Foot’s view this is a non-starter since: “In most contexts, ‘good’ requires to be complemented by a noun that plays an essential role in determining whether we are able to speak of goodness rather than badness.”147 The adjective “good” should not be construed as predicative adjective, as in the sentences “the horse is good” or “friendship is good.” It should be thought of as an attributive adjective, as in the sentences “a good horse” or “a good friend.” This is because there is no “good” in the abstract just as there is no “small” or “large” in the abstract. There are only good particulars, like a good horse or good cactus, and the measure by which they are judged good or not is species-specific. When applied to humans, the implication is that morality

and nature are much closer than they appeared. Where this ties into Foot’s own work is in her attempt to show that morality-as-virtue and happiness-as-natural are inseparably related. This presupposes that humans are distinctly rational. So while physical needs and ends set many parameters for human life, our mode of deliberating, envisaging, foreseeing, and planning make it false to think that morality is thereby collapsed into biology.148

Foot claims that happiness is the kind of flourishing proper to the human species.

To live a happy life is to live a virtuous and enjoyable one. For her, happiness is “the enjoyment of good things, meaning enjoyment in attaining, and in pursuing, right ends.”

Pursuing and attaining occur through activities, and enjoyment is of activities. So this brings Foot close to Aristotle’s definition of happiness as “activity in conformity with the virtues” that is characteristically enjoyable.149

Happiness is the human good and to display how something good is happy- making Foot employs the concept of benefit. Her claim is that something benefits an agent if it conduces to their flourishing and to that extent makes them happy. Only the virtuous pursue, attain, and enjoy the right things in the right way. Since doing just that is the primary aspect of happiness, the virtues are beneficial or happy-making. This provides Foot with a tool for distinguishing real from apparent happiness. For example,

Foot mentions Frederick and Rosemary West, serial killers who did not even spare their own children. Could they have lived a happy life? Just possibly might have claimed to be so, in that they subjectively enjoyed the life of serial killing. But Foot says it would be

absurd to say that vicious enjoyment of this bloodshed benefited them qua human and social animals. Foot uses this example to illustrate the claim that virtues benefit the agent whereas vices do not: that the virtues are “conceptually inseparable (from true happiness)”.150

This is an edifying conclusion that fully accords with Aristotle and his heirs. But it also raises troubling questions. For instance, what does Foot make of virtues such as justice and courage which may get someone fired, harmed, persecuted, tortured, or killed? Certainly they may benefit the community, but can we say the courageous themselves are benefited by acts that get them harmed, or flourish through acts that get them killed? This brings Foot into an internecine debate between Aristotelians. The dispute is over which of the following best describes the eudaimon overtaken by tragedy:

1) they lose eudaimonia and fall into misery,151 2) their eudaimonia is diminished but not abolished, or 3) they lose no eudaimonia but rather “blessedness” (makarios) construed as a kind of “eudaimonia plus”: i.e., eudaimonia plus some of the goods of fortune and characteristic enjoyment seen as a kind of “luster” or “adornment” supervening on eudaimonia itself.152 With Martha Nussbaum and against T.H. Irwin and Julia Annas,

Foot argues for position 1). But 1) raises the specter of virtue being in conflict with happiness. If that were the case, virtue ethics and eudaimonism might have to part ways at the experimentum crucis; this would wreck Foot’s project in Natural Goodness.

Position 1) also raises the question of whether virtue is an essential or merely contingent

benefit to humans: i.e., whether virtue’s benefitting properties are ultimately at the mercy of fortune.

Foot wrestles with these problems, and locates a set of exemplars who help navigate the tension. They are a group of young German men who were imprisoned and killed for bravely resisting the Nazis, and whose thoughts are recorded in letters sent to their sweethearts and families. The letters were later published in a book called Dying We

Live.153 Foot calls them the Letter-Writers, and describes them as exceptionally virtuous and suited to a happy life. Out of justice and sustained by fortitude they refuse to go along with Nazi demands and this leads to imprisonment and execution. So did their virtues make them sacrifice their happiness, Foot asks? It seems so. They lost their families, loved ones, and future. Should they have sacrificed their virtues in pursuit of happiness, and given in to Nazi demands? Foot replies no: they would not even have felt that happiness could be found by abandoning the virtuous course.154

Foot thinks two essentials are required for happiness: a) a virtuous way of life or virtuous activity, and b) characteristic enjoyment. But it looks as though costly virtues such as justice and courage may cause a) and b) to come apart. If so, virtue might in a strange twist backfire on the very happiness it conduces to and for which conducement it is deemed an objective benefit in the first place. In such a situation the relationship between virtue and happiness may look competitive. This leads to the dark question of whether one might have to pick one at the expense of the other should push come to shove. Foot rejects such a proposal. Since true happiness requires virtue, one cannot seek

happiness by vicious courses. She notes that “only goodness can achieve” eudaimonia, but “by one of the evil chances of life it may be out of the reach of even the best of men.”155 So the virtuous agent in tragedy does not seek virtue over happiness. Fortune makes it “that a happy life had turned out not to be possible for him. We cannot ignore this interpretation… if we identify happiness with the human good.”156 To put it in double-effect language, the eudaimon in tragedy intends virtue while foreseeing but not intending the probable loss of eudaimonia.

The consequence of Foot’s view is that happiness is ultimately contingent on fortune. The unlucky experience not just a eudaimonia gap but a eudaimonia voiding.

Faced with tragedy, the virtuous must sadly forgo happiness. At least this is Foot’s theoretical view. But her actual set of exemplars raise another possibility which she finds tantalizing if personally off-limits. It is the possibility of Christian hope.

The Nazi-resisting Letter Writers who comprise Foot’s test case are supposed to illustrate the theoretical points about what happiness requires and how the virtuous may have to forgo it. Imprisoned and awaiting execution for their witness, they are Foot’s equivalent of Aristotle’s “man on the rack” who cannot possibly be happy. Yet Foot notes an anomaly in her test case: her exemplars do not actually seem to be unhappy, so that the hypothesis and the evidence are in tension. Making clear that she is a “card- carrying atheist,” Foot nevertheless feels she must point out that: “Readers of these letters have been struck by the extraordinary sense of happiness they radiate, which has perhaps to do with the fact that practically all the writers were devout Christians (with belief in)

God”.157 The letters are in fact replete with Christian hope. Because of this hope the

Letter Writers believe that virtue does not require them to forgo happiness as such.

Without denying that they are experiencing great loss now, they nevertheless believe their virtuous course will ultimately lead to a complete and irrevocable attainment of happiness. Hence the apt title for their collected letters: Dying We Live. The

“extraordinary sense of happiness they radiate” makes it clear that hope does not just make them trust in future happiness; hope also confers a certain present happiness even amid tragedy. The motto of Foot’s exemplars could easily be the Scriptural phrase

“rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation” (Romans 12:12).

The first part of this chapter argued that the virtues are internal means, constituents, or ingredients in happiness itself. Foot’s test case gives room for the view that hope is just such a virtue, a fact seen by its help in partly bridging the eudaimonia gap. This is the key behind what Foot calls “the extraordinary sense of happiness (the

Letter-Writers) radiate”; a sense which she cannot explain, but which simply says

“puzzled (me) for years”.158

The source of her puzzlement seems pretty clear. On the one hand, Foot qua virtue theorist sees that hope really is happy-making for those who have it, and that hopeful agents may find a better solution to misfortune than a melancholy resignation to forgo happiness while clinging to a praiseworthy virtuousness. On the other hand, Foot qua atheist is puzzled that a hope for which she sees no grounds contributes so clearly to the human good. I see in this corroboration for my claim that there is space in nature for

hope as a virtue of grace to do just what Foot says the virtues should do: to benefit us.

Foot’s view that happiness is only for the lucky and that the unlucky have to forgo happiness is something she is not at peace with but is ultimately resigned to as the best naturalism can do. Yet her account of the eudaimonia gap shows she is at the same time she is intrigued by a more attractive possibility founded on hope.

1.2.3 Rosalind Hursthouse

My final philosophical witness to the eudaimonia gap is Rosalind Hursthouse. Her

1999 book On Virtue Ethics has been described by Simon Blackburn, Roger Crisp, and others as the defining and comprehensive exposition of virtue ethics. It shares with Foot’s

Natural Goodness the goal of tethering virtue and eudaimonia to naturalism. But its proposals for how to achieve this are far more detailed and programmatic.

Hursthouse claims that virtue ethics can be made objective using three theses. In order, they are: 1) the virtues benefit their possessor by enabling eudaimonia, 2) the virtues make their possessor a good human being, and 3) the two theses interrelate in that what is happy-making for an agent coincides with what makes the agent good qua human: i.e., as a rational and social animal of a species-specific kind.159 The virtues benefit by making the appetites, needs, parts, and operations of a human well-endowed for attaining their four main natural ends. These in turn are: 1) individual survival, 2) continuance of the species, 3) characteristic freedom from pain and characteristic

enjoyment, and 4) the flourishing of the social group. The human being enabled by virtue who attains these four ends is eudaimon.160

Well aware of the problems posed by luck, Hursthouse insists that this claim is a general rather than an infallible truth. All virtues are not always enjoyable. Nor is virtue sufficient for eudaimonia anyway. Honesty and charity foster individual and social goods but in some cases they may get someone harmed or killed. So the virtues do not necessarily secure happiness. But just as a “health regimen” is our best chance for attaining health, so a virtuous life is the “only reliable bet” for attaining happiness. The health example is pertinent. It is a general truth that regular exercise, good eating, and quitting smoking conduce to health. This obtains even though in a particular case someone might live healthily but still die young of health problems or an accident. The relation of virtue to happiness works similarly:

The claim is not that possession of the virtues guarantees that one will flourish. The claim is that they are the only reliable bet – even though, it is agreed, I might be unlucky and, precisely because of my virtue, wind up dying early or with my life marred or ruined.161

Hursthouse’s view is therefore quite similar to Foot’s – though more fully elaborated – when it comes to the relation of virtue and happiness, and the possibility of the virtuous having to forgo happiness. But as with Foot, she acknowledges that religious hope may give resources for believing that happiness need not be forgone through virtuous behavior after all, and that this would be a valuable contribution if available.162

In addition to providing this much space for hope, Hursthouse also sees it as indispensable for a second reason. Her naturalism presupposes that the parts of human 72

moral psychology work cooperatively toward the same goal like well-conducted musicians playing together in an orchestra. But she cites and grapples with arguments against the view. Characteristic is the claim of Bernard Williams that: “(in) adding rationality to our social animality, nature has produced a sadly flawed and divided creature, an ‘ill-assorted bricolage of powers and instincts’”.163 Hursthouse takes this challenge of inner division seriously, and entertains various examples for it. For instance, child-rearing may foster the continuance of the species and the good of the social group.

But what if the demands of child-rearing frustrate the agent’s characteristic experience of enjoyment and freedom from pain? In that case, natural ends 2) and 4) can only come at the expense of 3), making us indeed look “sadly flawed and divided.” Williams’ famous case of the painter Gaugain makes a related point. In this case, the drive to develop one’s talents and pursue one’s deepest aspirations may ultimately conflict with the good of one’s family or community.

Whether to have children or not, whether to work or stay at home with the children, whether to put creativity and career over one’s family: such cases are not the stuff of tragedy; they betoken the inner conflict and competing demands which countless people see and experience as jeopardizing any comprehensive happiness. Williams pessimistically maintains that: “Humans beings are to some degree a mess… beings for whom no form of life is likely to prove entirely satisfactory, either individually or socially.”164 The conclusion is that the sort of comprehensive happiness that is eudaimonia only comes through “astonishing luck.” But something so unsure and

unstable can hardly be made the basis of ethics. With the eudaimonia gap recast as a eudaimonia abyss, the project of bridging that gap in any reliable way looks quixotic, and eudaimonism itself a failed project.

Hursthouse chastised this view as a form of “tragic despair,” and calls upon her readers to fight it. After all, the claim that the virtues benefit their possessors by conducing to eudaimonia is one we are deeply invested in. Don’t good parents give a moral education to their children which through a stock of traditional stories and fairy tales implies that the virtuous are characteristically better off and more happy than the vicious? We teach that the brave, loving, and loyal hero or heroine, not the treacherous friend or wicked step-mother, should and generally does end happily. If we did not believe the virtues characteristically benefitted their possessors, the moral education which benign parents give would be fraudulent. This is not an argument, of course: but does Hursthouse takes it as an appeal to necessity. The necessity is that we must give this kind of moral education to our children on peril of forming them to live by “counsels of despair.”165

Rather than despairing, Hursthouse thinks so few are happy because so few have the measure of virtue needed for eudaimonia. Yet Hursthouse does admit that it is not easy to evade the threat of the natural ends cannibalizing each other and producing inner division. So while she believes her case for virtue ethics is still plausible, she hedges somewhat, concluding: “The fact, if it is a fact, that human nature is, at best, harmonious,

is a highly contingent one. It is a contingent fact, if it is a fact, that we can, individually, flourish or achieve eudaimonia.”166

By hanging everything on this string of ‘ifs’ and ‘at bests’ and ‘extreme contingencies,” Hursthouse exposes her overall case to the law of dwindling probabilities. This might play directly into Williams’ hands, implying that eudaimonia is the result of “astonishing luck” after all. But she rejects this given her commitment to fight despair in ourselves and not pass it down to our children. To prevent such despair,

Hursthouse makes an appeal that from the philosophical point of view is shocking; almost a deus ex machina. Concluding her celebrated book, On Virtue Ethics, she said:

Atheists may find it hard to recognize the point nowadays, but believing that human nature is harmonious is part of the virtue of hope… to believe in (God’s) Providence was part of the virtue of hope; to doubt it is to fall prey to the vice of despair. And that seems to me to be right.”167

Clearly this is a naturalistic rather than a theological hope. Its end is eudaimonia rather than supernatural beatitude, and its source is nature rather than God. Hursthouse wants to retrieve this hope because she thinks the evidence for naturalistic eudaimonism is fair but highly inconclusive; teleological worries hedge it in an improbably long list of admittedly contingent claims. So we need more than just factual belief that nature is harmonious: we need existential hope that this is true. Hursthouse concedes that no theoretically known object of naturalism justifies this hope. The hope is instead justified by its own practical necessity: “hope, as a virtue, is not without its own validation. We could give it a sort of ‘necessary condition of our practice’ justification.”168 Hope almost

becomes a pure postulate of practical reason. The work this hope does is to make us trust that reality is ultimately “for us” in a way that mimics the Christian hope that Providence is “for us.” This guarantees that we pass down to the next generation the belief that the world in which they find themselves is essentially comic rather than tragic.

Teleological worries are Hursthouse’s occasion for retrieving hope. But we must not confuse this occasion for hope with its overall justification - any more than a particular danger which occasions fortitude is the sole justification for fortitude as a virtue. Hursthouse uses hope as a shield for eudaimonism against Darwinian attacks on naturalism. But she does not imply that hope became a virtue only after and because

Darwin published The Origin of the Species. Occasions of despairing in the possibility of eudaimonia are many, and so Hursthouse’s overall justification for hope is the need to resist any such despair. The motto with which she closes her book is: “Keep Hope

Alive.” So even if one thinks that the alleged destabilization of teleology has been overstated by Williams and given too much credit by Hursthouse, her retrieval of hope is of broader relevance.169

In borrowing from a religious virtue, the Egyptians are here trying to despoil the

Christians of their gold. We might gladly share some, but surely the proposal raises serious questions. Hursthouse hopes in nature as though it were beneficently arranged by

Divine Providence. But why? Christians hope in Providence because they believe God is trustworthy. Hursthouse hopes in nature because she is not sure if nature is trustworthy.

She trusts in the nature she doubts because we as human beings have nowhere else to go.

We cannot exit human nature and so “there is no practicable alternative” than hope for those who wish to resist “counsels of despair.” This raises the possibility of asking whether - even if we granted for the sake of argument that the hope were practically justified - there actually does exist an object which makes that hope well-placed. If there is such an object, then hope really does trust in something which merits that trust. If there is no such object, then even if we grant that the hope is justified as a practical necessity, the end of hope is ultimately absurd and tragic.

As Hursthouse tentatively suggests, the perfect conceptual fit for such an object of hope is Divine Providence. Naturalistic hope trusts in nature as if it were providentially

“for us” while unsure of whether it is. Genuine trust in Providence removes this awkward play-acting by proposing an object proportionate to the hope: a genuine Providence which has made creation be actually and not just feignedly “for us.” It is the difference between the trust of those who jump from a window believing a firefighter will catch them, and the trust of those who jump as if they will be caught while having no idea if anybody is there. To specify an object proportionate to the hope Hursthouse sees as a practical necessity would show that the hope was not merely justified, but not in vain.

The implication is that hope as a practical necessity would in every way be strengthened and perfected by the reality and knowledge of an object proportionate to that hope.

Whether hope in Providence is itself justified depends upon further beliefs – not the least of which is whether naturalism is the whole of the human story. But what is clear is that belief in Providence grounds the sort of hope Hursthouse wants far better

than atheistic premises since it affirms and does not merely feign an object proportionate to the hope. Such trust in Providence for the connatural end of eudaimonia would obviously differ from any theological hope for supernatural beatitude. But while distinct, the two are closely related. Trust in Providence is the major presupposition required for theological hope, and to that degree such trust removes a major barrier to theological hope.

Apart from questions of nature, theology would resolve a more live and pressing problem in Hursthouse’s account. She believes hope is justified as a virtue because we need something to resist despair. But there are serious reasons for doubting whether her hope could resist despair. Naturalistic hope trusts that human nature is harmonious enough for eudaimonia to be possible: “to doubt (this) is to fall prey to the vice of despair.”170 Note that this is not the personal hope that I will attain eudaimonia, but the abstract hope that human nature conduces to eudaimonia. So what happens when individual eudaimonia is – as Hursthouse often thinks it is – impossible even for the virtuous due to tragedy? Not being able to hope in what I know is impossible, do I fall prey to despair? Since Hursthouse’s hope is a hope in human nature’s capacity for eudaimonia, I do not despair in her sense. The wrecked or marred eudaimon may still hope in nature. But are we really going to say that someone with no personal hope for eudaimonia is not in danger of despair? It would be a very odd naturalistic hope which neither sustains me individually during trying times, nor suffers any loss if I am placed

“on the rack” and lose my naturalistic goods and very self. By making human nature

alone the object of hope, this is what Hursthouse has implied. I hope for no individuals: neither for myself, my loved ones, my community, my country, or any particular people.

My hope is in human nature, but this is a very thin form of hope, rather like a vague

“faith in humanity.”

The practical work this hope does is very small. Someone lurching toward individual despair will hardly be comforted by being told in these or similar words: “I know you and your loved ones are on the brink of persecution, bankruptcy, destitution, ruin, and possibly death, but at least human nature in general conduces to happiness.” In actual circumstances where eudaimonia as she construes it seems impossible,

Hursthouse’s naturalistic hope is irrelevant. In no sense that matters to any particular people can it “Keep Hope Alive.” In a far thicker and lived sense, the ruined individual is certainly “prey to the vice of despair,” and any account of despair which fails to take this into account is radically inadequate. Yet Hursthouse’s hope qua naturalistic has nothing to say to such a person. Only insofar as it is open to Providence might it have something to say to them; yet Hursthouse’s own Providence-talk is understandably undeveloped given philosophical constraints. As we saw with Foot’s Nazi-Resisting Letter Writers, a supernatural hope is the only live option to prevent individual despair in those who have no naturalistic hopes for eudaimonia. If ever there were a contribution to happiness which theology could provide, this would be it.

Assessment

We have seen that Aristotle, Philippa Foot, and Rosalind Hursthouse all acknowledge the eudaimonia gap. Each believes we cannot attain eudaimonia as fully as we wish due to various impediments. For Aristotle, the eudaimonia gap is constituted by our composite, finite, and mortal nature which pinches happiness with various limitations and makes us vulnerable to fortune. The gap not just of tragedy, but of the more ordinary things most people contend with: the nagging neediness of the body with its hunger, weariness, needs and ailments of all kinds; problems in the family, problems with one’s friends, problems in the polis, and so forth. These do not ruin eudaimonia or call its overall worth into question, but they do impede its scope. The decline and death of one’s fellows, and one’s own inevitable decline and death, are also serious impediments, and may indicate that on naturalistic premises we characteristically end in tragedy even though for most this is of a quotidian rather than a dramatic sort.

Such impediments apply in various ways to both active and contemplative happiness. The contemplative way of life is particularly lionized by Aristotle. In it we identify with our theoretical reason or nous: that portion of our composite nature which we have in common with the gods or immortal intelligences. We “strain every nerve” to approximate a form of contemplation whose full attainment is “too high for humanity.”

Qua rational beings we attain our proper end. But qua composite beings we attain it in a lesser way than what Aristotle sees as proportionate to the reason with which we identify.

This leaves a tension between the eudaimonia we can get and the greater form of it we are lofty enough to conceive of but too feeble to attain. The tension should not be overstated or either the possibility or the worth of connatural happiness might appear in doubt. But that a certain cramping is present surely accords with Christian intuitions, not least of which is belief in the Incarnation as more than just “curious news.” Having no immortality and no Provident and caring God, Aristotelianism has no source for hope. It is therefore interesting to note that Thomistic hope proposes a contemplative object which conceptually would fill what Aristotle regarded as the one major lack in eudaimonia.

Foot and Hursthouse likewise acknowledge the limits of naturalistic eudaimonism, and emphasize perhaps even more than Aristotle the vulnerability of happiness to misfortune. They insist that the virtuous may have to forgo happiness, and they admit that even the virtuous need good luck to be happy. The best their naturalism can do amid very bad luck is cling to a praiseworthy virtuousness which is nevertheless deflated by the melancholy resignation to forgo happiness of necessity. Without committing themselves to theological premises, they both acknowledge that hope seems to have better resources for navigating the eudaimonia gap than their own naturalism does.

For Hursthouse, this is not that strange. While not labeling herself Christian, she has much kind language for theism and repeatedly states that belief in an afterlife would help solve many of the above problems. She even concludes her book with an appeal to

retrieve the virtue of hope, despite the fact that “atheists may find it hard to recognize” the need for something like this. In Hursthouse’s view, naturalists should take from religious hope its transcendent assurance of trust in Providence and then project that trust onto nature. I have claimed that actual trust in Providence would strengthen this hope.

One would then believe that the trust has been placed in a trustworthy object instead of just acting as if it were while remaining agnostic on the question. Trust in Providence would make Hursthouse’s connatural hope stronger, and it would remove a major barrier to theological hope. Lastly, I argued that a supernatural hope would also be relevant to individuals who in naturalistic terms have been marred or ruined by tragedy.

Hursthouse’s generic hope in humanity has nothing to say to them. When the pinch comes, we need a much stronger tonic than naturalistic hope if we are to be saved from personal despair.

In contrast to Hursthouse, Foot is a “card-carrying atheist.” But what does she point to when happiness as she construes it faces not just a gap but a voiding, and the claim that the virtues are happy-making is ultimately true only for the lucky? She points to Christian exemplars for whom the virtue of hope not only contributes to happiness, but for whom it is the most important sustainer of happiness when misfortune strikes. Foot’s test case implies that while the losses incurred by tragedy are real losses, hope could make it that true and lasting happiness is nevertheless not just for the lucky.

1.3 Conclusion

In the last section I tried to let naturalistic eudaimonism testify to its own limitations. This is not because I am trying to undersell or denigrate it. As previously stated, I affirm that natural eudaimonia is a genuine and excellent happy life. Pointing out its limits does not call its value into question any more than conceding a few faults in a beloved parent or spouse means denying their overall goodness or even greatness.

Suppose I am correct that some forms of virtue ethics and eudaimonism either leave room for hope or even see hope as beneficial or desirable. I still have to answer the question of how this helps my overall case. It certainly does not help in the sense of demonstrating that virtue ethics and eudaimonism are gravely flawed without hope, or by showing that they absolutely need hope. Since I take hope to be a theological virtue, this would be tantamount to denying natural virtue and happiness, both of which I affirm. Nor do I claim that it helps in the sense of making eternal life as the object of hope more probable.

What I do claim is that the forms of virtue ethics espoused by Aristotle, Foot, and

Hursthouse have a certain structural openness to the conclusion that hope, if it were available, would very likely make an important contribution to happiness; a contribution that would resolve acknowledged gaps in the kind of eudaimonia they think is available. I see this as giving respectable if not overwhelming support to my presupposition that grace is perfective of nature and my thesis that hope as a virtue of grace contributes importantly to human happiness. To put it in legal language, I do not see the

philosophical resonances as initial or primary evidence for my presupposition and thesis, but as corroborating evidence that tends to further support a proposition whose main evidence rests on other grounds. An example of initial or primary evidence is a witness’ testimony to a hit-and-run. An example of corroborating evidence would be suspicious dents found on the car of the accused. The dents support the testimony, but would be insufficient evidence by themselves. I see my philosophical interlocutors as providing the latter kind of support. Since my thesis is theological, the initial or primary evidence for my claims comes from theological sources.171 But as someone engaging with philosophy,

I see the eudaimonia gap of my philosophical interlocutors as lesser but useful corroborating evidence.

The corroboration helps make it less stipulative and circular to claim that grace perfects and that hope contributes to the happy life. I also see it as leaving open the door for philosophical and theological engagement. My claim allows us to acknowledge the main difference between naturalism and supernaturalism as a given, but add that the difference is not so great that the two speak in equivocal terms and therefore have nothing to mutually say or offer. The result of equivocity is to make religious and secular identities and citizens further hive off from each other into mutually suspicious enclaves deaf to each other’s very forms of discourse. Besides being socially toxic, such equivocity undermines the gratia non tollit principle, suggesting to naturalists that supernatural happiness is not a recognizable form of happiness at all, and that all talk of supernatural virtue is just “language on holiday.”

In proposing a “eudaimonia gap” I am proposing that happiness is possible but fraught with limits we would overcome if we could but which even the virtuous are cramped by. Aristotle, Foot, and Hursthouse identify many contours of the gap without – like St. Augustine – using the gap as evidence that connatural happiness is a fiction.

Clearly one can affirm eudaimonia while saying that we wish we could free ourselves of impediments to it. The commitment to free ourselves of such impediments so far as we can is a good thing. Both the naturalist and supernaturalist can agree on this, though they may disagree on what the means are and how much the impediments can be overcome.

My normative claim at this point is that the commitment to overcome the impediments insofar as we can both for ourselves and others is important, good, and praiseworthy. To the virtuous it will be a priority and not just a kind of vague wish. Many of the reasons why have been hinted at in my account of the eudaimonia gap as described by Aristotle,

Foot, and Hursthouse. But by way of summary I may broaden and generalize the gap to bear out my claim.

Earthly existence exposes us, those we love, our neighbors, and the whole human community to impediments such as poverty, disease, unruly passions, hunger, ignorance, violence, pain, loss of livelihood, broken relationships, abuse, disabilities, mental and bodily decline, and tragedies of all kinds. In its final extremity it exposes us to death, which on naturalistic terms is the final and irrevocable parting from those we love most; the permanent loss of all that we cared and worked for in this world. All these “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” deprive us over the course of our lifetime of priorities we

desire as highly important, and whose loss is grievous. This is not to confuse earthly happiness with the possession of finite goods. Connatural happiness as I see it is characteristically enjoyable virtuous activity. Nevertheless, loss of important finite goods impedes virtuous activities and forfeits many virtuous enjoyments, and to that extent impedes happiness itself.

Besides important non-moral goods, such misfortunes threaten still more important moral goods. Serious concern for people, communities, and great moral causes is proper to the virtuous. Outrages and injustices visited upon the human race are grievous. They could only fail to impede commitments of ours if we were indifferent to moral concerns and therefore vicious. Though one may affirm the essential goodness of creation, what virtuous person looks upon poverty, war, starvation, oppression, torture, and genocide, and says “Nothing is deeply wrong in the world”? The virtuous and happy person is the just person, and the just person seeks happiness not just for him or herself, but for the common good of which he or she is a part. The fact that this larger good has both its non-moral and moral aspirations so seriously impeded is something we should be committed to overcome.

As impediments to the happy life, the presence of these moral and non-moral imperfections is part of what it means to say that the happiness we want we cannot fully get. We rightly desire to avoid these evils, experience their presence as abhorrent, and fervently seek their removal.172 Since they constitute that which impedes our happiness, the corollary is that by seeking individually and socially to overcome them we are shown

to will their contrary. But what is this “willing the contrary” but an indirect admission that the impediments supervene on and help constitute a status quo opposed to many of our virtuous priorities? Correlatively, this suggests that the desire to attain a more complete and fuller form of happiness – i.e., a happiness not impeded in these ways – is good and praiseworthy rather than contemptible or superfluous. But precisely because we are finite, composite, mortal, and vulnerable to fortune, this desire has not fully attained its object. Both naturalists and supernaturalists can agree that the commitment to overcome the eudaimonia gap so far as we can is important, good, and virtuous. But only the latter believe we can overcome the eudaimonia gap as much as we rightly want; only they affirm the fuller beatitude made possible by “the means of grace and the hope of glory.”

The Positive Side of Gap

I have mostly put the eudaimonia gap in negative terms, focusing on impediments to happiness. But I should note that the eudaimonia gap can has frequently been read positively and not just negatively. It can be read as made not just of impediments to happiness, but of the yearning to attain a greater share of happiness - perhaps even a total fulfillment. In this sense, the gap refers not to limits we would be rid of, but the desire for more of a good thing. As the happy eros of courtship may suggest the yet greater fruition of a wedding day, so partial happiness may rouse the desire for fuller or even perfect

happiness. This positive reading of the gap complements the negative reading and presents hope as attractive even to those who are not riddled much by impediments to happiness: to the overall virtuous, happy, and lucky. As such, it is a second and more positive occasion for hope that is commonly experienced and which I will briefly sketch.

Drawing upon the work of Michael Himes and C.S. Lewis, William Mattison III has made claims highly pertinent to my topic. He seeks to give a contemporary gloss to the theme of Augustine’s “restless heart” by claiming that we have a “seemingly unquenchable desire” for the “complete satisfaction of our longings.” This theme is prevalent in the Christian tradition, and is especially associated with the name of

Augustine. But Mattison notes that atheist existentialists such as Jean Paul Sartre and

Albert Camus have also affirmed it and that it is extremely common. Mattison describes the “seemingly unquenchable desire” this way:

We always hunger for more, and never seem to be fully satisfied… human persons never do sit back in this life and say, “there is nothing more to do, or nothing further I could enjoy”… even those of us who live satisfying and rewarding lives would have to admit that our lives are not complete. We long to be closer to others, to work on important life projects, to continue to improve ourselves, to understand more.173

he or she does not “just sit back” and effectively quit moral agency. The eudaimon continues to do things such as eating and drinking, engaging in relationships, noble projects, and pursuing leisure activities. These activities may be constituents in happiness, but the fact that more constituents are always being sought implies that a further and ongoing share in happiness is being looked for. If we think of the constituents of happiness as being like bricks that build a house, we see that the house is never exactly finished: there is always more to do, more to pursue.175 To put the point in Augustinian and Thomistic terms, we are never perfectly happy. We never attain what Aquinas describes as “the perfect good, which satisfies appetite altogether.” Before addressing the status of the desire for perfect happiness, I will sketch that desire in Thomistic terms.

Aquinas believes every creature has a natural desire for its perfection.176 Non- rational creatures pursue this spontaneously, attaining union with God in ways appropriate to them. For Aquinas, the perfection of a rational creature is what happiness means. But for rational creatures, attaining perfection has to be filtered through conscious deliberation and choice, and so can go wrong. When all goes well, we as rational creatures will by hypothesis attain our perfection as an agent in some appropriate way.

But by the same token, we will be aware that this is only a partial and temporal fulfillment, which leaves us with more to do, more to pursue, and so forth. As Mattison says, we “never do sit back in this life and say, “there is nothing more to do, or nothing further I could enjoy”. Early in this chapter I noted Aquinas’ belief that appetite is in

“motion” (motus) toward its end point (terminus), attaining which it will rest (quies). The

end or good is the goal or end-point (the telos or finis) of appetite’s motion. On this side of the eudaimonia gap the rational appetite or will is a motus that never fully attains its terminus and so never quite has quies. This opens up the possibility that we would begin to desire a fuller or even complete kind of perfection which we know we cannot attain.

As previously discussed, Aristotle saw the possibility of perfect contemplative happiness, but concluded that due to our composite nature humans could not attain it. But he is hardly alone in considering the prospect of full or complete happiness. Many Greek,

Roman, and Indian philosophers affirmed it, Augustine made the theme famous, it is a constant theme of poetry, and Camus and Sartre affirmed it while denying a proportionate object. Aquinas suggests that the desire for perfect happiness is signum or premonition – though not a proof - of the existence of God, since God is its proper object. As I will make clear later, this desire is natural and general rather than supernatural and specific. It is not theological hope, but something which can be supernaturally elevated by theological hope.

Aquinas held that this desire for perfect happiness was proper and recurrent to the human condition: that it was a natural desire. Even if the moral psychology behind this is doubted or denied, such a desire is remarkably common, and a theologian writing about hope should have something to say about it or risk irrelevance.

From the perspective of theological hope such a desire has often been seen as material that can be taken up and clarified through the specification of a proportionate object.177 As a natural desire it is somewhat raw and unclear as to its object, and therein

lies its very suggestiveness as a kind of intimation - if not proof - of the divine. As the

18th c. journalist and poet, Joseph Addison, put it:

Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secrete dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? ‘Tis the divinity that stirs within us; ‘Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!178

Whether put poetically or in plainer philosophical prose, the desire for the kind of happiness which exceeds our natural grasp is highly relevant to hope. To the extent that even a virtuous and happy life does not totally satisfy the desire – i.e., to the extent happiness is inevitably partial and imperfect in this life – the theological virtue of hope is deeply relevant. It holds out the promise that such a desire does indeed have its proper object in God: that those who desire total fulfillment or completion do not desire in vain.

Given what has been said, the theological proposal that a perfect form of happiness is available which could overcome the eudaimonia gap is at least intriguing. It suggests that if a plausible candidate for filling the eudaimonia gap could be found it would be “good news” rather than just “curious news” to us. Many who lack theological premises have their own reasons for and ways of affirming this, as the examples of

Aristotle, Foot, and Hursthouse showed. This does not mean that philosophical eudaimonism without Christian hope simply fails. It does not prove the reality of hope

and in some respects it does not even make it necessary. But I do believe my argument helps show that hope fills a real empty space and is not a liability or even just an irrelevance. As suggested, I take this to be corroborating but not initial or primary evidence for my overall argument that grace perfects and hope contributes to happiness: that “grace in Vertue’s key tunes Nature’s string.” In the next chapter I will give an overtly theological account of hope. Taking for granted now that there is space for hope to contribute to the happy life, I will seek to show just what it contributes and how.

CHAPTER 2:

THOMISTIC HOPE

2.1 St. Thomas Aquinas on Grace

Theological hope proposes that perfect happiness is possible. The impediments to happiness can be overcome; the desire for a fuller and lasting share of happiness is not in vain. In effect, theological hope says that we can get beyond the eudaimonia gap: that total fulfillment and perfection is a live option and not just an idle wish. In terms of the negative side of the gap, this means transcending the “impediments” to happiness - a term

I have borrowed from Aristotle’s empodiai. The empodiai are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives and world. Being neither a Stoic nor a utopian, I conclude that transcending them effectively requires an eschatological state which Fortune cannot mar.

Only there can the impediments to happiness be wholly overcome. As Scripture says:

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away”

(Rev 21:4). This was the hope of Philippa Foot’s Letter Writers, and both Foot and

Hursthouse saw its appeal and benefit. Theological hope also addresses the more positive side of the gap. It promises the total satisfaction of our longings in the perfect and eternal

activity of contemplating God with overflowing delight in the beatific vision. To put it in

Aristotle’s terms, we can actually and not just feignedly “immortalize ourselves” and attain a perfect happiness which he thinks is possible only for God, but which Christians believe God shares with us. Hope therefore promises that both the negative and positive sides of the gap will find an appropriate solution. But Christian hope also makes clear that this is the work of grace rather than of our unaided efforts. The pagan and secular eudaimonists were in a sense right in thinking the gap is inevitable and inescapable. To put the point in Christian terms: we stand in need of “salvation.”

For the most part I put on theological brackets in the last section so as to speak in terms my philosophical interlocutors themselves use. Taking them off so as to engage in theological analysis, we see that many philosophical terms get a further layering. Thus much of what I called “impediments” can be further described in terms of “sin,” both original and individual; and with the global and local effects of sin such as concupiscence, suffering, and death.179 That these impediments are not naturally escapable is a kind of bad news. The revelation that we can receive “salvation” from the eudaimonia gap through grace is of course good news. The theological proposal is that the gap has been conquered by Jesus Christ through his life, death, and resurrection. The

Risen Christ is the first member of a “new creation” (Gal 6: 15) in which the gap has no power.

Being “saved” means being “made safe,” and in the terminology I am using this means being saved from the threats and limitations that comprise the eudaimonia gap.

This is a big part of what hope looks toward. As St. Paul says: “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility (mataioteti), not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:19-21). That “futility” (mataiotes) to which creation is now subject captures most of what I referred to in theologically neutral language as the “impediments” (empodiai) to happiness. As I have conceded, virtuous efforts can lessen but not overcome the eudaimonia gap. No amount of moral habituation, political endeavor, educational reform, health care, social justice, or virtuous projects can free creation from the “futility” to which it is now subject, or remove the sting of death.

As George Orwell glibly replied to utopian socialists: “Man is of his nature sinful, and cannot be made virtuous by an act of Parliament.” In theological terms, our ultimate goal is eschatological.

I follow Aquinas in seeing the theological virtue of hope as one of grace. This virtue is often given short shrift. Faith and charity characteristically get far more attention in theological ethics, as do cardinal virtues such as justice whose this-worldly relevance is immediately obvious.180 But hope is a major virtue in the graced and Christian life. Its neglect is a major oversight that should be corrected. Since hope is a virtue of grace rather than nature, it is first necessary to lay out the main features of the Thomistic doctrine of grace to make clear the nature of hope’s operations. This will not be a wholesale justification of Thomistic grace, since that task would require enormous space.

Instead it will be a brief outline of Thomistic grace to provide context for the language and function of theological hope.

Aquinas holds that grace contributes to happiness by raising up and rectifying the agent: through what he calls “elevating grace” (gratia elevans) and “healing grace”

(gratia sanans).181 Grace as elevans directs us to a perfect end that exceeds our natural powers, and therefore it is super-natural. Grace as sanans helps renovate the tainted moral psychology that is the result of original sin. Since fallen nature cannot do this itself, this also is a supernatural work.182 Why we need these is explained with reference to God’s nature and personal call, the unfolding of revelation, the dispensation of the laws and covenants, and the salvific role of Christ. For my purposes the following are the central points.

Following age-old tradition which denied that God creates evil, Aquinas believed human beings were created wholly good and so unfallen. He calls this state “integral nature” (natura integra).183 By it we could readily attain the good connatural to us.

Natural virtue and eudaimonia were then not hard won, but a happy given. Humans were also and further created in a state of grace known as “original justice.”184 Whereas

Aristotle’s God is aloof from humans, the Christian God not only exercises immediate

Providence over them, but even entered into personal friendship with them. By this grace of original justice humans were gratuitously and supernaturally elevated to divine communion. Original justice is therefore a gratia elevans. By it also the body and passions were harmoniously subject to reason, which was itself harmoniously subject to

God, our creator and lord. In the original harmony of this grace, humans were immortal and suffered no hurt. As Aquinas quotes from Paul: “By sin death came into the world"

(Rom 5:12). All the “impediments” to eudaimonia which Aristotle thought composite nature is stuck with were absent in integral nature and original justice. Though raised in gratia elevans, human nature did not stand in need of gratia sanans.185

Integral nature was not itself original justice. By the former, humans could know, will, and do the good proportionate to their nature: the good of acquired virtue and natural happiness. The latter allowed humans to know, will, and do the good exceeding natural power: the good of infused virtue and supernatural happiness. So integral nature and original justice concretely overlapped, but were distinct phenomena. The consequence is that grace is not built into the definition of human nature. But despite the integrity of nature, human beings were concretely created in grace and called to supernatural beatitude. So while integral nature and original justice are separable, they were never meant to be separated. The consequence is that strictly connatural happiness or eudaimonia falls short of our calling in the divine economy. The eudaimonia of the

Nicomachean Ethics and of neo-Aristotelians may be possible and relatively good, but it is not and never was optimal. From perspective of integral nature, original justice, and our redemption in Christ, it has a bittersweetness like Dante’s Limbo.

Aquinas distinguishes connatural eudaimonia from supernatural beatitudo, or broadly Nicomachean happiness from Gospel happiness. Such talk is feared by many to be a dangerous return to two-tiered Thomism. Solving the nature and grace debates of the

past century is of course outside the scope of this dissertation, but I want to state my own position. Collapsing the distinction between grace and nature through overemphasis on a single end is in my opinion a mistake.186 Nevertheless, I do not read Aquinas as saying that there are two ends: a natural one equivalent to pagan eudaimonia, and a supernatural one equivalent to Christian beatitude. Gospel happiness consists in the exercise of supernatural virtues, but these perfect our natural capacities and an agent who is still essentially human. As Aquinas says, the regenerate do not receive a new form beyond the natural power of the human form they already have. If they did, they would receive a new nature. Instead, the human form is modified by supernatural causation to receive certain attributes and to do what the human form by itself cannot do.187 For example, charity as grace perfects the will, and infused temperance as grace perfects our concupiscible appetite. As infused and gracious virtues, this perfection is effected supernaturally. But what is perfected is and remains natural: i.e.., the human will, appetites, and other natural capacities. Thus on my reading of Aquinas there are not two ends. Instead, natural and supernatural happiness represent two modes of fulfilling what is in fact one end, understood under the appropriate formality.

When humans fell in sin, we lost both original justice and integral nature. The grace of original justice was destroyed by the Fall. Nature remained, but was now wounded. Death and disease begin to mar human existence. The passions, appetites, intellect, and will are all partly corrupt and at odds with each other. All of the

“impediments” have now arrived. Human life becomes vulnerable to fortune, and liable

to the internal division, discontents, and tragedies which Foot and Hursthouse wrestle with. But it is important to note that unlike the later Jansenists, Aquinas insisted that human nature remained essentially good. We retain our natural inclination to the good, and we lose none of our natural powers.188

Aquinas’ narrative to this point suggests what grace is needed for. Though created in grace, the loss of original justice meant losing friendship with God. The threat of damnation then became terribly real. So the offer of a restoration is very good news indeed: nothing less than a salvation. By ordaining us back to our end in God, gratia elevans makes eternal beatitude a possibility again. Beyond this, the loss of integral nature meant our capacity for natural virtue and eudaimonia was diminished, even if not destroyed.189 From the theological perspective, the vice and misery which Aristotle and the neo-Aristotelians see as so frequent is the result a Fall they lack resources to name.

By partly healing the results of original sin, gratia sanans begins a process of internal healing and transformation that will culminate in the eschaton. It follows that both elevating and healing grace are needed after the fall. To attain God as supernatural end, integral nature only needed gratia elevans, which original justice bestowed. But in addition to needing this, fallen nature also requires the remedial work of gratia sanans.190

To make clear how this elevating and healing function we must look at Aquinas’ broader theology of grace. According to the tradition, grace is essentially a participation in the divine nature and goodness. As Aquinas quotes from Scripture: “He has given us most great and most precious promises; that by these you may be made partakers of the

divine nature” (divinae consortes naturae [2 Pet 1:4]). As a partaker in the divine nature, the effect of this grace is to justify us anew before God, remitting the guilt of sin, and making us at peace with God.191

Since justification was merited by Christ’s Passion and applied to us as a gift, it is strictly gratuitous. But justification is not simply an external legal declaration of pardon.

As creator, God’s love causes the good that is loved, and is not just a response to a good already there.192 Love involves willing the beloved’s good. Humans are loved by God not just in having natural good willed to us; beyond this, the supernatural good of friendship with the Triune God is willed to us. As creative and therefore causal, God’s love therefore effects within us the supernatural quality required for that good to be participated. Grace is thus a tangible “gift” freely given (dono gratis dato): that of participation in the divine nature construed as a quality bestowed upon the agent as a free gift.193

This raises the question of what kind of quality is meant exactly. The gracious quality cannot just be a transient motion or passion. If it were, justification and grace would quickly fleet in and out of existence, and not be durably predicated of the agent.

Scriptural language about the “heart of stone” being replaced by the “heart of flesh” would look absurd on this account. But neither can grace be a substantial change of the agent, otherwise grace would absorb human nature wholly into itself. So what kind of quality is the donum of divine participation?

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Aquinas’ sensibly concludes that this grace of justification is a habit or habitus gratuitously given to the agent by God.194 As a habitus it is an accidental rather than a substantial quality. Human nature is therefore not collapsed into divinity. Since it is a gift rather than an achievement, it is “infused” rather than “acquired.” In that respect it is supernatural or beyond the capacity of unaided human nature to attain. But the fact that it is a habit of the agent means that it is a genuine principle of operation for him or her, and not just a displacement of human by divine agency (which would make grace morally irrelevant).

Habitual grace is not compartmentalized in one or some capacities of the agent, but pervades the essence of the soul. Grace is holistic rather than piecemeal: the whole person, not just scraps of a person, is the object of redemption. Being a habitus, such grace is characteristic of the agent, and so the agent is characterizable in those terms: as gracious. Though it pervades the essence of the soul, grace is not an amorphous energy. It is instantiated in the various human capacities as derivative habits which are supernaturally perfective of those capacities.195 As the soul’s natural capacities flow from its natural essence, so infused virtues and habits flow from the overarching supernatural habit into the agent’s natural capacities. In the form of the theological virtues, grace as faith perfects the intellect, and grace as hope and charity perfects the will. In the form of the infused virtues, the four cardinal virtues perfect their familiar capacities, but the mean of virtue is derived from revelation rather than just reason, and the cause of the virtue is supernatural infusion rather than natural acquisition.196 The fact that the infused habits

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flow into existing natural capacities makes it at least prima facie plausible to say that grace perfects nature. For if grace created new natural capacities, it would have had to create a new nature and abolished the old one.

Whereas virtues such as faith and charity refer to given capacities such as the intellect and will being supernaturally ordered to God, justification and habitual grace refer to the “general rectitude of order” by which the person as a whole is ordained to

God.197 Habitual grace is therefore called gratia gratum faciens (“grace making one graced or pleasing” [i.e., to God]), which i n post-Tridentine theology came to be called

“sanctifying grace”. In Aquinas it is distinguished from “graces freely given” (gratiae gratis data) for the justified to help lead others to God (i.e., charisms).198 It is also distinguished from the grace of auxilium (“help” or “aid”) construed as discrete supernatural motions given by God to either prepare the agent for the infusion of habitual grace, or to actualize the habit of grace into a supernatural act of faith, hope, or charity, etc. This auxilium maps onto what later theology called “actual” graces. It is a lynchpin in Aquinas’ theology, and I will say more about it below. But what needs to be stressed at this point is that habitual grace both elevates the agent to a supernatural plane and partly heals our disordered moral psychology. It therefore does double duty as both gratia elevans and gratia sanans.

Pervading the whole person this way, Aquinas says that habitual grace effects “a certain regeneration or re-creation”. Since fallen humanity could not justify itself, this regeneration is not an acquired habit. Aquinas cites Paul to this effect: “For it there had

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been a law given which could give life – then Christ died in vain”.199 Rather than humanly acquired, the cause of grace is the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection. The willing death of the obedient Christ satisfies for our sins and for the first humans’ pride and disobedience.200 The merit of Christ’s Passion is applied to us through baptism in which our “old man” is buried with Christ.201

Being justified and partly healed, those in habitual grace are called the

“regenerate,” and habitual grace is often referred to by Aquinas as our “newness”

(novitas): i.e., the regenerate life of the “new man” reborn in Christ. This is contrasted to our “oldness” (vetustas): i.e., the sinful remainder we are being healed from. This healing is usually a long, painful, and laborious process, as seen for example in

Augustine’s Confessions. It is further complicated by external temptations that threaten a relapse into mortal sin which would destroy habitual grace. Should this occur, the justifying merit of Christ must be applied again as medicine: this time through the sacrament of Penance.202 So neither Aquinas nor his sources think grace is a quick fix. If it were, the object of hope would not be what Aquinas calls it: a “future good possible but arduous to attain” (emphasis mine). Such considerations led Aquinas to distinguish between imperfect supernatural happiness, in which perfection is incomplete; and perfect supernatural happiness, which is proper to the fully healed and perfected saints. These two are further distinguished from connatural happiness, and this is always imperfect since fallen nature cannot achieve perfect eudaimonia.203 This is another way of saying

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that the eudaimonia gap cannot be overcome by fallen nature - a point I argued in the last section non-theologically.

Aquinas of course does not use the phrase “eudaimonia gap.” But while he often describes our predicament as one of sin, personal and original, he plainly sees the predicament of sin as coextensive with what I have more neutrally described as the eudaimonia gap. A representative text is question 5 of the Prima secundae. There in very

Aristotelian terms he states that contemplative happiness may be diminished or lost through forgetfulness, sickness, or busyness. Likewise, he states that active happiness may be diminished and mostly lost through bad luck and wholly lost through a lapse into vice.204 All of these evils are either sin or the consequences of living in a sinful world.

Yet they may also be described in terms that philosophers such as Aristotle, Foot,

Hursthouse, and people in general would acknowledge as realities and as real evils. This is not to collapse the philosophical into the theological language, or vice-versa. It is to say that they are talking about similar problems using difference conceptual equipment, while adding that these are analogous rather than equivocal languages. Aquinas speaks both languages, slipping from the philosophical to the theological vocabulary depending on what audience he has in mind at a given point.

The theory of grace as a supernatural habitus allows Aquinas to say that grace is both fully gratuitous and fully voluntary, allowing it to be wholly dependent upon God and yet the principle of virtuous actions in the agent. Saying that supernatural happiness consists in graced activity raises the question of how habitual grace is put into action. To

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answer this Aquinas posits auxilium or helping grace as a motion of God given to actualize the habitus of grace.205 This is an application to grace of Aquinas’ overall doctrine of Providence according to which all created things must be moved by God to exist or act at all. Aquinas’ God is not a deist clockmaker. For him, creation is on-going: a creatio continua. The ratio of a creature is present in God’s mind, and the executio of the creature is voluntarily performed by God. It follows that the continued existence of everything that exists, for as long as it exists, is radically dependent upon God at all times knowing the ratio that a created nature embodies, and perpetually willing the creature into being through the creator’s executio.206 It is as though God as every moment and not just the initial moment of a thing’s existence were saying: “Let there be this”.

Providence works this way with both nature and grace. Take a natural habit, such as that of grammar or bicycling. Though the habit may be mine, God’s motion as first cause is required to uphold me in being and move me to my proper ends, enabling my capacity to be brought to act. Aquinas calls this natural help or auxilium. It implies that there is no space or time in which I am not beholden to divine causality, in which I am not a creature. The same dependency occurs with supernatural habits. I may have the virtue of faith or charity, but God’s motion as a supernatural auxilium is needed to bring the potency to action. This is another way of saying that we still need God’s help even after we receive grace: that after baptism we are not simply left to our own devices.

Prior to the Fall we would have needed supernatural auxilium to actualize the habit of grace simply. Like habitual grace, the grace of auxilium was thus for prelapsarian

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nature solely a gratia elevans. But post-Fall we also require such helps because our fallen nature is not yet fully healed. Like a broken leg that is set but not wholly remedied, fallen nature has been partly but not fully healed by habitual grace. Concupiscence and ignorance leave us with a weak spot vulnerable to temptations. So even when regenerate, postlapsarian nature requires supernatural auxilium or help as a gratia sanans. “For which reason,” Aquinas says, “it is becoming in those who have been born again as sons of God, to say: ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ and ‘Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ and whatever else is contained in the Lord's Prayer.”207

Such auxilia or divine helps are characteristically what it is that we pray for.208

Though derived from God as primary agent, they are generally applied to us through instrumental causes such as the sacraments, the Scriptures, spiritual experiences, and other people. In appealing to the Lord’s Prayer as a locus for auxilium, Aquinas taps into

Augustine’s anti-Pelagian claim that even the regenerate need further graces to persevere in grace – otherwise we would not pray for them.209 Though Aquinas refines it and unlike many of his contemporaries throws the role of auxilium into bold relief, the overall theme is a familiar one in the Latin theological tradition: Da quod iubes et iube quod vis.210 As will become clear, auxilium is a central concern of hope. In many places Aquinas describes the act of hope simply as leaning or relying upon God’s auxilium to see us through the journey. Hope is preeminently a “virtue of acknowledged dependence.”

This correlation of habitual grace and auxilium led Aquinas to affirm the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit as key players in the graced life. Precisely because our conformity

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to grace and participation in the divine nature is imperfect in this life, Aquinas believed that supernatural habits such as the theological and infused moral virtues are participated in imperfectly. We are still afflicted by “folly, ignorance, dullness of mind and hardness of heart,” and so forth.211 Accordingly, gifts of the Holy Spirit opposed to these deadweights are given to put our cooperation with grace on a surer footing. Each gift is a discrete supernatural habit which inheres in a particular theological or infused moral virtue. So located, each gift makes us amenable to the promptings of God’s auxilium as it moves us to act out of a particular infused virtue, keeping in mind that these are derivatives of habitual grace. Thus the gift of fear makes us more amenable to infused temperance, the gift of piety makes us more amenable to infused justice, and so forth. In effect, these gifts provide a greater interior affinity with grace that allows us to cooperate with God’s auxilium in a better manner: with greater promptness, facility, and naturalness. Bernard Lonergan argues that this account, which emerges later in Aquinas’ career, is “a very adequate answer to the objection that external intervention is violent, or as we should say, unnatural.”212

Since the habits of grace can be put into act with God’s help, the way is open for saying that God can cooperate with the agent in producing supernatural actions. This implies that human and divine agency are non-competing. God as first cause works in, with, and through secondary causes. As creatures we function as secondary causes, and as rational creatures we operate this way using our free will. Thus my contribution to a graced act does not occur only to the extent that God does not contribute to the graced

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act. Instead, God’s contribution is precisely what enables my own.213 The act of an infused habit is thus fully my own, and fully dependent on God. Supernatural agency is not a “zero-sum game.” The implication is that the regenerate are not mechanically shoved grace puppets whose agency is bypassed.

To parse human and divine contributions to graced acts, Aquinas distinguishes between operative and cooperative grace. The operative occurs when God alone is operating, in which we are moved but “God is the sole mover.” The cooperative occurs when God works with us, in which “our mind both moves and is moved.”214 Each form occurs with both habitual and auxilium grace. Thus habitual grace is operative insofar as the person is supernaturally elevated, partly healed, and justified – all of which are God’s work. But habitual grace is cooperative in that it gives us the capacity to perform acts of infused virtue, and so is the principle of merit. Likewise, auxilium grace is operative insofar as God initiates the process of conversion, and insofar as God gives the convert further auxilia by which he or she perseveres in habitual grace. But auxilium grace is cooperative insofar as God works in and through the agent so that he or she may perform supernatural acts.215 As an act flowing from that habitual grace which is the principle of merit, such an act is meritorious of reward from God.

The topic of merit is crucial to theological hope.216 Aquinas opposes to hope that sinful presumption which believes one can have “pardon without repentance, or glory without merits.”217 As cunning mimics prudence, and foolhardiness mimics courage, so the presumption which leads to moral indifference and the refusal to labor in this world

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mimics hope. Yet Aquinas insists that we do not merit condignly or strictly speaking, by putting God in our debt. He prefers to say we merit congruently, in that God freely chooses to reward virtuous action as something that is fitting. Thus while we cannot acquire the infused virtues, we can merit their increase by acting virtuously. We can also merit eternal life in the qualified sense that the transformation required to be perfectly happy is one which grace effects through our free will rather than despite it. Such merit is congruent in the sense that God deems reward fitting. But it is also condign just insofar as supernatural action derives from the grace of the Holy Spirit, the dignity of whom is equal to the supernatural end.218 The consequence is that eternal beatitude is not externally related to who we are and what we do in this life, but internally related to it.

Unless we become a certain kind of person, the happiness which only that kind of person can have is something we will miss. Only the perfected enjoy perfection.

Grace is thus meant to be truly transformative of character, to neither bypass human agency nor to leave it untouched. God’s supernatural love is an intervention into rather than just an external affection for the beloved; something which breaks in and renovates human moral psychology to make us the kind of creatures in whom God can be

“well pleased.” It is a central preoccupation of virtue ethics to regard the kind of person one is and the sort of character a community needs to have. This preoccupation is accordingly shared by Aquinas at both the levels of nature and grace. As a supernatural elevation, grace helps overcome the limits of finitude which Aristotle and countless others have seen as putting complete happiness out of reach. As a supernatural healing,

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grace helps rectify the moral impediments which hinder us from reaching our ultimate end in God. Grace does not abolish the eudaimonia gap, but it begins the process; it is an

“already” with a “not yet.” The gap will only be fully overcome in the final state of glory, and it is this toward which hope looks.

2.2 Thomas Aquinas on Hope

Hope as a virtue flows from habitual grace and is a major department of the supernatural or Christian life. Grace elevates us to a new kind of happiness. But as the previous section stated, our share in that happiness in this life is still imperfect and at risk.

In medieval terminology, the convert or justified person has ceased to be homo erro or the “human wanderer” lost in the mazes of mortal sin. They are regenerated as homo viator or the “human wayfarer” on the journey or itinerarium to perfection.219 But the shoots of are still green; the buds are tender and vulnerable. As with Dante after he has left the dark wood, there is a challenging journey for the convert to make. They have not yet arrived and become homo comprehensor: the “possessor” of perfect beatitude in the heavenly homeland (in patria). The major task of hope is to help one through the journey over the lingering gap that stands between us and perfect beatitude in heaven. In the following section I will set briefly describe Aquinas’ model of theological hope.220

Thereafter I will build on Aquinas’ foundation in normative fashion. This will involve engaging with relevant interlocutors and important issues, showing what the hopeful life looks like, identifying practices by which it is expressed and sustained, and 110

arguing that theological hope helps overcome the gap or limits that make happiness in this life less than ideal.

Hope keeps one moving toward God as one’s final end, and it regards that under a unique aspect: that of a perfect beatitude which is within reach but not yet in hand - one which we could miss out on if we’re not careful. As Aquinas puts it, the object of hope is

“a future good possible but arduous to attain.”221 Hope is therefore a finisher virtue which sustains the agent amid life’s challenges. It buoys him or her up with a certain confidence and anticipation, and it keeps the person’s “eye on the prize.”

The latter aspect is needed so that the wayfarer does not wreck the journey either through the presumption that regards the end as easy or guaranteed, or through the acedia and despair that threaten amid tragedies, failures, dry spells, discouragement, personal decline and a general sense of tedium vitae. So hope sustains the commitment of the agent to God over time and amid the “impediments” which make happiness an arduous goal, and lend the eudaimonia gap a formidable aspect. Hope is thus a kind of love of and reliance upon God as the source of strength who will get us through the impediments noted by Aristotle, Foot, and Hursthouse, as well as many not noted by them.

Above all, hope leads the agent to trust in and lean upon God as the one who will see him or her through to the end. Aquinas insists that the main act of hope is a kind of acknowledged and enacted dependence on God’s help or auxilium. Specifically, it is leaning or relying upon God as the divine friend who helps overcome what I called the

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eudaimonia gap, and who draws us to perfect beatitude in the eschaton.222 Hope is therefore a key player in grace’s overall suite of movement to perfect happiness.

The Quality of Hope

According to Aquinas four qualifications are needed for something to be an object of hope (spes). This holds whether the hope in question is a passion or movement of will.

First, the object must seen as a good (bonum), or we would shun rather than seek it.

Second, it must be a future prospect (futurum) rather than something we possess, or we would simply enjoy it. Third, it must be possible to attain (possibile) or we would despair

(desperatio) of it. Fourth and lastly, it must be arduous (arduum) rather than easy to attain.223 Trifles (minimi) are not the object of hope, but things taken in stride and for granted. This last point needs stressing. If arduousness is built into the definition of hope, it follows that hope should never be confused with optimism. Aquinas’ spes does not refer to “a hopeful and sunny disposition” or to the cheerful outlook that the future will be bright. The fact that hope always regards an “arduous” good generally gives it a realism, grit, and determination lacking in the sheltered complacency of optimism. But since hope always regards a “possible” good, it is equally free of the cynicism, disillusionment, and apathy of serious pessimism.

Given the four qualifications mentioned it follows for Aquinas that the object of hope is always a “future good possible but arduous to attain.”224 Hope is therefore a

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particular kind of love or appetite. If it emerges in the sensitive appetite, it is the passion or emotion of hope. If it flows from the rational appetite or will, it is a volition of hope.

As explained in the first chapter, the objects of sensitive appetite are sense particulars such as this crock of honey or that cool stream. Those of the will are intelligible characterizations of the good, such as “refreshing,” “enjoyable,” “healthy,” “interesting,” and the like.225 Of course, the same material object may be simultaneously regarded under these two distinct formalities; hope as movement of will and as emotion will often be psychologically entangled. But the two are formally distinct.

As its name suggests, theological hope has God for its object. Since God is not a physical object, it follows that theological hope seeks an intelligible good and therefore properly resides in the will rather than the passions. This does not mean that volitional hope is cold and bloodless. Though not a feeling, it is a movement of love; typically, a very potent and determined form of love. Aquinas describes the love of theological hope this way: “To him that longs for something great, all lesser things seem small; wherefore to him that hopes for eternal happiness, nothing else appears arduous, as compared with that hope.”226 Aquinas regards hope as quite prepared to undergo Herculean labors for the prize we long for.

The volition of hope is analogous to the passion of hope in that both are a movement of love, and both share the same general object of a future, arduous, possible good. Beyond this, volitional hope may overflow into and stimulate the passions, often giving rise to passions of hope.227 In addition, the mental reflections which volitional

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hope gives rise to may also cause passions of hope through mediation of the imagination.228 So hope in the will is often concurrent with and routinely causes passions of hope. Naturally it may work the other way around: the passion of hope may itself be taken into the will and help give rise to the hopeful intention to obtain an arduous good.

Passions and volitions of hope will very often not be practically or experientially separate. This mingling helps explain why Aquinas - first among the scholastics - wrote an extended treatment of hope as a passion preparatory to treating hope as a virtue.229

Nevertheless, the passion of hope itself – which Aquinas thinks conspicuous among dumb animals, inexperienced youth, and drunkards – should not be confused with hope in the will generally, or theological hope as a virtue of the will specifically.230

Theological hope is therefore proper to the will rather than the passions, and it exists in the will not as a transient motion, but as a virtue or good habit. Lombard was the first to define hope as a virtue, but Scripture was widely thought to have implied this, and

Aquinas certainly affirmed it.231 Hope is the habit which enables the will to rely upon

God’s grace to reach perfect beatitude. A virtue of hope is needed because the will integrates all of our desires, passions, and aims over time, being the principle of our unified agency. As an intellectual appetite, the will has to adjust over time to changing circumstances that call for a reaffirmation of one’s core commitments. Hope disposes the will to do this well when it comes to circumstances that challenge one’s pursuit of God as a future, possible, but arduous good. As I have already hinted, the circumstances that do the challenging have to do with the eudaimonia gap in both its positive and negative

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aspects. Positively, we may self-righteously presume that the perfect beatitude we long for and seek is easy or guaranteed. Negatively, the impediments (empodiai) to happiness can make perfect beatitude look not only arduous but impossible, confronting the will with the prospect of despair. Hope disposes the will to persevere in its commitment despite these challenges, and to keep the wayfarer moving toward God. In essence, hope is the love of God as the friend who will get one through the challenges to the journey’s end.

The Final and Efficient Causes of Hope

Since hope’s specific object is God, it is a “theological” virtue like faith and charity. But how is this to be understood? Aquinas’ thought on hope receives its fullest and most mature expression in the secunda secundae. There he describes God as the object of hope in a two-fold sense. “Hope,” Aquinas writes, “regards two things, viz. the good which it intends to obtain, and the help by which that good is obtained.”232 The first is hope’s final cause or end, and consists in God as the source of one’s own eternal happiness. The second is hope’s efficient cause or means, and consists in God’s help

(auxilium) to attain the final end. From the perspective of final causality, “Hope denotes a certain stretching forth of the appetite towards an arduous good.”233 From the perspective of efficient causality, “Hope attains God by leaning on his help”:234 i.e., by relying upon

God’s “omnipotence and mercy.”235 Hope’s basic action therefore consists in longing for

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God as final cause and leaning upon God as efficient cause to that end. I will examine each of these in turn, beginning with hope’s final cause or end.

The concept of hope’s ultimate end helped give rise to the patristic and medieval motif of the Christian as the “human wayfarer” (homo viator) taken as a pilgrim, alien, or exile from Eden.236 Like Abraham, the wayfarer undertakes an arduous journey based on divine promises and in hopeful pursuit of “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb

11:13-16). Abraham becomes the great exemplar of hope, and the final cause or end of hope becomes perfect beatitude in the heavenly promised land: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek one which is to come” (Heb 13:14).

If the final end which hope seeks is God as one’s eternal happiness, does this mean that hope is indifferent or even hostile to temporal goods and happiness? Bent on a heavenly promised land, does hope deflate our earthly lives and social concerns with a reductive contemptus mundi? Unlike a great many Christians – particularly in the premodern period – Aquinas does not depict hope as a negation of the world.237 He notes that hope’s longing and leaning are characteristically expressed through prayer. Since the

Lord’s Prayer includes petitions for goods of this life, and since it cannot be wrong to desire what we rightly pray for, it follows that we may and should hope for the temporal goods of this world. Yet we only hope for them “as ordained to eternal happiness.”238

Earthly goods from one’s daily bread to the most pressing goals of social justice are thus not only compatible with theological hope insofar as they are virtuously sought; they can

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participate in theological hope as “secondary final causes” ordered to our “ultimate final cause”. Just how this works will be a major topic of the fourth chapter.

The place of hope as an efficient cause on which we “lean” is actually a late development in Aquinas.239 In his early work the Scriptum he had only posited one object of hope: God as final cause. Habitual grace was all that one required to attain salvation, making further graces or helps unnecessary. This accords with Lombard and most scholastic interpretations. But later in his career Aquinas added the second object of hope: God as efficient cause operating by means of auxilium grace. The object of hope is now not merely God in heaven, but God in this life as a “helper strong to assist” one in completing the journey.240 Hope in the Scriptum is a far more autonomous affair; God provides habitual grace and the agent largely takes matters from there.241 Hope in the

Summa holds that even after justification God intervenes extensively and intimately through the “efficient cause” of ongoing auxilia or actual graces. Its hope is no longer just a matter of “God as my beatitude,” but much more a matter of “God as personal savior.”242 By this point in his career, Aquinas has rejected the original formulation of hope as radically inadequate. Hope is now no longer just a matter of “keeping one’s eye on the prize;” it is equally a matter of God sustaining us on the way.

Aquinas often speaks of hope as trusting in God, or as relying and leaning upon

God. Put more technically, this means that those who possess habitual grace must nevertheless continually rely upon further auxilium graces to sustain them “on the way”

(in via).243 The need is both metaphysical and moral. Metaphysically, habitual grace as a

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potency is “actualized” by auxilium. Hence the post-Tridentine relabeling of auxilium as

“actual” grace. In this role, auxilium does duty as “elevating grace” or gratia elevans. But is it also needed as part of “healing grace” or gratia sanans. Even the regenerate is described by Aquinas as homo infirmus: as a “sick human” not fully healed from concupiscence and therefore in need of enduring auxilium or divine help. Auxilium meets not just a metaphysical, but also a medicinal need.244 A frank look at the moral failings of

Christians favors this view.

The efficient cause of hope may both elevate and heal, but hope would not be our virtue if only God did the acting. Hence the qualification that we do not just passively receive God’s auxilium; we actively entrust ourselves to it, we lean and rely upon it; not forgetting to do so, and not failing to act after doing so. This is our contribution to hope’s efficient causality, meaning that it involves gratia cooperans in which God cooperates with us to produce a supernatural action our unaided trying cannot attain, but which does engage our wills and to that extent enables their perfecting.245 Through this grace

Aquinas even says that we “attain” God in this life. “Insofar as we hope… by means of divine assistance (auxilium), our hope attains (attingit) God himself.”246 God as final end may be “a future good” of the next life, but by prayerfully leaning on God’s auxilium, the sustaining work of hope makes God present to us in this life. Insofar as auxilium is cooperans, God acts with and through us, so that hope relies upon and receives from God intimate, providential, and ongoing intervention. These auxilia range from forgiveness of sins to deliverance from temptation to getting one’s daily bread. More generally, the

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petition “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” is taken to be a sweeping petition for all of the auxilia necessary to do God’s will.247

The petition “thy will be done” and the work Aquinas ascribes to it show that hope is a crucial waymeet for all the infused habits and the whole supernatural life. Hope prays for, expects, leans upon and trusts in God’s auxilium. Given that all of the infused virtues are actualized by auxilium, and given that all of these virtues qua cooperative require the agent to lean upon that auxilium for God to cooperate with the agent, it follows that the acts of all other infused habits depend in this crucial respect upon hope.

If trust upon God’s auxilium goes awry through either presumption or despair, the operations of the other infused habits break down. Hope is not the form of the virtues, but it is something like their bottleneck.

With such extensive and immediate reliance upon God, why would we ever need to lean upon anything creaturely in the supernatural life? Aquinas answers that it is because God frequently works through instrumental causes to confer grace: a theme which resonates with his view that the causal relationship between the creator and creature is non-competitive, and that creatures themselves can be made into blessings.248

The greatest instrumental cause of grace is Christ’s humanity and his Passion. Other instrumental causes include the sacraments and the prayers of the saints. Aquinas says that even the ordinary “physical benefits” of life may be instrumental causes of grace insofar as they conduce to eternal beatitude.249 This inclusion is strongly supported by his

Aristotelian epistemology and hylemorphic model of embodiment. It helps dispel the

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image of the supernatural life as occurring in a Cartesian cogito too good to spiritually traffick in this world.

Faith, Hope, and Charity

Aquinas spends a great deal of time explaining the difference and relationship between hope and its fellow theological virtues, faith and charity. These three virtues are

“theological” in that God (theos) is their immediate object and sets their mean, they are infused rather than acquired, and they are divinely revealed rather than naturally discovered.250 While the immediate object of each theological virtue is God, the aspect under which each virtue regards God varies. So they share the same material object, but differ in terms of their formal object. Were this not the case, there would only be one theological virtue, not three.

The object of faith is God qua first truth. By faith the intellect is perfected through learning revealed truths about God and matters pertinent to salvation.251 The object of hope is God qua one’s own good or beatitude. By it the will is perfected through adhering to God for one’s own sake. The object of charity is God qua goodness as such. By it the will is still more perfected by adhering to God for his own sake.252 Following scholastic practice, Aquinas explains the volition of hope and charity in terms of two kinds of love:

“love of concupiscence” (amor concupiscentiae) and “love of benevolence” (amor benevolentiae).253 By the former we wish good to ourselves, and by the latter we wish

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good to another. In its fullest form, the latter blossoms into the love of friendship or amor amicitiae. It is by concupiscent love that “we are said to love wine, or a horse, or the like” – i.e., in an interested sense, or for one’s own sake. It is by benevolent love that “we love someone so as to wish good to him” – i.e., in a disinterested sense, of for the beloved’s own sake.254 Benevolent love is a necessary but not sufficient condition for friendship, which also requires a mutuality founded upon a shared good.255

Hope corresponds to concupiscent love, and charity to benevolent love. This is because hope seeks God not as good simpliciter, but as our own good secundum quid.256

Charity does the reverse. Nevertheless, Aquinas does not see the two loves as opposed.

For him, concupiscent and benevolent love are both good, though the latter is more perfect than the former. We go astray if we project into his terminology the opposition between selfish and unselfish, or egoistic and altruistic. For Aquinas, the two loves do not stand to each other as good versus bad, permissible versus meritorious, or suspect versus innocent. They stand to each other as lesser good to greater good, with the lesser being fully good in its own sphere.257

Aquinas regards self-love as such as ordinate even though to remain that way it must be subordinated to the love of goods greater than oneself. These range from the local and national good to the good of one’s species to the good of the universe and the good that is God.258 Good in general is the object of the will, and perfection is the end of every substance and of creation itself. Concupiscent love seeks one’s own good or perfection, but this does not by its nature entail seeking it at the expense of still greater

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goods. As movement is the precursor to arriving at the end, Aquinas sees amor concupiscentiae as a precursor rather than an inherent rival or enemy to amor benevolentiae.259 Due to sin, the relationship between these two loves will often go awry.

But this is the abuse rather than proper use of their natures, and abusis non tollit usum.

These two loves help explain the psychological sequence of knowledge and affectivity found in religious conversion.260 Aquinas calls this the “order of generation:” i.e., the order in which the theological virtues arise in the conversion process. Given that the will is an intellectual appetite, it follows that “nothing is in the will unless it is first known”.261 We only seek what we have cognition of. Since the theological virtues are supernatural, some form of supernatural knowledge must therefore precede supernatural volition. Hence, faith must come before either hope or love. Charity is the form of the infused virtues, and habitual grace only obtains when one has charity. The consequence is that the faith which is prior to charity is unformed and not of itself salvific.262 But precisely because auxilium grace precedes conversion, preparing us “as matter for form,” it makes sense to speak of such faith as supernatural and dispositive toward habitual grace. Since this faith includes among its articles the promise of perfect beatitude or everlasting life, it presents the will with this prospect – a desideratum which from the perspective of the “eudaimonia gap” is literally too good to be true. Presented with this prospect, the will may then be stirred towards it, so that there is a movement of interested or concupiscent love likewise moved by supernatural auxilium. From this unformed hope may arise.263 At that point the will is deeply invested in what faith discloses.

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There is thus an intermediate stage between believing in the possibilities for the happy life as limited by the eudaimonia gap, and believing in the possibility of friendship with God and a supernatural end which exceeds the gap. Whether this occurs over years or in a “Damascus experience,” the agent may reach a point at which he or she is disposed in a different way towards God. Belief and desire may begin to grasp God’s truth and goodness; it may occur to the agent that salvation is a possibility. This is a movement of the intellect which the will may seize upon, so that unformed faith and hope may be born. As with Augustine, one may not immediately let go of the old lifestyle; but one may begin to see and entertain a better possibility. Hence Aquinas says that one can have faith and hope – albeit unformed – without charity.264 Yet at a certain point the agent may commit, deciding that the prospect is worth it.

There is a famous story from the Venerable Bede which depicts this process. It occurs when the Anglo-Saxon King Edwin deliberates with his nobles about whether they should “follow the new teaching” which has clearly intrigued them and convert to

Christianity. The following passage captures the movement from unformed faith to that of an unformed hope primed for conversion and the infusion of charity:

Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thanes and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears

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on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.'265

In this passage we hear the voice of people dissatisfied with the eudaimonia gap and considering a more appealing prospect; one which requires a certain break with the old life, and a commitment that may be costly. It captures the sense of how movements of unformed faith and hope precede and dispose to genuine conversion. Aquinas holds that unformed hope is the penultimate movement prior to the infusion of charity. In this he draws upon the idea that while hope as concupiscent is an imperfect form of love, it disposes the agent to the perfect love of charity.266

Hope seeks the end of perfect beatitude which God offers, and to that extent loves with amor concupiscentiae. But God offers this end not as something due to us, but as a free gift of charity: i.e., as a form of amor benevolentiae. The kind and degree of this benevolent love as disclosed by revelation is staggering: “While we were yet helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man – though perhaps for a good man one will dare to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom 5:6-8).” The belief of the hopeful that

God loves them with such extraordinary benevolence shows God to be lovable in a still higher way than that of concupiscent love - to be lovable not just as one’s own good, but beyond this as goodness itself. This in turn prepares the hopeful to reciprocate a benevolent love back toward God.

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Love of God as meeting one’s own needs creates space in us to receive God’s benevolent love, to acknowledge the gift in awed gratitude, and then to reciprocate benevolent love back toward God in our own creaturely way. One sees more fully that

God is not just a means to one’s own happiness, but that God is infinitely good and worthy of all our love.267 This process is clearly similar to the benevolent love which people spontaneously show to those who do them kindness. If the man beaten by thieves had ever met the Good Samaritan who had saved him, would anyone be surprised if he showed him a benevolent love in return, loving him for his own sake rather than out of a desire to get more money from him?

Aquinas therefore sees unformed hope as an amor concupiscentiae for God that disposes one to a response of amor benevolentiae for God. In Aquinas’ scholastic jargon, faith and hope precede charity in “the order of generation,” but charity precedes both in

“the order of perfection.”268 The response of benevolent love is essential to enjoying the love of friendship (amor amicitiae) with God. Friendship requires mutually benevolence, but it does not just consist in mutual well-wishing. The friendship must be about something and involve a communicatio or shared good that characterizes the friendship.

With the benevolentia between the agent and God now mutual, amicitia with God and therefore infused charity is conceivable. But what will constitute the communicatio upon which the friendship may be founded? Surely it is far fetched to picture God and humans as conventional friends. Their ontological distance raises the questions of what they will have in common, and what the friendship will be about. Aquinas answers that the

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communicatio they will have in common is the divine nature itself and the supernatural happiness or beatitudo proper to it.269 It is in this that we are made partakers, and it is that participation which is the essence of habitual grace. Since the divine nature is Trinitarian, habitual grace is thus a participation in the Trinitarian life.

With amor concupiscentiae giving rise to benevolentia, and the mutuality and commonality for this to be amicitia put in place, charity as friendship with God is infused in the soul, and with it all of the infused habits. Unformed faith becomes formed, so that the act of faith is justifying.270 Unformed hope also becomes formed, so that one does not just long for God’s help and eternal life in a vague way but habitually leans upon God as the divine friend one trusts for help.271 Moreover, faith, hope, and charity are complemented by the infused moral virtues and seven gifts of the Holy Spirit which are infused with habitual grace. “The greatest of these is charity,” and so Aquinas regards charity as the “mother and root” of hope and the other infused virtues. The various infused habits still pursue their own proximate ends, but charity further directs these to its own ultimate end of union with God.272 “Charity is called the form of the other virtues,”

Aquinas clarifies, “not as being their exemplar or their essential form, but rather by way of efficient cause, insofar as it sets its form on them all.” Charity is also the only theological virtue which will remain in patria. Faith and hope will both pass away, being needed only in via. Clear vision renders faith superfluous, and loving possession makes hope an anachronism. But the love of God never becomes dated.273

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Hope is not just a duet between God and the soul. The presence of charity as informing hope gives to it an ecclesial and social dimension. Hope may be a self-directed love, but charity loves the beloved as a friend, considering him or her as another self. The consequence is that hope as informed by charity may hope for the neighbor as for another self, giving to hope a fully social dimension in the body of Christ and in the human community.274

Transformed by this infusion of habitual grace and charity, the convert is “reborn” or regenerated in Christ, becoming the “new human” (novum hominem) who walks in “newness (novitas) of life”.275 This in turn is a new kind of happy life (supernatural makarios or beatitudo) that differs from connatural eudaimonia. In effect, it is Gospel happiness as distinct from Nicomachean or some other happiness: the form of life proper to those living not merely the acquired virtues but their infused counterparts. This beatitudo is the “newness of life” mentioned, and like eudaimonia it is constituted by virtuous activity: i.e., that of the infused virtues. It is given concrete form in the New Law of the Gospel – above all, in the beatitudes of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.276

An important consequence of this is that Christian sanctification and supernatural beatitude are materially the same thing. It is important to recall that habitual grace is gratia gratum faciens: literally “grace making one graced or pleasing” (i.e., to God). In other words, it is the origin of our sanctification, and our ongoing sanctification derives from it.277 For this continued growth we also require auxilium grace to actualize habitual grace, so that sanctification is a matter of both habitual and auxilium grace. Actualized by

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auxilium cooperating with our capacities, the acts of the infused habits flow from habitual grace and congruently merit its increase.278 So they are acts of supernatural virtue and therefore constituents of supernatural beatitude which also merit an increase in such virtue and beatitude. But they are equally acts flowing from the habit of our sanctification as actualized by auxilia cooperating with our agency. By instantiating habitual grace – itself the habit of our sanctification – and meriting that habit’s increase, such acts further our overall sanctification. The consequence is that the presence, expression, and growth of beatitude is materially the thing as the presence, expression, and growth of sanctification.279 For Christians, the holy life is the happy life, and vice-versa. Hence the very holiest life – eternal life in the beatific vision – is also the supremely happiest life.

Presupposing the natural desire for perfect happiness, hope on the basis of revelation and elevated by grace specifies its object as the Triune God, and assures the agent that perfect supernatural beatitude beyond this life is indeed possible. The seeming inevitability of the eudaimonia gap with the pagan resignation it invites is defeasible after all, but only at the steep price of Christ’s blood, and only through the divine charity that calls us to the beatific vision.

Despair and Presumption

Aristotle claimed, and Aquinas agreed, that virtue is a mean between two extremes of excess and defect. The mean is determined by practical reason, and one’s

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perception of the mean is correct if it conforms to the rule or measure required for a certain aspect of human nature to attain the good. Otherwise, it errs by seeing something excessive or defective as advisable. But supernatural virtues complicate this by ordaining us to an end which exceeds reason’s natural grasp. Aquinas therefore claims that whereas reason is the mean of the acquired moral and intellectual virtues, God is the mean of the theological virtues. But if God is their mean, and God is not poised between various extremes, it follows that the theological virtues do not fall into the usual pattern of the doctrine of the mean. One cannot hope in God too much; one cannot even hope in God as much as God warrants. The same holds of faith and charity. This is because:

… our faith is ruled according to Divine truth; charity, according to His goodness; hope, according to the immensity of His omnipotence and loving kindness. This measure surpasses all human power: so that never can we love God as much as He ought to be loved, nor believe and hope in Him as much as we should. Much less therefore can there be excess in such things.280

Insofar as God is the object of the theological virtues, such virtues lie in the extreme, not in the mean. But while per se they lie in the extreme, per accidens they may be estimated in the wrong way on the part of the subject. We cannot hope enough, but we may hope in the wrong way, or fail to hope. The result is that the vices opposed to the theological virtues are vices of defect and excess in an extended sense. If one believes the final end is impossible, it is despair, hope’s vice of defect per accidens. If he or she assumes the final end is guaranteed or easy, it is presumption, hope’s vice of excess per accidens. There are vices opposed to hope, but one cannot have too much hope. Aquinas

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writes: “the good of such a (theological) virtue does not consist in a mean, but grows as it approaches the summit.”281

The mean of hope is in the extreme, so to speak, from which it follows that one has an interest in increasing hope more and more to approach nearer its proper measure.

Thus while one might reach the point where one’s temperance and prudence are very good indeed, and for the most part as good as they will ever be, one never reaches the point where one’s faith, hope, and charity are a finished product. Approaching but not having reached the summit, they are meant to be still increasing. One implication is gestured at by Alasdair MacIntyre: “The saint is, from the standpoint of the prudent

Aristotelian, liable to seem an unbalanced extremist.”282 Consider for example that

Abraham and Job were both mocked by their spouses for persevering in a faith and hope that looked excessive given the circumstances. From the standpoint of the conventional optimist, the hopeful will look obdurate - like people who don’t know when to quit, or recognize when they have lost. As my section on the eudaimonia gap noted, fortune may turn very dire indeed, making us require a seemingly excessive hope (a “hoping against hope”) not to surrender to despair. Philippa Foot’s Letter-Writers showed just this kind of

“extreme hope” while awaiting execution. From the Thomist perspective, they would have conformed to the mean of hope rather than slipping into vice of excess territory.

Far from taking it for granted that it will repose near the summit, Aquinas knows the hope of the regenerate may fall short, and may even be vitiated through hope’s opposed vices of despair and presumption.283 Since these are very real threats, something

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must be said about both. Like hope, despair (desperatio) regards an arduous good. But unlike hope, despair considers it impossible to attain. Despair is both cognitive and conative. Cognitively, it arises from the “false opinion that (God) refuses pardon to the repentant sinner, or that He does not turn sinners to Himself by sanctifying grace.”284

Despair thus impugns God’s mercy and falsely construes sin as ineradicable. Despair is often allied to a rigorism that depicts God as an exacting and unforgiving lord in the vein of “Master, I knew you to be a hard man” (Matt 25:24). Conatively, this grim error is followed by the will going slack and giving up on the commitment to persevere in seeking God as final end. Despair thus denies that the object of hope is possible, and accordingly gives up on the search for heavenly beatitude. As a direct aversion from the source of salvation, Aquinas regards despair with particularly horror, writing that

“nothing is more hateful than despair” and likening it to a “fall into hell.”285

Aquinas sees sloth or acedia as the characteristic cause of despair. Though it sometimes results in idleness, laziness, and moral turpitude, acedia is not reducible to flabby inaction. In that respect, “slothful” in English is too weak to capture the meaning of acedia. Following St. Gregory the Great, Aquinas regards acedia as “sadness about one’s spiritual good” due to the costly demands of Christian discipleship.286 Like the rich young man, the slothful wish God had not called them to the arduous journey of perfection, but had simply left them in a contented mediocrity. Acedia is directly opposed to the spiritual joy of charity, but indirectly it exercises a vicious trickle-down effect into

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hope. As a spiritual sadness that demoralizes the agent and increasingly makes the religious life a source of loathing, acedia is a kind of gateway vice to despair:

…the fact that a man deems an arduous good impossible to obtain, either by himself or by another, is due to his being over downcast, because when this state of mind dominates his affections, it seems to him that he will never be able to rise to any good. And since sloth is a sadness that casts down the spirit, in this way despair is born of sloth.287

The vice of presumption is a simulacrum of hope which sins by leaning poorly. It comes in two forms, both of which err through a disordered relationship to the efficient cause of hope. The first form of presumption is the Pelagian variety which denies the need to lean upon God’s grace, and contents itself with leaning upon one’s natural powers to attain perfect beatitude. Aquinas regards it as the evil fruit of vainglory, and recalls the telling biblical admonition "Thou humblest them that presume of themselves.”288 It follows that godlike self-sufficiency espoused by Aristotle’s magnanimous man and the Stoic sage, Pelagian and Emersonian forms of self-reliance, vulgar forms of therapeutic self-helpism and “believe in yourself” creeds of unfettered self-esteem – all of these are condemned as presumptuous by theological hope.

This claim might seem to invite moral laziness on our part. If we are dependent on

God for what matters most, why not just opt out of the moral struggle and abdicate responsibility for transforming oneself and the world, vaguely expecting God to do everything in a way that lets one conveniently withdraw from the process? Such worries lurk behind criticisms of hope as monkish, otherworldly, and disengaged from the world.

But Aquinas condemns this as an equal and opposite form of presumption. Such agents 132

trust in God’s mercy and power excessively, ignoring God’s justice and complacently assuming they will receive “pardon without repenting, or glory without merits.”289 By leaning inordinately upon God’s auxilium while refusing to cooperate with what that auxilium is prompting them to do, they fail to merit and decline to be spiritually transformed. Hence such complacency “removes or despises the auxilium of the Holy

Spirit” by which we repent and perform the acts of the infused virtues.290

F. Fear and Certitude

This brief sketch of the vices opposed to hope makes clear that hope is vulnerable and needs to be sustained if we are to successfully complete the journey. To that end, a major bulwark of hope is the gift of fear which makes the hopeful more amenable to the promptings of grace.291 Like all habits of grace, hope is a potentiality which is actualized through auxilium as a discrete supernatural motion. The gift of fear is a habit which inheres in the overall habit of hope. It makes the hopeful more docile and pliable to the motion of auxilium insofar as such grace prompts the virtue of hope into action. This puts cooperation with grace on a surer footing, and helps counteract temptations against hope that

Aquinas discusses a variety of fears to make clear which kind he identifies with the gift. All fear is a dread of losing what one loves: “fear is born of love, since a man fears the loss of what he loves.”292 When the beloved is not infallibly and permanently

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possessed, fear of some kind is a natural and proper effect of that love. But what kind of fear is this when the object of love is God as willed by theological hope? Fully virtuous fear is not servile fear, according to which the prospect dreaded is simply punishment.293

Aquinas paradigm of the gift is filial fear, according to which the object of fear is separation from God.294 So hope’s proper fear is not just a cringing dread of punishment.

In its purest form, it is dread of whatever might estrange us from God. Such fear is therefore perfectly compatible with the charity by which we love God.295

Fear-talk may seem ill-at-ease with the lived experience of hope. Do not the hopeful enjoy a certain confidence and assurance of divine aid? Is not hope a source of comfort against despair? Aquinas fully grants that hope often brings with it gladness over nearing the goal, and the assurance that we will in fact reach the goal with God’s auxilium. The Scriptural phrase “rejoicing in hope” is not voided by overweening trepidation. Aquinas explains this by nuancing the object of fear. By fear we do not worry that God’s auxilium will fail. Rather, we fear lest we withdraw ourselves from God’s auxilium and so fail.296 Hence fear is not exactly a “tension” in hope, and it does not make the hopeful psychologically schizophrenic. Fear complements hope and makes one more amenable to its workings. It therefore makes sense to speak of fear as hope’s gift rather than its burden.

Aquinas goes so far as to ascribe a certain “certitude” to hope. Hope’s certitude is not the speculative intellect’s certitude about a proposition or event. It is not the confident prediction of one’s salvation as a future occurrence. Hope’s certitude belongs to the

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rational appetite’s analogous but distinct kind of certainty: one which clings with complete trust to the means necessary for salvation.297 As Aquinas writes: “That some who have hope fail to obtain happiness, is due to a fault of the free will in placing the obstacle of sin, but not to any deficiency in God's power or mercy, in which hope places its trust.”298 The confidence of this certitude strikes precisely the right balance needed to disqualify presumption while precluding despair.

In Aquinas’ theology the beatitudes are not discrete habits; they are the acts of those seven habits known as the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It follows that since each theological virtue has at least one gift assigned to it, each has at least one beatitude associated with it by means of the gift. Hope is therefore associated with a particular beatitude. Following Ambrose, Augustine, and the broader tradition, Aquinas believes the beatitude which puts fear into action is poverty of spirit. A renunciation of excessive attachment to honors and riches, spiritual poverty helps void the pride, vainglory, and worldliness which feed presumption, acedia, and despair.299

As stated in my method section, I regard the main outlines of Thomistic hope as persuasive and worthwhile, and in what follows I will assume its general contours as a given while striking out on my own and trying to describe the hopeful life in contemporary terms. This will involve engaging with relevant interlocutors and important issues, portraying the life of hope, and describing practices by which it is expressed and sustained. To summarize, I have proposed both that the will is a rational appetite which desires happiness or perfection, and that happiness consists in virtuous activity. I then

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argued that natural happiness is genuine but suffers from various limitations which comprise a eudaimonia gap. This gap shows there to be room in human nature for the theological virtue of hope to make a major contribution to the happy life. Hope assures us that the thirst for complete fulfillment is not in vain and it buoys us up with the anticipation of perfect beatitude. By sustaining us amid life’s trials and the inevitable approach of personal decline and death, hope keeps us from despair. By rooting us in acknowledged dependence on God while demanding merits that contribute to this world, hope curbs the presumption which resists virtuous activity and thereby diminishes happiness. In doing so hope offers a more attractive solution to the eudaimonia gap than pagan or secular resignation – one that makes a key contribution to this-worldly happiness while disposing us to full beatitude in eternal life.

2.3 Is Hope a Liability?

I have claimed that the theological virtue of hope makes an important contribution to the happy life. Yet theological hope itself has had innumerable “cultured despisers” who disagree. Hume would number hope among the “monkish virtues” which make a person useless, boorish, and unsuccessful.300 Rousseau saw it as distraction from human progress and earthly well-being.301 For Swinburne and many fin de siecle pessimists, hope is the heavenly bribe Christianity offers to make people buy into a miserable life of gloomy asceticism. The great tragedy of post Greco-Roman civilization is that the offer was accepted: “Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean: the whole world has grown gray 136

from thy breath.”302 Such criticisms of hope vary in quality from gratuitous abuse to forms of instructive hyperbole which expose unbalanced expressions of hope. But for the most part such criticisms come from thinkers whose attack on hope itself is just one file in a brief meant to discredit Christianity itself: to “crush the infamous thing” (Ecrasez l’Infame).303 Much of what has been said already will have made clear that Christian hope in anything like the Thomistic form neither entails nor condones the above follies.

The fourth chapter of this dissertation will address many of the social concerns at greater length. But in this section I want to address concerns about the object of hope which are not driven either by purely social or frankly un-Christian critiques. Many with no stake in crushing the infamous thing have grave and intelligent reservations about hope’s nature and main interest.

Turning from the descriptive to the normative, in this section I will seek to clarify the nature and object of hope, addressing misconceptions about its final cause or eschatological end, and engaging some prominent interlocutors. Much of it will address

Timothy Jackson’s arguments in Love Disconsoled that hope characteristically sullies agape’s “purity of motive” with a mercenary interest, that it distracts from neighbor-love and the joys of this life, and that hope’s object is unnecessary anyway since agape and the possibilities of this world are sufficient for the good life. Such claims have been made before, but Jackson makes the best case for them in the contemporary literature.

Moreover, as a Christian theologian Jackson is not a “cultured despiser” whose critique of hope is meant to discredit Christianity. He is someone who knows and loves the

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tradition from the inside and believes that Christianity would benefit by pruning away the deadwood of traditional hope. Jackson is also prominent and influential, and his criticisms of hope have gotten a lot of interest and received some impressive endorsements.304

Many would agree with Iris Murdoch that “In the moral life the enemy is the fat relentless ego.”305 Over the centuries, quite a few have claimed that theological hope has joined with that enemy through its apparent self-preoccupation and self-regard. Hope loves God as one’s own beatitude, fulfillment, and perfection. To some this makes it a

“selfish” virtue far removed from the disinterested love of God and neighbor. The self- regarding love which Aquinas and the scholastics called amor concupiscentiae is here seen as a kind of boil which must be lanced by the other-regarding love of amor benevolentiae. This suspicion of hope’s self-regard was carried to its extreme by the seventeenth-century French Quietists who advocated a l’amour pur for God so disinterested that it did not even prefer salvation to damnation. All that mattered was to unite one’s love with God’s will, whatever that had in store. According to Quietism,

“every request for oneself is self-interested, contrary to l’amour pur and to conformity with the will of God.”306 What the scholastics called amor concupiscentiae is to be wholly “quieted” by disinterested love which voids self-regard altogether through abandonment to the divine will. Karl Barth said of self-love that “God will never think of blowing on this fire, which is bright enough already.”307 The Quietist goal was to douse that fire wholly. As Bossuet wrote in his critique of François Malaval and Madame

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Guyon, this theology requires “the exclusion of every desire and every request for oneself, abandoning oneself to the most hidden wishes of God, whatever they should be, either for damnation or salvation.”308 Though the two emerge in starkly different contexts and have very different qualities overall, there is a definite parallel between the Stoics’ resignation to fortune and the Quietists’ resignation to providence. Both check personal hopes through resignation to a power of necessity which voids those hopes.

Quietism sought l’amour pur as a mystical ascent beyond selfishness into pure divine love.309 Put abstractly, this may sound inspiring. But when it is carried through to its conclusion, it is appalling. Such a theology instrumentalizes the self, abdicates any meaningful moral patient status, and by construing the person as nothing but a burnt offering to the divine will raises dark questions about the character of God so understood.

By treating one’s neediness before and dependency upon God as morally and spiritually irrelevant, Quietism undermines our very status as creatures. For what else is a creature but a dependent and needy being before its creator? To treat that neediness as morally and spiritually unimportant is to performatively subvert the creaturehood which

Christians theoretically profess. Quietism claims to void self-seeking, but ironically it does so by a peculiar self-exultation: one which assigns its members the role of a spiritual and even mystical elite who effectively say to God “I express no needs and ask you for nothing; I love you disinterestedly.” This rather clashes with the initial motives assigned to the Prodigal Son in the parable whose repentance begins with the recognition of his own abject neediness rather than with a high-minded l’amour pur.310

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The theological virtue of hope is implicitly negated by Quietism. Hope loves God secundum quid: for one’s own sake as one’s perfection and beatitude. Charity loves God simpliciter: for God’s own sake regardless of what we get in return. Aquinas explicitly states that hope and charity as loves are related as imperfect to perfect. I fully agree with this, and reject any “theology of hope” which seeks to dethrone charity’s primacy among the virtues. Nevertheless, imperfect goods are still goods. All things being equal, there is no reason why lesser goods should be discarded simply because they are not greater. The good players on a sports team are not kicked off because they are not the team’s best players. This relation especially holds true when the lesser good both disposes to reception of the greater, and complements it when the greater has been received.

Precisely this was suggested in the last section in terms of the relation between hope and charity. But for those to whom anything less than l’amour pur is at best a splendid vice, hope cannot even occupy this modest role. Hence the most telling critics of Quietism such as Bossuet focused less on the spiritual exercises and mystical vagaries associated with it and more on the fact that if Quietism were true theological hope would have to be cast out of the list of virtues.311 Faith and charity would abide, these two, but if I have hope I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

In a very different context, confessional background, and overall theology, somewhat related suspicions about theological hope appear in Timothy Jackson’s Love

Disconsoled. Though Jackson concedes the permissibility of a vague and uncertain hope for future beatitude, he insists that it is not permissible to believe in or assign it any

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importance. “Love’s priority,” according to Jackson, “implies the moral irrelevance of an afterlife.”312 A hope that believes in and seeks future beatitude is rejected as “a threat to purity of motive” which “tempts us to hate life or love death.”313 Jackson gives a place to self-love in his ethics, so this is not Quietism.314 But there is a family resemblance between the Quietist l’amour pur which finds hope a pollutant and the Jacksonian “purity of motive” assigned to charity relative to which theological hope is a “threat.”

To see why Jackson makes these claims we must situate them in the context of his overall project in Love Disconsoled. Jackson is a former and devoted student of both Paul

Ramsey and Richard Rorty. They represent the two poles or tensions in his thinking: one the one hand, a Christian agape which makes charity bedrock; on the other, a postmodern askesis which unmasks false consolations. As it happens, Jackson thinks these can be admirably reconciled: that the love whose type is Ramsey should be disconsoled by the askesis whose type is Rorty.315 The “false consolations” of Boethian invulnerability and

Pauline immortality obscure the nature of agape and therefore should be expunged. This is done using a pragmatism which Rorty thought exposed Christian love as ultimately false and cruel, but which Jackson thinks unwittingly helps to clarify agape.316 The idea is that pragmatic critiques cut deep enough to expose consolation as a wish-fulfillment fantasy while failing to damage agape itself. Christian charity thus both survives and indirectly benefits from this askesis through having the deadwood of consolation removed.

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Rortian skepticism is in turn chastened with a Christian moral realism and agapism which Jackson thinks acknowledge fallibility and vulnerability just as well as postmodernism while having better resources than Rortian irony for keeping solidarity alive.317 The experimentum crucis for this thesis is the kenosis and Passion of Christ which expose false consolations while nevertheless showing that the commitment to charity is intrinsically worthwhile.318 What Christians require is a “strong agape” committed to Christ’s command to “Love one another as I have loved you.” Jackson thinks that God is perfectly loving, that agape is its own reward, and that Christians may lead the good and happy life in this world. Nevertheless, part of the disconsoling askesis which requires a “strong” agape is that lives may be ruined and marred and yet have no heavenly compensation to look forward to. Contrary to Lady Julian of Norwich, all may not be well. Though the last word in our lives and world may turn out to be tragic rather than comic, Jackson tells us to refuse both pessimism and despair, on the one hand; and the opiate of consolation, on the other. Once again looking to Christ’s passion as the exemplar, Jackson instead commends a “willingness to stick it out apagically even to the edge of doom.”319 Here as elsewhere, Jackson’s rhetoric suggests the image of strong agape in a heroic last stand against meaninglessness, nihilism, and “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

For Jackson, agape itself is defined by three “interpersonal features.” They are:

“(1) unconditional commitment to the good of others, (2) equal regard for the well-being of others, and (3) passionate service open to self-sacrifice for the sake of others.”320 He

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describes such apage as a “metavalue,” and though it is not the solum bonum it is emphatically the summum bonum. Other goods such as happiness, health, justice, and freedom are acknowledged, so this is not “love monism” or strict l’amour pur. But whereas the “weak agapist” regards love as the first among equal goods, the strong agapist rates love as beyond comparison higher, justifying this move by the fact that

God’s very nature is agapic love. The consequence is that when goods come into conflict, charity as the “metavalue” always trumps.321 Jackson is fairly confident that this rids us of genuine moral dilemmas.322

Strong Agape and Happiness

Jackson takes charity as the necessary but not sufficient condition for happiness.

Health, happiness, freedom, and justice are true goods, but our pursuit and acquisition of such goods will itself be marred and hobbled absent agape. “Charity is a necessary condition for a well-lived life,” he insists.323 But Jackson swerves away from a possible

Stoic turn. Even the loving remain vulnerable to fortune; the virtue of charity is neither identical to nor sufficient for “full human flourishing.”324 Such points may give the impression that Jackson has an Aristotelian side. It may appear that once practical agape has been substituted for contemplative sophia, both Jackson and Aristotle can agree that happiness is comprised by virtuous activity while giving enough importance to goods of fortune to allow “man on the rack” style escape clauses from Stoicism. But while Jackson

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correlates virtue (especially agape) with happiness in important ways, he distances himself from eudaimonism. “Strong agapists,” he writes, “break altogether with Greek eudaimonism.”325 For Jackson, the practice of agape does not constitute the telos of happiness, but is its own, higher telos distinct from happiness. Agape trickles down into happiness, but cannot comprise it all by itself.

Yet there is a tension in how Jackson relates virtue and happiness. He believes one is not properly happy without the virtue of charity. So while the wicked may not drop dead of vice, “they do not know true joie de vivre.”326 No argument is provided for this claim which skirts a major debate in the ethical literature. Rosalind Hursthouse, for example, has argued that many unrepentant Nazis who escaped from Germany with comfortable sums of money led prosperous and contented lives of a sort, even if they fell short of the virtuous good life. Whether or not or in what sense “the wicked flourish like the green bay tree,” the debate cannot be settled by handwaving.327

Jackson’s own definition of happiness contributes to the obscurity. He defines happiness as “doing well, getting what you want.”328 Suppose we grant this conception of happiness. Obviously the wicked often “get what they want;” so why are they barred from happiness? Is it because they do not “do well”? But the notion of “doing well” is left murky in Jackson. Linguistically it calls up eudaimonia since phrases such as “living well,” “doing well,” and “faring well” are often stand-ins for eudaimonia in Aristotle, and are ubiquitous as such in the virtue literature.329Yet Jackson explicitly distances his

“happiness” from the concept of eudaimonia, particularly when understood and translated

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as “good living” or “human flourishing.” So Jackson’s “doing well” is not Aristotle’s

“virtuous activity” or “good living.” In fact, Jackson never suggests that “doing well” means “doing morally well” at all. Instead, he seems to make it a variation on the theme of “getting what you want,” as in the phrase “he did well for himself”.330 But if so, why is

Jackson justified in saying that the wicked are not happy and lack “true joie de vivre” if they do “get what they want”? Even if one grants that they need agape and goods which the wicked likely miss out on, they apparently don’t want it, and “getting what you need” is not part of Jackson’s definition of happiness. The adjective “true” in “true joie de vivre” appears to introduce a qualification, but grounds for qualification are not given. It is a ghost adjective that does no real work.

The net result is that the relationship between virtue and happiness is confused in

Jackson. This is a problem for several reasons. First, his claim that agape as he construes it contributes to happiness is argued from rather than argued to. Second, Jackson wants to sunder the virtue of agape from our desire for consolation. But as he himself eloquently makes clear, the “consolation” we want is the assurance that though fortune may do its worst, we will ultimately be happy. In effect, the consolation consists in believing that the eudaimonia gap can be overcome through God’s grace. Disconsolation consists in separating agape from the assurance of happiness. But since it is not clear from Jackson whether or how apage contributes to happiness beyond the stipulation that it does, and since Jackson beats back future assurances of happiness to make room for a better agape, why on his account should we believe that agape is the friend of happiness at all? Why

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should we not conclude that the relationship is indifferent or even antagonistic – that the disconsolation is more or less total?

Jackson obviously values the happy life and claims that the charitable will seek to foster it in their neighbors, being well-attuned to “each other’s joys and afflictions.”331

Nevertheless, his own portrayal of what the agapic life looks like from the inside seems excessively disconsoled. The fifth chapter of Love Disconsoled is perhaps the central one in the book, and the quotations that mark its beginning strike a representative note. From

The Iliad Jackson quotes: “There is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.” And from the Book of Job: “Human beings are born to trouble just as sparks fly upward.”332 Jackson’s chosen exemplars of the moral and spiritual life are Job in his dark night, Kierkegaard’s Abraham on Moriah, and Christ emptying himself as a slave and as the Suffering Servant crying out: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”333 Despite living before Christ, Job and Abraham are Jackson’s success stories of love disconsoled: those who chastened the mercy and reconciliation of agape with the askesis of disconsolation.334 “The greater the love,” Jackson frankly states, “the more it will be disconsoled and disconsoling, yet without despairing of the works of love in caring for others.”335 This is largely because disconsolation requires forgoing traditional spiritual comforts and heavenly promises, and because Jackson emphasizes our vulnerability to the point where suffering almost defines our humanity.336 Add that the agapic are to lead a life of unconditional and costly self-sacrifice on the above terms, and it is little wonder that Jackson’s ideal life “will be disconsoled and disconsoling.”

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Though I see Jackson’s strong agape as a far more profound ethic than postmodern irony,

Rorty despite his vaunted askesis at least leaves room for humor, cheerfulness, and “the kind of ‘light-mindedness’ that glides along the surface of life.”337 As Jackson said of

Rorty: “His ‘nihilism’ is not of the hand-wringing, desperate variety one associates with certain nineteenth-century Russians; it is unmistakably American in its cheerfulness.”338

Despite saying that charity produces joie de vivre, there is nothing like this in Jackson.

Even the novels he trawls for moral test cases dwell on anti-heroes and suicides. From F.

Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway he focuses on stories which show “how people go to hell” and the fact that “we are all bitched from the start.”339

Christ in his kenosis and Passion is for Jackson the supreme exemplar of the strong agapist who is “prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life” and has no future happiness to console him or her. For Christ himself and for us, there may have been no Resurrection, so that the Passion is the last word.340 With all the emphasis on disconsoling, the characteristically tragic examples of agape, and the absence of happy test cases for charity in Jackson, it begins to look as if happiness is an exception to the agapic rule. Despite stipulations that strong agape fosters happiness, Jackson’s own formulations and test cases suggest that love disconsoled does not give good odds for joie de vivre. Strong agapism could of course stare this criticism down and even accept it since agape rather than happiness is the summum bonum.341 But obviously this would come at a cost and make the askesis bite deeper than advertised.

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According to Jackson, one of the strongest false consolations we cling to is belief in personal immortality. “Love of neighbor in time and for her own sake, calls on us to uncouple Christian charity from several notions to which it is traditionally attached: for instance, immortality as heavenly reward.”342 Rorty, Sklar, Nussbaum, and others have convinced Jackson that both philosophy and theology are too consolatory. The exemplar of this bad trend is Boethius, whose Consolation of Philosophy on Jackson’s reading states that fortune is unimportant both to our moral striving and our aspiration for happiness. Nonmoral goods are ultimately illusory and true happiness is moral. Since no one can take one’s virtue away, and since happiness will endure eternally after death, one is consoled by the reflection that ruinous fortune is trifling. In effect, people like Boethius in his prison cell awaiting execution or Aristotle’s “man on the rack” may be “supremely dexterous and splendidly prosperous” despite outward appearances. Playing off Martha

Nussbaum, Jackson calls this view the “facility of goodness.” “In a Boethian world,” he writes, “the individual’s moral life trumps everything in time and leads in turn to surety about eternal beatitude.”343

Contrary to the facility of goodness model, Jackson believes we are morally vulnerable to the depredations of a bad upbringing and to forms of horrific treatment that mar or ruin one’s ability to give and to receive love. Moreover, he is agnostic about the afterlife and worries that the facility of goodness model is a “poisonous opiate” that makes the degradation of victims seem illusory and so deadens us to the work of agape.344 Jackson believes that Rorty, Nussbaum, and others have buried the facility of

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goodness view among philosophers and that he is called to bury it among theologians: to cast out the remaining “Job’s Comforters.” Jackson uses his disconsoling askesis to unmask a variety of false consolations. Most relevant here is his “denial of the necessary immortality of love that nevertheless does not plummet into despair.”345 In what follows I shall largely confine myself to this topic since it strikes directly at theological hope.

Though he disconsoles us concerning heaven, Jackson is not a Sadducee. He never asserts that there will be no afterlife. Instead, he is officially agnostic on the question and merely argues that “Love’s priority implies the moral irrelevance of an afterlife.”346 But while morally irrelevant, Jackson is willing to admit it might be desirable. The young Feuerbach claimed that “Love would not be complete if death did not exist” because the surrender of the self enacted by love has death as its natural and necessary counterpart.347 Jackson denies that love requires death, and even concedes that

“all things being equal, we would prefer a lasting communion with those we care for.”348

Jackson also considers Walter Kaufman’s claim that an intense and meaningful life of love and creativity eventually wears us out. Worthwhile projects take place in a world of turmoil which grinds down our desire to go on existing, so that while we may not seek death we rightly “welcome” it as a release.349 From this perspective, the prospect of an afterlife as endless duration is unappealing. But Jackson rejects this view as well, claiming that Kaufman would only be right if the afterlife were “simply more of the same turmoil that we experience in time,” which it may not be.350

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But this is the only good word which Jackson has for the chance of an afterlife, and this little taper does not cast much light in the general gloom of a chapter whose point is to wean us from heavenly and spiritual consolations. Having depicted Feuerbach and Kaufman as one extreme, Jackson then depicts C.S. Lewis as another extreme to position himself again in a self-made middle. But prior to examining Lewis, Jackson gestures at his own position. He concedes that “Postmortem rewards and punishments may” occur but that we “need not assert” they will because strong agape can stare down the “possible extinction” of our existence.351 When it comes to the afterlife, “There is no certainty… nor need there be.”352 The central claim is this: “We need not insist on the impermanence of death as a necessary condition for love, since charity is its own reward.”353 For Jackson, hope is essentially agnostic. We are allowed to vaguely hope for an afterlife, but we are not allowed to believe in the afterlife, since “love’s willing the good for others insures only the present plenitude of the self.”354 Theological hope is therefore replaced with agnostic hope conceived of as a vague wish. Jackson forbids this thin hope to believe that its object even exists. Moreover, Jackson does not allow agnostic hope to have any action-motivating or action-guiding role in our lives, insisting that it is morally irrelevant.355 Agnostic hope is therefore not a virtue at all, even considered on its own terms.356 Indeed, Jackson regards “any virtue” to be “dubious” if it is unable to

“accept the finality of death.”357 There is even a dark hint that the goods of the afterlife, if they do exist, may perhaps be irredeemably lost through “self-consciously grabbing at them.”358 Having no place in virtue, action, or the moral life, it should be clear that

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Jackson is not simply trying to minimize the theological virtue of hope, but demote it to the rank of a splendid vice.

The Alleged Threat to Purity of Motive

In language that recalls the Quietist search for a l’amour pur, Jackson states that a main reason for rejecting belief in the afterlife is “a threat to purity of motive.”359

Jackson’s concern is that agape will be polluted by the motive of a heavenly bribe, reducing the strong agape he wants into a kind of spiritual commercialism where eternal bliss is up for sale and can be bought through acting charitably in this world. So while eternal beatitude is not strictly impossible as a gracious, unmerited, and unforeseen gift of

God, Jackson thinks that in practice the consideration of heaven tends to spoil charity with mercantile motives.360 Hence the insistence on charity as its own reward rather than heaven as charity’s reward.

Representing all dangers of belief in heaven and the superfluity of it to charity is a single sermon by C.S. Lewis. Jackson makes Lewis the spokesman for traditional

Christian hope, seeks to discredit him, and then behaves as if centuries of Christian tradition concerning hope have thereby been discredited. The following is the crucial claim of Lewis which Jackson singles out for criticism:

We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward [heaven] makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is the reward which has no natural connexion with the things you do to earn it,

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and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation… The Christian, in relation to heaven, is in much the same position… Those who have attained everlasting life in the vision of God doubtless know very well that it is no mere bribe, but the very consummation of their earthly discipleship.361

This is a flat denial of Jackson’s claim that the proper motive of heaven is external to charity, and therefore that charity’s “purity of motive” is under siege from hope. On Lewis’ view, the end of heaven is internal to charity precisely because heaven properly understood is perfect communion with the God whom charity loves. This claim strikes me as sensible, and Aquinas says much the same thing, arguing that hope informed by charity seeks perfect beatitude through union with the divine friend.362 Since communion with the friend is the proper or internal reward of friendship, there is no reason to depict heaven as an external or mercenary reward that pollutes charity.363

Debates about the nature of agape and the proper motives for it obviously involve a lot of fine print. What is relevant for present purposes is the suggestion that traditional hope for heaven is a “mere bribe” to get us to behave charitably out of a “mercantile desire.”364 Having examined Lewis’ argument, how does Jackson maintain that such hope for heaven is “a threat to purity of motive”? Even if we grant that many poorly instructed

Christians may view heaven as a crass bribe for charitable works, Lewis is Jackson’s

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chosen representative of the traditional view of hope, and he argues the exact opposite.

Jackson’s only rebuttal is to claim that “it is unclear that endless life is such an inherent

‘consummation’ of Christian discipleship – what I have called ‘putting charity first’ – that its absence would undermine the meaning of that discipleship.”365 But the question

Jackson has set up in taking on Lewis is not whether absence of theological hope undermines charitable discipleship, but whether it smuggles an impure motive into it.

Lewis gives an argument for why it does not, and Jackson replies by changing the subject. He then proceeds as if his accusation has been proven. The case for “threat to purity of motive” ends up as question-begging.

Though Jackson is certain that hope is mercenary he never bothers to consider what hope seeks. Denunciation of hope requires him to characterize its motives somehow or other, and he ends up talking as if the main goal of hope is immortality in the abstract.

The desire for heavenly consolation, according to Jackson, is essentially the itch for

“endless life” and “Literal deathlessness.” Jackson rightly points out that sheer immortality is not a “consummation” of agape, and then wonders why we should insist on immortality since of itself it adds nothing to agape. But neither Lewis nor any other

Christian theologians are quoted as saying that immortality simply is what the hopeful seek. The very sermon of Lewis’ which Jackson critiques explicitly states that immortality simply is not the object of Christian hope, but rather perfect and undying communion with God.366 Traditional hope does not seek “Literal deathlessness” as such, but the perfect and irrevocable consummation of a loving relationship with God where

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there is perfect unity of motive, mutual benevolence, and everlasting enjoyment of the lovers in each other: for “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Cor

13:12-13). To depict motivated hope toward this end as no more than spiritual survivalism bribing its way into an impersonal immortality is to gravely distort the rich interpersonal character of Christian eschatology and theological hope. Yet this is what

Jackson repeatedly does.367 The result is that Jackson does not interrogate hope as a

“theological” virtue at all, because he never examines the historically deep and wide- ranging tradition which makes God (theos) the object of hope.

Invulnerability as Cruelty Enabling

The last major criticism Jackson makes of traditional hope is that it tends to “a troubling denigration of this world” and that it undermines charity by playing down human vulnerability.368 If “all shall be well” for the suffering in heaven, perhaps it is easy to let agape slacken on earth. This is a variation on the classical charge that theological hope is a “monkish virtue” which cares only about heaven and lets the world fester.

Again representing the entire tradition of hope is the one sermon of C.S. Lewis. The particular claim of Lewis’ which Jackson singles out for criticism is this: “If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical

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relation to what will truly satisfy.”369 This passage is regarded as the smoking gun which shows traditional hope’s “troubling denigration of the world” and “illustrates the danger of emphasis on the afterlife.” “This is especially true,” Jackson continues, “if we speak of both good and evil (e.g., others’ pain) as ‘fallacious.’”370 But Lewis is not talking about good and evil in general or of others’ pain as an instance of evil. He is considering our ultimate good in particular: what “our real destiny” is as agents longing for perfect happiness. In Thomistic language, he is addressing what constitutes our “final end,” and is judging ends other than God as “fallacious” candidates for this role.371 Obviously

Lewis’ sermon in no way considers our neighbors’ pain as a candidate for our final end - a misreading which if seriously entertained could only result in charges of spiritual sadism. But even if Lewis’ sermon did demonstrate the evils Jackson fears from theological hope, what would that prove beyond the fact that this one sermon contained errors? How would any broader criticism against theological hope have been made unless

Jackson demonstrated that these errors were characteristic of theological hope throughout

Christian history and tradition? Yet Jackson does not even attempt the heavy lifting needed to prove the latter point. His evidence for “the danger of emphasis on the afterlife” rests upon one sermon read at cross-purposes.

Influenced by the Rortian notion that false consolations are the midwives of cruelty, Jackson argues that hope undermines vulnerability and therefore makes cruelty more likely. He states that the greater “the moral role played by immortality-as-endless- life, the harder it is to acknowledge human vulnerability; and the less we admit

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vulnerability, the easier it is to be cruel.”372 The will-to-agape with its mission to end cruelty is thus at odds with theological hope, cruelty’s implied accomplice. Jackson follows up by saying that: “The risk of false comfort, as Rorty and Sklar point out, is a tendency to cruelty… So, in quasi-Rortian fashion, charity tends to change the subject when the topic of heaven arises.”373

Jackson does not say what kind of cruelty he thinks theological hope tends to. Am

I more liable to cruelty of commission: to performs acts of injustice, hatred, and malice during the week because on Sunday I professed with the congregation “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come?” Or am I more liable to cruelty of omission: to ignore suffering, injustice, and oppression, because I believe in the

New Testament promise of future beatitude?374 Jackson does not say what cruelty he envisions, let alone give evidence for hope’s production of it. But regardless of whether he meant cruelty of commission or omission or both, the accusation is incongruent even granted his own premises. Jackson has already depicted traditional hope as tainted by the effort to buy heaven through acts of charity.375 Clearly it would be suicidal to practice cruelty on such terms. Even if one granted that robust views of the afterlife regard human vulnerability as temporary, the hopeful as Jackson depicts them would by their own lights see cruelty as their main enemy. Jackson regards motivated hope as subverting charity into good deeds done for the sake of heaven. But if so, the very vulnerability of one’s neighbors would be the precondition for winning heaven through works of mercy, and the temporariness of that vulnerability would spur one to get on with the kindly deeds

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immediately and often, effectively reminding one that “night comes, when no one can work” (John 9:4). This may be a reductive view of charity, but obviously it both leaves no room for cruelty and indeed demands the opposite behavior. The result is that

Jackson’s critique of hope contradicts itself. If he is right about the motives of the hopeful, he is wrong about the cruel tendencies of hope, and vice-versa.

Scriptural Hope and the Resurrection

So in the end what place does Jackson give to agnostic hope? It is not a virtue, it does not affect deliberation, and it is no way action-motivating or action-guiding.

Nevertheless, Jackson says that hope in the afterlife is permissible as what used to be called a vague “wish” or utinam. As such it overlaps with what Elizabeth Anscombe in

Intention calls the “idle wish,” writing that “a chief mark of an idle wish is that a man does nothing – whether he could or no – towards the fulfillment of the wish.”376

Doubtless Anscombe would agree with Jackson that his agnostic hope conceived as an idle wish is “morally irrelevant.” But then we are right to ask whether Jackson has done justice to hope in any biblical or Christian sense by making its role so insignificant.

Consider the role of hope in salvation history. Hope in God’s covenant promises helped set the religious tone in Israel for hundreds of years.377 “Hoping against hope” (Rom

4:18) Abraham trusted in God and was made the father of many nations. Israel hoped in the Lord and was delivered from slavery in Egypt and later from captivity in Babylon.

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The Psalms are a record of hope where complete trust is placed in God as one’s rock, refuge, and fortress despite setbacks and defeats. The New Testament gives an even larger place to hope, and makes it quality more triumphal. The Letter to the Hebrews describes hope as “the sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Heb 6:19) and 1

Thessalonians speaks of the Christian persevering in part through donning “for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess 5:8).378 Plainly there is no pretending that Jackson’s faint and uncertain hope is the lawful heir or successor concept to this tradition of hope. No one, for instance, would be justified in calling Jackson’s agnostic hope a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,” or be well advised to put it on as a “helmet” for salvation.

Jackson himself insists that his form of hope is “morally irrelevant.” By any reasonable standard this fails to do justice to biblical and Christian hope as a moral category that helped fuel centuries of religious practice and kept the Chosen People going despite the crushing blows of history.

Nevertheless, Jackson sees the possibility of an afterlife as a “blessed hope” (170) in some sense.379 “We may still hope for an afterlife of heightened spiritual stature without categorical insistence on it.”380 This is the dichotomy as Jackson sees it: either make hope a vague agnostic wish with no moral role or dogmatically “insist” upon an afterlife and push agape to the margins. But this is a false dichotomy. Between these extremes lie a range of options, including making hope the confident belief and personal trust that God has gratuitously chosen to raise us up not despite but because of agape -

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that God’s “love is strong as death,” that “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it” (Song of Solomon 8:6-7).

Christianity has traditionally refused the two options Jackson presents, and seen his dichotomy as false. Whether it is the Church of the New Testament and apostolic era, the Church of the first seven ecumenical councils, or the Church of the later East

Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Reformed confessions, Christianity has consistently refused to accept anything like Jackson’s proposal. To ascribe this refusal to

“Boethian ethics” or ridicule it as a Job’s Comforter rings false. Historical Christianity no less than Jackson has been schooled in Christ’s Passion, and like Jackson has ruled out cheap and tawdry consolations as untrue to the “costliness of regeneration.” Yet mainstream Christianity unlike Jackson has enshrined a hope that could without absurdity be called an “anchor” or “helmet” of souls. The reason for this is readily located. Both before and during Christ’s lifetime the hope of Israel took shape as the hope for a

Messiah. The disciples projected these hopes onto Jesus, but on Golgotha such hopes seemed mocked and ruined. The place of the skull could have easily become the place of despair. Against this backdrop the Resurrection of Christ emerged as the sudden, unexpected, and ultimate vindication of biblical hope. It proved that nothing – not even death – could stop the coming of God’s kingdom and our part in the same. Arising this context, Christianity emerged not just as a religion of hope; but as a religion of confident, triumphant, and rejoicing hope.381 Nothing more unlike Jackson’s faint and muted utinam could be imagined.

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Having no place for hope in his theology, it is therefore no surprise that Jackson has no place for the Resurrection either. Obviously the two omissions are mutually reinforcing. For Jackson, “the best of Biblical piety” is summed up by Abraham on

Mount Moriah and Job in the slough of despond.382 This strain of piety reaches its agapic climax on Golgotha, and then it has nowhere left to go. “Love on the cross” is the pioneer who has now crossed the last frontier. Jackson’s theology therefore effectively stops on

Good Friday; Easter Sunday holds no new triumphs for it. The “disconsolation” of the cross is not succeeded by the “reconsolation” of the empty tomb, but by agnostic silence.

Jackson even talks as if the Resurrection would be an insult or slight to the gravitas of the

Passion.383 His image of theological hope as a kind of parasite threatening the well-being of agape is paralleled by the image of the Resurrection as an unseemly levity which cheapens the disconsolation of the cross. Even when pondering the empty tomb,

Jackson’s motto is very much: “My soul refuses to be consoled” (Ps 77:2).

Jackson is very alive to the possible counter-example posed by the Resurrection to his overall theology. He puts the central question well: “is not the empty tomb a central and ineliminable consolation?”384 The Resurrection is the crux experimentum which would show that Christianity ends not in disconsolation but in reconsolation. Jackson himself seems to doubt whether Christ historically rose from the grave, but “Christ’s own example on the cross suggests the possibility of obedience in the midst of doubt.”385 As he admits, this makes his position “admittedly more Joblike than Pauline.”386 He does not deny that the Resurrection happened, though he rehearses the Bultmannian theory of “the

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welling up of the Easter spirit” among the disciples whose Lord is bodily rotting.387 What really matters for Jackson is not whether the tomb was empty, but that it does not matter if the tomb was empty or not. This certainly gives Jackson the merit of consistency. For him, the cross exhibits the fullness of self-giving, self-sacrificing agape. With everything needed to teach and effect “strong agape” in place as of the crucifixion, what place could the Resurrection have? Only the distracting one of undermining vulnerability and making us think about the afterlife again. Viewed from Jacksons’ canon within the canon of strong agape, this would only invite backsliding, and so the topic of the Resurrection must simply be elbowed aside.388

A cynical critic might interpret this dodging of the Resurrection as lack of faith, as though Jackson were on the path “that led an earlier generation by stages from

Latitudinarian theology, to Deism, to Hume, to Holbach.”389 But such a view would do injustice to Jackson. Nothing shows him to be gripped by the skeptical worries of someone whose faith is gradually being hollowed out by naturalism. Jackson fully affirms the doctrines of creation, divine providence, and the Incarnation, and he claims that God could grant us an afterlife is this were spiritually necessary.390 In this he differs from Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse who affirmed the desirability of Christian hope but not its possibility given their naturalistic limits. Since Jackson affirms providence, his position is quite different: he believes in a God with the power, if not the will, to make “these bones live” (Ezek 37:3).391 The only reasons Jackson gives for actively doubting Christ’s resurrection or ours are entirely moral, and have to do with

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preserving agape from pollutants such as hope. But Jackson has failed to show that theological hope renders us mercenary, that it denigrates the world, or that it makes us morally apathetic or cruel to our neighbors. His own agnostic hope fails to do justice to the robust place given to hope in the biblical and Christian tradition. Moreover, the assurance that love disconsoled is a religion of joie de vivre hardly convinces. There is no rejoicing in the Lord in the pages of Love Disconsoled, and no evidence that Christianity on Jackson’s account is not finally a divine tragedy rather than a divine comedy. In more ways than one, Jackson’s theology is “more Joblike than Pauline.” In the end, Jackson has given the churches no compelling reason to take an eraser to parts of the Apostles and

Nicene creed. The profession “I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come” has not been proved to be a misguided creature of Boethius. Since

Jackson has not shown that theological hope is a problem, Christians may reasonably reject his agnostic hope as the proposed alternative.

Hope’s Contribution to Charity

Jackson puts hope in the dock and agape in the judge’s seat pronouncing a verdict of guilty. I have tried to prove hope’s innocence, so to speak, and therefore have focused on the harm it does not do to charity rather than the good it might do. But the whole image of antagonism between these theological virtues should be overcome. Though I believe with Aquinas that charity is the form of the virtues and the greatest of virtues, I

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also believe that hope benefits charity itself and gives it a larger field of operation. This is important to the topic of hope’s relation to charity which Jackson raises. Like Aquinas and the traditional generally, Jackson believes that apape is characterized by willing the good of the beloved.392 Hope can contribute to this in concrete ways. An example would be that when I look at my wife, child, or neighbor, I do not see someone bound for Sheol or for annihilation but for glory. I do not see them merely through the prism of The Iliad, the despond of Job, or even Christ’s Passion abstracted from the Resurrection. Chastened by the costly reminder of Christ’s Passion, I nevertheless see them through the eyes of

Easter morning. I would will their good in any case, but the presence or absence of hope alters the kind and degree of good I may will to them. Through the mediation of charity one may hope, pray, and labor for the eternal good of the beloved: hope that they shall see God face to face and enjoy perfect and irrevocable happiness in God’s presence forever.393 This is an expression of charity which hope alone makes possible.

Hope allows us to believe that greater good can be done to the beloved than would otherwise be the case. All of our lives are undeveloped to some point, and our share in supernatural happiness in this life is imperfect. Every one of us, I have argued, is on the wrong side of the eudaimonia gap to a significant extent. But consider those whose lives are radically undeveloped, maimed, or ruined, and who for various reasons do not have a realistic chance of being appreciably mended in this world. They are either descending on what I have called the eudaimonia arc, or they never really ascended it in the first place. From the perspective of happiness, they are more and more has-beens and

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tragic might-have-beens. Without hope, charity can only will them goods of virtuous activity, accomplishments, freedom, health, and overall happiness that it is impossible for them to receive. By contrast, hope believes that their story does not end where the eudaimonia gap leaves it: that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes… neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev 21:4). Charity would not be hamstrung without this hope. Most of the good we will and do for others on a daily basis we could still do. Yet this contribution of hope to charity is a real addition rather than a threat.

In what I have claimed is an extravagant overreach, Jackson argues that hope as a false consolation has “a tendency to cruelty.”394 When we consider how the consolation of hope is usually given, this claim itself sounds like a cruel mockery. The most poignant and characteristic occasion for hope to be offered as a consolation is to the dying or the bereaved. Consider a dead loved one. To an extent one grieves for one’s own loss, but the loving also grieve that further and genuine goods they will the dead beloved now seem impossibly out of reach to them. The parent mourns the development, accomplishments, happiness, possible marriage and children that their dead child will now never experience. The child mourns the healing, reconciliation, and development their dead parent is now barred from. The good which charity wills, mortality foils. Hope not only consoles the bereaved with the possibility of reunion; it consoles them qua charitable with the prospect of still willing the beloved good (not the same goods, but still good).

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Considering that this is the most common and representative way in which hope is used as a consolation, it is shocking that Jackson regards the consolation of hope as a

“tendency to cruelty.”395 The hour when the consolation of hope is most sought and most characteristically given is the funeral service, the cemetery, and the period of mourning.

The pastor or loved one who comforts the mother and father at the coffin of their dead child with the promise of the Resurrection is not engaging in a practice with a “tendency to cruelty.” Generally speaking, the reverse is true. Depriving the suffering and grieving of consolation without a compelling reason is the real cruelty, one that can hardly be described as charitable unless motivated by necessity. But I have argued that Jackson’s case against hope fails to prove such a necessity, that he gives us no compelling reason to abandon the hope of Easter morning and of the eschaton.

In grave suffering or at a deathbed, the good which agape wishes the beloved the strong agapist cannot affirm as a credible option for them. The consequence is that the presence or absence of hope alters the expression of charity itself. Unlike hope-filled charity, Jackson’s love disconsoled ends in the territory of melancholy resignation. This is not exactly Stoic, but as Jackson himself admits, his kind of strong agape invites Stoic comparisons.396

The good of perfect happiness which charity rightly wills the beloved, which is gravely absent in many and fully present in none, is a good which hope proposes as possible. As such, hope allows greater scope for charity by letting us believe that the full, lasting, and complete happiness we want for the beloved can be attained by them, and

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therefore is something we may pray for and will to them in earnest rather than just idly wishing they could have in some counterfactual state that can never be. Obviously this is not an excuse to avoid willing them such good as is possible in via. It is the opportunity not to stop willing them goods insofar as their good is hindered in via. In effect, it is to say that the scope of charity’s good will and beneficence is not outflanked by the eudaimonia gap.

In terms of our relationship with God, hope also comes to the aid of charity.

Jackson has already hinted that we want our loving relationship with God to continue rather than end. “All things being equal, we would prefer a lasting communion with those we care for.”397 Compared to the ardent love and desire for communion with God found in Scripture and the writings of the saints, this is an understatement. As Aquinas wrote in the Summa Contra Gentiles:

…in every lover there is caused a desire to be united with his beloved, in so far as that is possible; as a result, it is most enjoyable to live with friends. So, if by grace man is made a lover of God, there must be produced in him a desire for union with God, according as that is possible… Therefore, the desire for this fruition results in man from the love of God. But the desire for anything bothers the soul of the desirer, unless there be present some hope of attainment.398

Hope makes it possible to believe that charity will attain to full fruition and achieve perfect and unimpeded communion with the beloved. It is also true that the alternative to hope is disquieting from the viewpoint of charity. Jackson believes in God’s immediate providence over human beings as a corollary of creation ex nihilo.399 If I die and there is no afterlife or resurrection, I cease to exist, and my ceasing to exist is not 166

something God simply watches, but something in which God as my creator is involved. If

I cease to exist, God withdraws the creative causality which holds me in being, and therefore I no longer am. For whatever reason, God ontologically withdraws from me as a creature and literally annihilates me. Surely from the perspective of a loving charity this is a disturbing thought. Jackson takes aim at the theodicies of Robert Adams and John

Hick, arguing that justice does not require God to grant me immortality.400 But even if we grant this, Jackson has already admitted that God certainly has the power to keep me in being and has said nothing to show that ultimate abandonment befits a relationship of agape. Hope comes to the aid of charity by promising that the divine friend is not planning my imminent annihilation, but wishes to continue, increase, and perfect our loving relationship in a covenant love that is unbroken by death. Jackson sees Job as an exemplar of disconsoled love, yet Job is not pleased to consider the loss of a loving relationship with God.

Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! If mortals die, will they live again? All the days of my service I would wait until my release should come. You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands” (Job

14:13-15).401

Hope allows this expression of love to believe that God will remember us and continue to call to us, not casting us away but still “long(ing) for the work of your hands.” In terms of charity to both God and neighbor, theological hope is therefore not a

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parasite or deadweight, but something which makes a real contribution to Christian love itself.

2.4 Conclusion

I have proposed both that the will is a rational appetite which desires happiness or perfection, and that happiness consists in virtuous activity. I then argued that natural happiness is genuine but suffers from various limitations which comprise a eudaimonia gap. This gap shows there to be room in human nature for the theological virtue of hope to make a major contribution to the happy life. Hope assures us that the thirst for complete fulfillment is not in vain and it buoys us up with the anticipation of perfect beatitude. By sustaining us amid life’s trials and the inevitable approach of personal decline and death, hope keeps us from despair. By rooting us in acknowledged dependence on God while demanding merits that contribute to this world, hope curbs the presumption which resists virtuous activity and thereby diminishes happiness. In doing so hope offers a more attractive solution to the eudaimonia gap than pagan or secular resignation – one that makes a key contribution to this-worldly happiness while disposing us to full beatitude in eternal life.

Yet many critics of hope remain, among them Timothy Jackson. In Love

Disconsoled he made the case that hope is a kind of moral parasite which threatens charity. Against this view I argued that hope neither pollutes charity with mercantile motives nor tends to cruelty by undermining human vulnerability. Hope both cooperates 168

with charity and even increases its scope of operations by allowing us to will and pray for the ultimate and eternal good of our neighbors. Moreover, Jackson’s rather Stoic abandonment of hope fails to do justice to the robust place given to hope in the biblical and Christian tradition – not least through its displacement of Christ’s Resurrection.

Jackson goes too far in his efforts to disconsole Christianity, but he makes several instructive points. His stress on human vulnerability and the need not to just change that subject is an important lesson to the hopeful. Though I do not think that hope tends to ignore vulnerability, a certain kind of emphasis on the afterlife could lead people to take earthly misery more lightly than they should. Jackson also helpfully reminds Christians that Job’s Comforters must be shown the door. Just as a prohibitionist may be right to denounce intemperance but wrong to enforce teetotalism, I believe Jackson is right to declare war on cheap consolations but wrong to reduce hope to that level. Yet this very fact serves as a reminder that theological hope must never be made part of the genre of easy consolatio. Thus while I believe that Jackson’s commitment to disconsolation is excessive, I am indebted to his debunking of cheap comforts and warnings not to neglect our own vulnerability. In Chapter 3 I will retain both insights as important to shaping my own account of theological hope. Trusting in God’s grace to attain perfect beatitude, hope offers a better solution to the eudaimonia gap than both the pagan or secular resignation of Aristotle, Foot, and Hursthouse, on the one hand; and the Christian but overly Stoic disconsolations of strong agape, on the other.

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CHAPTER 3:

CONTRIBUTION OF HOPE

3.1 Rejoicing in Hope

3.1.1 The Desire for Fuller or Ideal Happiness

In the last chapter I argued that hope gives proper consolation to the suffering, dying, and bereaved, and criticized Timothy Jackson for casting hope’s solace in the role of a Job’s Comforter. Granted that Jackson is wrong to excessively disconsole Christian ethics, we need to see what ordinate consolations hope may offer. This section will seek to accomplish this task by examining the contributions hope makes to the happy life.

Hope’s role as “comfort against tribulation” has rightly been emphasized in the tradition, and I will examine it in the second half of this chapter. But despite the way many theologians and philosophers have written about hope, I do not regard solace and strength in trials as its only role. If it were, hope would only seem relevant during misfortune.

This would hardly account for the positive expression hinted at in a phrase like “rejoicing in hope” (Rom 12: 12). In the first chapter I initially put the eudaimonia gap in negative terms, focusing on impediments to happiness. But I also said that the gap had a positive side to it. This is comprised not of ills that cramp and pinch happiness, but of the 170

yearning for a greater share of happiness - perhaps even a total fulfillment. In that sense, the gap refers not to limits we would be rid of, but to the desire for more of a good thing.

As the happy eros of courtship may suggest the yet greater fruition of a wedding day, so imperfect happiness may rouse the desire for fuller or even perfect happiness. When one has hope, one believes this desire is not idle, vain, or absurd. This positive reading of the gap complements the negative reading and presents hope as attractive even to those who are not riddled much by impediments to happiness: to the overall virtuous and happy during ordinary and characteristically enjoyable periods of life. As such, it is a second and more positive occasion for hope that is commonly experienced and which I will briefly sketch.

Drawing upon the work of Michael Himes and C.S. Lewis, William Mattison III has made claims related to my topic. He seeks to give a contemporary gloss to the theme of Augustine’s “restless heart” by claiming that we have a “seemingly unquenchable desire” for the “complete satisfaction of our longings.”402 This theme is prevalent in the

Christian tradition, and is especially associated with the name of Augustine. But Mattison notes that atheist existentialists such as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus have also affirmed it and that it is extremely common. Mattison describes the “seemingly unquenchable desire” this way:

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work on important life projects, to continue to improve ourselves, to understand more.403

Mattison puts his finger on an aspect of the gap which does not consist of tragedy or niggling impediments, and which is recognizable to virtuous and happy people whose lives are going well. He calls it a certain “lack of satisfaction, or ongoing restlessness, even in the presence of genuinely good things.”404 The eudaimon may be living well, but he or she does not “just sit back” and effectively quit moral agency. The eudaimon continues to do things such as eating and drinking, engaging in relationships, noble projects, and pursuing leisure activities. Provided they are virtuous these activities may be constituents in happiness, but the fact that more constituents are always being sought implies that a further and ongoing share in happiness is being looked for. If we think of the constituents of happiness as being like bricks that build a house, we see that the house is never exactly finished: there is always more to do, more to pursue.405

To put the point in Augustinian and Thomistic terms, we are never perfectly happy. We never attain what Aquinas describes as “the perfect good, which satisfies appetite altogether.”406 As I covered in Chapter 1, Aquinas held that the desire for this was proper and recurrent to the human condition: that it was a natural desire. Even if the moral psychology behind this claim it is doubted or denied, such as desire is remarkably common, and a theologian writing about hope should have something to say about it or risk irrelevance to most people’s lived experience. Mattison’s claim is that even amid genuine happiness there is a remainder of restlessness. Augustinian language of the cor inquietum is loaded, suggesting disquietude. But suppose we tweak the remainder of 172

restlessness so that it does not necessarily refer to overall disquiet. We may instead read it as a kind of ongoing openness or appetite for fuller and completer good. I will not therefore presuppose that it is a necessary truth of moral psychology that all agents pursue a perfect good or complete happiness. Without in any way undermining this claim, I will dialectically waive it to be less philosophically divisive. All I must presuppose for present purposes is that even the happy and virtuous continue to pursue an ideal of good that they never fully attain.

The happy and virtuous do not think the good they have is as perfect as they would like, and so they would not deny the need to know more, to understand better, to improve more, to love better, to mend our world, to accomplish more things, and so forth.

We quite properly have an ongoing desire to continually move toward this “more” and

“better” and “improved,” to chase a fuller and more perfect good.407 Yet we never seem to have “arrived” completely and finally, and so we do not just retire our intellectual and moral agency, but keep pursuing things and engaging in projects. In a quasi-technical sense I will abbreviate this ongoing openness for fuller happiness or appetite for greater completion, referring to it as the desiderium for an ideal good whose fullness we never quite attain. This will help distinguish it from other desires and avoid repetitious paraphrase. My goal is to briefly sketch this desire to make plainer what hope elevates in grace and to show how this warrants a life lived “rejoicing in hope” by promising that the ideal good can be instantiated in patria and by ordaining finite goods to that end in via.

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A deep existential yearning for an ideal good or even complete fulfillment is expressed in various ways in countless songs, love stories, paintings, movies, philosophies, religions, “mystery traditions,” and even political theories. The very difficulty of articulating this desiderium makes it somewhat elusive of description. For that reason gifted poets often give better utterance to it than those limited to dryer technical vocabularies. Matthew Arnold is a good example of someone who affirms the desire for a perfect beatitude.

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us – to know 408 Whence of lives come and where they go.

Arnold affirms the desire while disbelieving it has a proportionate object.

Brazening this out leads him to a “wistful, soft tearful longing.”409 In Arnold and others, the desiderium is experienced as though calling to us “from an infinitely distant land” of supreme perfection. Just what might satisfy the desiderium is left hazy. Lest the desiderium sound like nothing but a theoretical a priori, I will glance at a very few examples of how the desire for fuller or perfect happiness plays out in widespread and recognizable forms.

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Perhaps the most popular target for the desiderium from the medieval rise of courtly love to Hollywood films today is an exalted ideal of romantic love. “If at that moment I had been questioned of anything whatsoever, I should have answered simply

Love, with a countenance clothed in humility.”410 These are Dante’s words after getting his first coveted greeting from Beatrice, but countless people who fall in love treat it with the same quasi-mystical fervor, feeling that the desiderium has found its proportionate object in the romantic beloved.411 Others envision a future Utopia as a state that will either confer perfect collective happiness, or at least a supreme degree of happiness impossible to us now. For example, in contrast to the disgusting Yahoos who are made to represent humanity in a present state of riotous appetites and uncivilized clamor, Swift in

Gulliver’s Travels describes the noble Houyhnhnms whose life is one of sober occupations and “sweet reasonableness.” H.G. Well pictures a future utopia of flawless hygiene, perfect health, refined hedonism, and scientific curiosity.412 Some project the desire for complete happiness backward, and imagine that a proportionate object must have existed in the past. Nostalgia is the flip-side of Utopia: the feeling that the golden age has passed, whether it is the Garden of Eden, the Elysian fields, a preferred century, one’s own childhood, or “the Age of Innocence.” One especially popular form of this nostalgia since the late 18th century has been a bucolic vision of the unspoiled rural village or local community enjoying something like premodern Sittlichkeit.413

Many writers within the fantasy genre express essentially the same vision with an invented world. A variation of the projected desiderium is the common if implicit belief

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that one can get temporary hold of Arcady in some favored hour or season such as a wedding, a honeymoon, or a holiday. The most common candidate is likely Christmas depicted as “the most wonderful time of the year:” one that is or at least should be a momentary paradise and ceasefire with the eudaimonia gap. Hence the increased misery and exaggerated disappointments of those for whom the “magic” fails. The shared feature in all these projections is an imaginary, proposed, momentary, or past setting in which it is thought that the desiderium would or should find its proper object. The heart will not be restless if only it can rest there.

It is important to note that the basic impulse behind the desiderium can be expressed not only through romanticism and escapism but also through serious and committed activism. The ideal proposed might not just be imaginary but political, and consist of serious proposals for effecting something proximate to a real rather than a fantasy utopia. Consider the wild euphoria with which many greeted the French revolution before the Reign of Terror. In Wordsworth’s poem, “French Revolution,” he contemplates the imminent overthrow of “meagre, stale, forbidding ways/ Of custom, law, and statute.” Believing like countless others that what he is witnessing is the earthly dawn of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, he gushes:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive… When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, When most intent on making of herself A prime Enchantress--to assist the work, Which then was going forward in her name! Not favored spots alone, but the whole earth, The beauty wore of promise What temper at the prospect did not wake

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To happiness unthought of? The inert Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!414

Similarly if less lyrically, countless communists and socialists have seriously envisioned and worked to bring about what they think will be a world of perfect human brotherhood and material happiness.415 The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama aroused similar euphoric hopes in many people: the tears and raptures, the hymn-like chanting of “Hope” and “Yes we can!” showed that the desiderium had been roused in many and was tinged by much utopian and even some messianic sentiment. So the desiderium for an ideal good at which “The inert” are roused “and lively natures rapt away” is not just fodder for science fiction, nostalgia, romanticism, and fantasy. It takes political and social forms where it is expressed not as a day-dream, but as a rallying cry and a vision for society. Many forms of environmentalism vary the theme through a vision for ecology.416

I have provided the above examples to display the desiderium for fuller or perfect happiness as a living, widespread, and recognizable longing to make clear that this is not just a scholastic abstraction. But for my present purposes, what is important is not so much what has been imagined or proposed as heralding a supreme good, but that there is an appetite for such proposals at all. They are a very popular way in which the desiderium for a fuller, ideal, or even perfect good is expressed through looking for an object that is time, place, and people-specific.417

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Mattison appeals to the work of C.S. Lewis in diagnosing the desire for a supreme good. Lewis notes that countless people attest to an indescribable and intense longing for the kind of beatitude no finite object can confer. This longing may be first awakened through a love of nature, travel, physical pleasures, music, falling in love, or excitement with some culture, subject, career, relationship, hobby, or moral cause. As when Dante first sees Beatrice, the feeling is often one of “Here begins the new life.” Suppose the object is good and that the characteristic activities involved in pursuing and engaging with that object would qualify as virtuous activities and therefore as constituents in the happy life. Nevertheless, Mattison suggests that there would still be “something we have grasped at, in the first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality… The wife may be a good wife, the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job; but something has evaded us.” The “something we grasp at,” Mattison says, is “the complete satisfaction of all our longings.”418 This statement requires two qualifications. The first is that on Thomistic grounds total satisfaction is not identical to perfect happiness. The essence of happiness is virtuous activity, and satisfaction or enjoyment is its proper accident. The “complete satisfaction of all our longings,” if we had it, would therefore not be the essence of happiness, but the proper attribute issuing from it.419 The two need to be distinguished as we distinguish heat from fire. The second qualification is that it is foolish to believe in and idolatrous to seek the satisfaction of all longings in a finite object. Nevertheless, many people have experienced at various points in their lives desires for things in this world the prospect of getting

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which makes the concept of ideal or even perfect happiness a “real” rather than a merely

“notional” proposition to them. Phrases like “If only she’ll marry me,” “If only I get that job,” “If only I could live in that place” or “If only we could make world peace,” often carry this existential freight. The powerful longing which created goods and ideals stimulate can stretch and enlarge our concept of fulfillment, suggesting hitherto unimagined degrees of satisfaction.

The lofty hopes which the desiderium kindles make it alluring but dangerous. It often spurs the idolatry by which agents make a finite good their ultimate end. So much is obvious, but there is another danger which usually goes unremarked. Ardent aspirations can end in burn-out and give way to the disillusionment and cynicism which are the midwives of sloth and despair. “These violent delights have violent ends/ And in their triumph die.”420 As bloated hopes, youthful dreams, and grandiose aspirations either wither or are gratified but fail to deliver the expected degree or duration of beatitude, a mounting sense of disappointments easily grows and leaves agents hard-bitten. When this happens fresh offers of an allegedly ideal good under any new form may look to the jaundiced eye like the old snake oil in new bottles, making it seem like wisdom to “see through” this new fraud at the risk of being taken in once again. Since theological hope promises perfect beatitude, the inclination of the disillusioned will be to cynically reject it as the biggest fraud of all. They become like the art critic who saw so many mediocre paintings of rivers under the moonlight that when he saw a real river under real moonlight he dismissed it as “conventional.” Jaded despair is thus facile optimism or

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naïve hopefulness stood on its head. So not only does the desiderium threaten idolatry.

Many end up disgusted with their idols but do not know where else to go, and like any number of Graham Greene characters they end up sunk in cynicism, sloth, moral inertia, and despair.421 Aquinas notes that “both children and drunkards are strong in hope.”422

The danger I am identifying here is that childish and drunken hopes may cause hope’s equivalent of a hangover. Hence this added need for the desiderium to be chastened with a reasonable ascesis and not to be uncritically endorsed lest bad habits of hope inoculate the agent against good habits of hope.

Nevertheless, the proper response of theological hope is not to cynically debunk the desiderium itself even when it is drunken or misdirected. Great longings, dreams, and aspirations often flow into adolescent or idolatrous outlets, but they may also lead to true greatness or heroism, as with the virtue of magnanimity. By contrast, a mediocre set of moral and personal aspirations may help one avoid the embarrassment of adolescent excess, but the wages of such faint-heartedness is the vice of pusillanimity.423 At a time when a frightening number of people ignore the common good, neglect self- improvement, and devote most of their leisure to a dreary flickering of the mind over endless cable television, video games, and social media, let no one say that we are in danger of overly lofty aspirations directed toward ideal goods.

Lofty aspirations make theological hope relevant and potentially of great interest to the agent. The longing for an ideal good or beatitude is therefore Janus-faced, but the solution is not to anaesthetize the desire, but to hold it up to the light: to recall the

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aspiration to people’s attention when it lies beneath a hard shell of demoralization, disillusionment, cynicism, or despair; to validate the appetite itself while reserving judgment about what it has fed on in the past, and then to chasten and direct it to its proper object in God as the source of perfect beatitude. It is a treasure so obviously contained in broken vessels that validating it to this extent in no way denies concupiscence or supports a romantic exultation of the desire as a “bow/which always shoots straight to its Happy Mark.”424

The desire for fuller, ideal, or perfect beatitude is not itself contemptible. Though it is marred by sin, hope’s response is: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench” (Is 42:3). If one is Christian, the desiderium is therefore not ultimately a “melancholy” one doomed to frustration, as it is for Sartre,

Camus, Arnold, and countless others. Lewis sees the desiderium providentially as a kind of intimation or signpost pointing us to a transcendent object.425 As such the desire is:

“the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”426 As Aquinas had done before him, Lewis argued that this was a natural desire for perfect happiness and inferred on teleological grounds that its object was therefore intrinsically probable.427 But even if one dispenses with the apologetic point due to contested teleological assumptions, the phenomenology of the desiderium itself can be retained as valuable. It helps illuminate or give us an “insider’s look” into the lived desire for ideal or perfect beatitude which hope proposes to take up.

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Infused by grace and disclosed by revelation, the theological virtue of hope alters our whole experience and perception of the desiderium for an ideal good. Hope supernaturally elevates it to the end of friendship with God, and exercises a much-need clarifying effect upon it. In contrast to the often muddled appetite of the desiderium in a state of wanderlust, theological hope specifies precisely what the proper object of the desire is. The consequence is that one gains a life-changing sense of direction. One is no longer homo erro: the human wanderer who does not know whether or where the ideal good can be found. One is homo viator: the human wayfarer encouraged by the knowledge that the ideal good can be found, who knows where it lies, and who is buoyed up by the will to make the journey and by the encouraging belief that one is already “on the way” (in via).

An important caveat is in order. Someone who lacks theological hope is not necessarily miserable or existentially lost. I am not a radical Augustinian, and earlier I argued that connatural eudaimonia is true, rich, and admirable: that a good life can be carved out in the eudaimonia gap. But even if such a happy life is available – say, roughly on Aristotle’s terms – theologically speaking this is not all we may hope for.

Recall Aristotle’s own attitude to what I have called the eudaimonia gap: “We must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and being mortal, of mortal things, but we must, so far as we can, immortalize, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us.428

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This lofty aspiration could serve as the motto of magnanimity, and that particular virtue is certainly the best tutor of the desiderium at the connatural level. But as I argued earlier, Aristotle’s view leads to a certain resignation because the Aristotelian agent qua rational can envision a superlative degree of eudaimonia he or she qua mortal cannot fully attain and enjoy. “We are happy, but only as men” he says with a certain regret.429

Yet this is an offhanded concession, not an existentialist crisis. Aristotle himself lacks anything like angst, sensibly focusing on the eudaimonia we can get rather than grousing about the loftier kind we can conceive of but not attain. I have therefore argued for the validity and richness of connatural eudaimonia, avoiding the scorched earth rhetorical strategy which suggests that either your heart rests in God or you are a complete existential wreck. Just because the pagan cup does not run over does not mean it cannot get fairly full.

Granted this qualification, theological hope nevertheless does makes a life- changing addition. To the connatural eudaimonist hope effectively says that happiness is no longer a matter of “so far as we can,” but “so far as we could want,” proposing that

God as the divine friend and perfect good which will completely satisfy the desiderium as its proportionate object. As such hope is an even better tutor to the desire than magnanimity since it directs it to an even more ideal end.

To the idolatrous who think to find perfect beatitude through falling in love, building an ideal earthly society, or whatever it may be, hope exercises a chastening but not demoralizing effect. The desire for the fullness of good which these finite goods

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aroused need not be despondently renounced but purposefully redirected. As Augustine says: “Seek what you seek, but it is not where you seek it.”430 Moreover, if the desire for perfect happiness has God as its object, then the lack of total satisfaction that is our earthly lot can itself be seen as a gift. Rather than proving that the desiderium is in vain, the inability of the desire to find a proportionate finite object reminds us of where it will not be found. In so doing, it prevents any idolatry, foolish nostalgia, or utopianism that might lead us to shipwreck the journey of hope.

Left at that, it might seem that hope requires a rejection of earthly goods and worldly enjoyments as nothing but harp-strumming by the waters of Babylon. Such a view in turn gives fodder to Christianity’s cultured despisers in their critiques of hope as thinly disguised misanthropy. “The country of the Christian is not of this world,”

Rousseau said. “This short life counts for so little in their eyes” that for Christians “the essential thing is to get to heaven” and out of “this valley of sorrows.”431 The suggestion is that unfortunates with no happiness in this world console themselves with the wish fulfillment fantasy of heaven relative to which the joys of this life are bankrupt anyway.

Adversity is supposed to give rise to Christian hope and hope then declares the world worthless. The world-renouncing asceticism of the Christian hopeful turns out to be a case of cosmic sour grapes. Any theology of hope whose practical upshot is a severe contemptus mundi reinforces this stereotype. The very prevalence of this stereotype helps account for the neglect of theological hope by Christian ethicists who dread the jeer that they are fixated on “pie in the sky.” Hence what must be established is how the hopeful

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should regard created goods and earthly projects granted that they have in some sense wrenched the desiderium away from those objects and toward God as supernatural end. If we are not to be idolaters, must we be iconoclasts?

I take my lead from Aquinas’ observation that Scripture often depicts eternal beatitude “by means of various goods known to us.”432 The New Testament describes the coming kingdom in various images: as a wedding feast, the Father’s house, paradise, the wine of the kingdom, an entry into joy, the heavenly Jerusalem, the marriage supper of the lamb, and so forth. These images seek to evoke heavenly desire through the image of created goods. No doubt the continuing goodness of these created objects is presupposed.

If not, they could with equal propriety be replaced by the image of heaven as an eternal brothel or everlasting drunken bout, which is surely a reductio. But more importantly for my purposes is that a certain analogy between the finite goods and the heavenly good, however partial and qualified, is also presupposed. For Aquinas this follows from the analogous language used for predications of God. Making sense of Scriptural statements such as “God is good” or “God is wise,” he writes: “…when we say, "God is good," the meaning is not, "God is the cause of goodness," or "God is not evil"; but the meaning is,

"Whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God," and in a more excellent and higher way.”433

Aquinas’ point is that absent some analogy between created and divine good it would be meaningless to say “God is good” or “wise” or “loving” or “righteous,” and so forth. Saying this just means “God is the cause of” gets embarrassing quickly. God is the

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cause of cockroaches and of the dull-witted. Yet we would not say “God is a cockroach” or “God is a dull-wit” the way we say “God is good” or “the Lord is kind and merciful.”

Aquinas concludes that divine predications are therefore analogous rather than univocal or equivocal, “although they fall short of a full representation of Him.”

God prepossesses in Himself all the perfections of creatures, being Himself simply and universally perfect. Hence every creature represents Him, and is like Him so far as it possesses some perfection; yet it represents Him not as something of the same species or genus, but as the excelling principle of whose form the effects fall short, although they derive some kind of likeness thereto.434

When Scripture speaks of heaven or our perfect good as a marriage feast or bejeweled city, I take it this way. The enormous joy of a wedding or the exquisite beauty of a jewel possess a created good or perfection which in a finite way reflects the God who

“prepossesses in Himself all the perfections of creatures, being Himself simply and universally perfect.”435

Hope chastens the desiderium by teaching that perfect good and beatitude cannot be found in an idealized relationship, career, subject, place, time, vision of the good society, etc. But taking my cue from Aquinas’ treatment of divine predication, I suggest that such finite goods have an analogous rather than equivocal or univocal relationship to the perfect good found in the vision of God. Fencing out misanthropy, this view suggests that goods which must be renounced qua idols may (all things being equal) be retained by the hopeful qua icons. Bespeaking the goodness of creation, this vision of hope allows us to receive creation as a gift which reflects its maker instead of turning hope into a libel on

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human life in its present form or slouching toward Manicheanism. It also allows us to follow the Scriptural example and speak of heavenly beatitude using the only language of desire we as finite beings have while fully acknowledging that the language is ultimately inadequate to the reality it signifies.

As a faint and far-off signum of their creator, the fitting response of the Christian hopeful to these created goods is neither to overindulge nor to disdain them. As Aquinas suggests, the proper response is to refer them to eternal happiness.436 The result is that the hopeful may only pursue and engage with such objects and activities in ways conformable with theological hope and the Christian life. Given the downward drag of concupiscence, reasonable asceticism therefore retains an important role. Beyond this, the inclusion of created goods in our lives may be ordained to the journey of hope. Insofar as they offer opportunities for virtuous activity, they are the occasion of imperfect supernatural happiness.437 For Christians the experience or prospect of an enriching relationship, ideal career, engrossment with subject or cause, or zeal to build up the good society, may therefore still offer the prospect of a magnificent good, if no longer of a perfect good. Yet that great good may itself be “referred” by the virtue of hope to the overall movement to the perfect good, becoming a constituent in the partial beatitude of this life.438 This does not require us to crudely instrumentalize all created goods - as though I were merely using my wife or the community as a neutral ladder to hope’s end and nothing more. The love and commitment expressed by virtuous activities and enjoyments I partake of through and with them may be sought for their own sakes, but

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also further and ultimately for the sake of our final end.439 As I will later explore in more detail, the end of perfect beatitude therefore has an internal rather than external relationship to imperfect beatitude. The Christian hopeful may thus regard their earthly desires and projects in a unique way, affirming their goodness while denying their ultimacy considered in themselves, and seeing the partial fruition attained in and through them as the first fruits and the signum of something greater.

The greatest statement of this vision is undoubtedly Dante’s relationship with

Beatrice in the Vita Nuova and especially his Divine Comedy. Hundreds of years of

Dante criticism have stressed that the perfection which Dante saw in Beatrice he regarded as a signum of divine perfection.440 To take but one episode: in the earthly paradise at the top of Purgatory, Dante beholds a heavenly pageant with Christ appearing in the form of a Griffin pulling the cart of the Church.441 Like us, Dante is not able to see Christ face-to- face. He is not yet ready for the beatific vision. Nevertheless, he is able to see the reflection of Christ in Beatrice’s eyes. He therefore stares into her eyes for some time, seeing Christ mirrored there. Yet it is not as though anyone else’s eyes, a clear pool, or any mirror handy could have reflected Christ to him in quite the same way. It matters that

Dante sees Christ in Beatrice’s eyes, looking lovingly at her but further and ultimately looking with love at Christ. For us who see through a glass darkly, created goods from a human relationship or an admirable pursuit to zeal for the good society may often reflect

God and likewise be part of our movement to God. Hence the influence which hope exerts upon the desiderium chastens idolatry without collapsing into misanthropy, seeing

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created goods and earthly projects in sacramental and incarnational terms and ordaining them to hope’s final end accordingly.

Hope also offers something important to those less prone to idolatry than to despair. It proposes that by the grace of God we are ordained to perfect beatitude.

Because hope informed by charity trusts in God as one’s perfect friend, the hopeful may confidently expect and joyfully anticipate this final and perfect beatitude, effectively saying: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps

27:13). Hope therefore cultivates an attitude of joyful expectancy. Just how this works bears mentioning. Aquinas says that agents may possess an end either in reality or by intention: that is, by having the end now, or by anticipating having it later.442 Those who lead a life of infused virtue possess the end of supernatural beatitude “in reality” now, if imperfectly, and to that extent they are happy.443 But at the same time the hopeful

“possess” the end of perfect beatitude now in the qualified sense in which an intention already possesses its end. This makes an important addition. While hope does not properly possess the end it intends to enjoy, hope’s intention of the end itself confers an anticipatory joy. Everyday examples display this kind of hope even at the natural level.

Consider people who hope to go on a holiday. They may delightedly linger over the brochures, talk to their acquaintances about the possible trip, and the acquaintances will typically express the hope that they do indeed get to go and to that extent share in their excitement. But those hoping to go on holiday are not just thinking of the enjoyment they hope for; they are enjoying now the prospect of the holiday’s anticipated enjoyments.444

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Hence it is not unusual to find that afterward people look back not just to the holiday but to the anticipation of the holiday, perhaps saying something like: “The vacation was wonderful, but I’m sorry it’s over. It gave me something to look forward to.” The second sentence captures the loss not only of the enjoyment as it was possessed in reality but in intention. In this respect Aquinas rightly states that:

Happiness is the last end of human life. Now one is said to possess the end already, when one hopes to possess it; hence the Philosopher says that "children are said to be happy because they are full of hope"; and the Apostle says (Romans 8:24): "We are saved by hope."445

Theological hope expresses this anticipatory joy for the greatest of all ends and so the quality and intensity of that joy may be very great. As Paul says: “We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). This rejoicing contributes markedly to the happy life of those who are “on the way.”446 So not only do the regenerate have partial beatitude now. The hope of perfect beatitude intensifies that partial beatitude and alters its whole tone. While the journey of hope may face difficulties and has important room for lament, the hopeful life is therefore not just a matter of wearily running down the clock to the eschaton. Trusting in the omnipotence and mercy of God to see us through to the end, the hopeful effectively proclaim: “I rejoiced when they said unto me, let us go to the house of the Lord” (Ps 122:1).

The hopeful see their existence differently from those without hope, believing there is an ultimate meaning and transcendent point to their lives and world. Committed atheist though he was, George Orwell is an intriguing interlocutor on this point. He noted

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that much modern technological hedonism stems from losing that ultimate meaning and transcendent destiny which were spiritual bulwarks of Western civilization for so many centuries. Though Orwell does not want to retrieve theological hope or belief in the

Christian heaven, he cautions his fellow socialists that “its disappearance has left a big hole, and that we ought to take notice of that fact.”447 He rebukes most socialists for thinking that material prosperity is our final end, for assuming “that all problems lapse when one’s belly is full. But the truth is the opposite: when one’s belly is empty, one’s only problem is an empty belly. It is when we have got away from drudgery and exploitation that we shall really start wondering about man’s destiny and the reason for his existence.”448 Orwell therefore suggests that the average comfortable bourgeois finds it worrisome to think about “man’s destiny and the reason for his existence” since the post-Christian answers to these ultimate questions are often bleak. Hence the comfort of technological hedonism and flashy amusements: the appeal of a “strip-lighted paradise” of pleasure resorts and perpetual entertainment with a summum bonum half-jokingly conceived of as “relaxing, resting, playing, drinking and making love simultaneously.”449

Orwell thinks the net effect of our “strip-lighted paradise” is to abolish the

“patches of simplicity” in which questions about the meaning of human existence and destiny are likely to occur. The unconscious aim to stifle reflective thought and the pondering of ultimate questions is aided by radios and other media which are never turned off and whose job is that of the great existential silencer. Orwell regards much of this as “simply an effort to destroy consciousness” and return one to a womb-like state of

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contented passivity. This technological hedonism tends “to weaken (man’s) consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals.”450

Orwell diagnosed this trend in the 1940’s, long before it was magnified by the invention of cable television, 3-D movies, video games, the internet, and hand-held media and entertainment devices – to say nothing of emerging technologies such as Google Glass or the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Certainly Orwell’s concern is anything but dated.

The tech fetish with its offer of infinite distractibility has only grown stronger. As has been quipped, the primary offer today of corporate America to its youth is: “Let them eat ipods.”451

Though very much an atheist, Orwell suggests that into the spiritual vacuum left by hope’s retreat has settled an existential drift which leads people to distract themselves from a sense of emptiness through flashy amusements, refined hedonism, and expensive tedium. As W.H. Auden teasingly put it:

The lights must never go out, The music must always play, Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.452

I have already insisted that absence of theological hope does not necessarily doom one to the splendid vices; that the pagan cup can be fairly full. But the pagan cup can also be drearily chipped and empty. From the Christian perspective, it is often difficult not to see a hardened secularism as a return to the bad news.453 Orwell suggests that this is true

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for a lot of people, and that the loss of hope is a major reason why. Of course it would be wrong to characterize contemporary society as nothing more than a “strip-lighted paradise.” Certainly there is much more to it, but the trend which Neil Postman called

“amusing ourselves to death” is widespread in our society even if not definitive of it.454

I suggested earlier that the desire for a fuller, more perfect, or ideal happiness is material with which hope can work. The sort of vulgarity which Orwell identifies pollutes this aspiration with a narrowness of vision that makes the options for happiness seem few and crude. Apart from explicitly religious appeals and more temperate habits, a major resource for disposing back toward hope therefore consists in intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural influences which expand people’s iconography of happiness and suggest more and better possibilities for fulfillment. Western culture historically teems with an iconography of happiness: a few examples would include Virgil’s Eclogues, Dante’s

Paradiso, the great paintings of Fra Angelico and Michelangelo, Tallis’ Spem in Alium,

Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa, Milton’s L’Allegro, Shakespeare’s greatest comedies,

Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Te Deum, the stain-glassed windows of Notre Dame, the best of Gospel music, the great works of the Romantic poets, Dickens Christmas Carol, and biblical imagery of divine ecstasy and heavenly beatitude. There is here an embarrassment of riches which makes almost any chosen examples almost arbitrary. Serious exposure to such advertisements for beatitude helps to expand the iconography of happiness beyond the limited options of the “strip-lighted paradise,” and goes a long way toward making perfect happiness thinkable. Exposing

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ourselves and our children to these and innumerable such resources can therefore prepare the way to making the vision of hope intelligible and even deeply moving.

Orwell may be wrong to wholly blame the “strip-lighted paradise” on the loss of hope. But hopelessness certainly creates in many a sense of emptiness and quiet despair which reinforces the widespread combination of existential boredom and technological hedonism: the itch to find distraction in a “kingdom of noise.” The infusion of hope makes a real difference to the twilight of the gods spiritual surliness that lurks under the technological glossiness and bread and circuses mentality of much post-Christian culture.

Hope restores the sense that one’s own destiny and that of one’s world have a transcendent meaning and purpose: that one was meant to exist, is infinitely loved, and was benevolently purposed for perfect beatitude. Believing that God is present through grace, providing guidance through auxilium and accompanying them on the journey, the hopeful need not seek distraction from self, God, and the question of one’s ultimate meaning and destiny.

Because hope supernaturally elevates the desiderium for fuller or even perfect happiness it alters its quality, giving rise to Christian rejoicing. But hope also exercises a chastening effect. Theological hope asserts that perfection cannot be found through the various ideals of happiness explored earlier, such as a romance or relationship, a perfect holiday or career, or a futurist utopia. Nor was it to be found in a past utopia we can only look back on with “terminal wistfulness.” Such beatitude is not even to be found in a ideal society or world that we ourselves can create. But no misanthropy or

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Manicheanism is entailed. The hopeful too may fall in love, ardently pursue a subject or way of life, or seriously yearn and work for a better world. Though we may not regard or pursue such finite goods as perfect ends, these goods may still be magnificent ends, and their perfections reflect something of God’s perfection. Earthly goods and virtuous activities need not be rejected by hope, but may be taken up and referred by hope to our eternal end as constituents in the happy life.

Put more technically, the finite goods and virtuous activities referred by hope to our eternal end are incorporated into imperfect beatitude as materials for and constituents of it, and when perfect beatitude is attained it will consummate rather than simply abrogate the happiness which preceded it.455 As the Vatican II document Gaudium et

Spes stated when addressing a related point: “after we have obeyed the Lord, and in his

Spirit nurtured on earth the values of human dignity, brotherhood, and freedom, and indeed all the good fruits of our nature and enterprise, we will find them again, but freed of stain, burnished and transfigured.”456 The life of grace and supernatural virtue is one of real if imperfect happiness that both prepares us for eternal happiness and constitutes its very beginning. “For it is one thing,” Aquinas says, “to hope that the tree will bear fruit, when the leaves begin to appear, and another, when we see the first signs of the fruit.”457

Amid partial beatitude, hope also looks forward to the arrival of perfect beatitude, bestowing upon it anticipatory joy. So while sin and misfortune make the end of hope

“arduous to attain,” hope itself truly is happy-making. Hope is thus a desirable solution not just to the negative side of the eudaimonia gap, but to its positive side. It speaks not

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just to the desire to overcome sad impediments to eudaimonia, but to the deep-seated aspiration to achieve a fuller fruition and an ideal good.

3.1.2 A Life of Praise and Thanksgiving

Encouraged by consideration of divine favors and the expectation of perfect beatitude whose first fruits have begun in this life, the Christian should habitually

“rejoice in hope.” Often expressed in liturgy and hymns, this rejoicing should color the whole tenor of the Christian’s life: for Christ is Risen and has gone “to prepare a place” for us (John 14:3). This positive expression of hope has been widely ignored in the literature. In that respect research on theological hope has abandoned most people precisely where their aspirations are most relevant to it. Thus Dominic Doyle focuses on hope largely in social and political terms.458 Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches emphasize the power of patience and endurance which hope confers.459 John Bowlin goes so far as to call hope a “Stoic” virtue, which certainly makes it difficult to imagine hope

“rejoicing.”460 Each has in common the neglect of hope’s positive and joyful quality. Yet this aspect of hope cannot be taken as a side show. Sloth paves the way for despair, and sloth often results from keeping hope buttoned up. Aquinas rightly notes that “just as despair is contrary to hope, so is sloth contrary to spiritual joy. But spiritual joy arises from hope.”

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Not to express the positive and joyful side of hope is to leave a spiritual vacuum into which sloth may settle. It is similar to the married couple who fail to spend time together or actively express their love and who therefore become vulnerable to marital burnout. In the sixth week of Easter in the Liturgy of the Hours a concluding pray asks:

“May we look forward with hope to our resurrection, for you have made us your sons and daughters, and restored the joy of our youth.”461 Traditionally hope has been associated with “the joy of youth,” a kind of supernatural analogue to the natural hopefulness of youthful vitality. By contrast, sloth and despair have been regarded as the supernatural equivalents of aging, decay, and senility. Hence the contrast between youth who have prematurely aged spiritually, becoming hard-bitten and cynical; and elderly people who retain hope’s spiritual youthfulness. As Josef Pieper states:

It seems surprising, however, how seldom the enchanting youthfulness of our great saints is noticed; especially of those saints who were active in the world as builders and founders… Nothing more eminently preserves and founds ‘eternal youth’ than the theological virtue of hope. It alone can bestow… that strong- hearted freshness… that resilient joy, that steady perseverance in trust that so distinguish the young and make them lovable.”462

Pieper fails to note that hope’s youthful joy may itself be tested by time and trials. But his overall point is well taken.

Obviously the positive expression of hope may take many forms. Aquinas himself prescribes contemplation of divine favors as the cause of hope and of the spiritual rejoicing which hope gives rise to. Hence Christology is central to the account. The

Incarnation is the major consideratio giving rise to hope, as Aquinas states:

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Hope..seems to proceed from the consideration of Divine favors, especially the Incarnation, for Augustine says: "Nothing was so necessary to raise our hope, than that we should be shown how much God loves us. Now what greater proof could we have of this than that God's Son should deign to unite Himself to our nature?"463

This consideratio of God’s love is magnified by the fact that Christ died horribly for our sakes “while we were yet sinners,” sacrificing himself for us as a free gift of unmerited love. This gives grounds for entrusting oneself to the God of love, and the

Resurrection then shows this God’s ability to conquer death itself: “through seeing

Christ, who is our head, rise again, we hope that we likewise shall rise again.”464 1 Peter likewise emphasizes the importance of the resurrection to a hope which rejoices: “By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus

Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice.” (1 Peter 1:3-6). Plainly the Ascension is the culmination of this process, uplifting our hope with the consideratio of Christ going preparing a place for us and ruling at God’s right hand. Failure to engage in the “consideration of divine favors” both makes us forget why God is reliable and why hope has grounds for rejoicing, leaving us vulnerable to sloth.465 Hope is therefore

Christological in its grounds and source. Later I will explore how hope is also

Christological in terms of Christ as our moral exemplar who possesses not the virtue of hope, but the “perfection” of hope.466 198

Strengthened and sustained by the consideration of divine favors, hope gives rise to “spiritual joy.” Lest hope be entangled with emotionalism, it is important to note that joy or gaudium is proper to the rational appetite or will. In that way it differs from delight or delectatio which is proper to the sensitive appetite and passions.467 There is often mutual commerce between the two, but the point is that by spiritual joy Aquinas does not simply mean a religiously-induced good mood. As a movement of the will, spiritual joy is properly a satisfaction of the will in the object it loves. Those who perform the suggested consideration of divine favors and spiritual goods may do so in a sincere way through private prayer, the reading of Scripture, liturgical participation, or something else.

Frequently this will lead the will to a spiritual joy which is both a preventive and curative remedy for sloth, and therefore an important part of keeping hope strong. Hope’s rejoicing therefore both expresses the hope we already have and allows it to grow further.

As Von Hugel says on a related point: “I kiss my son not only because I love him, but in order that I may love him.”468

This “rejoicing in hope” may be spontaneous but often it will be pre-planned, so that the habit of hope is delegated not just to occasional moods but to arranged times and liturgical seasons. Since these occasions of hope are the product of commitment rather than of passing fancy, they reinforce the status of hope as a virtue of the will rather than something whose exercise is left to mood or chance. This consistency and regularity is important. Hope may be a gift of grace, but as a habit of the will its maintenance requires an organized set of attitudes and trained habits which must be kept strong through

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consistent expression. If this positive side of hope is not regularly willed and expressed, the danger is that hope will just start to look like a holding operation in a war of attrition against despair. But it is reductive to cast hope simply as a weary and embattled wait for the eschaton that is vulnerable on the one hand to misanthropy and on the other to sloth.

Very often hope’s rejoicing will take concrete form through prayers and hymns of praise and thanksgiving which exalt in hope based upon Christ’s saving work. In a related way Scripture sometimes addresses what Christians should do in leisure time and when they are joyful. For James the matter is quite simple: “Is any one among you suffering?

Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise” (James 5:13). Having said substantially the same thing to the Colossians, Paul writes to the Ephesians: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart” (Eph 5:18-19). Aware that people look for a release from life’s stresses through wild parties, drunkenness, and a rowdy night life, Paul does not just dissuade from “debauchery” but tries to fill the void with devotional music, divine praises, and thanksgiving. The Psalms constantly suggest that such praise not be muted, self-conscious, and officious, but a true instance of rejoicing that invokes festive tones.

“O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!” (Ps 95:1-2). “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and

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I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God” (Ps 43:4). “Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob!” (Ps 81:1).

Such rejoicing is not a substitute for the hedonistic partying that offers an escape from routine, boredom, and stress. The reverse is true. A debauched night life is a paltry substitute for the spiritual rejoicing in which the heart at rest with God openly delights in the fact. Such expressions depend not just upon the inclination to rejoice, but upon the will to rejoice. But while this is initiated by the will, the expression often then overflows into the passions, and this further stimulates the will’s original movement.469 Obviously such rejoicing may take numerous forms depending on the context, culture, and individuals in question, but I take it that this is a characteristic way in which we express and strengthen hope while preventing sloth.

Whether it is a community of monks singing the liturgy of the hours, a parish singing hymns during Mass or divine service, or a family gathered around the piano in the evening, this expression gives concrete form to the “consideration of divine favors” by which we rejoice in hope. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, with its hosannas to the

Son of David, is an excellent paradigm. “As (Christ) was now drawing near… the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice” (Lk 19:37).

As they advance on the journey the hopeful also believe Christ is “now drawing near” and therefore rejoice. Luke adds that the disciples rejoiced and praised God “for all the might works they had seen” (Lk 19:73, emphasis added). Likewise, the hopeful do not just abstractly look forward to heaven, but root their anticipation and trust in what

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Aquinas describes as the “consideration of divine favors:” i.e., in the “mighty works” the

Church has seen: especially the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This spiritual rejoicing which hope gives rise to is the opposite of Timothy Jackson’s love disconsoled with its somber resignation. Jackson suggests sternly rebuking the consolations of the hopeful and silencing the hosannas of the children with Rortian irony.

This section proposes an alternative vision which resists this cold counsel and effectively says to the disconsolers: “if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Lk 19:40).

3.2 Presumption, Merit, and the Gift of Fear

Luther reminds us that we can fall off a horse either from the right side or the left.470 I see Jackson as falling away from hope through his excessive disconsolation; but we must take equal care not to fall away through false consolation. It is true that the comforts and rejoicing of hope express a certain confidence. The Christian wayfarer believes he or she knows where perfect beatitude is to be found, and trusts in God’s grace to see one through the journey. This is preferable to either secular resignation to the eudaimonia gap or a strong agapism that tends toward Stoic resignation. The key is not to let this joyful confidence and expectation lurch toward presumption, the false consolation which mimics hope’s virtuous consolation. The confidence of hope must be balanced with a continuing sense of creaturely dependency and ongoing moral responsibility so that one does not become self-reliant and self-righteous on the one hand; or complacent 202

and morally lazy on the other. Any rejoicing in hope must therefore be tempered by an awareness of moral responsibility and by a call to vigilance.

Aquinas sees presumption as inordinate hope. One cannot hope too much in God, but one can hope in the wrong way. In particular, he sees presumption as the breakdown of hope’s “efficient cause:” the grace on which hope leans.471 This breakdown comes in two forms. There is the broadly Pelagian kind according to which agents think they may attain our ultimate end by their own unaided merits. The error here consists in leaning upon oneself rather than God as what leads to attainment of our ultimate end. There is also a morally lazy and complacent presumption by which one takes heaven and beatitude as easy or guaranteed. The error here consists in leaning upon God too much by expecting to be forgiven without repenting and to attain beatitude without being oneself transformed. This signals the return of a childish or drunken hope opposed to virtuous hope. Aquinas sees the first as resulting from vainglory, and the second as resulting from pride.472 What both get wrong is the sense in which hope is possible, so that the agent fails either to lean on the right source or to lean upon it in the right way. I will look at each in turn as part of grasping the broader terrain of hope. Beginning with Pelagian presumption and then examining complacent presumption, I will conclude with a good word for hope’s widely neglected gift of fear, suggesting that it is a key resource for overcoming presumption.

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3.2.1 Emersonian Piety and the Vice of Presumption

Pelagianism continues to have its defenders. Contrasting his own Emersonian piety to Augustinian piety, Jeffrey Stout in Democracy and Tradition describes his position as Pelagian in an extended sense. Since he does not believe in God, he is not a textbook Pelagian. But he sees the inner logic of both Pelagianism and Montanism as kindred to his own ethics.473Moreover, his constant praise for “the self-reliant heart,” a

“self-reliant posture,” “self-dependence,” and “self-respect” shows a family resemblance to Pelagianism which no amount of atheism can wholly efface.474 Stout’s is an ethics of presumption which denies the need for reliance and leaning upon God to reach our genuine end, and which subtly characterizes hope’s divine reliance as unworthy of the self-respecting democratic agent. In this respect his Emersonian perfectionism makes an excellent challenge and counter-point to Thomistic hope.

Harold Bloom called Emerson the founding prophet of the American religion, and suggested that most of those who think of themselves as orthodox Christians are in reality

Emersonians at heart: that the creed of self-reliance, self-help, self-esteem, and can-do optimism has bitten so deeply into the American identity that it has hollowed out

Augustinian Christianity and refashioned its in its own image.475 On this view, Emerson and the pragmatists were the Pelagian Trojan horse in the American Church. Stout regards this as hyperbole concealing a half-truth, suggesting that “many Americans who call themselves Christian are in fact more Emersonian than Augustinian in outlook.”476

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To the extent this is true the hopeful must be vigilant and diagnose the trends so as to prevent the subversion over which Bloom shows naked triumphalism. Pelagian presumption does not spread so much through proselytism as through self-reliant cultural memes which subtly undermine the perceived need for mercy, repentance, and a savior.

Among other things, it does this through a rhetoric of self-reliance and self-help that makes grace seem unnecessary, and through a rhetoric of self-esteem packaged as democratic self-respect which construes sin-talk and repentance as morbid. Plainly both phenomena rule out hope’s leaning on its efficient cause of divine grace.

More is at work here than a theological assessment of Emersonian piety. Stout wishes to forge links with Augustinian Christians, broadly construed, for joint democratic ends. He argues that the virtue of piety is an important piece of common ground that accords Christians and Emersonians a decent working relationship. I will argue that while he frames piety as shared moral space, Stout redefines the virtue, making it an essentially

Emersonian virtue and subtly expelling any Augustinian quiddities. He does this by defining the virtue entirely in terms of gratitude and self-reliance, and insists that dependence and deference befoul the fitting and virtuous expression of piety. To the extent Christians accept piety on the terms Stout proposes as shared ground, the virtue of hope will be subverted by Pelagian presumption. Stout’s attempt to redefine the virtue of piety therefore has wider ramifications.

Against the antiliberal claims of MacIntyre and Hauerwas, Stout insists that democracy and pragmatism are not individualistic, atomistic, and averse to community

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and tradition. In Democracy and Tradition he tries to show this by retrieving the virtue of piety as the “virtuous acknowledgement of dependence on the sources of one’s existence and progress through life,” ranging from one’s country, local community, and the discursive traditions from which one emerged, to the parents, teachers, friends, and fellow citizens to whom one is indebted.477 Stout sees pragmatic piety as a character- forming part of the democratic tradition, one which rejects feudal deference to authorities and traditions with an insistence upon self-respect and equal discursive rights in deliberations about the good. It is democratic in the spiritual no less than in the political matters. It rejects the need for Christ’s saving work, for the Church, for the mediation of priests or sacraments, and it denies original sin and the need for grace. Its founding prophets include Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Dewey; and its contemporary defenders number Cornel West, Harold Bloom, and Stout himself.

Whitman strikes the characteristic note: “Long enough have the People been listening to poems in which common humanity, deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors. But America listens to no such poems. Erect, inflated, and fully self-esteeming be the chant; and then America will listen with pleased ears.”478 Doubtless Whitman would not worry if the Pelagian streak in this self-reliance and optimistic anthropology were pointed out to him. Whitman had, after all, prophesied that people like him would displace theologians like Augustine for whom Pelagian trends were a live worry: “The priest departs, the divine literatus comes.”479 He met the accusations of hubris made by orthodox Christians with a phrase worthy of Milton’s Satan: “Taking myself the exact

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dimensions of Jehovah.”480 The Promethean cut of the pragmatist’s moral wardrobe is evident, though as Jackson says of Rorty, “it is unmistakably American in its cheerfulness.”481

As Stout puts it, pragmatic piety is “the virtue of fitting or just response to the sources of our existence and progress through life.”482 But how is this response expressed? Not through abject deference or obedience, and perhaps not even through the pliant teachableness and measured docility which Aristotle wants ethical pupils to have for their moral betters so as to be formed in prudence and the other virtues.483 As Stout says: “Gratitude, not loyalty or deference, is, for the tradition of Emersonian perfectionism, the better part of piety.”484 Hence Stout echoes Dewey’s rejection of

“militant atheism,” since it lacks gratitude for many religious but important “sources of one’s existence and progress through life.”485 Stout equally rejects traditionalist supernaturalism with its God, revelation, Church, and need for a Savior. Pragmatic piety is meant to be a via media between militant atheism, on the one hand; and Augustinian orthodoxy, on the other. It is purged of militant atheism’s arrogant disregard for “the sources of one’s existence and progress through life.”486 It is equally purged of traditionalist supernaturalism’s anti-democratic deference and sin-sleuthing mistrust of self. So how does this relate to traditional Christian piety?

Augustine wrote that “true virtues cannot exist except in those who possess true piety.”487 On Stout’s reading, this has often led Augustinians to claim that the

Emersonian side of the American experiment is impious given that it does not

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acknowledge the true God. (By “Augustinians” he seems to simply mean “non-

Pelagians” who affirm original sin and the need for grace, using the label very broadly.)488 The default social expression of this charge is to reject secular democracy as a creature of impiety and withdraw into a traditionalist sect or Christian subculture. Stout sees MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and to a lesser degree, Milbank, as the contemporary leaders of this Augustinian withdrawal. A major part of his strategy is to vindicate Emersonian piety from these charges by stressing that it has much more in common with Augustinian piety that has been allowed: enough for the two sides to work together building up a social polity far richer than a MacIntyrean ruin. Stout argues that Emersonian piety, unlike militant atheism, can therefore co-exist with Augustinian Christianity, refusing to defer to its authorities, sources, and expressions; but acknowledging them with gratitude as important sources for our life and society. For this and other reasons, Stout suggests that the Augustinian Christians and Emersonian democrats who largely divide America between them can work together profitably if not always easily in the wise ordering of civil society.489 Stout’s attempt to rehabilitate Emersonian piety before a Christian audience has high stakes. It is part of his aim to shift the citizenry away from the antiliberal animus, “premodern traditionalism,” and “terminal wistfulness” he ascribes to

MacIntyre and Hauerwas – a bog into which Stout thinks a generation of Christians have sunk, to the detriment of American democracy.490

Though they may disagree with his nonreligious pragmatism, Augustinian

Christians owe Stout a debt of gratitude for the seriousness with which he takes their

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presence and their arguments in discussions about ordering civil society. Few secular philosophers have read contemporary theologians so deeply, or engaged with them more sincerely. Yet it is unclear what Emersonian perfectionism with its pious acknowledgment is supposed to have in common with Christian piety, or how this shared ground is supposed to foster friendly ties. For Stout as for his sources, piety requires one to acknowledge debts of dependency upon the sources of one’s existence and progress through life, and this acknowledgement takes the form of gratitude rather than deference.

He chastises militant atheism for not paying this acknowledgement to religious believers and to the role of religion in our culture. But no reason is given for why people like

Emerson or Whitman should want to show gratitude to the Augustinian sources they are trying to undermine. Stout like Emerson and Whitman dislikes the feudal, deferential, undemocratic, clerical, self-abasing, and sin-hunting qualities he sees as typical of

Augustinian Christianity. He describes these as a “blight on the human spirit” in both their individual and social effects.491 It is therefore odd that Stout should regard such

“sources of existence” as deserving of gratitude. Why should he give thanks for them?

They are the very chains which Emersonian perfectionists want struck off.

Stout distances himself from the “militant atheist” with whom the Augustinian presumably cannot work by saying that the Emersonian, unlike the militant atheist, gratefully acknowledges good religious “sources of one’s existence and progress through life.”492This is supposed to help convince the Augustinian that the Emersonian is a workable ally. But close examination reveals that Stout’s pious acknowledgment of

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Augustinian sources is non-existent. At times he praises the courage, justice, or patience of individual Christians or historical Christian movements. But this acknowledgment of gratitude is not paid to them qua orthodox Christians but qua citizens and human beings whose values or interests overlap with those of the Emersonian in the respect in which they are being praised. Insofar as they are thanked or admired, it is never for those qualities Stout has singled out as peculiar to Augustinian Christianity and has invariably described as undesirable and undemocratic.

The one specifically Augustinian trait Stout gratefully acknowledges is the impulse against idolatry whose inner logic he thinks should ultimately lead theism to negate its own God as the last idol left standing.493 So the great benefit of Augustinian

Christianity is its latent power to advance atheism. The idea that such left-handed compliments are the grateful acknowledgment which Emersonians make to Augustinians

- one which is supposed to mark them off from the “arrogant disregard” of militant atheists – is an impressive display of cheek. It is like “appreciating” a rival for his ability to take out all one’s other rivals before himself committing suicide and leaving one’s position uncontested. The Augustinian might well be excused for preferring the candor of the militant atheist to such “pious acknowledgements.” The consequence is that Stout’s piety does no substantive work in bringing Emersonians and Augustinians together. They may still come together over issues of justice, the common good, civil society, and so forth. But the proposal of piety as important shared ground between Emersonians and

Augustinians is an exercise in salesmanship that is lacking in substance.

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While emphasizing its common role for Emersonians and Augustinians, Stout frames piety entirely in Emersonian terms. He does this by slanting piety exclusively toward gratitude and self-reliance, and insisting that deference and dependence shown toward God are unnecessary and indeed detrimental to piety’s fitting and virtuous expression.494 The move is almost a parody of Chesterton’s quip that “Christianity and

Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism.”495

If what is essential to piety is what Emersonians like about it, then to the extent

Christians accept Stout’s redefinition of piety it will be easy for the Augustinian bits of the virtue to look like awkward add-ons with no important contribution to make. The

Augustinian traits will then increasingly look like what Stout and his fellow Emersonians say they are: “ossified poetry.”496 At best they will then be superfluous curiosities, like a

Baroque gargoyle on a modernizing building. Such an object may receive all the lip- service due to elaborate “ossified poetry,” but it hardly fits in with the newer architecture, and during renovations the case can easily be made to have it discreetly removed.

Through his reformulations, Stout has eased the way for Christians to discreetly remove the Augustinian encrustations from piety, leaving only its Emersonian core.

Yet Stout goes further and defines piety such that Augustinian qualities are not just superfluous but unworthy and pathological. He asserts that habitual deference to an authority over oneself is undemocratic and unfitting. This is not due to the belief that no existing authority is wise or good enough, but to the belief that such deference itself wrecks the habit of democratic agency.497 In other words, even if the Augustinian God

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existed, nothing suggests that Emersonian piety would commend undemocratic service to this hierarchical “Lord.” In addition, Stout thinks that belief in a debt which one lacks the power to repay is a “mark of sadomasochistic pathology,” and insists on the need for a

“piety cleansed of sadomasochistic tendencies by democratic self-respect.”498 Stout is here trying to keep piety within the bounds of gratitude, insisting that the debt of acknowledgement does not veer into the Augustinian need to acknowledge an indebtedness we cannot repay. The comment is in fact a barely concealed attack on the theology of Christ’s atonement, here regarded not just as unnecessary but as unbefitting the virtue of piety. By the canons of Emersonian piety, then, belief that Christ died for our sins is “masochistic self-abasement.”499 Note that Stout makes these points while charting the boundaries of the virtue of piety as such, not while giving suggestions for how piety should best be expressed while conceding that it could lack these qualities while remaining a true if lesser instantiation of the virtue in question. And indeed, it would be absurd to characterize a habit of “sadomasochistic tendencies” and

“masochistic self-abasement” as a virtue. The upshot is that Stout does not merely omit the matter of Augustinian piety, he banishes its form. Even if the God of orthodox

Christianity existed, Augustinian piety would remain a “blight on the human spirit.”

Insofar as Christians buy into Stout’s redefinition of piety and any civil religious expressions loosely associated with it, we should expect that many will relax or reject the insistence on piety’s Augustinian traits and come to think of the Emersonian traits as the real or only ones. The likely result is clearly foreseen by Stout himself: that great

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numbers of Americans who “call themselves Christians” will become “in fact more

Emersonian than Augustinian in outlook.”500 In both Bloom and Stout’s opinion, this phenomenon of the “anonymous Emersonian” is a good thing and is well underway. As

Stout writes of the “alienated theologians” who start to think rather Emersonian thoughts:

“most of them are moving in the direction of heresies that I embrace, so I welcome their company.”501

One can hardly blame Stout for “welcom(ing)” this trend given his own commitments, but his explication of the virtue of piety is a concealed exercise in exclusion-by-stipulative-definition and as such unworthy. Stout should not expect orthodox Christians to give him the power of redefining piety for them in such a way as to make it an essentially Pelagian virtue while describing it as common ground and pretending to validate their integrity as Augustinians. He may want theologians to “move in the direction of heresies I embrace,” but then he had better do this honestly and not make converts through sly equivocations on the word “piety.” He would resist any effort to redefine piety such as to tacitly beg the question in favor of Augustinian sources. So he should not be surprised if the theological border police cry foul when he claims to establish common ground through a virtue of piety which from their perspective looks more like the vice of presumption.

The debate between Pelagianism and Augustinianism is ancient and ongoing. In the past generation of theological ethics the greatest flashpoint of this debate, for better or worse, has been the running dispute between Jeffrey Stout, on the one hand, and Stanley

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Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, on the other. Stout’s quasi-Pelagianism is relevant to theological hope in several ways. Books like Augustine’s City of God offer a rival genealogy of morals, one in which self-reliance is diagnosed as “prideful self-assertion, a willful rejection of a human being’s actual status as the fallen creature of a perfect

Creator.”502 From the perspective of theological hope, Emersonian self-reliance encourages the vice of presumption born of vainglory by failing to rely upon God’s grace in an ongoing state of acknowledged dependence.503 The prominence and influence of

Stout’s own work suggest that what the Christians might call Pelagian presumption is not a dead letter but a live option in American society. Very likely Stout’s success is not just a cause but a symptom of this fact.

Stout’s formulation of piety acknowledges one’s ongoing dependence with gratitude. But in its more popular and less academic forms, the ideal of self-reliance has various widespread and less savory mutations. For instance, exaggerated self-reliance is often cast as essential to the American dream and to a middle-class, upwardly-mobile, and social climbing way of life. Consider Arthur Miller’s spokesman for the American dream in Death of a Salesman, the diamond tycoon Uncle Ben. He holds himself up as an exemplar of self-reliance and success, frequently boasting: “When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich."504 In a society for whom self-reliance is often wed to a narrative of the American

Dream as upwardly mobile success, the temptation to the “self-made” mentality with its self-righteousness, self-satisfaction, and presumption is hardly idle.

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Many Augustinian types think the inroads of Emersonians and other preachers of self-reliance have been exaggerated. They feel that the U.S. is more deeply Christian than is often acknowledged. This often coincides with a narrative according to which

Americans are essentially a Christian people unduly represented and manipulated by a liberal secular elite. Against the image of secularism on victory march, Richard John

Neuhaus characterizes America as a “maddeningly muddled Christian country,” with much of the “muddle” due to the influence of irreligious higher education and media establishments.505 Similarly, Peter Berger has quipped that America is “a nation of

Indians ruled by an elite of Swedes,” the point being that India is supposedly the most religious and Sweden the least religious country in the world.506 But other thinkers, no less “Augustinian” in Stout’s broad sense, believe that America and other Western democracies are much less Christian than they appear. Already in the 1970’s Josef Pieper suggested that a vague theism which is ultimately Pelagian operates as a kind of default middle class creed in Western societies. He warns of:

the typically liberal and bourgeois moralism that is antagonistic not only to dogma as such, but also the sacramental reality of the Church: solely on the basis of his own moral “performance”, an “upright” and “decent” individual who “does his duty” will be able to “stand the test before God.”507

This maps perfectly onto what Aquinas meant by the sin of presumption in its self-reliant form. Bloom and Stout think countless Augustinians are really Emersonians at heart. Pieper thinks the prevailing religious beliefs of the middle class, despite Christian cultural trappings and occasional churchgoing, harbor not the virtue of hope but the vice

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of presumption. Even if Pieper exaggerates its scope, the phenomenon is recognizable, widespread, and corrosive of theological hope. As William Mattison and others have noted, many who self-identify as Christians believe religion is a sort of contract or bargain whose inner logic precludes the need for grace.508 God delivers various commandments, it is up to Christians to follow these rules, and if they more or less keep their side of the bargain, God will reward them with heaven. God is law-giver and judge, but the role of savior and the need for grace quietly recede since everything important depends upon the person’s own moral effort rather than upon any help God may offer.

The fact that this is the penny catechism of countless half-churched people shows how widespread the vice of presumption is among people who lack the theological vocabulary to name it.

From the Thomistic perspective these self-reliant trends are distinctively Pelagian.

They all involve the refusal to acknowledge our creaturely neediness and spiritual dependency upon God combined with a failure to lean upon hope’s “efficient cause:” the grace we require to reach salvation.509 The remedy to this is an acknowledged dependence upon God’s grace: to overcome presumption by getting hope’s “leaning” right. This requires a frank admission of one’s fallibility and poverty before the creator as well as recourse to God for needed grace, forgiveness, and mercy through prayer and sacrament.510

A virtue of acknowledged dependence like no other, hope’s reliance on God is naturally expressed through petitionary prayer. Aquinas sees the Lord’s Prayer as the

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paradigmatic expression of hope.511 It shows awareness of our neediness and dependency on God. Moreover, it asks God to provide what we do not presume we can get or cannot take primary credit for. Whether it is the petition for our daily bread, forgiveness for our trespasses, or for the grace to overcome temptation, the Lord’s prayer replaces self- dependence with God-dependence and self-reliance with God-reliance, shattering any illusions of self-sufficiency and construing the self as a sinner in need of continual strength, healing, and grace.512 Where this habit of hopeful trust and divine reliance is regularly and sincerely expressed, the Pelagian mutations of contemporary culture will find it hard to make inroads and the triumphalism of Bloom will ring false.

3.2.2 Complacent Presumption

Just as agents can lean too little or not at all upon God, so they can lean upon God too much and regress into a spiritual infantilism that shirks accountability and moral work. The appearance that hope itself commends this behavior has often caused it to be thought a morally deflationary force: as a heavenly consolation which makes this sinful world look like a dissolving phantasmagoria before the inbreaking eschaton. Those who think this way may come to see earthly progress as a waste of time, like rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic. They may also show apathy toward the suffering, regarding their pains as momentary trifles compared to the pleasures of eternity that

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await. They may regard God as exclusively merciful and not just, so that grace makes no costly demands and sin has no consequences.

This is precisely the kind of false consolation that Jackson cautions us against.

Yet this false consolation is one of presumption rather than of virtuous hope, standing to it as a falsa similitudo of a genuine virtue. On this point Aquinas quotes Augustine:

“every virtue not only has a contrary vice manifestly distinct from it, as temerity is opposed to prudence, but also a sort of kindred vice, alike, not in truth but only in its deceitful appearance, as cunning is opposed to prudence.”513 From a distance or to the untrained eye, fresh water looks the same as salt water, and a bee looks like a wasp.

Closer examination reveals the difference. Complacent presumption bears this relation to hope. In Thomistic terms, this form of presumption errs by leaning upon God too much: expecting God to do all the work and never demand anything, so that the Christian may conveniently withdraw from moral tasks. As Aquinas trenchantly put it, such agents err by expecting to receive “pardon without repenting, or glory without merits.”514 The type is a recognizable one: soft-pedaling God’s justice and inflating their own worth, such agents assume salvation is not just possible but easy or guaranteed. They go from being wayfarers on the journey to tourists on holiday, neglecting good works or impenitently sinning away in the assumption that an all-loving God will never call them to judgment.

Claiming to rejoice in hope, they merely rejoice in presumption. From the perspective of virtue ethics, such presumption fails to see the connection between character and happiness, regarding the two as extrinsically related and assuming that God will bestow

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beatitude despite our agency rather than with and through it. This is the opposite of the view set forth earlier that happiness or perfection, both natural and supernatural, consists in virtuous activity.

Glory without Merits

It is sinful presumption to believe we can attain “glory without merits,” as

Christ’s parable of the sheep and the goats makes chillingly clear. On this subject

Timothy Jackson is a helpful interlocutor. At times he regards hope for the afterlife as a bribe which pollutes charity, and at other times he regards hope as an otherworldly distraction from the present tasks of charity and justice.515 I have argued that both charges are false, but the manner in which Jackson warns of the second possibility is instructive.

Wrongly thinking he has convicted hope, he issues some excellent warnings against presumption.

Theological hope properly understood does not ignore vulnerability. But a certain kind of emphasis on the afterlife could lead people to take earthly misery more lightly than they should. This in turn abets neglect of charity and works of mercy amongst many who think they are comfortably on track to heaven. By stressing these points, Jackson has issued concerns parallel to Aquinas’ own concern over the presumptuous expectation of

“glory without merits.”

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How does this presumptuous neglect of vulnerability play out? St. Paul wrote that

“the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18). Relativizing suffering with respect to the eschaton is a staple consolation in the tradition, as I noted in the last chapter. As St. Teresa of Avila said: “In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.”516 The message is meant to give comfort to the afflicted, but if read in the wrong way it could give comfort to the apathetic. If my neighbor’s misery is just one night in a bad hotel, perhaps I do not need to worry that much about it.

Doubtless this line of thought has been abused in various times and places by the morally apathetic who are quick to gild the lily and slow to help. The danger I am highlighting comes from those who use eschatology to emphasize the fleeting nature of this world and then mutter to their needy neighbors “this too will pass,” dressing up as consolation what is really the refusal to help.

It would have been interesting if Jackson had developed this critique of hope in detail. He could have claimed that theological hope disposes us to look upon fellow human beings lacking proper food, shelter, medicine, and education, reflect that they will go to heaven by and by, and enjoy the truly false consolation of not having to do anything costly to help. The defender of theological hope could then proceed to diagnose this as the vice of presumption opposed to hope, and charge Jackson with lacking nuance by never considering the difference between hope and presumption in the tradition. He or she could then point out that many Christians conspicuous for theological hope were also

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conspicuous for social reform. This would include medieval saints who spent their lives in service to the poor, the British evangelicals whose efforts helped abolish the slave trade, and the more recent work of reformers like Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement. The difference between hope and presumption is not just theoretical, but is practically displayed in such lives. Jackson is right to stress human vulnerability and wrong to suggest that hope undermines it, but theological hope should never forget the message itself or allow it to be misread by the presumptuous.

Those gripped by the presumption of complacency are characterized by moral laziness. Aquinas says they languish in the error that God “gives glory to those who cease from good works.”517 It is therefore important to note that Aquinas sees such quietism not as a mere peccadillo but as a mortal sin which vitiates hope and destroys the whole life of grace. The moral laziness which Jackson sees as characteristic of hope is one of the very things it exists to strike down.

The broader issue may be explained in terms of hope’s relationship to merit. The topic of merit was examined in Chapter 2.518 For present purposes what matters is the following. Aquinas believes that a person in a state of habitual grace may through virtuous actions merit reward from God. One may not merit habitual grace, since that is a pure gift. But once in a state of grace, God’s actual grace or auxilium cooperates with the agent, moving him or her to the praiseworthy exercise of the infused virtues and habits of grace. Such good works do not indebt God, but they are a good use of free will and therefore are fittingly rewarded. Condign merit where equals indebt and obligate each

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other is therefore ruled out for congruent merit according to which it suits God’s generosity to grant rewards in response to good voluntary actions. In this sense Aquinas believes that the wayfarer may merit both an increase of grace and eternal life. Both claims require qualification. As to the first: the infused virtues are habits of grace which the Holy Spirit actualizes through the movement of auxilium grace cooperating with our faculties to produce a virtuous action. That action is ultimately enabled by God but occurs in and through God’s cooperation with us, or else it would not be our act or an expression of our virtue at all. Such virtuous acts congruently merit an increase in the graced habit in a manner which is roughly analogous to the increase of connatural virtues through repetition. Charity as the form of the virtues is the primary principle of merit, but the other virtues, duly ordered by charity to our ultimate end, also engage where appropriate. The increase in grace furthers one’s sanctification. Because imperfect happiness is virtuous activity, such gracious acts also increase our supernatural beatitude.

So in our concrete moral and spiritual development, Christian sanctification is supernatural beatitude, and vice-versa.

Aquinas insists that while eternal beatitude is primarily a supernatural gift of God we cannot be owed, it is also fittingly regarded as a congruent reward for living a certain kind of life and becoming a certain kind of person. Jesus himself admonishes believers to

“lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt 6:20). Moreover, the measure of eternal beatitude is importantly related to the measure of our charity and merit in this life.519 As

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Paul says: “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” (2 Cor 2:6). Hence the very nature of hope’s search involves it in the pursuit of merits, and even implies that the more merits, the better the reward.

Aquinas explains the matter as follows: “every virtue obtains its meritorious efficacy from charity, which has the end itself for its object.”520 The degree of heavenly beatitude is therefore “distinguished according to charity… which the more perfect it will be in any one, the more will it render him capable of the Divine clarity, on the increase of which will depend the increase in perfection of the Divine vision.”521 All attain perfect happiness through the vision of God, and in that respect all share the same happiness. But some have grown more in charity and the infused virtues, and in effect have the capacity to see and enjoy more in the beatific vision of God. A rough analogy would be two people whose appetite is perfectly satisfied by the same meal, but one of whom had a more refined palate and so was able to detect ingredients and appreciate nuances which the other person missed.

I have already argued that hope’s desire for the enjoyment of God does not make it a mercenary virtue.522 The pursuit of merits in the interest of a higher degree of beatitude does not alter this. If the concept of merits were divorced from that of charity, the scheme would indeed be crass. Merits would just be stocks purchased for a heavenly investment fund, and the purest selfishness could mimic the externals of charity while lacking its love. Every good act could be calculated simply to advance one into a finer niche of paradise. Such spiritual commercialism is not what theological hope has in view.

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God through charity is one’s friend, and the object of hope is perfect beatitude through union with God. Merit implies that the degree to which one will be able to enjoy that friendship depends upon the extent to which one has grown in that friendship by engaging in the activities proper to it: those which deserve approval from God and which transform one into the kind of being capable of enjoying God.523 Here as elsewhere it is important to make clear that the object of theological hope is not an impersonal paradise or vaguely conceived heaven for which God is the necessary ladder. The object of hope is a perfect communion with God which constitutes our supreme perfection as rational creatures, and this end is intrinsic rather than extrinsic to friendship with God.524

Understood in this qualified way merit is crucial to the journey of hope. The hopeful are “wayfarers” (viatores): that is, those “on the way” (in via) in a journey to the heavenly homeland. But one does not go on the way without movement and progression, and here merit is important. Hope’s journey does not progress through the mere passage of time or gradual approach of death. As time passes and death approaches one might well regress on the journey. The wayfarer progresses through a growth in charity and grace which involves human agency but ultimately depends upon God’s gratuitous agency. For Aquinas, merit contributes to hope insofar as it gives added grounds for hoping in the reward, and for hoping in a greater reward the more we merit.525 The obvious implication is that any moral quietism or laziness is sheer folly from the perspective of hope, like burying one’s talent in the napkin.

Hope is also a general stimulant to virtuous actions. Aquinas writes:

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Hope of its very nature is a help to action by making it more intense: and this for two reasons. First, by reason of its object, which is a good, difficult but possible. For the thought of its being difficult arouses our attention; while the thought that it is possible is no drag on our effort. Hence it follows that by reason of hope man is intent on his action. Secondly, on account of its effect. Because hope, as stated above, causes enjoyment; which is a help to action, as stated above. Therefore hope is conducive to action.526

Seeking eternal life through the journey of this life, hope spurs one into virtuous action. It both rises to a challenge in pursuit of a difficult good and adds a joyful anticipation to the pursuit of that good which gives the action relish. The upshot is that merits give confidence to hope and hope spurs one to further meritorious actions.527 If all goes well, the result is a virtuous spiral.

Consider how this alters our whole perception of time. The message becomes:

“We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work” (John 9:4). Time is not just something which passes, or a staying operation to be endured. For every wayfarer it is a priceless, rare, and fleeting commodity to be wisely used. Not having seen time this way while he was alive, and viewing it rightly but belatedly now in despair, the ghost of Jacob Marley provides Scrooge with a cautionary tale about hope, time, and merit: “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business… Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light 225

would have conducted me!”528 As in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Marley only grasps too late the stakes between hope and merit: “Oh! captive, bound, and double- ironed,” cried the phantom… “Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”529 Hope’s symbiosis with merit changes the way we see time. It rules out the view of time as a clock to be run down before the eschaton and construes it as a precious and non-renewable resource that affords the only opportunity for moral and spiritual labor, merit, and growth we have. A summons to moral responsibility, from hope’s perspective idleness and the “wasting” or

“killing” of time are not minor foibles, but foolish waste and ruinous husbandry.

Through the mediation of charity, hope’s mutually reinforcing relationship with merit is not just individual but fully communal. Love of neighbor as oneself is extended to hope for neighbor as oneself, giving it a thick social role.530 This makes it highly relevant to social justice and charity to others. Through the mediation of charity one hopes not just for oneself but for one’s neighbor. Obviously this makes the plight of one’s neighbors relevant to hope itself. To neglect one’s needy neighbors and not come to their aid temporally and spiritually is to abandon them where it matters most and furnish them with temptations to despair. In an indirect way, hope therefore motivates us to improve our neighbor’s lot. Charles Williams’ novel, Descent into Hell gives a bracing account of how injustice and lack of charity tempt to despair. The life of a miserable common

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laborer culminates in him being fired from his job. His existence has been one of continual abandonment by his fellow humans, and this abandonment successfully tempts him to a quiet despair in which he hangs himself. Referring to humanity as a city or republic, Williams comments:

The Republic, of which he knew nothing, had betrayed him; all the nourishment that comes from friendship and common pain was as much forbidden to him as the poor nourishment of his body. The Republic had decided that it was better one man, or many men, should perish, than the people in the dangerous chance of helping those many. It had, as always, denied supernatural justice. He went on, in that public but unspectacular abandonment, and the sun went down on him.531

Without theatrics, even without passion, the man concludes that he is ultimately worthless, alone, and unloved - that he can “never rise to any good” to use Aquinas’ bleak phrase about how dejection incubates despair.532 Having despaired over lack of love, good will, and community, the man commits suicide. Such examples remind us that hope for one’s neighbor is expressed not just through prayer and the like, but is importantly related to social ethics. Even apart from the independent demands of justice and charity, hope incites one to works of justice and charity on behalf of the neighbor for whom one hopes lest he or she plunge into that “unspectacular abandonment” in which the sun of hope may set to never again rise.533

Forgiveness without Repentance

Apart from believing one may receive “glory without merits,” complacent presumption can occur through banking on “forgiveness without repentance.” As the 227

source of this impenitence Aquinas points to a certain spiritual narcissism. “Such presumption,” Aquinas writes, “seems to arise from pride, as though man thought so much of himself as to think God would not exclude him from glory… however much he might be a sinner.”534 The belief that one is all but guaranteed to go to heaven unless one is spectacularly wicked is not uncommon. It crops up in the therapeutic spirituality of millions who take their simplified Rousseauan catechism from figures like Oprah

Winfrey – often while still thinking of themselves as thoroughgoing Christians. The New

Age publishing industry, with its seasonal shift in gurus and best-sellers, explicitly markets a presumptuous spiritual narcissism to Christians by aping their theological vocabularies. The “power of positive thinking” movement with its countless successors and imitators is thinly veiled presumption originally served up by a Christian pastor.535

The most recent diagnosis of such trends has come through the work of sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. They coined the term

“moralistic therapeutic deism” in their book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual

Lives of America’s Teenagers. Based on lengthy sociological research and thousands of interviews, their thesis is that the majority religion of America’s youth is not Christianity in any historically recognizable form at all. Instead it is “Christianity’s misbegotten step- cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”536 According to the authors, the majority religion of America’s teenagers believes is expressed in the following creed:

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1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth."

2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the

Bible and by most world religions."

3. "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."

4. "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem."

5. "Good people go to heaven when they die."537

This almost infinitely malleable religion is further described as being “about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherent” as opposed to things like “repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of a sovereign divine, of steadfastly saying one's prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering.”538 It involves “belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally involved in one's affairs--especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved.”539

Such transcendence on the cheap is a very good inoculant against repentance. God conveniently stays out of one’s life in those areas where one prefers it, so what need to repent? Those who believe that feel-good self-satisfaction is the meaning of life will hardly prefer that God involve them in costly moral reform. For the “central goal of life is

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to be happy and feel good about oneself,” where “happy” means contented and “feel good about oneself” implies acceptance rather than repentance. “Good people go to heaven when they die,” and the bar for being “good people” is set so low that Faust and

Hitler may be the only disqualifications. This is a resounding denial of Aquinas’ claim that the object of hope is an arduous good.

According to Smith and Lundquist Denton, in this religion God becomes

“something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he's always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”540 This religion comes with a divine policy of non-interference combined with complacent self- satisfaction and a near-guarantee of heaven. If the authors are right, the “religious and spiritual lives of America’s teenagers” turn out to be little more than a parade-ground exercise in the vice of presumption.

This account may be exaggerated, but it is interesting to note that the authors have been criticized less for exaggerating the trend than for regarding it as a bad thing.541

Either way, the contemporary threats to hope are not limited to obvious forms of hopelessness and despair, but include forms of spiritual narcissism, self-satisfaction, and moral laziness which not only vitiate hope but disincline agents to labor for the common good. It is almost impossible that the reforming and self-sacrificial zeal of a Dorothy

Day, a Mother Teresa, or a Martin Luther King should emerge from the attitudes, commitments, and habits fostered by moralistic therapeutic deism. Not only should those

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who care about hope worry about the prevalence of this new majority religion, but any who care about society. It is very much a luxury religion of the prosperous with built-in justifications for preferring a life of comfortable mediocrity to any kind of moral or spiritual hard work. Forming the Church and citizenry in such habits can hardly bode well for the religious or the common good.

Tyndale wrote that the spiritual life does not begin till “the cockatrice of thy poysoned nature hath beheld herself in the glasse of the righteous law of God.”542

Recovering a sense of sin is plainly crucial to curbing complacency’s polite impenitence and soft-spoken self-righteousness. Stanley Hauerwas is a helpful interlocutor on this point. For Hauerwas, the road to repentance is barred by prideful “self-deception”.

Specifically, the “self-deception” it is the belief that I am effectively my own creator, which leads to “the illusion that I am in control”.543 This spurs the perceived need to assert oneself or one’s class in violence and forms of discrimination that reinforce the illusion of being in control. Here is where there may be a connection with moralistic therapeutic deism. Damon Linker wrote that:

Theologically speaking, this watered-down, anemic, insipid form of Judeo-Christianity is pretty repulsive. But politically speaking, it's perfect: thoroughly anodyne, inoffensive, tolerant. And that makes it perfectly suited to serve as the civil religion of the highly differentiated twenty-first century United States.544

Now consider Hauerwas’ point about self-deception and the illusion that one is in control leading to violence and evil. In therapeutic deism one is very much in control;

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God will observe a policy of non-interference wherever one prefers it. This may produce an “anodyne, inoffensive, tolerant” citizenry, but even if it does it may not produce an anodyne, inoffensive, and tolerant nation. Like many others, Linker has made the mistake of thinking that violence is essentially the product of aggressiveness. But it can equally well be the product of complacency, especially when morally flaccid and self-satisfied citizens and consumers defer to the corporate executives and politicians whose often manipulative, coercive, and violent schemes are packaged in the rhetoric of economic opportunity and personal freedom. After all, for the therapeutic deist, "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself." The comments of Ross Douthat in a critique of Linker may be a bit of a buckshot, but they are at least suggestive:

…let's say you think that the biggest problems facing America in the Bush years were… the botched handling of the Iraq occupation and a massive and an unsustainable housing and financial bubble. In that case, you don't have to look terribly hard to see a connection between the kind of self-centered, sentimental, and panglossian religion described above and the spirit of unwarranted optimism and metaphysical self-regard that animated some of Bush's worst hours as President (his second inaugural address could have been subtitled: "Moral Therapeutic Deism Goes to War") and some of his fellow Americans' worst hours as homeowners and investors.545

Moralistic therapeutic deism fosters the presumptuous “illusion that one is in control,” and its spiritual, moral, and social results can be very bad. Considered in itself, this religion hides beneath its affable exterior a self-righteousness which refuses to acknowledge sin or the need to repent, like a very genteel pharasaism. To address

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prideful self-deception and illusions of control Hauerwas recommends an honest exercise in self-knowledge which serves to recover a sense of sin. He suggests that such self- deception can only be overcome by “learning to be a sinner”: that is, by realizing and admitting that one is a broken person in need of healing and forgiveness. According to

Hauerwas, this is paradigmatically done not through forgiving others, but by learning to be forgiven by others.546 In this I believe he is quite right. For unless one has learnt this, one’s forgiveness of others may just be a subtle form of control, manipulation, and passive aggression.547 Learning how to be a sinner, one unlearns being a moral deist.

3.2.2.1 The Gift of Fear

Such self-examination and explicit recognition of moral fallibility is a good first step in learning how to be a sinner. A further resource for doing this and overcoming presumption is hope’s gift of fear. The literature on theological hope has ignored the gift of fear, making hope’s gift look like an awkward add-on. But to the extent fear has been neglected, the work on hope has failed to deal adequately with the vice of presumption.

Aquinas himself refuses to either dodge the subject of fear or to give it a puerile account. He states that by fear we refuse to “presumptuously revolt against (God) or condemn him”548 Recall that each of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit inheres in one or more of the seven infused virtues, and that the purpose of the gift is to make the agent amenable to the grace of the Holy Spirit who prompts the use of the virtues. The purpose

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of the gift of fear is therefore to remove barriers to hope’s action. Presumption is a major barrier to hope, and obviously fear is good at unsettling and ruffling the complacent.

Aquinas states that all fear is a dread of losing what one loves: “fear is born of love, since a man fears the loss of what he loves.”549 When the loved good is not infallibly and permanently possessed, fear of some kind is a natural and proper effect of that love. Aquinas therefore distinguishes kinds of fear according to kinds of love. Servile fear dreads punishment and therefore is a fear founded upon love of self. Filial fear dreads separation from God and so is a fear founded upon love of God.550 Aquinas paradigm of the gift is filial fear, meaning that hope’s proper fear is not just of punishment. In its purest form, it is dread of whatever might estrange us from God. Such fear is therefore perfectly compatible with the charity by which we love God. By checking complacency about the sins that could separate one from divine friendship, it curbs presumption. This makes one more amenable to the supernatural promptings of hope that propel us toward the union with God.

While such filial fear is the ideal, and is proportionate to charity, Aquinas assumes that beginners in the spiritual life will have an admixture of servile and filial fear. This initial fear, as he calls it, is a mingled fear of separation and of punishment. But insofar as one progresses in charity, the filial element casts out the servile. Writers as diverse as Plato, Augustine, Calvin, Wesley, and John Henry Newman have held that fear of damnation is a useful if lesser form of moral motivation.551 Aquinas gives some berth to this fear which has obviously played a big part in the spiritual lives of millions of

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people. Whether it is a nagging but inarticulate fear that your sins and injustices will eventually “catch up to you,” or the explicit prospect of a wretched afterlife, such fear may serve as a check upon presumption.

Consideration of divine justice is important to fear. Specifically, it is relevant to the dread of punishment which is proper to servile fear and which is still present, albeit mingled with filial and charitable elements, in initial fear. In this respect it is interesting to note that many who deny the existence of a being who could hold agents accountable in a transcendent sense nevertheless see the fittingness of such an accountability in principle. In Jim Crace’s recent novel Harvest, the squire and rustics of a hamlet in an obscure and forgotten corner of pre-industrial England put this on display. Two strangers, a father and a son, squat and cause problems on the squire’s land. Showing insolence, they are sentenced to the pillory for a week. This soon breaks the elderly father’s neck, and the hamlet folk find his corpse - half-gored by a loose pig – next to the raging, cursing, despairing son. The monstrousness of the situation dawns upon the narrator,

Walter Thirsk. Like the author, he is irreligious. Yet he reflects:

None of us had the expertise to make repairs, although we knew we had to… to what? To make amends? So we did what little could be done – mostly wiping off the blood, closing the wounds enough to hide the grinning white of bone… But I could sense the thunder and the lightning closing in on us. A mighty storm of reckoning was on its way, if there was any justice in the world. The air was cracking with the retributions and damnations that, in my heart of hearts, I knew that some of us deserved.552

As it happens, the hamlet and its people do end up ruined by an enclosures act which scuttles their farms, turns them adrift, and rents out the land to the more lucrative 235

enterprise of sheep-farming. In the above passage, there is no settled belief that punishment is on its way, but there is a sense that punishment is deserved even if there is no one to render it. It is a kind of half-articulate, pagan piety. It is not sure if reality is just and therefore in some sense to be feared by the unjust. But this mindset sees it as fitting for reality to be just and therefore believes that “some of us deserve” punishment even if there is no one to allot it. This is not the fear of God in any Augustinian or Thomistic sense. But it is precisely what must be acknowledged for the fear of God to be conceivable and to find a holding place from which it might be accepted. Unlike presumption, such fear acknowledges justice. By at least taking moral demands seriously, such secular piety is in many way an advance upon theistic presumption. Perfect charity may cast out fear, but fear is the “beginning of wisdom” for the complacent. By insisting that God is just, such fear casts out presumption’s habit of relating to God casually and cheaply. It is a first step in preparing the way for charity’s thicker and richer relationship with God.

A dose of initial fear is a good tonic for the presumptuous. Combining fear of punishment with a fear of divine separation, it dispels the “illusion that one is in control.”

This replaces any therapeutic deism with the centrality of God’s initiative and providence. Such fear also dispels the complacent assumption that God will keep out of

“affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved.” On this latter view, God simply looks the other way like a fond and foolish father who does not mind if his children become vicious so long as they enjoy themselves. Such a theology shuts out

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charity, which wills the real rather than just the apparent good of the beloved. The good of grace which God charitably wills us propels us toward moral and spiritual perfection.

But given concupiscence and our own failings and bad habits, this process is bound to require costly acts of reform. As Ronald Knox says, God’s charity is too genuine to

“shirk the celestial surgery when the wound cries for the knife.”553

Though infused fear is the work of grace, various practices and considerations may dispose to it. The best known are explicitly religious, and vary from the vulgar to the deeply moving. Considerations of death and judgment loom large here, from crude hell- fire sermons and preacher’s scare tactics to Shakespearian soliloquies about damnation, ornately sculpted cadaver tombs, Renaissance paintings of the Last Judgment, and that prolonged exercise in memento mori, Mozart’s Requiem. Such considerations foster a state of moral and spiritual vigilance and watchfulness.

In addition to explicitly religious practices, fear may be disposed to in a more preparatory way through aspects of education that have the power to shape vision, attitudes, and taste. One such form of education is aesthetic, and involves awareness of the category which Burke and others call “the sublime.” To regard the sublime is to make mental and imaginative space for appreciation of awe-inspiring objects that make one feel existentially dwarfed. In the language of Burke, Kant, and others, this marks it as a discrete aesthetic category apart from “the beautiful.”554 Typically the beautiful describes forthrightly pleasing objects such as gardens, sunsets, roses, jewels, peacock tails, snowflakes, a lovely face, and the like. It includes the orderly, harmonious, gracious,

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smooth, sweet, delicate, and elegantly varied. The sublime denotes objects which primarily stimulate awe, wonder, and often fear; and secondarily admiration, reverence, and respect.555 Characteristic objects would include thunderstorms, the ocean abyss, a dark chasm, ancient monuments, the night, fireworks, a lion’s roar, great waterfalls, and anything captured by the phrase “terrible as an army with banners.” As instances of his related category, “the Great,” Addison describes: “a vast uncultivated Desert, of huge heaps of Mountains, high Rocks and Precipices, or a wide Expanse of Waters.” All of these produce a “Stilness and Amazement in the Soul.”556 Rather than being pleasant, cheerful, and safe, the objects of the sublime tend toward the gigantic, the overpowering, the untamable, the unexpected, the obscure, the arduous, and the frightful or ominous.

Representative is “that sort of delightful horror” that comes from reflecting on infinity and eternity.557 One need not be a romantic, still less a lover of the Gothic, to make aesthetic room for this category. To say nothing of the Bible itself, elements of the sublime are found in figures such as Virgil, Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Beethoven.558 Moreover, the universe itself includes many sublime as well as beautiful objects. To attend only to one category at the expense of the other is an aesthetic provincialism

Awareness of the sublime is not fear of the Lord, but its qualified appreciation of goods which may be awe-inspiring and unnerving forms an aesthetic and affective disposition which makes religious fear more intelligible. It teaches that fear may be suitably felt for objects deemed worthy of a certain veneration. Where such an

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appreciation is present, the transition from servile fear to initial to filial fear may also be smoother for the regenerate. One will be primed to attend to the goodness present in certain objects which instill awe and fear.559 Where such an appreciation is lacking, the agent may be predisposed to regard religious fear as “rather in bad taste” – as nothing but a cringing, demeaning, and prudential desire to keep safe before a threatening deity acknowledged to have power but not yet goodness.

Closely related to this is the religious category which Rudolf Otto called the

“numinous” and described as a divine quality which excites awe, dread, or fear

(tremor).560 Examples are numerous in the Bible, where theophanies tend to arouse wonder and dread. After his vision of the angels ascending and descending on the ladder to heaven, Jacob rises from sleep saying “how dreadful is this place” (Gen 28:17). When

Isaiah sees the Seraphim and the glory of the Lord in the heavenly temple he cries out:

“"Woe is me! For I am lost… for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"” (Is

6:5). Ezekiel saw “rings” in his theophany which “were so high that they were dreadful”

(Ezek 1:18). At the sight of the glorified Christ in his exile on Patmos, John says “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Rev 1:17). As Otto notes, such holy dread is common to Christian experience outside Scripture and indeed to religions generally.561

According to Otto, the numinous is experienced as supremely majestic, overpowering, unapproachable, urgent, and wholly other. This gives rise to an awe that may be accompanied by shuddering, fear of divine wrath, and a sense of creaturely smallness and utter dependency combined with a perceived unworthiness in need of

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“covering” before this mighty presence.562 Otto calls this the mysterium tremendum, but he adds that it is also mysterium fascinans, having a glory, wonder, or majesty which arrests, fascinates, attracts, and compels.563 Mozart’s Rex tremendae is a magnificent example of such compounded tremendum and fascinans.

Though the two must not be crudely equated, Aquinas identifies certain sublime and numinous qualities in the gift of fear itself. He quotes with approval Pope Gregory’s comments on the passage in Job “The pillars of heaven tremble, and dread at His beck,” which states that: “‘The heavenly powers that gaze on Him without ceasing, tremble

(contremiscunt) while contemplating: but their awe (tremor), lest it should be of a penal nature, is one not of fear but of wonder (admirationis).” Aquinas adds that this is because the heavenly powers in the trembling “wonder at God's supereminence and incomprehensibility.”564 Such fear displays “avoidance of the evil that consists in non- subjection to God” combined with awe at the “supereminence and incomprehensibility” of the God to whom one adheres.

The first aspect corresponds to the main work Aquinas ascribes to fear. Whether it is servile, initial, or filial, fear checks pride and presumption with the intended benefit that “a man be converted to God and adhere to him.”565 In this respect it is analogous to fear of the sublime and to Otto’s tremendum. But Aquinas also affirms an element of wonder or amazement (admiratio) in religious fear similar to appreciation of the sublime and to Otto’s fascinans.566 This second aspect of fear remains even in heaven; hence the trembling of the angels in Gregory. An episode in the Paradiso illustrates this religious

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admiratio. When Dante looks upon the apostles James, John, and Peter in Paradiso, he sees them as “mountains” (monti) too vast for his gaze to fully take in. The effect is to make him feel tiny and compressed under an immense spiritual “weight” (pondo). Before their greatness he feels overwhelmed and humbled yet not disrespected or humiliated – he is after all being loved and welcomed into heaven - and he delights to revel in a goodness greater than himself.567 The vision of “God’s supereminence and incomprehensibility” would obviously raise this kind of admiratio to its highest pitch.

This consideration is a fine corrective to Whitman and Stout’s indelicate conflation of humility and obeisance with humiliation and self-disrespect.

Aquinas is right to say that this admiratio of fear remains in heaven. Though directed exclusively toward God, the general quality of such fear corresponds to appreciation of the goodness of sublime, numinous, and fearful goods. I have suggested that such appreciativeness helps smooth the transition from servile to initial to filial fear.

When loss of the personal and divine good is no longer possible, and fear of punishment and separation are forgotten in a draught of Lethe, it will be fitting for the appreciative quality in fear to yet remain. For the “supereminence and incomprehensibility” of God which inspired that admiratio will remain, and such wonder is perfectly compatible with a secure and perfected charity.

A spirituality which includes elements of the numinous will obviously foster that awe, wonder (tremor, admiratio) and sense of humility which dispose to and often supervene upon fear proper. Moralistic therapeutic deism with its “combination Divine

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Butler and Cosmic Therapist” entirely lacks any sense of the mysterium tremendum. It has no divine object over which to experience a holy tremor which makes “self- naughting” a thinkable act. It regards Dante’s mountains as molehills, and listlessly asks what is so amazing about grace. Such a vision resists anything like the gift of fear and typically defaults to complacent presumption. To the extent our aesthetic and religious education can make some room for ingredients like the sublime and the numinous, the gift of fear will become increasingly intelligible. Such an education helps dispose agents to hope by cultivating habits, passions, and attitudes apt to reject presumption as a boorish insensitivity to qualities toward which the proper response is humbled awe.

In my consideration of fear I have treated Burke and Otto as valuable bricolage.

Parts of their overall accounts have dated, but I have gone the way of a bricoleur by retrieving important insights from their accounts while not committing myself to carry every satchel of their philosophical baggage. These insights explain much that is common in religious experience and which speak to the gift of fear. Though they may overlap in practice, experience of the sublime and even of the numinous need not be a motion of the gift of fear; but any vision and spirituality which includes these categories will foster attitudes and passions which dispose to religious fear.

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3.3 Patient in Tribulation

3.3.1 The Beatitudes and Imperfect Happiness

I have previously described the negative side of the eudaimonia gap with its impediments to happiness, calling upon Aristotle, Foot, and Hursthouse as philosophical witnesses to avoid the appearance of theological question-begging. I claimed that connatural happiness is genuine and worthwhile, but noted that it is far from perfect, and that many of its imperfections rankle. I argued that hope vastly improves the situation by assuring us that it is possible and not just desirable to overcome the eudaimonia gap with its vicious and biting impediments. As Lady Julian wrote: “Sin is behovable, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”568 Hope and the life of grace are not proof against misfortune and the cross, but Christians rightly regard the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune differently from “those who have no hope” (1

Thess 4:13), recalling that Christ himself endured the shame and will one day make all things new.

But this is not a moral and spiritual anesthetic. Thomistic hope explicitly refers earthly goods to our eternal end. To that extent it is invested in them and cannot counsel

Stoic apathy as the best way to deal with the vulnerabilities in which the world of contingency plunges us. Though the hopeful are “on the way” through the eudaimonia gap, they are not yet beyond it, and so they remain vulnerable. In addition, through

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charity we hope for our neighbors. We hope ultimately for their eternal good but also proximately for their temporal good as referred to the eternal. We are therefore implicated in our neighbors’ own vulnerability. Apart from whatever harm comes our own way, we are also to “bear each other’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal

6:2).

As this suggests, the pursuit of supernatural beatitude will involve virtuous commitments which come with a cost. For example, it could involve cutting back hours spent pleasantly gardening to volunteer in a grimy soup kitchen, giving up a golf game to attend Church on Sunday morning, or forgoing a desired vacation to donate the money to a crisis pregnancy shelter. Such activities contribute to happiness in one way while sacrificing different activities which might contribute to happiness in another way.

Nothing is wrong with gardening, golfing, or vacationing; such activities may be expressive of virtue in their own right. Yet the agent may often forgo these to pursue activities which exhibit supernatural virtues such as faith, hope, and charity.

The Christian will be apt to think these activities contribute to happiness in a deeper and more lasting way than the alternatives, and believe that they direct us to a higher end. An analogous recognition is sometimes made by non-Christians. One striking case of this comes from late antiquity. The Roman Emperor Julian “the Apostate” is second to no one in history for his hatred of Christianity, going so far as to bathe in bull’s blood to efface his baptism. But while he extolled pagan virtue, he definitely saw the appeal of one Christian virtue missing from the canonical pagan list – the virtue of

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charity. Julian saw both the benefit of charity to the common good and the religious sales appeal which charity gave to Christianity. “These impious Galileans,” he wrote, “not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapae, they attract them.”569 Anti-Christian though he was, Julian encouraged the formation of pagan charities which would provide the same benefits that made Christianity appealing. We have here a frank admission from a hostile source that the central virtue of Christianity wrought major benefits for the human condition.570 Even if Julian was just cynically leveraging charity for its sales appeal to the citizenry, this just confirms that charity was widely recognized as making lives better and happier.

Philippa Foot is an intriguing philosophical interlocutor on this issue. Like

Hursthouse she insists that virtue contributes to happiness while adding that the demands of virtue may be costly. She writes: “Joy is of the essence of the good life, but is of course compatible with prolonged suffering. In this connection I think also of an old

Quaker woman of whom I have read, who after much persecution and suffering spoke of her ‘joyous life’ preaching the Word.”571 Foot calls herself a “card-carrying atheist.” Yet she is repeatedly mystified by the happiness of Christians who practice virtues which land them in trouble even while Foot suggests it adds a “depth” to their happiness that makes the trouble worth it. In Chapter One I gave her example of the anti-Nazi Letter

Writers whose hungering and thirsting for justice landed them in prison, and whose

Christian hope sustained them while they awaited execution. Without trivializing their losses, she says that one fact about this case has “puzzled me for years:” namely, that

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while on paper they seem like the equivalent of Aristotle’s “man on the rack,” they nevertheless foil theoretical predictions of wretchedness. “Readers of these letters,” Foot writes, “have been struck by the extraordinary sense of happiness they radiate, which has perhaps to do with the fact that practically all the writers were devout Christians (with hope in) God”.572 In their case, the virtue of hope not only contributes to happiness, but is the most important sustainer of happiness when misfortune strikes. In the Quaker woman’s case, the virtue of charity seems to have been the main ingredient in her “joyous life preaching the Word.” In both cases, many possible and important constituents in the happy life are missed out on while other constituents believed to be even more important are added. As Newman put it, such happiness gains in perfection, depth, and merit what it may lose in comfort, money, leisure, and security: “just as a face worn by tears and fasting loses in beauty.”573 Aquinas like many others adds that faith, hope, and charity contribute richly to happiness and lead to increased love, joy, reconciliation, peace, mercy, communion, goodwill, and so forth.574 These are real gains but they come at a cost.

The anti-Christian Emperor and the “card-carrying atheist” are only two examples of non-Christians who acknowledge the possibility of Christian virtue adding to the happy life despite its costliness. But such acknowledgements are hardly rare throughout history. Nor are they rare today, where faith-based aid and relief organizations motivated by Christian charity are widely embraced at regional, national, and international levels as valuable contributors to the human good.575

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Supernatural happiness may be a true form of happiness, but its imperfection in this life leaves the vulnerable, and the consequence is that the life of Christian beatitude is somewhat bittersweet. For one thing, such happiness still resides in the eudaimonia gap, though I have suggested that it deals with it in a better way than the qualified resignation of connnatural happiness. For another, such happiness motivates commitments and activities which tax many of our ordinary enjoyments even while they open up deeper possibilities for perfection, community, love, and fulfillment. Hence the characterization of hope as persevering toward an “arduous good” rather than something easy. But whereas connatural eudaimonia is essentially imperfect because it does not seek perfect happiness as a live option at all, supernatural beatitude is incidentally imperfect because it believes perfect happiness is possible and that it is on its way there. The former therefore lives out imperfect happiness with a certain resignation, while the other does so with supreme hopefulness. This makes an important difference to how each sees the imperfection that remains in imperfect happiness. To this difference I now turn.

The perspective of hope frankly concedes that supernatural happiness is doomed to be imperfect in this life. It therefore encourages eschatological patience with the status quo of imperfection, restraining any utopian excesses which could bottom out in disillusionment, consequentialism, or tyranny, depending on the direction in which they are pulled. But while hope counsels patience with imperfection and deformity, it does not seek a truce with the eudaimonia gap. Hope does not effectively say of the gap: “Such imperfections will have their way in this life, so I will leave them unmolested and just

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wait for the next life.” As I have suggested, hope as far as is possible devotes itself to overcoming impediments to happiness in this world in preparation for the full perfection in the next, disposing temporal potential to eternal perfection as “matter” disposed for the full influx of “form.”576

Hope is patient enough with imperfection to accept that it cannot be got rid of wholesale. This patience prevents an overly imminent eschatology or lapse into zealotry which expects the kingdom of God on earth. But hope is also eager to overcome imperfection insofar as that is possible to dispose to the perfection which we wait for, long for, and indeed expect. The result is a zealous patience. On the one hand, hope is fully aware that final victory over the gap awaits the eschaton. Hence failures to increase individual and social happiness will rightly be met with lament but not with despair. This corresponds to the patience proper to those who know we remain in via. On the other hand, hope is zealous to overcome imperfection and is perpetually occupied in costly and difficult border skirmishes with the eudaimonia gap, seeking to improve individual and social happiness where we may. This corresponds to the ardent desire for happiness which hope by its very nature possesses.

What does hope’s attitude of zealous patience toward the eudaimonia gap look like in practice? Obviously forms of it vary, but I suggest the best illustration comes from the beatitudes of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Operating in the mode of hope and based on eschatological promises, the beatitudes contend with the eudaimonia gap in via while acknowledging that final victory will only come in patria. The tradition of reflection on

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the beatitudes is long-standing, and the current discussion and set of debates about the beatitudes is vast. I have no stake at present in addressing every jot and title of that literature.577 For my purposes, what is of interest is the exemplary way in which the beatitude illustrate the bittersweet nature of imperfect supernatural happiness. As discussed earlier, Aquinas associates each beatitude with one of the seven gifts of the

Holy Spirit; understanding the gift as a habit and the beatitude as that habit’s act. Each gift is assigned to one of the seven infused theological and cardinal virtues, and the purpose of the gift is to make the agent docile and pliable to the grace of the Holy Spirit who prompts the exercise of that virtue.578 As the acts of the gifts, the beatitudes are therefore crucial to the overall graced life. Based largely upon Matthew’s Gospel and using Luke’s as supplementary, Aquinas followed Augustine and the tradition in believing there are seven beatitudes, with the eighth a culmination of the rest.

As their name suggests in both New Testament Greek and the Vulgate’s Latin, the beatitudes are concerned with beatitude. Each declares as happy those who pursue some arduous task such as poverty, mourning, meekness, hungering for justice, and so forth.

The beatitudes’ language of future reward takes up the Old Testament promise of the promised land and ordains it to the eschatological kingdom. Like hope, each of the beatitudes therefore seeks a “future good possible but arduous to attain.” Hence Aquinas speaks of “the beatitudes of the present life, which are based on hope” (beatitudines praesentis vitae, quae sunt spei, emphasis mine).579 But how are they based on hope?

Aquinas has stated that each beatitude corresponds to gifts which inhere in all manner of

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infused virtues, only one of which is hope. But if each beatitude shares hope’s formal object in some sense, why not just say that the beatitudes all inhere in hope’s own gift, making a tidy and fairly intuitive alignment?

The short answer is that Aquinas believes that the beatitudes contain “the total formation of the Christian life,” and Christian life involves a lot more virtues and habits than hope and its gift of fear.580 Yet there is some sense in which all of the beatitudes are

“based on hope.” So how is this tangle of overlapping formalities to be unraveled? To my knowledge Aquinas never spelled this out clearly. But based on his overall scheme of infused habits and theory of causality, I propose the following. Aquinas’ action theory allows certain more determinate ends to be referred to and in a qualified sense contained by other more general ends. For instance, he states that an army’s ultimate end in

“fighting well” is “victory.” Certain proximate or more immediate ends will be ordained to that ultimate and more comprehensive end. For example: “the right ordering of this or that regiment” is a proximate end ordained to the ultimate end of victory.581 As such, the proximate end is contained in the ultimate as a “species” is contained in its “genus.” Yet the proximate end is a genuine end of itself. Hence if the ultimate end of victory were not attained, the proximate end of “the right ordering of this or that regiment” still might have been attained. In this respect, the proximate is contained in the ultimate end, but the integrity of the proximate end itself remains. My suggestion is that the ultimate end of hope is the “genus” relative to which the proximate ends of the beatitudes are “species.”

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Each beatitude has a proximate end which corresponds to that beatitude’s gift. For example, poverty of spirit pursues the end of fear and purity of heart seeks the end of understanding. These are the proximate ends from which the beatitudes derive their species. The ultimate ends they aim at are the rewards for those beatitudes. Poverty of spirit is rewarded with the kingdom of God and purity with seeing God. But “all these rewards” Aquinas states, “are one in reality… eternal happiness” since the kingdom of heaven, “which is eternal life, contains all good things.”582 But since we cannot comprehend the perfect good, the rewards of the beatitudes are described by “various goods known to us” so as to kindle desire.

The ultimate end of each beatitude is therefore eternal happiness. But each beatitude pursues this ultimate end as the eschatological reward for arduous tasks such as mourning and hungering for justice. The beatitudes have their proximate ends as

“species,” but the ultimate end of the beatitude as a “genus” is precisely hope’s end: namely, perfect happiness pursued as “future good arduous but possible to attain.” In that respect, the virtue of hope might be called the “form of the beatitudes.”

As the arduous good of the beatitudes suggests, hope does not promise happiness on easy terms, imply that the life of grace is an idyll, or promote apathy to earthly life and social concerns. Acts like renouncing wealth in solidarity with the poor, curbing with meekness the urge to vengeance, hungering after justice, and doing the hard work of peacemaking, are all costly and all involve us in people’s brokenness. Any happy life

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which takes such acts on board will gain here but lose there, entangling itself in others’ neediness and woundedness. The beatitudes are nothing if not arduous.

In that respect the hopeful life as I see it is far more human than is made out by those who see it as nothing but a case of cosmic sour grapes leading to wholesale investment in the world to come. The case of Leo Tolstoy is instructive. He advocated celibacy and reviled marriage as a state of “slavery, satiety, repulsion” which entangles one in a life of “ugliness, dirtiness, smell, sores.”583 In other words, ordinary human life - which marriage and childrearing carry on - is simply disgusting, and we should

“transcend it” in a state of antiseptic mysticism that is only tenuously organic. Neo-

Platonic, Stoic, and Manichean flights from vulnerability and embodiment often strike this note, offering the prospect of a mystical aloofness freed from or at least inured to the world of pain, dirt, disease, and smells.584 At its worst, this is plain misanthropy. But while the worst is seldom reached, elements of misanthropy often pour their drainage into

Christian thought and practice. The Stoic invulnerability advocated by Boethius and the wholesale interiority advocated by Thomas a Kempis are representative.585 By contrast, through tethering hope to the beatitudes, any “high-minded” disgust and renunciation of the human are ruled out by the hopeful. Hunger and thirst for justice, solidarity with the poor, the work of peacemaking, and the like are a plunge into rather than an escape from the world of dirt and frailty.

The hopeful are therefore vulnerable to the impediments of the eudaimonia gap and their virtuous commitments make them vulnerable to their own neighbors’

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vulnerability. Their share of supernatural happiness remains imperfect, falling well short of the beatific vision. By insisting on this point we save hope from looking quixotic and from being used to construct an overly realized eschatology that easily veers toward presumption.

At the same time we must stress real gains which the hope of the beatitudes offers against temptations to despair which the eudaimonia gap may pose. Aquinas believed that the beatitudes fell into three different sets. The first is poverty, meekness, and mourning.

This set corresponds to eternal happiness by way of removing obstacles to it: namely, the obstacles to true happiness that come from seeking “sensual happiness” in a life of wealth, hedonism, and unmoderated passions. The second set is justice and mercy, and it corresponds to eternal happiness primarily through disposing to it in a life of “active happiness.” The third set is purity and peacemaking, and it corresponds to eternal happiness as a beginning of that “contemplative happiness” whose consummation is the vision of God. Relative to eternal happiness, the first two sets therefore refer to merits and the last set to the reward. Relative to this life, each set contributes at varying levels to the imperfect happiness of this life while readying us for the perfect happiness of the next.586 This corresponds well with what I argued earlier both about happiness beginning in this life and about happiness requiring merits and moral transformation.

Aquinas believes the various rewards of the beatitudes “are one in reality… eternal happiness,” and that they are characterized by “various goods known to us” to appeal to different ways in which we experience the desire for happiness.587 With great

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ingenuity, he follows this up by stating that the reward correlated to each beatitude corresponds to the good mistakenly sought in some vicious behavior opposed to that beatitude. The beatitudes thereby become a way of recognizing apparent happiness and driving it out for true happiness. For example, the intemperate seek comfort from life’s toils in “the pleasures of the world.” They are therefore told that by a mourning which repents of hedonism they “shall be comforted” in a better way by the spiritual life. The violent fight to gain a secure possession for themselves. Hence they are told that by a meekness which curbs violence they will find an equilibrium which confers spiritual security in this life and will “secure the land” in the heavenly kingdom. The unjust take what belongs to others because they think this will fulfill their sense of emptiness. Hence they are told that by hungering for justice they will “be satisfied” by moral and spiritual goods which more adequately address their desire for fulfillment. The morally apathetic avoid their needy neighbors “lest they be busied with other people’s misery. Hence Our

Lord promised the merciful” that they would “obtain mercy” and forgiveness in this life, and “be delivered from all misery” in the next.588 Sinful behavior aims at fulfilling a real need, and in the beatitudes these needs are validated rather than Stoically debunked. As

Augustine said: “Seek what you seek, but it is not where you seek it.”589

The rewards of the beatitudes may only be fully attained in the next life, but the suggestion is that they are partially attained in this life. To refer to earlier examples, despite their great losses Foot’s Letter Writers and embattled Quaker woman all show evidence of being comforted, reconciled, fulfilled, and spiritually secure or at peace.

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When the latter spoke of her “joyous life preaching the Word,” the joyful life in question was this life. To a significant degree it was made enjoyable by the kinds of rewards which Aquinas and the tradition assigned to the beatitudes.

From the viewpoint of hope imperfect supernatural happiness is thus a halfway house which improves upon connatural happiness but is itself incomplete. The hopeful believe they know enough about the limits of connatural eudaimonia to see supernatural happiness as a trade up, and they rightly rejoice in hope during their earthly sojourn.

They overcome the Ecclesiastes mood with its sting of futility and refuse the melancholy resignation to lowered expectations which the eudaimonia gap on naturalistic grounds construes as inevitable. But the gap still has one hook in the hopeful and costly merits and personal transformation are required of them. Moreover, the time and length of their journey and the conditions of their death are dizzying uncertainties. As a rational appetite, the will is able to reflect upon these obstacles and so may be dismayed. In this respect the job of hope is to help the will deal well with the challenges proper to our status viatoris lest the agent despair.

3.3.2 Stoic Hope?

The virtue of hope is not morally and spiritually invincible. As I have noted, we are threatened by temptations to presumption, sloth, and despair which can eat away at the habit of hope. Such temptations are typically occasioned by events and conditions in

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the spatio-temporal world. This ongoing moral vulnerability is an ineradicable hazard of the imperfect happy life. Only those who have attained the fullness of perfection - who have been finally and permanently “saved” - are morally indefectible. Yet this indefectibility only comes when homo viator emerges as homo comprehensor, and to vary the proverb of Aeschylus: call no one safe until he or she is dead. Given this ongoing vulnerability of the hopeful I disagree with John Bowlin’s characterization of hope as a “Stoic” virtue which is invulnerable to fortune. In his Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’ Ethics, Bowlin argues that Aquinas is something of a hybrid virtue theorist.

Elements of Aristotelian thought preponderate, but Stoic additions prove useful.

According to Bowlin, Aquinas takes from Aristotle the point that the virtuous agent is morally enmeshed in the world of contingency. Important goods such as early education and good breeding, intelligence, money for liberality, and health for contemplation are both good and relevant to getting and using virtue even though they come by Fortune’s lottery. The virtues regard these goods and in many respects are ways of getting them, using them well, or dealing well either with their absence or with the complications they involve. To that extent the shape the virtues take is determined by conditions posed by pursuit of goods in the world of fortune. Considering what prudence, courage, or justice actually deal with, it follows that the nature of the virtues requires giving fortune a serious role in the moral life.590 But Bowlin rightly notes that Aquinas is not satisfied with the kind and degree of happiness available on Aristotle’s terms.

Compared to the happiness of Adam in Eden or the bliss that awaits in heaven, one may

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generously acknowledge happiness in via while reserving the right to “express theologically charged discontent with the virtue and happiness available to us in via.”591

At this point Bowlin sees Aquinas adding Stoic supplements to his overall

Aristotelian account of virtue certain. Conceding that fortune still matters, Bowlin suggests that the infused virtues induce “Stoic modifications” which “eliminate fortune’s authority over virtuous habits and actions, and by implication, its influence over the happiness of the virtuous.”592 How does this happen? Aquinas distinguishes between the proximate and remote ends of virtue. The former are immediate goals of a virtue generally located in the present world of fortune. For instance, the immediate goals of justice in a particular social or political space might include apprehending murderers, abolishing slavery, or implementing the right to a just wage. Infused virtues and especially charity further direct these laudable goals to our ultimate end of attaining and adhering to God. Proximate ends obviously can be defeated. The murderer may go uncaught, slavery may continue, and the campaign for just wages may fail. As Aquinas’

Aristotelian side would insist, such misfortune involves real loss. The finite goods which proximate ends aim to secure or protect are after all genuine goods. But despite losses the virtuous agents still attain the ultimate end of infused virtue by referring themselves to

God with firm adherence.593 Agents outmaneuvered by fortune may still have gotten closer to God and grown in sanctification through their virtuous efforts. As Bowlin sees it, infused virtue is therefore immune to fortune where it matters most: i.e., in our

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ultimate ordination to God. On this account, infused virtue is therefore Janus-faced:

Aristotelian enough to feel the sting of tragedy, but Stoic enough to survive anything.

Yet those with infused virtue still lack the perfect and unimpeded attainment of

God. Hence they long for a “happiness that transcends fortune’s reach.” The result is that the overall attitude of the virtuous toward fortune “must be hope.” Bowlin’s account of hope focuses not so much on future reward as on present invulnerability. Since the world of contingency can only foil the proximate ends of infused virtue, the ultimate end is perfectly safe for those who refer proximate ends to God in hope. As Kierkegaard put it:

“spiritually there is only one who can slay me, and that is myself.”594 The consequence of morally disarming fortune certainly sounds fortunate: “Success is guaranteed, the difficult good achieved, in the very act of hoping.” Bowlin states that “This is, of course, a Stoic rendering of Christian hope” since it insists that “there is no chance that fortune might interfere with the hopeful.”595 Bowlin has tendered into existence what Jackson thought the most damning indictment of hope: the spectacle of hope conferring a thick shell of moral and spiritual invulnerability. With supremely confident language like

“Success is guaranteed” and “there is no chance that fortune might interfere with the hopeful” (emphasis mine), Bowlin conjures the image of a superpowered hope which earthly reversals can irritate but in no way threaten.

Bowlin is right to ascribe to Aquinas the view that infused virtue may attain its ultimate end even when it fails to attain its proximate end. The consequence as he notes is that misfortune as such does not cause the loss of hope. From this he draws the

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conclusion that hope is invincible against fortune. I see this latter claim as a flawed reading of Aquinas and a poor view of hope full stop. As frightful evils do not cause cowardice but may tempt to it, so bad fortune do not cause dejection, sloth, or despair, but may tempt to it. This ongoing moral vulnerability of hope to temptations thrown at it in the world of fortune is completely neglected in Bowlin’s account.

Hope involves considerations and commitments that are apt to sustain and comfort us when fortune goes awry: to help us persevere and grow even amid tragedies, injustices, failures, dry spells, discouragement, personal decline, and a general sense of tedium vitae. But this process is not inevitable, guaranteed, or easy. At some point we may begin to view the arduous journey as impossible or fail to rely properly on grace for our strength. We are then prey to sloth and despair.

As previously stated, Aquinas sees the vice of sloth as “sorrow about spiritual good.” Why is one sad about divine things? Typically because the demands of discipleship are seen as too burdensome, so that the spiritual life becomes an object of loathing.596 I noted earlier that sloth often settles into a spiritual vacuum which results from failing to positively “rejoice in hope.” Hope’s rejoicing feeds on the regular consideration of divine favors such as the Incarnation, and it should be habitually expressed through practices such as praise and thanksgiving which both express and increase spiritual rejoicing. Aquinas sees this as a preventive remedy to sloth: “just as despair is contrary to hope, so is sloth contrary to spiritual joy. But spiritual joy arises from hope, according to Romans 12:12: ‘Rejoicing in hope.’”597 Where such hopeful

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rejoicing is habitual, the will characteristically embraces the divine good and so sloth’s sorrow at the divine good finds no easy foothold.

While a pent-up hope is often the cause of sloth, bad fortune may pose temptations of its own. The sheer accumulation of sad knocks may foster a melancholy outlook which makes divine help look unlikely and shakes one’s confidence in the attainment of happiness. Hence Gregory the Great personifies sloth saying to the rattled wayfarer: “What reason do you have to be happy, putting up with so much grief?”598 In this respect Aquinas sees sloth as a gateway vice to despair. The arduous good may start to look like an impossible good when a person is overly downcast: “because when this state of mind dominates his affections, it seems to him that he will never be able to rise to any good… In this way despair is born of sloth.”599

As a virtue of the will which concerns an arduous good, hope is primed to help us overcome impediments to happiness, as courage is meant to overcome danger and fear.

But like courage, hope suffers from contrary temptations posed by our entanglement in the world of fortune. Granted, the ultimate end of infused virtue may be attained even when proximate ends are foiled. But the defeat of proximate ends often consists in misfortunes which provide the “occasions of sin” against hope, and in that sense bad luck threatens the agent’s ordination to the ultimate end. Whether by sudden tragedy, the dashing of youthful hopes and dreams, the mounting of disappointments, or the slow attrition of the years, the blows of fortune try our hope. As the distinctively rational appetite, the will is able to consciously regard these troubles which rub against its plain

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desire for happiness, and this can tempt to a demoralization, brooding, and dejection that bottoms out in sloth and despair. Hope therefore remains vulnerable, and in the absence of renewed considerations and commitments it may fail. Bowlin is therefore mistaken when he says “there is no chance that fortune might interfere with the hopeful.”600

Aquinas insists that our moral healing by grace in this life is patchy.

Concupiscence and ignorance mean we are often caught off guard or in an hour of weakness by events that come our way through fortune and contingency. Given this ongoing vulnerability even for the regenerate, Aquinas writes that “we must be guided and guarded by God, who knows and can do all things.” Such help is provided not despite our exertions, but in and through them. Hence Aquinas adds that we must habitually lean upon God for help. “For which reason also it is becoming in those who have been born against as sons of God, to say: ‘Lead us not into temptation,” and ‘They will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”601 This is not the prayer of those who think “Success is guaranteed.” Misfortune is a characteristic occasion of temptations against hope. The wise wayfarer is aware of the vulnerability this creates, and therefore relies habitually upon God to keep hope and the other virtues strong. But since misfortune is a characteristic medium for temptations to sins against hope, it follows that hope is not invulnerable to fortune – any more than it is invulnerable to temptation and sin.

Bowlin’s Stoic hope with its serene invincibility is therefore something of a false friend. It renders the somber threats of sloth and despair off-stage, making the hopeful feel overly secure. The unwitting effect is to make despair easier to fall into when the

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pinch comes. Should misfortune tempt to sins against hope, agents who believe that misfortune lacks this power will have to conclude that they are to blame. Their Stoic armor-plating means that nothing external or contingent could have posed the moral hazard, so the contrary motion to hope must be due to an internal break-down. Just for having to flex its muscles against temptation, the virtuousness of their hope will look questionable. Defenseless against scrupulosity, the appearance will be that their hope is weak, ailing, or non-existent. They will be hope’s equivalent of the person who thinks he is no better than an adulterer just because his pulse quickened when someone attractive entered the room. For if “Success is guaranteed,” and “there is no chance that fortune” can afflict hope, what else could be to blame for temptations to sloth and despair but one’s own flaccid or defunct hope? And since Bowlin’s Stoic hope does not acknowledge moral vulnerability as basic or counsel leaning trustfully upon God’s grace when that vulnerability is tried, what source of help and strength might agents have recourse to or lean upon when they panic that their hope is weak? No source of help has been identified since the need for help has not been acknowledged. The ironic result is that by exaggerating hope’s strength, Bowlin makes it weaker.

Stoic hope neglects the ongoing moral vulnerability of the hopeful and loses an essential quality of hope born from our exigency: namely, its faithful, trusting, but also dogged reliance on grace to get one through challenges believed to be a real threat to the journey. In terms of hope’s causality, Bowlin’s treatment leaves the virtue halved. Since divine reliance is superfluous, hope’s efficient cause is left with nothing to do. Bowlin

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does not address the efficient cause of hope at all and his formulations leave no room for its need. The final cause of hope remains, and to his credit Bowlin treats this admirably.602 But the virtue of hope itself on emerging from its Stoic surgery is gravely reduced. Fully half of what Aquinas believed essential to hope is laid off. Not only does this omission of hope’s efficient cause leave it more vulnerable to sloth and despair; it encourages a false sense of security with no safeguards against presumption.

3.3.3 The Consolation and Reliance of Hope

Hope must be sustained through various considerations and commitments without which it may be extinguished. But these considerations and commitments in turn strengthen the virtue of hope and provide solace in trials. This is where hope’s efficient cause and proper consolation become central. The wayfarer must lean upon God for the grace of auxilium needed to complete the journey, and hopes to receive some kind of strength or consolation against the threat of despair. Asking God for help in trouble, what might this leaning look like at the level of detail, and what kind of consolation might it receive? Presupposing the model of Thomistic hope set forth in Chapter Two, I will elaborate and build upon it to answer the above question.

As a virtue of the will, the strength and comfort provided by hope in trials will be proper to the will. They will be bound up with considerations which encourage the agent and help the will reaffirm the commitment to carry on with the journey. Being the work

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of a supernatural virtue, the strength we lean on is the grace of auxilium which actualizes the habit of hope. But since hope is the agent’s own virtue, auxilium will work cooperatively, buoying up the will to recommit to hope rather than simply bypassing the will. Subjectively I suggest that this will involves several ingredients: 1) the intellect’s consideratio or contemplation of what reasons we have to hope at all. As Aquinas suggests, such considerations center around God’s role as savior throughout salvation history, particularly in the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ.603 These are taken as warrants of God’s power and mercy, and lend credence to divine promises for the eschaton. The consideration of these grounds for trust in God should be regular and habitual, being frequently brought to mind through acts like spiritual reading, liturgical remembering, the singing of hymns, and the repeating of the Christian story.

The consideratio of hope’s basis and promises disposes to: 2) the proper consolation of hope, which we might describe as the consolation of possibility. The intellect’s belief that the ultimate good can be had with divine help impinges upon the will, buoying it up with a sense of good prospect. As such, hope’s proper consolation may be subjectively experienced as a sense of encouragement, expectation, possibility, trust, invigoration, confidence, and resilience. Uttered in a certain way, the phrase “I can do this” captures this encouraged confidence. The biblical formula is of course: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13, emphasis mine). The intellect’s consideratio is engaged by the will as a rational appetite and terminates in hope’s consolatio.

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The Book of Psalms is the paradigm for such consolatio. The Psalms continually witness to hope, comfort, and encouragement amid setbacks and defeats due to trust in

God as one’s rock, refuge, and fortress. Psalm 27 gives a representative example:

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Though a host encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident (Ps 27: 1, 3)

As the Psalm makes clear, the psalmist is beset by enemies (“evildoers assail me to devour my flesh,” Ps 27:2). So this is not cheap optimism, but confidence under fire.

Plainly the spiritual consolatio depends upon the theological consideratio. The buoyed up

“I will be confident” depends upon theological reasons for believing “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” For Christians, this consideratio includes the Paschal mystery and eschatological promises which offer the will a similar encouragement or consolatio.

Such a consolatio may or may not include emotional comfort. By reflecting on

God’s mercies and our reasons for hope, the agent’s anxieties and fears may be soothed and countered by passions of hope. But properly speaking, hope’s consolation belongs to the will. So while “sensible consolations” may arrive like water in the desert, they are not guaranteed. Saying so is merciful rather than cruel. By ruling out the view that divine auxilium always confers emotional comfort, we rule out the view that emotional and spiritual dryness are positive proof of divine abandonment. This is why it is necessary to

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emphasize that hope is a virtue of the will: one empowered to keep one going not until, but also amid, the loss of good fortune and emotional comforts. The example of Christ in

Gethsemane is instructive here.604 When things grow dark and the will is dismayed by an ever-widening eudaimonia gap, hope’s consolatio helps the agent overcome the temptation of discouragement to slow down or give up.

If all goes well, this consolation or encouragement leads the hopeful agent to 3) the renewed commitment to doggedly persevere while having prayerful recourse to God as one’s divine friend and savior. Aquinas characterizes the relationship of the human petitioner and divine helper in terms of Aristotelian friendship. Aristotle sees the friend as someone to petition for help in time of need: most emphatically in weakness and old age.605 Aquinas makes use of this account to explain auxilium. In this friendship with

God, the Christian plays the broadly Aristotelian role of the weaker and needy friend who petitions a better-placed friend for help. In this case, God is the “friend in need,” and the help in question is auxilium grace. The manner in which we ask God for this help is summarized by the Lord’s Prayer. Aquinas sees this prayer as the paradigmatic expression of hope. It involves petition (petitio) or prayer (oratio) to the divine friend from whom the Christian asks for the auxilia needed to reach the kingdom. The wayfarer who recommits to persevere with the journey only correctly does so by simultaneously having recourse to divine grace to do just this.606 Expecting to receive aid from God “as a helper strong to assist” (17.6), the wayfarer is emboldened to keep going.

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The foiled retirement of the prophet Elijah provides a suggestive analogue. After the contest on Mount Carmel, Elijah fled into the wilderness to die. He had been persecuted by the powerful for years, acquitted himself admirably, but now decided that his story was finished. The Bible says that “he went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked that he might die, saying, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers” (1 Kings

19:4). Elijah prematurely declares his journey at an end. He falls asleep and an angel wakens him, saying “Arise and eat” (19:5). He eats but then lays down again to die. The angel then reappears saying: “Arise and eat, else the journey will be too great for you.”

So the journey is not at an end after all, and Elijah must keep going. At this point Elijah recommits to persevering in the journey. He “arose,” ate his meal, “and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God” (21:8).

Amid the temptation to quit Elijah receives divine help and encouragement and makes a renewed commitment to persevere with the journey. Elijah “went on the strength of that food.” Likewise, I take it that the wayfarer tempted to sluggishness, sloth, or despair should not give up in the wilderness. Instead, he or she should consider the divine favors which console hope with the prospect of success and should renew the commitment to persevere in the journey “on the strength” of the divine auxilium provided by the sacraments and other instruments of grace.607

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3.4 Conclusion

Drawing upon the work of William Mattison and others, I examined the positive and joyful contribution hope makes to the happy life. I argued that the confident rejoicing in hope so prevalent in the New Testament speaks to our desire for deep and lasting beatitude, and kindles expectant joy by assuring us that the longing of the “restless heart” is not in vain. This joy should be expressed through praise and thanksgiving, and itself serves as a preventive remedy to sloth.

Yet rejoicing in hope must be distinguished from presumption in its various forms, from Emersonian self-reliance and Pelagian self-helpism to the cocksure theology of therapeutic deism. Theological hope with some help from fear is good at exposing and overcoming presumption in all its forms. To the extent wayfarers grow in hope, they will veer from self-reliance by leaning upon God’s grace and mercy, and will renounce a life of complacency for one of merit, acknowledgement of sins, and moral reform in pursuit of the arduous good. The rejoicing in hope which I recommended earlier will then keep well away from a false rejoicing in presumption.

The roles of leaning, merit, and repentance imply that grace is meant to be truly transformative of character, to neither bypass human agency nor to leave it untouched. It is a central concern of virtue ethics to regard the kind of person one is and the sort of character a community needs to have. As Tyndale says: “An adder… is hated of man not for the evil it hath done but for the poison that is in it.”608 The presumptuous fail to grasp

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this point, complacently expecting the fruits of perfection without seeking to become perfect. Such presumption fails to see the connection between character and happiness, regarding the two as extrinsically related and assuming that God will bestow beatitude despite our agency rather than with and through it. This is the opposite of the view set forth earlier that happiness or perfection, both natural and supernatural, consists in virtuous activity.

Imperfect supernatural happiness is still arduous and vulnerable. Hope navigates but does not simply abolish the eudaimonia gap. It’s “already” is held in tension with a

“not yet.” The beatitudes help illustrate what the policy of hope toward imperfect happiness looks like in practice. This policy is rich and multi-layered. First, the hope of the beatitudes acknowledges that the eudaimonia gap cannot be wholly overcome in via.

This curbs the impatience of either despair or utopianism by fostering eschatological patience with respect to the coming kingdom. Second, such hope appreciates that the beginning of beatitude may be had in this life, and this allows the hopeful to curb misanthropy by affirming the goodness of creation and of human life generally. Third, hope makes no truce with the eudaimonia gap. Acts such as hungering for justice, works of mercy, and peacemaking all help overcome impediments to beatitude which degrade human life. The result is a zealous patience with the conditions of imperfect happiness: a socially committed way of life which faces down utopianism, misanthropy, and despair alike by ardently pursuing the possibilities of beatitude in this life as a very valuable but limited beginning.

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The bittersweet quality of the beatitudes suggests that hope continues to be vulnerable while we remain wayfarers. Hence my critique of John Bowlin for depicting hope as invulnerable and my stress on the resilience of hope and the consolation it offers during trials. I described this reliance and consolation as consisting of 1) the consideratio that hope’s final cause is possible and that God will help us, 2) the consolation of possibility in which a renewed awareness of possibility and help encourages and the will, and 3) the will’s renewed commitment to rely upon the grace of God as the will’s source of strength, and to persevere in pursuing the arduous good of hope.609

Hope is a virtue of grace and such acts of hope require God’s auxilium. But such consideration, leaning, and commitment involve human engagement at each step, making this a work of cooperative grace. I see this as the characteristic way in which hope deals with the impediments to happiness posed by the eudaimonia gap, and I will say more about hope’s consolatio in the next chapter when I discuss the ars moriendi or “art of dying.” But enough has been said at present to give a sense of how hope deals with the vulnerabilities of imperfect beatitude. By calling to mind the grounds for hope, by making clear that our present situation is not permanent, and by relying upon grace to sustain us, hope braces the will to persevere in the journey and precludes undue dejection, sloth, and despair. As Isaiah says: “They that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall take wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Is 40:31).

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CHAPTER 4:

HOMO VIATOR AND THE WORLD

4.1 “In” the World But Not “of It”?

I have argued that the theological virtue of hope makes an important contribution to the good and happy life. In my consideration of the place of finite goods and earthly projects, the role of hope for our neighbors, the pursuit of merit against presumption, and the socially entangled nature of the beatitudes, I have insisted that hope takes up and refers finite and social goods to our eschatological end. The theological virtue hope as I see it resists quietism, dualism, and misanthropic withdrawal from social stakes in the common good. But even if hope were a leaven to the world, this would still leaves unanswered the question of how the hopeful regard their own place in the world. The hopeful famously believe that “here we have no lasting city, but seek one which is to come” (Heb 13:14). This raises obvious tensions in terms of the agent’s identity as a

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Early Christians often do create the impression of having their foot in two worlds

– a departing foot in this one, and an arriving foot in the next. To take just one biblical instance, the Letter to the Hebrews claims that Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham all

“acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb 11:13), and that in comparison to the Promised Land of Canaan: “They desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:13-16). The early Church reinforced these trends. The second century Epistle to Diognetus famously said that Christians “reside in their own homelands, but as if they were foreigners… they are in the world but not of the world.”610

The overall sense of a foot in two worlds was taken up in the image of the Christian as a pilgrim or wayfarer who is on a journey of hope from the worldly to the heavenly city.611

As Peter Brown says, the early Church espoused a jubilant and confident hope which not only wanted to “leapfrog” the world, but which even “tended to leapfrog the grave

(through) a heady belief in the afterlife.”612

Similar sentiments were frequent in the patristic, medieval, and later tradition where “the world” becomes a foil to the Christian pilgrim or wayfarer on the journey of hope.613 Such talk frequently gives the impression that the hopeful are essentially alienated from this world. Perhaps they might benefit it through works of mercy and going through the motions of good citizenship. But the suspicion is that they not see themselves as belonging to it in any thick sense. As Gerhart Ladner says, in the tradition homo viator generally sees our earthly stop as a temporary inn: “he will rest in it bodily, but mentally he is already somewhere else.”614

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Are the Christian hopeful “in the world” but “not of it” in some sense which alienates them from family, town, community, culture, and civil society more broadly?

The image of homo viator passing through this world to the next often creates this impression. I will concede that the wayfarer model at its most Platonic is guilty as charged. But rather than throwing out the overall model itself, I will suggest that

Thomistic hope and the kind of homo viator self-image its creates does not entail a worrisome alienation.

Two Thomistic differences are especially important. The first is the broadly

Aristotelian view of embodiment which states that humans are essentially body-soul composites and not essentially souls which just happen to work through bodies. As essentially embodied beings our identity is importantly shaped by local and temporal factors from which we cannot escape and should not try. The second is hope’s ability to refer created goods and earthly causes to our eschatological end. Since this is true of created and earthly ends as a class, it is also true of social goods and causes as members of that class. Without aiming at an overall theory of this-worldly identity or theology of

Christian citizenship, I will at least make clear that Thomistic hope allows for dual membership in and genuine love of the two cities.

Nevertheless, the world in some sense has traditionally been seen as antagonistic to hope. As Christ ominously told his disciples: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me first… because you are not of the world… therefore the world hates you” (John

15:18-19). Historical reflection on the virtue of hope is likewise ambivalent or distrustful

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about “the world.” Neglecting this body of thought in a rush to make hope user-friendly is unwise. Hope’s centuries-long ambivalence about the world may look like a rhetorical deadweight best dropped discreetly, but I will suggest that the tradition identified real problems we have forgotten to our own loss. The tradition may have addressed those problems with varying degrees of success, but I believe the traditional ambivalence of hope concerning “the world” (in some yet to be defined sense) was not merely misanthropic or paranoid. I will therefore address the older tradition’s worries, not ignoring but uncovering what made Christians in past ages eager not to be “of the world” in some qualified way.

What then is the pejorative sense of “the world” about which hope expresses worries? In brief, it derives from a complex state of character called “worldly love” or

“worldliness.” Aquinas and others describe “worldliness” as the excessive attachment to external and this-worldly goods such as wealth, fame, reputation, social status, honors, power, and influence.615 This is “the world” which the hopeful are not to be “of.” More than a single vice, worldliness is a complex state of character in which we judge our identity to be ultimately this-worldly and therefore shut the door to eschatological hope. I propose that we retrieve worldliness as a moral concept to better understand a major threat to hope. Since worldliness is also a major cause of apathy toward the poor and the underprivileged, I will suggest that the topic is relevant to social ethics generally.

Looking towards remedies, I will advocate and examine hope’s much-neglected beatitude of poverty of spirit, suggesting that it’s voiding of greed, vanity, ambition, and power-

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seeking is the best remedy to the worldly character. This beatitude was traditionally the remedy to worldliness. Hence it is no surprise that when concern about the latter receded, the beatitude itself was left with little work to do. By putting worldliness back on the map

I hope to also make clear the importance of hope’s beatitude.

A given society may be affected by worldliness in different ways or at different levels. Suppose the majority of a society, or the majority of a certain class in a society, regard worldly values as basic, advantageous, desirable, or necessary for this-worldly success. To the extent this is true, alienation from those values and the way of life they inspire may give the impression that the Christian is alienated from society as such. Often this perception is shared by Christians themselves, but I will argue that the matter is more complicated. Even when one’s society is deeply infected by worldly values against which one should witness, the Christian should express this qualified alienation not as social withdrawal but as a form of solicitude for and an act of communication with the social body with which one continues to identify.

Since worldliness itself is vicious and dehumanizing, hope’s opposition to it frees the wayfarer to be “of the world” with respect to virtuous earthly projects and the build- up of a truly good society. The implication is that hope is contra mundum in a highly qualified sense that allows it to be pro mundo in another and much more important sense.616 In the section follows I will then explain just how it is that hope is pro mundo, what it might contribute to the earthly city of which we are also members, and the important stake the hopeful have in their social identities. Since hope ultimately seeks full

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citizenship with “the saints and the household of God” (I-II.63.4) in the heavenly city, the next section will examine eschatological considerations which have practical bearing upon the life of the hopeful.617 In particular, I will examine how hope might foster a renewed ars moriendi or “art of dying” as a resource for end-of-life care.

4.1.1 Worldliness and Gentle Despair

Despair and presumption are usually identified as hope’s opposing vices.618 But in the tradition of hope that stretches from the New Testament, Church fathers, medieval scholastics, and Protestant reformers up to Vatican II, another major threat to hope has been identified which too often gets a free pass. More pervasive than despair and presumption and a breeding ground for both, it walks incognito because we have lost the moral category once used to diagnose it. This threat to hope is the state of character known as “worldly sin” or “worldliness:” a category which despite its contemporary neglect was a major figure in the older tradition.

Aquinas has many insightful things to say about worldliness, but on this subject he is less a pioneer and more a faithful transmitter of the received tradition. He also assumes that his readers are familiar with what the tradition says about worldliness and often just directs them to the pertinent biblical or patristic sources.619 Since part of my goal is to retrieve worldliness as a coherent moral category, I will begin with a history of

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the concept to bring into sight what the tradition meant and what associations it called up for Aquinas and most Christians in past ages.

The New Testament consistently uses shocking language to describe “the world.”

In Luke’s Gospel “the children of the world” are sharply distinguished from “the children of the light.” John’s Gospel calls the devil “the ruler of this world” who must be "cast out" (John 12:31). Later in the same Gospel, Christ says that the world cannot receive the

"Spirit of truth" (John 14:17). World-bashing receives its most blunt spokesman in

James: "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4).

Perhaps most chillingly, the first letter of John states that "the whole world is in the power of the evil one" (5:19) and that "If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15).

Whatever is meant by “the world” in such passages, it is obviously seen as a permanent and malignant setting to the Christian vocation. But it is not immediately clear why the world should be described so pejoratively. Did not God create the world and call it very good? More baffling, how is one to square “for God so loved the world” (John

3:16) with “love not the world” (1 John 2:15)? Scripture scholars have shown that the

English word “world” does duty for several different Greek words, helping cause this confusion. “World” may translate the Greek words ge, he oikoumene, kosmos, or aion.620

Ge and he oikoumene sometimes refer to the earth but more often to the human race, and are not used pejoratively. The former in the Septuagint is that earth of which Genesis

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proclaims: “And God saw that it was good” (Gen 1:10) All the passages condemning “the world” in Greek condemn either kosmos or aion. In John’s Gospel, kosmos can refer either to the physical world or the human race, as in “for God so loved the kosmos.” Or it can refer to a fallen order set up in rivalry to God, as in “love not the kosmos.”621 Outside of John the dominant pejorative is aion, a temporal term meaning "epoch," "period," or

"age." This is "the world" that Scripture usually rails against: "the present aion" (Matt.

12:32), which fell into sin and represents an order opposed to the coming of God’s kingdom or basileia.622 Its dominant images are Babylon and Babel, and it is sharply distinguished with the new, everlasting “world to come” (Matt. 12:32), in which the kingdom of God will establish undisputed rule.

The Risen Christ is the first fruits of this new “aion to come.” We are being drawn into his regenerated life, and all creation groans for the coming glory (Rom 8:22), but the old aion and its fallen ways linger until the eschaton. There is thus an “already” with a “not yet.” This sense of inhabiting a twilight between the ages created the image of the Christian as a pilgrim or wayfarer who is on a journey of hope from the worldly to the heavenly aion.623 To take just one biblical instance, 1 Peter describes Christians as

“pilgrims and strangers on the earth” (1 Peter 2:11).

The early Church reinforced these trends, as found in the already-quoted passage from the Epistle to Diognetus.”624 Augustine famously contrasted the “pilgrim City of

God” with the “City of the World,” the two of which are divided by competing loves.625

Such thought was ubiquitous in the patristic and medieval Church. From the Moralia of

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Pope Gregory the Great and the Rule of St. Benedict to medieval hagiography, “the world” and worldliness become foils to the Christian pilgrim or wayfarer on the journey of hope.626

Inflate such language without discretion, and Christianity becomes Manichean, dualist, or quietist. Hence the need for getting quite clear on what exactly is being condemned under the labels of “the world” and worldliness. Most of the tradition - and to my eye, the best and most nuanced of it - took its cue from the key passage in 1 John: “all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not of the Father” (1 John 2:16). This passage had the benefit of specifying what was actually being condemned. In the high medieval period especially, this passage came to be understood as condemning the feverish pursuit of pleasurable vanities (the “desire of the flesh”), preoccupation with wealth and possessions (the “desire of the eyes”), and the lust for power, renown, and honors (the “boastful pride of life”). This was an interpretation which Aquinas expressed and reinforced.627

This distinction helped give rise to the familiar triad of “the world, the flesh, and the devil” as the standard sources of temptation: a triad common in baptismal formulae, emphasized by Aquinas, and made familiar in English through the Book of Common

Prayer.628 A sampling of texts over different periods will give a sense of what was meant by “the world” in this pejorative sense. Dante in the Purgatorio personifies the world and worldliness by a Siren whose perilous song tempts the pilgrim to forget Paradiso altogether. As one victim of the Siren tells Dante: “our eyes, attached to worldly goods,

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would never leave the earth to look above.”629 Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales describes two forms of being ensnared by “the world.” One is an excessive and upwardly mobile ambition to climb the social and economic ladder. By contrast, his Oxford clerk is praised for not being “so worldly as to seek office”: that is, he does not abandon his impecunious religious and philosophical research for a lucrative secular post.630 Chaucer’s second form of worldliness is the pride and complacency resulting from established riches, noble blood, high rank, estates, expensive clothing, and the like.631 The greedy social climber familiar to much middle class mythology is thus distinguished from the “high born” worldling surrounded by aristocratic splendor. In Spenser’s Faerie Queen, Mammon rules over the “court of Ambition.” Proclaiming himself the “God of the world and worldlings,” his baits are riches, renown, power, honors, and estate.632 Note that prosperity, high position, and a good name are not themselves condemned in such passages; what is reproved is the excessive ambition, sinful misuse, and complacency taken in them. Many sources see “pomps and vanity” as the special token of worldliness.

In As You Like It, Shakespeare identifies it with the “painted pomp” of court life with its strutting, intrigue, jealousy, and flattery, contrasting these vanities with the simplicity of rustics and the spirituality of hermits.633 An excellent summary of this tradition was given by the Anglican theologian William Law in the 18th century. There he described the temptations of “the world” in these terms:

To abound in wealth, to have fine houses, and rich clothes, to be attended with splendor and equipage, to be beautiful in our persons, to have titles of dignity, to be above our fellow-creatures, to command the bows and obeisance of other people, to be looked

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on with admiration, to overcome our enemies with power, to subdue all that oppose us, to set out ourselves in as much splendor as we can, to live highly and magnificently, to eat, and drink, and delight ourselves in the most costly manner, these are the great, the honorable, the desirable things, to which the spirit of the world turns the eyes of all people.634

Aquinas himself believes that the cause of this worldliness or “worldly love”

(amor mundanus) is the inordinate pursuit of external, transitory, this-worldly goods.635

By this worldly love a person “hopes in the world as his end” rather than in God.636 By its very orientation, serious worldliness calls the wayfarer’s journey of hope to a halt. It should therefore be no surprise that it is a major breeding ground for the vices opposed to hope, namely presumption and despair.

Worldly Presumption

As previously discussed, Aquinas sees presumption as the breakdown of hope’s

“efficient cause:” the grace on which hope leans.637 One conspicuous way this occurs is when through over-confidence and self-satisfaction we begin to lose sight of our need for grace and so fail to rely upon God for strength and mercy. Worldliness is a fast-track to this state. The worldly desire wealth, status, influence, and acclaim, and are generally eager to take credit for their own success. As John Henry Newman says:

When a man has been advanced in the world by means of his own industry and skill, when he began poor and ends rich, how apt will he be to pride himself, and confide… in his own resources… how will such an one be tempted to self-complacency and self-

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approbation! How apt will he be to rely upon himself, to rest contented with himself.638

That spirit of godlike self-reliance sums up vulgar and widespread forms of the

American Dream still with us today. Yet Newman’s overall point must be qualified. The attainment of this-worldly success, status, reputation, influence, and prosperity neither constitute nor necessitate worldliness or presumption. As Newman wisely acknowledges,

“It may be a duty” for those with the requisite vocation “to accept these things” and to

“not so much put them away, as to put away our old natures.”639 Material success does not necessitate presumption any more than beauty necessitates lust. But if it is unchecked by hope’s acknowledged dependence on grace, prosperity can easily produce the spirit of self-reliance that constitutes presumption. The remedy to this Pelagian mindset is an acknowledged dependence upon God’s grace: to overcome presumption by getting hope’s “leaning” right. This requires a frank admission of one’s creaturely neediness and poverty before the creator as well as prayerful recourse to God for needed grace and mercy.”640 Hope’s conscious reliance on God counteracts that worldly presumption which is founded upon the illusion of self-sufficiency. A consequence is that the

Christian wayfarer cannot truthfully construe him or herself as an elite being who stands over and above “the world,” but as a sinner who is always in need of healing and forgiveness.

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Worldly Despair

In contrast to presumption, Aquinas sees despair as the breakdown of hope’s

“final cause:” the end of eternal happiness for which hope longs.641 It may not at first be evident why worldliness is a source of despair. This is because the kind of despair it fosters has receded from most people’s moral taxonomies. Aquinas himself saw it clearly.

He holds that despair can happen in two ways, creating two distinct forms of it. As stated previously, hope’s object is a “future good possible but arduous to attain.”642 The first kind of despair believes beatitude is an impossible good. This is either because one’s sins seem too great to be forgiven, or because one is so miserable that it seems one “will never be able to rise to any good.”643 These are both recognizable and horrible forms of despair.

But alongside this is a second form which denies that happiness is a future arduous good.

It occurs when a wayfarer decides that happiness can be had on easier terms than the costly discipleship of committed Christianity, and so abandons the journey.644 It may seem odd to call this a form of despair since the agent still hopes for happiness. To clarify we must therefore distinguish between “theological” despair, which despairs of God

(theos) as the source of happiness; and total despair, which despairs of happiness as such.

The despair which denies that happiness is arduous is of the former but not the latter kind since it still hopes for happiness in some form. Because a habit of hope likely remains in the agent, he or she will continue to look and act hopefully; giving the impression that

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despair is not present. I will call this “gentle despair” to distinguish it from the more familiar “total despair.”

Aquinas ascribes this gentle despair to preoccupation with created goods which absorb our affections and make spiritual goods seem remote, boring, and evanescent. He writes: “love of those pleasures leads someone to have a distaste for spiritual, and not to hope for them as arduous goods. In this way is despair caused.”645 Aquinas’ own example for this is sexual pleasure, but his general point is that overindulgence in created goods spoils our spiritual palate, so to speak. Whether it happens quickly or slowly gains ground over the years, worldliness breeds the “here and now” mindset which makes hope’s eternal end look increasingly vague, costly, and remote – a mere will o’ the wisp. The result is that the “arduous” demands of Christianity no longer seem worth it compared to the more immediate gratifications to be had on secular terms. The excessive gratifications found in money, possessions, social status, power, reputation, fame, and honors fill precisely this role for the worldly. Thus whereas despair is usually associated with devastating sorrow and dejection, worldliness causes a largely unnoticed and even

“optimistic” despair in which hope for fulfillment shifts from God to this-worldly idols.646 It produces that “distaste for spiritual goods” through a state of sloth or “spiritual sadness” which makes the wayfarer want to forget hope altogether.647 Though worldliness has been neglected in the literature on hope, the set of attitudes, values, and habits it causes plainly subvert hope as a virtue. If is fully grown, Christian wayfarers forget who they are and where they are going, forsaking the journey of hope. Their state

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is then analogous to the sailors in The Odyssey who joined the Lotus Eaters: “those who ate this honeyed plant… longed to stay forever… forgetful of their homeland.”648

A caveat must be issued at this point to prevent misunderstanding. To resist worldliness the wayfarer is not required to adopt the strictest asceticism, condemn all joys and culture of the present life and in general walk about like a crank. Augustine and

Gregory the Great both speak of how the wayfarer may legitimately enjoy the refreshment of a few “wayside inns” on the journey, and say these inns correspond to the good and innocent comforts one finds in life “on the way.” The danger comes if the wayfarer “lingers at the inn,” failing to progress on the journey or even mistaking the Inn for a permanent home.649 To recall an earlier distinction, whereas the world in the pejorative sense (aion, kosmos) calls for resistance while the world in the benign sense

(ge, he oikoumene) does not, even in the benign sense enjoyment of the world calls for balance, temperance, and the correct setting of priorities.

Avarice, Vainglory, and Ambition

Just what are the specific temptations of worldliness that tempt the wayfarer to gentle despair, and what are the remedies in the tradition for countering this? Pruning a very fertile and tangled body of reflection, Aquinas reduces worldly ends to four. They are wealth, power, fame, and honors.650 Excessive attachment to wealth produces the vice of avarice, which Aquinas regards as immoderate love of money and the possessions

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money can buy.651 This can be expressed in different forms, but most representative are hoarding and prodigality. The hoarder or miser loves the sheer accumulation of wealth and possessions. But perhaps more common today is the prodigal, spendthrift, or wastrel: that paragon of consumerism who craves the thrill of excessive shopping and buying.652

Though the pursuit of power is distinct from the pursuit of wealth, the two are obviously related since getting and keeping wealth and resources typically requires local and international exercises of power, domination, and coercion.653

The worldly ends of fame and honors are more complex than that of wealth.

Aquinas distinguishes undue desire for fame (which he calls vainglory) from preoccupation with honors (which he calls ambition). The vainglorious desire for fame and the ambitious desire for honors both proceed from pride, which is the inordinate desire to excel or establish superiority.654 Not content simply with excelling, both vainglory and ambition wish to be seen and esteemed as excelling. But unlike vainglory, ambition is fastidious about its audience. The ambitious want to be deemed excellent not by the masses, but by “the people who matter.”655 By contrast there is an indiscriminateness and latent vulgarity in vainglory, which seeks celebrity status, newspaper fame, or even sensationalist notoriety on almost any terms. Widespread contemporary forms of vainglory are easily seen in the thirst for acclaim which infects much popular culture. To take one example, consider the wild acclaim, the disciple-like mimicry, and the name-brand merchandizing enjoyed by countless movie, TV, sport, and music celebrities. Millions of youth regard them as their idols, heroes, and exemplars not

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because of any perceived moral greatness, but simply due to their charisma, distinction, and glamor. The appetite for fame and the famous casts a wide and indiscriminate net, now exalting in the red-carpeted glitter of a Hollywood Oscars ceremony, now grubbing for the petty acclaim of reality TV. A mania for fame is a manifest deadweight to the virtue of hope. When solidly entrenched it makes wayfarers reluctant to look beyond a world where they may be so petted and admired, or at least makes them one of the starry- eyed fans whose “minds lick up shadows.”

Ambition refuses to be similarly garish. Whereas the vainglorious simply want notoriety and applause as such, the ambitious want approval and distinctions from “the right people”: those deemed excellent, exclusive, and judicious; who are seen as having the right expertise and taste.656 Ambition often produces a familiar contemporary type: the driven social climber who is eager to move up the office or corporate ladder, acts from enlightened self-interest, flatters those with influence, trips up rivals, and shuns the unimportant and out of favor. If and when this opportunist becomes successful and is thought reputable, an agreeable sense of security, status, and smugness settles in. He or she is now considered accomplished and distingué. At the social level this smugness is often expressed through the pride felt in belonging to a superior and exclusive club. The group may preen itself for intellectual, cultural, national, economic, or even religious pretensions. “We” may be the Greeks versus the barbarians, the aristocracy versus the common people, the Elect versus the ungodly, Americans versus foreigners, the rich versus the poor, the intelligentsia versus the philistines, or white-collar versus blue-collar

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workers. The important thing is that “we” are the important, the distinguished, those “in- the-know.” Ambition to get in or move up, snobbery once one has arrived and domination of those below, are the general trends. The net effect is to cause the ambitious to feel ultimately and magnificently self-satisfied and at home in this world, making the prospect of the eschaton little more than a vague threat to their secure this-worldly splendor.657

If unchecked by some ascesis, these worldly vices lead to innumerable evils.

Blown up to the collective level they readily take the forms of plutocracy, racism, classism, militarism, discrimination, and elitism of all kinds. Moreover, they dispose to apathy toward the poor, the disabled, the underprivileged, the oppressed, and the ostracized. Since such people have no worldly advantages to offer they are typically shunned or ignored by the worldly.

The domineering, greedy, consumptive, flashy, and arrogant complex of vice that produces the worldly character is very much with us today. Examples could be multiplied, but let one suffice. Modern consumerism has been a very fertile womb for worldly sin.658 At an elite level, avarice and ambition motivate many of the jet-hopping executives whose multinational corporations thrive on systems of greed and acts of hubris for which it is very difficult to hold them accountable.659 Corporate elites frequently and with impunity exploit domestic workers at home, promote the dirty little secret of sweatshops abroad, break unions, manipulate geopolitical affairs, and wreck ecosystems with industrial waste. This phenomenon is in fact one of large-scale avarice and ambition

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in contemporary garb. Moreover, corporate marketing specializes in appealing to and further inflaming the greed, vanity, and self-importance of average consumers to ensure and ultimately increase their profits. The products include costly emblems of lifestyle and trendy items whose name brand chic confers the prestige and status sought by both the vainglorious and ambitious.660

Whether it is about getting the latest Ipad, an Armani suit, or a car with bragging rights, the consumeristic drive for finery is not just avarice writ large. As one marketing manual astutely notes, the successful company will cater to the consumer’s “desire to feel special.”661 Barry Schwartz writes that: “Part of (consumers’) satisfaction from achievements and possessions comes from the awareness that not everybody can match them.”662 In other words, the winning formula in marketing is to appeal not just to consumers’ greed but to their vainglory and ambition – in short, to worldliness. In the era of globalization, such structures of sin threaten not just the virtue of hope, but the moral character and well-being of billions of people along with the health of the planet itself.

My focus here is the effect worldliness has upon hope and my primary resource is historical. Nevertheless, it is important to make clear that worldliness plays out today in widespread and recognizable forms that threaten hope and countless other great goods. In the following section I will gesture at alternatives and remedies.

Worldliness is not just a cause but a symptom of what I have called “gentle despair.” On the one hand, seeking ultimate comfort in some combination of wealth, power, fame, and ambition smothers eschatological hope in those who have it. On the

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other, those lacking hope for heavenly beatitude frequently default to the above ends in their desire to “drink life to the lees” in this world.663 This state of gentle despair has been overlooked in favor of “total despair” with its forlorn desperation. Since few inhabit the latter’s psychological netherworld, despair is mistakenly thought to be found only in the severely depressed or suicidal. But while it may lack tragic sullenness and wear a trendy and smiling demeanor, the gentle despair caused by worldliness is a sepulcher none the better for being whitewashed. By exposing it, we correct a false impression which makes despair look exceedingly rare and hardly a live threat to “normal” people. Correlatively, we see that the existing hope deficit is both ruinous in itself and in its wider effects.

Hope’s Beatitude of Spiritual Poverty

Various “unworldly” remedies have been advised in the patristic, medieval, and later Western tradition for overcoming worldliness. Spiritual contemplation and works of charity were often recommended as remedies to what the Book of Common Prayer calls the “pomps and vanity of this wicked world.”664 As a long-term solution, religious life with its vowed poverty, chastity, and obedience was long considered the “unworldly” trump card. The later tradition complicated this view. As Newman helpfully observed, in the cloister itself we may find “the evil in which the world lies, in your own hearts,” making Christians “the world to each other.”665 Besides, most Christians are not vowed

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religious. So while the evangelical counsels may be an exemplary way of living out hope, more broadly applicable resources are necessary.

As an essential remedy for worldliness I propose hope’s beatitude of poverty of spirit.666 Aquinas regards this beatitude as a negation of pride, pomp, and greed. The beatitudes in general represent values that are plainly at odds with “worldly wisdom,” declaring states such as poverty, mourning, and meekness as blessed. Yet Aquinas states that the Sermon on the Mount, which opens with the beatitudes, “contains the whole process of forming the life of a Christian.”667 The first of the beatitudes is “blessed are the poor in spirit,” which Aquinas associates with the theological virtue of hope. He interprets spiritual poverty as “the voiding of a proud and puffed up spirit.” More specifically, he claims that through this beatitude a person “does not, by pride, seek greatness either in himself or in external goods, namely honors and wealth… this proceeds from poverty of spirit.”668 This beatitude is therefore an essential means for combatting worldly sin.669

Poverty of spirit is the beatitude associated with fear and therefore with hope.670

But if so, what does this beatitude as the “act” of fear look like in practice? Aquinas does not propose one discrete act type, but thinks that poverty of spirit can be expressed through multiple practices, though he does not say much about what these might be.671

For tangible forms of spiritual poverty, we should therefore look to other sources and possibilities.

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In an entertainment and consumerist culture which hides death and dying, one much-needed expression of spiritual poverty is the practice of memento mori (literally:

“remember [that you have] to die”).672 The goal is to soberly reflect that the bloom of youth, the security and comfort of wealth, the glory of the famous, and the distinguished swagger of the honored, are all alike fleeting. Meditations on death, visits to the sick and dying, and sober thoughts in a graveyard are all advocated as disabusing us from painted pomp, and as reminders that “All flesh is as grass, and all its glory as the flower of the field” (Is 40:6). This Ash Wednesday message against worldly vanitas is also meant to undermine disparities between the rich and the poor, the famous and the disregarded, by casting death as the great leveler who equalizes the condition of all in the end. Should this produce the effort to resist the spirit of overweening pride with its itch for wealth, fame, and honors, it becomes a genuine exercise in poverty of spirit.

A second and Christological expression of spiritual poverty is meditation on the poverty and kenosis of Christ coupled with the appropriate resolutions and amendment of one’s life.673 “Though he was in the form of God,” Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2: 6, 7). The Gospels depict Christ as born in a manger, living in humble obscurity in Nazareth, making his entrance into Jerusalem not in a chariot but on a donkey, washing the feet of his disciples, and exercising his ministry in radical solidarity with the poor and homeless: “The Son of man has nowhere to lay his head”

(Matt 8:20). As the New Testament scholar Richard Hays notes, Matthew 24 depicts

Christ not only as among but even in the poor: “Jesus himself is present in the hungry and

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homeless.”674 The implied message is that the way of worldly pomp, riches, and arrogance has been falsified by the kenotic way of Christ who is himself the “way” (via) which the wayfarer (viator) must walk: “the road under our feet.”675 Humbling oneself as a child, taking the lowest place at the table, rejecting ostentation and swagger, and other ways of following the poor Christ are thus genuine expressions of “blessed are the poor in spirit.”

The religious life of vowed poverty is often thought of as the ultimate form of such imitatio Christi. But for laypeople who do not renounce all their possessions various sources advise “great plainness and simplicity of life” as a remedy to greed, luxury, arrogance, and distance from the poor. As William Law writes: “avoid all superfluous shows of finery and equipage, and let your house be plainly furnished with moderate conveniences. Do not consider what your estate can afford, but what right reason requires.”676 Such simplicity is an excellent alternative to and witness against the consumeristic excesses named above.677 Besides a lifestyle of simplicity, St. Francis de

Sales recommends frequent almsgiving for those with means. Aquinas regards almsgiving as an act of charity rather than of spiritual poverty. Nevertheless, the detachment from wealth which poverty of spirit effects removes an obstacle to charity and therefore gives a boost to it. St. Francis also counsels us to “love the poor (in their) poverty.”678 He notes that St. Louis, a 13th century medieval king of France, had 3 poor men to dinner with him every day and visited the poor and sick - not with his crown on but in plain clothes. The point is not simply to do good to the poor, but to be in

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community and solidarity with them. “If you love the poor,” he says, “be often in their company,” engaged in shared activities such as work, conversation, cooking, dining, and joint projects together.679 The poor are therefore conceived not just as lay figures for pious works of supererogation. One is meant to be among them as one’s fellows and equals and to see Christ in their midst: to enter the spirit of poverty.680 Acts such as these are poverty of spirit in tangible form. They counter-witness to consumeristic excess in a deeper way than just mailing a check to a charity or practicing interior detachment from surrounding wealth.681

Essentially a form of solidarity, humility, and detachment, poverty of spirit frees us from undue preoccupation with wealth and prestige by countering the greed which leads to avarice, on the one hand; and the pride which leads to vainglory and ambition, on the other. The “proud and puffed up spirit” which spiritual poverty voids is thus precisely the spirit of worldliness as interpreted above. Poverty does this through practices in which hope, fearing to be separated from the love of God, resists the worldly preoccupation with riches, power, fame, and honors.

The association of this beatitude with hope was a master stroke of Augustine and

Aquinas.682 I have argued that hope is threatened by worldliness and needs resources to push back. We now see where an essential resource lies. Aquinas argues that the beatitudes are the acts of gifts which make us “amenable” to the work of their respective infused virtues. Though spiritual poverty is the act of fear, hope’s own gift, the literature on hope has said little about how this gift and beatitude make us “amenable” to a hopeful

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life. I believe that the answer is now in plain view. Spiritual poverty makes us

“amenable” to hope by countering worldliness: that preoccupation with possessions and prestige which produces “distaste” for hope’s commitments, main interest, and end. It is no accident that the neglect of worldliness as a moral category has gone together with the neglect of hope’s gift and beatitude. When worldliness vanished from sight, hope’s gift and beatitude were left with little practical work to do. Hence in most of the literature on hope the gift of fear and beatitude of spiritual poverty are duly acknowledged but play no serious role.683 The recovery of worldliness as a moral category is therefore important also for the meaningful recovery of hope’s gift and beatitude.

4.1.2 Homo Viator as Dual Citizen

I began this chapter by noting the tension that is often thought to exist between the hopeful and “the world” understood as a site they are “in” but are not supposed to be

“of.” This tension has deep roots in the tradition, and has sometimes roused suspicions that a Church/world dualism is embedded at the heart of Christianity. But as I have explicated it, “the world” in the pejorative sense refers not to the physical earth, the human race, or human culture. It refers to a particular group of evils distinguishable from others: those which people uninterested in heavenly beatitude will very often but not always default to in their desire to get the most out of this short life. As noted above, in the New Testament and much of the subsequent tradition these evils are thought to be

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representative of unregenerate human life. Certainly the excessive pursuit of wealth, fame, status, reputation, power, influence, and the like are extremely common, as the examples provided above suggest. For that reason worldliness often complicates the integration of homo viator in standard social and political life. The more the values, attitudes, habits, and way of life of a society are “worldly,” the more the hopeful and virtuous will have to object to deeply ingrained habits of their own society. The risk is social alienation.

Considered purely as a risk, such alienation is not unique to hope or any other

Christian virtue. Principled stands that risk alienation may have nothing to do with

Christian witness. The ancient cynics who rejected “convention” for a life purportedly in accord with nature, reason, and virtue risked alienation. Groups and movements as various as Albigensians, Jacobins, royalists, republicans, abolitionists, suffragists, pacifists, and even nudists have in different contexts and in various ways risked alienation and incurred different kinds of social backlash. So the risk is not uniquely

Christian, and such principled stands have often been an important agent of social change.

Theological hope with its homo viator model of identity has the power to make

Christians resist vicious and idolatrous demands of the State, market, or society. To that extent it is a potentially subversive contra mundum. My proposal is that Christians should be “in the world” but not “of the world” in terms of worldly values and habits. In that respect the Christian they should be not just wayfarers and pilgrims, but aliens and exiles.

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But many have gone further than this, believing that society is not just marred by worldliness and the fallen aion, but that postlapsarian society itself is identical to them.

Where this is believed, hope’s status viatoris is used to negate society as such. Some prominent Christians and Christian movements have talked this way, despairing of society as irreformable. To say nothing of heretical movements from the Gnostics to the

Cathars, this would include figures such as Tertullian, Thomas a Kempis, and Leo

Tolstoy, and the more radical fringes of Egyptian and medieval monasticism up to the latter-day Mennonites, the Amish, and contemporary sects and doomsday cults.684

Despair of society is sometimes coupled with an attempt at physical withdrawal.

But even where this does not occur, the group may want a moral withdrawal from society. Physically the group may dwell in the local city, town, or village, but they may abdicate responsibility and minimize participation in anything outside their own Church structures.685 They treat society at large rather like a father who disowns his son but still has to live next door to him. Obligatory polite noises may be made when they cross paths, but beneath any civil front lies a deep moral abandonment.

As Ladner notes, this contra mundum reflex was sometimes carried to bizarre extremes. For example, in the later middle ages some pious cartographers drew whole continents not as geometrical shapes but as “demonic figures” since “all that is in the world” is said to be “of sin.”686 Such thought and practice has paved the way for

“cultured despisers” from Celsus to Bertrand Russell to claim that Christianity harbors an inner logic of otherworldliness and obscurantism.687 As Rousseau scoffed: “The country

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of the Christian is not of this world.” For the Christian, he continues, “The essential thing is to get to heaven” and out of “this valley of sorrows.”688

From the perspective of Thomistic hope both anti-social Christianity and anti-

Christian hyperbole are overly simplistic accounts. My reasons for this assessment are as follows. Few theologians or philosophers today believe in mind-body dualism: the view which Gilbert Ryle called “the ghost in the machine.” For very good philosophical reasons, most profess belief in a psychosomatic unity according to which a human being is essentially embodied and not essentially a mind, soul, or psyche which just happens to operate through a body before pulling up stakes at death. I am both philosophically and theologically persuaded by this account. Philosophically, mind-body dualism is rightly treated as a moribund theory defended only by a few idiosyncratic Platonists and

Cartesians. I find the neo-Aristotelian accounts of David Wiggins, Robert Pasnau,

Michael Loux, Peter Strawson, and especially Peter van Inwagen, the best contemporary treatments of the issue, but while their rejection of dualism is hylomorphic, they are joined in that rejection by almost every other philosophical camp, including empiricists.689 Theologically I see belief in the rejection of dualism as fully in step with the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ, to say nothing of the general resurrection of the dead. For if the agent is essentially a soul or mind, it is very difficult not to think of the body as unnecessary. Aquinas himself goes very far in stressing our essential embodiment, stating bluntly that “My soul is not I” (anima mea non est ego) and insisting that death breaks human nature apart.690 Full recognition of embodiment makes a crucial

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difference to the identity of the Christian hopeful. As essentially embodied beings our identity is importantly shaped by local and temporal factors. Alasdair MacIntyre states:

For the Platonist, as later for the Cartesian, the soul, preceding all bodily and social existence, must indeed possess an identity prior to all social roles; but for the Catholic Christian, as earlier for the Aristotelian, the body and the soul are not two linked substances. I am my body and my body is social, born to those parents in this community with a specific social identity.691

The Platonist or Cartesian may have a view of embodiment according to which it really is possible for the psyche or cogito to essentially subsist apart from the spatio- temporal world and therefore not to be essentially entangled in social space. Thomistic embodiment offers no such escapist fantasy since it takes the body-soul composite with its local and social origins as basic.

Not pretending to escape social space, the Thomist can accept that we are socially embedded in a robust sense. Long before the work of MacIntyre and others made this a truism, George Orwell noted that habits, attitudes, feelings, and agency itself cannot transcend social context. “My taste in books and food and cloths, my sense of honour, my table manners, my turns of speech, my accent, even the characteristic movements of my body, are the products of a special kind of upbringing.” Though some of these social features may be altered, it is impossible to simply transcend the whole, and it would be insane to try. As Orwell states: “I would have to alter myself so completely that at the end

I should hardly be recognizable as the same person” (150).692 The account of hope I am offering, which presupposes full embodiment and consequent entanglement in the social

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world, can fully accept Orwell’s point. Even if some forms of alienation are necessary, alienation can never and should never go all the way down.

Moreover, the body-soul composite from the Thomistic perspective includes the natural inclination to sociability, and upon this sociability the virtue of justice is built.

One aspect of justice is piety, which demands that reverence and regard be shown to our parents as the primary sources of our “birth and nourishment.” Such piety is demanded by the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. Aquinas believes that such reverence and regard are owed by extension to other sources of our life and nourishment. After our parents he especially insists that piety be “given to our native land (patria).” This includes “honor to all our fellow-citizens and to all the friends of our native land.”693 So not only is it impossible to escape one’s social identity; failure to acknowledge indebtedness to the community that gave one “birth and nourishment” is unjust.694 The implication is that the wayfarer truly is a dual citizen. Homo viator may seek eternal citizenship in the city of God, but he or she owes honor to the earthly city analogous to honor shown toward parents. Since disowning that city, like disowning one’s parents, is perhaps the grandest gesture of refusing honor, the effort to renounce membership in the earthly city is by Thomistic lights both sin and folly.

Thomistic hope insists that we wayfarers are dual citizens bound in piety to honor our native homeland. Moreover, hope invests itself in the social body and refers it to our ultimate end. Utter and wilful alienation from our earthly homeland is therefore ruled out.

Nevertheless, the hopeful may find much in that earthly homeland wanting. Obviously

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this includes expressions of despair and presumption. But as I noted above, hope and its beatitude of poverty are also discomfiting whistleblowers when it comes to worldly values which often have broad social acceptance.

To take principled stands against socially embedded forms of avarice, vainglory, ambition, and domineering plainly is to risk a fair degree of alienation. Let me give a few contemporary examples. Those who lack a lifestyle of affluence, who are not fluent in the youth, beauty, and glamor-obsessed entertainment culture, who do not wear pricy name- brand clothes, do not drive impressive cars, and who do not toady to the affluent or show partiality toward the influential, will lack entrance to certain social niches, activities, and ways of life. This can be particularly painful for the young whose peers often cluster into enclaves based on affluence and domineering and who regard the name-brand and entertainment culture as the very currency of social existence and acceptability.

Moreover, those who do not regard life as an upwardly mobile and essentially competitive scramble up the social and economic ladder and who fail to “play the game” according to the social Darwinian rules that often govern the workplace or corporate office, will likewise risk a certain alienation. They may conscientiously abstain from the undue arrivisme and enlightened self-interest that motivate innumerable activities, decisions, policies, and conversational staples which are basic career and social conductors for that context. Now suppose such people do not merely abstain from such activities but positively object to them - however charitably or intelligently - as vicious.

Suppose they further adopt idiosyncratic practices which cut against the social grain. In

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short, suppose they try to lead a hopeful life shaped by poverty of spirit and the beatitudes in a contemporary high school, sports league, political party, business school, law firm, sales department, or other ambitious workplace, to name but a few examples.

Allowing for happy exceptions, those who pursue this way of life will often be seen as grating against the ethos of their social context.695 If in addition to such local frictions they adopt cultural, social, and political opinions opposed to consumeristic, entertainment, corporate, nationalistic, and militaristic excesses, they may find themselves on the outside of a great many social practices and institutions, in part if not whole. A degree of social alienation is at that point a datum, whether or not the person has sought it or not.

As I have described hope’s social commitments, such alienation is never a desideratum. The hopeful truly are bound by birth and nourishment to their native homeland and people. Moreover, these are not just any social object for hope to take up.

Given the greater proximity and ties of this social body to oneself, the order of charity makes one’s patria a pressing object of both love and hope.696 So apart from the contextual improbabilities it would involve, one cannot respond to alienation by wholly transferring one’s social membership out of one’s patria and into the Church, for example. Membership in the earthly city remains and that membership is in countless respects a social good, whatever attendant ills it may bring. Hence any unavoidable alienation from one’s patria due to hope’s way of life is an evil, even if sometimes a necessary evil.

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Not only does this rule out a Church/world or related forms of dualism; it makes a crucial difference to how the hopeful should deal with that alienation. For one thing, it means that such alienation should never be met with that retaliatory pride and resentment which lead to a martyr, saint, or hero complex. Many sects and movements from the

Gnostics and Donatists to contemporary Christian subcultures are littered with a self- appointed spiritual elite who hold their society in such contempt that alienation becomes a kind of proof of sanctity. As with Milton’s poorly sketched Christ, these chosen ones regard the generality of their fellow citizens as “a herd confused/ A miscellaneous rabble… of whom to be disprais’d were no small praise.”697 Taken this way, misguided hope and its exaggerated distance from the world gives the illusion that one stands over and above the world as “the Elect” above “the ungodly.” By contrast, I have emphasized that homo viator does not stand over and above the world, but is still prey to temptation, and is in need of continual repentance and recourse to divine grace. From this perspective, reveling in alienation is misanthropic and of dubious contextual coherence. It is also a form of impiety and presumption and therefore destructive of hope. When hope and poverty’s stand against worldliness threaten a degree of social alienation, the fitting response is lament rather than celebration. To the degree such alienation exists, temptations to exaggerate its extent must be fought or a martyr complex combined with the view of society as a massa damnata may result.698

In addition, piety and social hope commend the hopeful to insist on membership in their society. This requires purposeful and persistent integration where possible. What

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Aquinas says about Christ’s own manner of life is instructive here. His question is why

Christ was not a hermit or extreme ascetic. Why is it, given the counter-example of so many prophets and saints, that “the Son of man came eating and drinking?” Aquinas answers: “it was in keeping with the end” of becoming human that “Christ should not lead a solitary life, but should associate with men. Now it is most fitting that he who associates with others should conform to their manner of living; according to the words of the Apostle (1 Corinthians 9:22): "I became all things to all men.” He concludes “And therefore it was most fitting that Christ should conform to others” in innocent matters since common ground increases love and fellowship.699 This is an excellent example for the hopeful. Should their way of life lead to partial alienation from the social body, the proper response is not to withdraw further out of resentful indignation or compensatory pride, but to renew our efforts to integrate in those areas where we may. On Aquinas’ reading, Christ conformed to the local “manner of living” in part by attending dinner parties and not refusing a glass of wine. The hopeful may do it by any number of social and cultural practices which express and reinforce membership in their people, from embracing the national cuisine and local traditions to quoting the nation’s poets and celebrating its holidays.

More crucially, the hopeful may further their integration by working toward the common good of their society. Here the beatitudes are again important to how we see hope concretely lived. Entangling oneself in human brokenness and working for the common good further integrates the hopeful in a morally meaningful way, shows a

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tangible commitment to their society, and takes much of the sting from the remainder of alienation. The earlier-noted example of Christian charity in the late Roman Empire is an excellent example of this. Though pagan Romans felt that the Christians in their midst were in many respects alien, Christian contributions to the common good greatly reduced that alienation both in fact and in pagan eyes.700 Today such service might take the form of volunteering or being a full-time member of an apostolate such as the Catholic

Worker, the Salvation Army, L’Arche, parish neighborhood rebuilding projects, Unity

Gardens, a Crisis Pregnancy Center, a Homeless Shelter, and so forth. The point is that such ministries serve not just one’s co-religionists, but one’s neighbors and society as such. Conceivably one might do this with a bizarre aloofness, “ministering” to neighbors without entering into any communal ties with them - effectively treating them as lay figures for works of charity in an impersonal sense. Consider Jonathan Swift, who in addition to being a splendid satirist, essayist, novelist, and poet, was an Anglican cleric and the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. As a “religious duty” Swift regularly gave alms to the beggars outside his Cathedral. But he did so with a kind of wryness:

“His beneficence was not graced with tenderness of civility; he relieved without pity, and assisted without kindness; so that those who were fed by him could hardly love him.”701

It is difficult not to read this with a shudder similar to the music lover’s shudder at a false note, and that is my point. Swift’s contributions did not integrate him into the community, but they should have. This is why his “beneficence” strikes a false note, and is a text-book case of how not to contribute to one’s community. The opposite behavior,

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magnificently shown in the lives of people like St. Vincent de Paul, Martin Luther King,

Jr., and Dorothy Day, is to contribute to one’s community in a way that integrates one in it in important ways, building personal ties and relationships instead of posing as a kind of distant heavenly presence who rains down manna upon those below.

While the hopeful may be alienated from their society in certain respects, they should remain deeply committed to it. A principled and limited alienation co-exists with tenacity in trying to reconnect, re-intregrate, and contribute to the social body of which one is a part. By doggedly insisting on membership in that society, by integrating where we may, by contributing, and by practicing a kind of partially alienated presence that refuses anti-social flight, suspicions of misanthropic grandstanding and risk-free armchair criticism are to an important degree defused. Such wayfarers show enough solicitude and love for their earthly patria to stay firmly put, to contribute, to identify, and to participate even when the risk of public obloquy may make social withdrawal tempting.

Understood in this way, such alienation as one must adopt can itself be a medium of outreach. Objecting to worldly values, practices, habits, and institutions may alienate, but this alienation is not the result of standoffish withdrawal or insolent cheek. To return to the example of Swift, such alienation should not be the superior person’s disdain for the rabble of Yahoos. Rather it should operate as a summons to one’s native people to recognize vicious and dehumanizing practices for what they are. That summons should be charitably expressed. Indeed, it should be a performative exercise in fraternal correction which Aquinas and the tradition saw as an act of charity rather than an act of

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withdrawal.702 Such alienation as they do express is therefore an act of communication to their society rather than a refusal to communicate with it. It communicates a summons to moral accountability, invites to a fuller pursuit of the common good together, and it signals the intention to lovingly persist in identifying with one’s people even amid, and not just until, the onset of serious tensions.703 Contrary to the suspicions of Christianity’s cultured despisers, such qualified alienation communicates that the hopeful are not mere traitors-in-waiting or fair-weather friends of their society.

The cases of Dante and Kipling are highly suggestive. Defending his home country from charges of injustice, Kipling wrote: “If England was what England seems/

‘Ow we’d drop ‘er. But she ain’t!” This suggests that devotion to one’s country may be dropped if one judges that it is on balance corrupt. But as C.S. Lewis notes, this is “like loving your children only ‘if they’re good.’” But “‘No man,’ said one of the Greeks,

‘loves his city because it is great, but because it is his.’ A man who really loves his country will love her in her ruin and degradation.”704 Not only does piety commend this approach; charity and hope do as well. Charity, which wills the good of the beloved, does not cease to will that good just because the beloved is not ideal. The pattern is the reverse, as suggested in the biblical verse: “God showed his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8, emphasis added).

A corollary is that commitment to one’s homeland or country persists even if one strongly disagrees with its political and economic policies. Love of one’s patria may prejudice one to approve of its policies, but such love is not premised on this approval

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and therefore can outlast it. Hence though George Orwell was a far-left socialist who rejected the political foundations of the British nation-state, he made it clear to his fellow-socialists in 1940 that England was “My Country Right or Left” and that he would continue to identify with and not simply disown his country “however little the boiled rabbits of the Left” might like it.705

Some have called into question the coherence of such identification by suggesting that the modern nation-state is less a country than it is a corporation. For example,

Hauerwas has described the United States as little more than a militaristic plutocracy and has gibed that the call to sacrifice oneself for the country sounds a lot “like being asked to die for the telephone company.”706 But Nicholas Wolterstorff and Jeffrey Stout have pointed out that it is necessary to clearly distinguish one’s homeland and people from the overlapping nation-state or political arrangement.707 The love of home, land, neighbor, and the way of life which informs cultural expressions and local customs is prior to any specific economic or political system or arrangement. Obviously the two exert much mutual influence, but we should distinguish them very roughly the way we distinguish between a person and a person’s official function. Even if everything Hauerwas says is true – and I think a great many of his specific criticisms are warranted - the social bond with one’s fellow citizens must not be confused with the sprawling institutional bureaucracies that govern economic and political life. Refusal to cooperate with certain policies and practices of the latter does not require repudiation of one’s membership in the former. Recognizing this fact helps disentangle piety from jingoism. This

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disentanglement in turn makes clear that love and honor of one’s country neither requires nor condones injustice to those outside national boundaries.

In contrast to Kipling, consider Dante’s committed membership in his native

Florence. Beatrice in the heavenly court vouches for Dante that “There is no son of the

Church Militant/ with greater hope than his.” Though second to none in hope for the heavenly patria, Dante also deeply loves his earthly patria (“my sweet fold where I grew up a lamb”.) Though he is in exile, Dante does not forget Florence, and pines to return to the font at which he was baptized. He denounces the city severely at times and is a “foe to the wolves that prey upon it now.”708 But such social criticism stems from piety’s solicitude and love’s anxiety, not from a clinically detached and aloof moral disgust. In short, he is personally invested in Florence. Zealous for membership both in his native city and the heavenly city, Dante is an exemplary case of homo viator as a committed dual citizen. He refuses the temptation to renounce either citizenship just because the dual commitment involves real tensions.

Worldly values and habits which vitiate hope cannot be acquiesced in, and such dissent typically comes at a social price. But because the hopeful believe that creation is good, that they are essentially embodied and therefore local creatures, that our nature is social, and that piety, natural love, and charity for one’s homeland is important, alienation co-exists with insistent membership and the desire to affirm what is good.

The reasonable attitude to civic membership is therefore one of virtuous ambivalence. A fine balance must be struck between affirming and denouncing, integrating and

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alienating. Whatever alienating must be done should be expressed in terms of fraternal correction and therefore in the temper and mode of charity, making alienation itself, to the extent it is unavoidable, a form of communication and outreach. By contrast, a wholesale alienation which quits on the earthly city is a failure of hope to respond to the demands of piety and charity. This kind of piety has the resources to work with non-

Christians in pursuing the common good for the earthly city, just as Stout wanted orthodox Christian piety to do. But it can do this without having to collapse its theological form and pour itself into an Emersonian mold.

My purpose here has not been to construct a theory of Christian citizenship or social membership as a whole. My task has been far more modest. I have wanted to make clear that exaggerated alienation is not proper to hope, insisting that committed membership can co-exist with partial alienation. By ruling out an excessive contemptus mundi which some in the homo viator tradition have expressed, this has the added benefit of showing those suspicious of hope that anti-social withdrawal is not the only or even the best way that theological hope can be socially expressed.

4.1.3 Hope for the Earthly City

Granted that the hopeful amid ambiguities may continue to identify with the earthly city, just what stake does the virtue of hope have in that city, and what might hope do for it? As previously stated, theological hope does not abandon created goods and

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earthly causes, but refers them to our eschatological end. This is true of created and earthly ends as a class. It is also true of social goods and causes which are members of that class and which I have argued we are invested in. The most thorough contemporary attempt to unpack this is undoubtedly Dominic Doyle’s recent book, The Promise of

Christian Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope.

An Associate Professor of Theology at Boston College, Doyle’s work addresses the question “Does belief in a transcendent God help or hinder human flourishing in this world?” In other words, can Christian hope sustain a true humanism? Using Aquinas’ theology of hope, Doyle argues that it can. Though its final end is eschatological,

Christianity is a true “humanism” precisely because its promotion of “the human person’s religious transcendence” does not detract from but conduces to “justice and flourishing in the present life.” The latter is ordained to the former by theological hope since, as

Aquinas states, hope is able to take up temporal goods “secondarily and as referred to eternal happiness.” In this respect hope “provides crucial grounds for Christian humanism.”709

The first third of the book examines the nature of Christian humanism and rebuts objections from atheistic skeptics who regard Christian hope as morbid. To this end

Doyle turns to the work of Charles Taylor and Nicholas Boyle, both of whom are proponents of a humanism which is open to religious transcendence. Taylor helps to show that “religious transcendence sustains the affirmation of ordinary life” rather than denying it. The consequence is that hope as the expression of “religious transcendence”

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does not entail flight from the world or spiritual impatience with daily routines and ordinary existence. Moreover, hope itself is an important ally of “ordinary life,” since its

“religious transcendence” provides support during suffering and death.710

Boyle argues that human life in order to flourish must be extended across time “in contrast to the market culture’s emphasis on the instantaneous point of consumption and its concomitant denial of finitude.” Consumerism fosters habits and a vision of instant gratification which grinds down an agent’s ability to locate him or herself as extended across time, causing a trauma of dislocation which may bottom out in despair.711 When the social iconography is configured more by Wal-Mart, MacDonald’s, and Hollywood than by Church, community, and the State, selfhood and membership are largely sucked into the market culture. This outrage visited upon our humanity may cause a discontent which the agent does not know how to escape - precisely because the terms in which the agent conceives of happiness have been defined for him or her in advance by the predigested message of consumer culture. The consequence, Boyle insists, is a bleak situation in desperate need for hope.712 Taken together, the work of Taylor and Boyle is held to show that “religious transcendence” is not merely compatible with humanism, but a positive asset for it.

Nevertheless, religious transcendence is not itself theological hope. Even if the former conduces to flourishing in general, how do we know that theological hope does so in particular, and what form might that take? To demonstrate this further point, Doyle shifts from the humanism of Taylor and Boyle with its vague openness to transcendence

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to the specifically Christian humanism of Jacques Maritain and John Courtney Murray.

Doyle borrows their emphasis on the doctrine of the Incarnation as warrant for “the intimate union between humanity and God.” The Incarnation is taken to show God’s regard and beneficence toward humanity and to validate and raise human dignity. The deification of humans as God’s image does not destroy them, but unfolds their full potential. As St. Irenaeus said: “Christ became human so that humans might become divine,” and “the life of the human person… is the vision of God.” Doyle affirms an

Incarnational vision which supports nature’s perfectibility by grace and insists that the creator-creature relationship is non-competing. So faith and reason, Church and culture, are not intrinsically at odds. To the contrary, Christian humanism exists to validate and ordain these to God, disproving the “atheistic humanist claim that belief in God harms the human.” How are these ordained to God? For Doyle, the answer is found in theological hope.713

The remainder of Doyle’s book gives an exposition of hope in Aquinas followed by a constructive attempt to explain how hope ordains human projects to our eschatological end. Though he is a systematic theologian, Doyle’s general grasp of

Aquinas’ virtue theory is as good as any theological ethicist could ask for. He clearly distinguishes the passion of hope from the virtue of hope, the acquired from the infused virtues, and the theological virtues from each other. Moreover, Doyle’s own book, which won the 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, was a pioneering effort to

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rehabilitate theological hope from the stubborn prejudice against it as an otherworldly and aloof withdrawal from human society.

Nevertheless, there are problems both with his exegesis of Aquinas and his constructive account. Exegetically, Doyle provides no in-depth treatment of happiness or beatitude in Aquinas. He duly acknowledges that the final end of hope is happiness, but he gives no adequate treatment of the relationship between the virtues and happiness.

Ignoring Aquinas’ claim that virtuous activity constitutes happiness, Doyle mistakenly neglects the virtues when the discussion turns to happiness. As I will suggest below, this omission does heavy damage to Doyle’s constructive account.

Oddly for a book subtitled “Thomas Aquinas on Hope,” there is almost no mention of what Aquinas saw as hope’s essential moral and conceptual entourage.

Almost nothing is said about hope’s opposed vice of despair, which is touched upon only once.714 Throughout the book’s 221 pages, nothing is said about the vice of sloth, the vice of presumption, or hope’s gift of fear. Consider how this compares to Aquinas’ own treatment of hope. Doyle’s exposition of Thomistic hope draws almost exclusively upon the Summa theologiae. The Summa’s treatise on hope in the secunda secundae includes 6 questions with a total of 34 articles. Of these, 4 questions and 22 articles are devoted to despair, presumption, and fear. If Doyle’s omissions were paralleled by Aquinas, only 1 out of 6 questions and 8 out of 34 articles in the treatise of hope would remain. It is almost a case of “Hamlet without the Prince.”

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The consequence is that Aquinas does not sound very much like himself. The challenges and vices which Aquinas saw hope responding to are thrust off-stage, and the gift with whose aid he thought hope would triumph simply disappears. Only 1/6 of

Aquinas’ own questions, issues, concerns, and solutions are addressed. For reasons that

Doyle does not explain, hope is not depicted as threatened by sloth or presumption all, and as only marginally threatened by despair. With hope’s opposed vices removed from sight, the result is that hope seems to operate from a position of great strength and ease.

So is Doyle’s hope, like John Bowlin’s, serenely invincible and splendidly dexterous?

Does Doyle confirm Timothy Jackson’s suspicion that hope plays down human vulnerability, and does he promote that notorious Job’s comforter, belief in what Jackson calls the “facility of goodness” both within individuals and throughout history? If so, and if Thomistic hope has perhaps drifted uncomfortably close to Whig hope and to Whig history, how does this theological virtue regard an “arduous” good?

Doyle does not interpret Aquinas roughly the way Bowlin did. Hope receives no

Stoic armor-plating to make it proof against fortune. Doyle fully grants that for Aquinas hope’s good is “arduous.” This is because it is plunged into “the suffering through which finite, fallen being must pass on its way to union with God.”715 Because of this, hope’s path is “cruciform.” The section in which Doyle states this is his one sustained treatment of obstacles to hope in any form. Coming in at two and a half pages, the treatment is a fairly brisk gesture. The only reason why hope’s good is “arduous,” according to Doyle, is the continuing presence in our lives of finitude, sin, and suffering. He quite rightly

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notes that these test our commitment to faith, and teach that “Christian life is less about giving ‘glowing accounts’ of the cross and more about patiently bearing it.”716 This is a recognition that hope is not given a free pass when it comes to what I have called the eudaimonia gap. But this is as far as Doyle goes in looking at threats to hope. He has briefly noted that hope’s good is “arduous” because it is threatened by sin, finitude, and suffering. This is undoubtedly true, but from the perspective of the secunda secundae the formula is far too vague an account of what specifically makes hope’s end arduous.

Aquinas believed hope was threatened not just by finitude, sin, and suffering in some catch-all sense; he believed hope was cramped and pinched by the direct threats of presumption, sloth, and despair; and by the extended threats of worldliness which lead to eschatological distaste and dispose to avarice, vainglory, and ambition. To ignore these problems is to lose a major part of hope’s intelligibility. The result is that the challenges which make hope an “arduous” good become vague and imprecise, and so hope’s response as a virtue of the will to those challenges becomes uncertain. Hence it is no surprise that hope’s gift of fear receives no treatment whatsoever in Doyle’s book, giving the impression that it is just one of those odds-and-ends brought in as an afterthought which does no real moral work. This grates against Aquinas’ own insistence that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are central to the life of infused virtue. Like a surgeon’s scalpel or a fine chisel, hope in Aquinas’ hands was a specialist’s tool dealing with specialized problems. By contrast, hope in Doyle’s hands becomes a generalist’s tool, and the

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specialized problems are not felt to be problems at all. The result is that the book treats us to “Thomas Aquinas on Hope” only in a very truncated sense.

Doyle draws upon Aquinas to argue that theological hope refers created goods to our eschatological end. In his preferred vocabulary - “Taylored,” as he puts it, to accord with Charles Taylor - created goods are styled as “secular hopes.”717 By this Doyle means temporal and social hopes such as “the struggle for justice within history.”718 The result is a tidy alignment between secular hopes and humanism itself, since the latter is a pursuit for the human good. His normative claim is that secular hopes can readily “participate in eschatological hope.” Put another way, humanism itself may partake of “religious transcendence” in a social expression of grace perfecting nature.719 This occurs when the hopeful ordain secular hopes as proximate ends to eschatological hope as their ultimate end.

In essentials, this is a legitimate use of Aquinas and a worthy thesis. But does it denote an arduous task? Apparently it does not. Hope may be individually “arduous,” but nothing in Doyle suggests that it is socially arduous. When he turns from the topic of individual to social hopes, the problems of sin, finitude, and suffering drop out of the discussion. Unsurpringingly, then, a thoroughly optimistic tone about how much hope can get done in this world is kept up throughout the book.

Symptomatic is Doyle’s chastisement of Pope Benedict’s Spe Salvi for what he sees as its pessimism.720 In his encyclical on hope, the pope issues warnings about scientific hubris and presumptions of progress in the secular state. He also claims that the

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degradation of the innocent and mental suffering are on the rise. Doyle’s response, to borrow a phrase from Hauerwas, is effectively to argue that “Things Aren’t As Bad As

They Seem.”721 He questions Pope Benedict’s claim that “the suffering of the innocent and mental suffering have, if anything, increased in recent decades.”722 More generally, he repeatedly criticizes Pope Benedict, Tracey Rowland, and others for pessimism about contemporary society, saying we should eschew this as a “rejection of modern culture.”

Instead of rejecting it, we should emphasize what is “positive to learn from it” and shift toward “a greater openness to the modern world.” Doyle regards the social “changes” of the past 40 years as on the whole good and sees theological hope as enabling us “to recognize and adjust to these changes.”723 Doyle issues dozens of warnings and devotes several sections to debunking “undue pessimism” about the contemporary scene, but there are no comparable warnings against “undue optimism.” Moreover, the sheer fact that Doyle does not address social threats to hope gives the impression that there are none, or at least none worth mentioning.724 The consequence of this omission is an optics of buoyant social optimism.

The peculiarity of Doyle’s optimism is not that it clashes with Pope Benedict, but that it clashes with Nicholas Boyle. Recall that Boyle is supposed to help show why humanism needs hope. According to Boyle, we desperately need hope because contemporary society has been shaped in the image of market forces which threaten to dissolve coherent agency with the instantaneous gratification and jolts-per-minute barrage of consumer excess. The “consumerist self,” created in the image of Wal-Mart

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and Amazon.com, is the result of collaboration between a “postmodernism” which denies existential limits and a “global consumerism” which makes “life in the shopping mall” our spiritual center of gravity.725 The consequence of this depressing portrait, Boyle suggests, is that: “Hope is what we need. Only if we look out on the contemporary landscape in the bleakest winter light will we do justice to the pain and disorientation and collapse that is intrinsic to an age of such rapid change.”726 This Eliotic Waste Land assessment of our civilization is far more pessimistic than anything Doyle convicts Pope

Benedict of. If Boyle’s pessimistic reading of the social scene shows us why we need hope, as Doyle suggests, then surely his own social optimism is problematized. I have no interest in arguing for one reading over the other. My criticism is entirely immanent.

Society described in Boyle’s terms (the “bleakest winter” of “pain and disorientation and collapse”) is almost a MacIntyrean ruin. Boyle sees contemporary Western society as widely vitiated by habits and attitudes that largely correspond to the category of sin described in this chapter as “worldliness.” If he is right about the nature and extent of society’s consumer toxicity, plainly it will not be easy to refer it to the Christian eschaton. Some sort of costly conversion which performatively subverts any antecedent optimism would be required. If by contrast Boyle is wrong, then his jeremiad has not helped to show that humanism is in need of hope; it has merely undermined Doyle’s own social optimism.

Doyle makes admirably clear the difference between hoping in the created world and hoping for it, condemning the former and only admitting the latter. But the

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consequence of not meaningfully addressing hope’s opposed vices or social obstacles is to radically undermine the social vulnerability of hope, making the possibilities for ordaining earthly progress to the eschaton look anything but arduous. The result is not the prospect of a wholly realized eschatology or immanent kingdom of God. But Doyle does comes across forcefully as a social optimist who says nothing to prevent the expectation that if we simply refer the present hopes of society to the eschaton, things should simply get better and better. Given that Doyle neglects social threats to hope, such a view is almost inevitable. The right response is not to swing to the other extreme, but in my treatments of presumption, despair, and worldliness, I have at least tried to show that social threats to hope are a live problem which the hopeful urgently need to address in specific and concrete ways. Moreover, I have done so while avoiding that “great

Serbonian bog where whole armies have sunk” – namely, the quest to provide an optimistic or pessimistic meta-reading of contemporary society as a whole. To my eye, this separate task is unnecessary and probably misguided. One can point to the serious social problems and great goods which concern the virtuous life without yoking this to an overarching optimist or declinist narrative.727

These are serious problems with Doyle’s account, but much that is instructive in it remains. He gives an excellent exegesis of hope’s efficient and final causality in Aquinas, clearly distinguishes supernatural hope from a merely “natural desire for God,” makes clear that hope is a virtue of the will, and gives a good sense of how hope relates to faith and charity.728 Material for a serious constructive account therefore remains. The final

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third of Doyle’s book supplies a highly inventive and intriguing appropriation of

Thomistic hope for constructing a fully adequate Christian humanism. His goal is to offer

“what I consider to be a legitimate development of Aquinas’s account of the theological virtues.” For Doyle, humanism in its best sense is the pursuit and attainment of “human flourishing,” individually and socially.729 Specifically Christian humanism pursues flourishing supernaturally according to the “grace perfects nature” formula, and it does so by effecting “religious transcendence.” Presupposing these points, Doyle states his normative thesis as follows:

I argue that if hope be the motion that constitutes the transcendence advocated by Christian humanism, then faith and charity may be considered, respectively, the potency and the act of Christian humanism. This interpretation of faith, hope, and charity as the potency, motion, and act of Christian humanism helps articulate how the theological virtues, in distinct yet related ways, mutually inform Christian humanism.730

Doyle takes the concepts of scholastic causation and uses them to explain

Christian humanism. Faith is the potency because it ‘shows’ the object” of the theological virtues and by extension Christian humanism. Yet faith “does not ‘move’ towards it” (98) and so it remains in potency.731 Hope is the “motion” by which proceed toward God.

Hope does not possess its object, and so it “has the imperfection of striving towards a goal that is not yet present,” and this motion corresponds to “the proper meaning of motion as reduction of potency to act.”732 Charity is the “act” of Christian humanism because it “has the character of perfection in that it unites one to God.” In charity’s

“actus, becoming gives way to being, and there is no more essential imperfection that

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characterizes motus.”733 The benefit of seeing the theological virtues this way is that it makes them the midwives of an overall Christian humanism which effects human flourishing and human good, both individually and socially. Theological hope is able to put secular hopes “in motion” to the eschaton, and so it bridges the human flourishing sought by humanism with the “religious transcendence” offered by Christianity. Doyle sees this “creative appropriation” of Aquinas as the finishing touch needed to complete the Christian humanism admirably begun but left unfinished in the work of Maritain,

Murray, Taylor, Boyle, and the tradition as a whole.

Doyle construes Christian humanism as the pursuit and attainment of human flourishing in a life in which nature is being perfected by grace. When describing legitimate humanism, Doyle repeatedly falls back on phrases such as “the human good,”

“justice and human flourishing in the present life,” “the present human good,” etc.734 The opposite of humanism is anything that detracts from the human good and flourishing, in particular what “harms the human.”735 Specifically Christian humanism is the same process of human flourishing under the influence of grace. The concept of “Christian humanism” therefore corresponds quite closely to Aquinas’ concept of imperfect supernatural beatitude. Put in Aquinas’ terms, Doyle is arguing that faith, hope, and charity are the potency, motion, and act of imperfect supernatural beatitude.

Doyle describes the Christian humanist life in via, contrasting it with perfection in patria, as follows: “It is not simply a potency for that actual state of happiness; nor is it the completed and perfect act of happiness that has attained the goal. Rather, it is the

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passage from the potential for that act to the act itself; it is the process of actualizing the potency to be united with God.”736 This formulation corresponds quite well to what

Aquinas meant by imperfect supernatural happiness. In that respect, the movement of

Christian humanism fits snugly with that of imperfect beatitude. But this raises the question of just what acts or motions actualize “the potency to be united with God.” For

Aquinas, this actualization is the result of virtuous activity.

In the first chapter I proposed that the virtues are not just instruments for happiness, but that virtuous activities with their characteristic enjoyment actually constitute happiness as we may have it in this life. For Aquinas, perfection or happiness is activity (operatio) in accord with virtue. Connaturally, this is expressed through acts of the acquired moral virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, as well as the intellectual virtues. Supernaturally, it occurs through the acts of the infused cardinal and theological virtues as well as the gifts of the Holy Spirit.737 The virtuous life is the happy life, and all of the virtues may contribute in their own way to the happy life. Put in terms of scholastic causality, the process of perfecting and so one’s share in happiness occurs through virtuous actions which reduce the agent’s capacities from potency to act.738 With this in mind, how does Aquinas’ model of virtue and happiness hold up after its

“legitimate development” at the hands of Doyle?

Doyle does not clearly state what the relationship is between virtue and happiness.

The consequence is that when happiness as actualization and perfection comes into view, the place of the virtues in this process becomes destabilized and unclear. Doyle suggests

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that faith is a potency which hope actualizes, but faith itself is not in act and so cannot be a constituent in imperfect happiness. Hope is a motion which partly actualizes the agent, and charity is fully in act and therefore perfectly actualizes the agent. So hope on Doyle’s terms could be a constituent in imperfect happiness and charity would be a fuller and more complete constituent in the same. The consequence is that what Doyle calls

Christian humanism, and which corresponds to Aquinas’ imperfect happiness, is actualized entirely by hope and charity. According to this scheme, the cardinal virtues will not themselves contribute to the happy life at all, and faith will only do so in terms of providing hope with its potency to get moving toward charity. The virtues in whose operatio happiness consists are strictly narrowed in number and scope. Strictly speaking, human flourishing, Christian humanism, and the life of imperfect happiness just is the life of hope and charity. Because Doyle says so little about what the life of Christian humanism concretely looks like, it is unclear what this hypertrophic enlargement of hope and charity in the moral life will amount to in practice. It is also unclear what role the infused cardinal virtues will occupy in this new regime. We are at least told what happens to faith. It is demoted from a contributor to happiness into raw material for hope. But the cardinal virtues are simply left dangling. This strikes me as a radical shrinkage of

Aquinas’ model of the virtuous and happy life.

For Aquinas, each virtue is a habitus which is in potency to acts of that same virtue, and those acts truly reduce the potency of that virtue into act to the extent that all goes well.739 In other words, no virtue, whether faith or anything else, just operates at the

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level of “potency.” In addition, the potency of a given virtue is actualized by acts proper to that virtue.740 Granted, each virtue also involves prudence, and the supernatural virtues all involve charity. But the act of one virtue is never simply collapsed into the habit of another virtue. Thus an act of fortitude does not of itself actualize the habit of temperance. Likewise, the habit of faith is not itself actualized by acts of hope. Granted the mediation of charity, faith insofar as it is in potency is actualized by acts of faith, hope by acts of hope, and charity by acts of charity. Each of these virtues is in “motion”

(Dante’s portrayal of them “circling in a dance” in the earthly paradise above Purgatory captures this magnificently).741 If it were otherwise, then either some virtues could not be actualized at all, or the acts of many virtues would actually be the acts of other virtues.

But this is a needless tangle with no Thomistic foundations and of dubious coherence.

Doyle’s scheme of potency, motion, and act is used to suggest that hope takes up the secular or earthly hopes of humanism and puts them in “motion” towards “religious transcendence.”742 In terms of what Doyle is actually trying to accomplish, this amounts to the claim that theological hope benefits and perfects humanism. Hope protects and sustains secular hopes, and secular hopes themselves “participate in eschatological hope” and indeed are “the means of its realization.”743

Though Doyle’s neglect of social obstacles to hope makes this process sound far too easy, I believe his general claim is entirely correct. But this claim can be argued for without the separate and distracting effort to force faith, hope, and charity into a neat alignment of potency, motion, and act. Aquinas himself suggested a more internally

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consistent and coherent mechanism based on primary and secondary causality. In terms of hope’s final cause, he wrote that “hope regards eternal happiness chiefly, and other

(i.e., temporal and created) goods, for which we pray God, it regards secondarily and as referred to eternal happiness.”744 In this respect, we may hope and pray for our daily bread, or a just social order. In terms of hope’s efficient cause, Aquinas applies the same logic of secondary causality: “it is unlawful to hope in any man, or any creature, as though it were the first cause of movement toward happiness. It is, however, lawful to hope in a man or a creature as being the secondary and instrumental agent through whom one is helped to obtain any goods that are ordained to happiness.”745 In this respect, we may rely upon goods which help us on the journey, from forgiveness of sins and temporal necessities to social goods.746 As Joseph Merkt states, these points connect “the secondary or created goods for which one should hope with the theological virtue of hope. Thus Thomas establishes a relationship between the material/political world and hope. He understands that in some ways the material/political world is a cause of hope and an object of hope.”747 Aquinas’ situating of primary and instrumental causality provided everything needed for Doyle to state his positive points about hope’s contribution to humanism. Moreover, at no point does Doyle even suggest, let alone demonstrate, that Aquinas’ account of primary and efficient causality is deficient in this regard.

It would have been better is Doyle had simply got rid of the scholastic language of potency, motion, and act in his constructive project. It cannot really be made to fit onto

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Aquinas’ scheme of the virtues, and the old wineskin bursts with this new wine poured in. Nevertheless, those who wish to see the influence of Aquinas spread in theological circles owe Doyle a debt of gratitude. To his great credit, Doyle in contrast to much

Thomist scholarship is able to translate Aquinas out of in-house scholastic language and into a vocabulary which non-specialists can readily grasp. He shuns arguments from authority, ably takes up contemporary questions, and his exegesis of Aquinas is succinct, lucid, and attractive.

I fully agree with Doyle that theological hope does not abandon created goods and earthly causes, but refers them to our eschatological end. His manner of putting this neglects social obstacles to hope and limits the constituents in imperfect happiness to hope and charity. But I believe his desire to show that hope actually can benefit earthly society was correct in its intuitions and praiseworthy in its intentions. His book and later articles have helped overcome the stereotype of hope as the opium of misanthropes and obscurantists. So just how can we incorporate the social body into hope as a secondary cause ordered to hope’s primary cause?

The earthly city cannot be the primary end of hope since that role is allotted to eternal happiness. Yet proximate ends may be referred to hope’s final end. This is why it is virtuous to pray for temporal and not just eternal goods, from our daily bread to the most pressing concerns of social justice. Moreover, through the mediation of charity we may hope for our neighbors’ beatitude and therefore for the beatitude of our fellow citizens and our earthly city as a whole. Since that beatitude is meant to begin in this life,

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albeit imperfectly, commitment to the common good and the beatitude of our patria is incumbent upon the hopeful. As the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes states:

the expectation of a new earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one. For here grows the body of a new human family, a body which even now is able to give some kind of foreshadowing of the new age. Hence, while earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God.748

As Gaudium et Spes suggests, grace may pervade the earthly city itself. Society is the occasion not just for the exercise of connatural virtues like prudence and justice; it has ample room for supernatural virtues such as charity. If heaven were eremitic, hope itself might have little part in this since it would have no stake in social existence except incidentally. But Christianity has always regarded our eschatological end in social terms - as a patria, a city, a communion of saints. Since the social body may be referred by hope to our final end, it is itself an object of hope’s regard. Consider how this might play out in terms of pursuing justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. pursued both social justice and racial equality, on the one hand; and the kingdom of God, on the other. Yet hope for the latter helped shape pursuit of the former. As William Mattison notes, belief that the ultimate end is eschatological helped King avoid burning out amid continual setbacks or becoming

“hateful out of impatience with those who were resisting his changes.”749 For King, pursuit of the kingdom was not divorced from concern for his society and people, but helped motivate them. The human brotherhood he encouraged in this life would help prepare people for the perfect fellowship of God’s kingdom and at its best be a foretaste 328

of the kingdom. The same basic pursuit is found in countless saints and reformers, from

St. John Chrysostom and St. Vincent de Paul to William Wilberforce and Dorothy

Day.750

Both social goods and social activities furnish plentiful occasions for infused virtues such as prudence, justice, and charity, and these may be referred by the virtue of hope to our overall movement to the future good. As matter in and through which supernatural virtue may be exercised, social activities become constituents in an imperfect supernatural happiness which is itself in via to perfect supernatural happiness.

This is best grasped by looking at the formal relationship between imperfect and supernatural happiness, and then considering how this bears upon the good society.

The two phases of happiness, imperfect and perfect, are morally continuous in that perfect supernatural happiness will not abrogate imperfect happiness but will consummate it. As I noted earlier, the joy of looking forward to and planning one’s wedding is distinct from the joy of a wedding. Yet the anticipatory joy as it looks forward is consummated rather than negated when full fruition arrives. The relationship between present imperfect and future perfect beatitude is analogous. Hence Aquinas describes perfect happiness as a kind of fully grown “fruit” relative to which imperfect happiness is not merely the “leaf” which foretells the coming fruit, but as the early form of the fruit itself.751 The result of this continuity is that the constituents in imperfect supernatural happiness have an internal rather than external relationship to fully constituted and

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perfect supernatural happiness. This is true of social constituents in imperfect beatitude such as the building up of a just and charitable society.

Yet the social body does not just supply the virtues with raw material for their operation. The work of the virtues is in may respects a social rather than a merely individual work. For example, a certain endeavor of justice may not just be "mine" but

"ours," and to the extent this virtuous activity is perfective and therefore happy-making, it has made us happy rather than just me happy. Why is this? Not just because we both have been made more virtuous, perfect, and happy singly. To the extent our virtue and perfection occur in and through social projects, our happiness is shared. The claim I am making presupposes the fact of group agency and identity: that agents may experience what John Hare calls a "partial merging of identity" which results from "an expansion of the normal boundaries" of agency beyond the purely individual. Like Charles Taylor and others, Hare wants to break down the idea that identity is atomistic. Group agents and group identities exist, and this accounts for the ascription of praise and blame, shame and pride, to whole social groups. This does not imply that the individual is simply absorbed into the group. Rather, the individual has an essential self-identity which co-exists with various overlapping social identifications. Hare writes:

It is not just in families and close friendships that partial merging of identity occurs. One can be ashamed and proud of things one’s colleagues to. There can be partial merging of identity with entertainment and sports figures and with national figures, like the members of a royal family. It is also possible for individuals to merge themselves to various degrees into groups of smaller and larger size: clubs and colleges and countries. Socrates thought of

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the laws and institutions of Athens as like his parents in making him who he was.752

Insofar as I am a member of a group agent and identity, I may partake not just of group shame, pride, and the like. When I and the group are engaged in virtuous projects that are perfective of us as a social body, I may partake of happiness qua social. To the extent this is going on, the increase of virtue and happiness in the social body is itself an increase of virtue and happiness in me and the other members of the community.

Christians will rightly see this as a goal for the Church, but the general point is not limited to the Church.753 As an agent with a social nature I have a personal investment in the virtue and happiness of any social body of which I am a part, including my patria. If it is becoming more virtuous and happy, then insofar as I partake in this movement I am myself becoming more virtuous and happy - but precisely as a member of the social body and not as an atomistic ego. This consideration helps further defuse a common objection to hope that I have already addressed: the perception that it is an essentially “selfish” virtue concerned only with individual happiness.

For example, consider the great moral reform of the British Abolitionists. A group of mostly evangelicals and Quakers led by the able parliamentarian William Wilberforce, their “Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade” formed in 1787 helped midwife into being the 1907 “Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.” One of the outstanding reform movements of history, it involved the social expression of justice, prudence, fortitude, and charity, and it helped dispose the citizenry to a further awareness of, and a greater commitment to, what these virtues required.754 Getting to this social good was an arduous 331

process which involved decades of setbacks. But the abolitionists persevered. As

Wilberforce exhorted in one of his speeches:

Let us not despair; it is a blessed cause… Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country.755

After years of tireless advocacy, the result was a genuine sea change: a greater push toward virtue, perfection, and happiness within the social body which produced the widespread resolve to end slavery. Though earlier votes had been badly defeated, the final vote on the “Abolition of the Slave Trade Act” was itself a massive success, passing by a margin of 283 votes to 16. With victory finally declared, Wilberforce’s colleagues rushed to cheer and offer him ecstatic tributes, while his own face streamed with tears.756

The movement and its dramatic end capture quite well the above-mentioned phenomenon of social happiness as a shared participation in virtuous activities, moral perfection, and an important degree of fulfillment.

Hope obviously does not do all the work of social reform. Compared to justice and charity it is almost a bit player. But hope gives to the other infused virtues an immensely increased horizon, a trust in divine help, and a transcendent investment and stake. Hope may take up and refer the work even of infused justice and charity to the eschaton. As the Gaudium et spes suggests about the “foreshadowing of the new age,” such achievements are not just viewed as of immanent importance. They may at their best

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be not just a movement toward, but a foretaste or premonition, of the perfect social happiness which will exist in the beatified communion of saints.

Just as individual beatitude is imperfect in this life and perfect only in the next, so it is with any social happiness. As Gaudium et Spes states, concluding the earlier-quoted passage: “after we have obeyed the Lord, and in his Spirit nurtured on earth the values of human dignity, brotherhood, and freedom, and indeed all the good fruits of our nature and enterprise, we will find them again, but freed of stain, burnished and transfigured

(emphasis mine).”757 The beatified communion of saints “will find,” so to speak, a perfect social fruition whose beginnings lay on earth. Given this and our irreducibly social identity, it follows that even if “here we have no lasting city,” it is false to conclude that the earthly city in which we are embedded is superfluous to our ultimate identity and narrative. 758 Indeed, if it were, it would make little sense to believe that “the glory and the honor of the nations” shall be brought into the heavenly city (Rev 21:26).

Put in the above terms it may sound as though social ethics has become rather too fixed on the heavenly. Are earthly goods merely instrumental to the eschaton? Such a view is too simplistic. Social memberships provide the moral space for countless virtuous activities in and through which both individuals and societies are in part perfected. This is true both of connatural and supernatural virtue, and the fact is relevant to how the community’s natural good relates to its possible supernatural good. Aquinas states that

“the acquired virtues dispose a person to receive infused moral virtue,” and that the acquired virtues help “preserve and foster” the infused virtues once habitual grace is

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infused.759 Aquinas is addressing the individual agent, but the same formal relation would hold of the social body. Insofar as our social commitments conduce to connatural virtue we are “disposing” the members of the community toward the life of grace. To the extent our community tends toward virtuous social habits, these further conduce to the preservation and fostering of graced habits in the community.

An irreligious, skeptical, unjust, and cruel community would be more apt to reject or fail to retain faith and charity than a more spiritual, just, and kindly community. Hope for neighbor and the community is ultimately the hope for their eternal beatitude. But given the above relation, this hope is itself invested in the connatural virtues of the social body since its connatural habits dispose either for or against the supernatural good of the social body according as they are virtuous or vicious.

Left at that, it might seem that the hopeful only contribute to the common good as a preparatio evangelica. They might serve in soup kitchens, volunteer in nursing homes, or repair run-down neighborhoods to soften up their audience for hearing the Gospel. But the relationship is not just external and instrumental. For one thing, connatural happiness or eudaimonia is intrinsically valuable. The more it is not just the privilege of a few but is widespread among the people the more something admirable and worthwhile in itself has been done. Of course such happiness, though rich and worthwhile, is also grievously hindered by the eudaimonia gap. Believing it is possible by grace and ultimately by glory to get further than this second-best state, Christians may reasonably and charitably wish supernatural beatitude upon their neighbors and co-citizens. Indeed, granted their own

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eschatological premises it would be horribly cruel not to. Yet this wish and prayer do not mean they only intend the connatural good for the sake of the supernatural good.

Where the supernatural good is not acknowledged, they may wish the connatural good for its own sake, as far preferable to connatural vice and misery. They may further wish it for the sake of the supernatural good, inasmuch as it helps “disposes” to,

“preserves” and “fosters” the supernatural good. It is analogous to how one might wish to marry for its own sake but also for the sake of having children. Both are wished for their own sakes, even though one is wished for the sake of something else as well. The implication is that the hopeful should care about the connatural social good not just as preparatory to the supernatural good, but also for its own sake.760

Such social beatitude is of course a bonum futurum. At present those who hope for the earthly city regard a bonum arduum. The social body we hope for is deeply marred by sin and a flawed public order. Hope’s overall commitment to the beatitudes, which involves innumerable skirmishes with the eudaimonia gap, makes clear that hope can and should aim big. But because theological hope regards only a “possible good” rather than an easy or guaranteed good, it is not a species of optimism. Hence continued hope for society will not based on the belief that things will get better, but only on the belief that important things can get better. Otherwise we would be forced to social despair.

We should work and hope for nothing less than a truly just, virtuous, and happy society. But being schooled to seek an arduous good, hope as a dogged disposition of the

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will is not conditional on optimistic predictions. As Jeffrey Stout says, social hope believes: “You are still making a difference when you are engaged in successful holding action against forces that are conspiring to make things worse than they are. You are even making a difference when your actions simply keep things from worsening to the extent they would have worsened if you had not acted.”761 Hope does this while believing that

God’s spirit is at work in the work, that divine help is available, and with that zealous patience which knows that much but not all may be rectified before the eschaton. The paradox is that this ability to carry on toward arduous goods after all the optimists have been foiled and given up makes hope a magnificently dynamic force for social reform, as the examples of Martin Luther King, Jr. and William Wilberforce suggest.

Such dogged social hope is urgently needed today. The vice of despair has collective expressions which depress our national, social, and political life with the toxins of pessimism, apathy, and cynicism. In the wake of the global financial crisis, political gridlock, challenges to education, environmental decay, family breakdown, unjust global structures, and national and social anxieties, social despair is a live threat. The virtue of hope regards an arduous and future good by definition. To the extent hope refers the social body to its final end, the hopeful may be daunted but will not despair over the challenges of actually moving the social body to the good. At the social level hope therefore provides resources for encouragement and resilience which prevent the demoralization that is all too easy when the results of our social, economic, and political projects prove flawed.

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4.2 Hope and the Art of Dying

4.2.1 The Traditional and Contemporary Ars Moriendi

As a practical application of hope in the earthly city, I will conclude by looking at what resources hope offers for our understanding of death and dying. Westerners live in a rapidly aging society in which the elderly and dying are frequently marginalized, neglected, and spiritually abandoned. A visit to almost any nursing home or to the countless suburban shut-ins shows just how spiritually bleak this scene can be. Moreover, death is an opaque concept in our youth, beauty, and consumer culture. The topic is almost neurotically avoided and it is dreaded as unintelligible. Yet the approach of death on such terms often heralds bewilderment or even despair. The spiritual geography charted by traditional eschatology has blurred for most, plunging the subject of death into a conceptual abyss which further aggravates the natural horror of annihilation. We simply do not do death well, and this weak spot infects our overall understanding and treatment of aging and decline.

Nevertheless, some excellent work has been done recently to retrieve the tradition of ars moriendi or “art of dying” as a resource for thinking death through and for dying well. Most of this work laudably seeks to meet increasing demand for pastoral resources urgently felt by health professionals and by those who minister to the sick and dying.

Rather than trying to construct a fully-developed ars moriendi, in this section I will focus on resources which the virtue of hope has to offer for the discussion and practice. My

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goal is therefore less to build anew than to augment a very old and potent tradition which has often been neglected but happily is now being retrieved. I will begin with a survey of the tradition and literature.

Serious considerations of death and spiritual preparations for it are common throughout the Western tradition. For my purposes the period that is relevant is that which gave birth to something sophisticated enough to be called a “craft” or art of dying.

Ars moriendi literature begins in earnest in the early fifteenth century. This was the century of “the Black Death,” when 30-60% of the European population was killed and a whole culture was thrown into post-traumatic shock. Death was not just on the mind; it dominated the aesthetics of the age.762 The decaying corpse, mere food for worms, the ornately carved cadaver tomb, the danse macabre, and woodcuts of death personified, all predominate in poetry, music, and art. Alongside this emphasis on the macabre emerges the ars moriendi, whose tone is quite different. There fascination with the creepy recedes and the focus is on consolatio for the dying.

The pioneering work is Jean Gerson’s 1408 De arte moriendi. This was a true handbook for the dying process; one written ad populum and not just ad clerum. The book was divided into six sections on 1) what the patristic and later authorities said about death, 2) how the dying person or moriens should resist the five sins of faithlessness, impatience, pride, worldliness, and despair, 3) a brief catechism, 4) prayers and principles for imitating Christ’s dying, and 5) prayers to be said around the bed of the dying.763 For a century, Gerson’s De arte was the standard ars moriendi manual. It was widely copied

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and made into woodcuts displaying the death-struggle over the five sins, with vivid images of angels and demons competing to influence the dying. The overwhelming impression the book leaves is that one’s salvation is either made or broken at the moment of death: “salus hominis in fine consistit.”764 How one’s past life with its habits have disposed one to behave a certain way in extremis is not in view.

Influential for a far longer period were Erasmus’ 1533 Preparing for Death, St.

Robert Bellarmine’s 1619 The Art of Dying Well, and Jeremy Taylor’s 1651 Rule and

Exercises of Holy Dying.765 Erasmus stresses the contemplation of God’s mercy far more so than Gerson. He compiles a list of God’s mercies in the Old and New Testaments which the dying should reflect upon, such as the prodigal son story and the forgiveness of

Nineveh.766 Like the older tradition, Erasmus stresses daily examination of conscience and regular confession as forms of spiritual preparedness. This is wise because death can happen at any time and one must not be caught in mortal sin by surprise and fall into damnation. But Erasmus does not stop there. Self-examination and confession do not just increase one’s chances of eluding mortal sin should disaster strike. They help shape the habits that dispose one to behave well or poorly when the dying process does come. In short, the emphasis is no longer just on the act of dying but on the character with which one approaches death.767 The themes of virtue, habituation, and character are central to

Erasmus’ account. He thus shifts the focus from ars moriendi as something done in the dying process to something we should be doing all our lives. Ars moriendi becomes

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inseparable from an ars vivendi or “art of living” understood as a character formation process.768

Robert Bellarmine continues this trend, applying a Jesuit ascesis which focus upon the surgical removal of vices and the cultivation of the virtues, especially the theological virtues. Compared to Gerson or Erasmus, he places particular stress on the sacramental life, on mortification, and on meditations of death and the Last Things as forms of preparation.769 Jeremy Taylor stresses with Erasmus the idea that “holy living” is the best path to a “holy dying,” and also like Erasmus he places emphasis on the consideration of God’s mercy. With great originality, Taylor divides the ars moriendi into two ways of approach: the “way of consideration” (i.e., contemplation of spiritual truths) and the “way of exercise” (i.e., a spiritual practice which enacts the considered truth). For instance, the consideration that life is brief leads to spiritual preparation, and the consideration that death may be horrible leads one to practice fortitude as best one can now.770

The above are representative of the ars moriendi in its major and popular forms.

Several themes are common to this tradition, particularly beginning with Erasmus. There is an emphasis on making the art of dying morally continuous with the art of living through viewing lifelong character formation both as good in itself and as a preparation for death. The second is the need for a certain standard set of virtues which will help one face death well. Emphases in different authors vary, but prominent fixtures are faith, hope, mercy, and patience. Faith in the afterlife and God’s Word is focal, and hope itself

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is rooted in this faith. Patience should be expressed not just as hanging on but as acquiescence to the divine will and as a modeling of Christ’s example in the Passion.

Alongside a recurring and moving stress on God’s compassion as a ground for confidence is the insistence that we should visit the sick and dying both to model God’s compassion and to learn the part of dying ourselves. This is combined with a myriad of spiritual practices and meditations, prominent among which is the continual remembrance of one’s own death and the imitation of Christ as the single best form of ars moriendi.771

Popular well into the eighteenth century and enjoying a brief revival in the

Victorian period, the ars moriendi tradition in anything like the above form declined sharply in the early twentieth century. From being the sort of books placed by innumerable Christian bedsides along with the Imitation of Christ or A Serious Call, books on the art of dying came to endure the ghost life of obscure library stacks. But the genre has made something of a comeback, particularly in the last two decades. The antiseptic, impersonal, and clinical emptiness of “medicalized death” has made the need for spiritual resources for the sick and dying ever more apparent and urgent. The answer has been some excellent retrievals of the art of dying that take the older tradition seriously while seeking to give the ars moriendi contemporary form and relevance. The two most thorough efforts are undoubtedly Christopher Vogt’s 2004 Patience,

Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well, and Allen Verhey’s 2011 The

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Christian Art of Dying: Learning From Jesus. Before turning to my own proposals, I will briefly examine each, placing a particular emphasis on the role they allot to hope.

In a very fine piece of ethical historiography, Vogt describes the main outlines of the ars moriendi tradition from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries.

Besides the various practices such as examination of conscience and visiting the sick,

Vogt suggests taking from this tradition a focus on character and the virtues and the imitation of Christ in dying. Vogt fully identifies with virtue ethics, and from this perspective he sees much to like in the ars moriendi tradition. He is particularly taken with the emphasis in Erasmus and Jeremy Taylor that the ars moriendi and “a holy dying” is inseparable from an ars vivendi and a “holy living.”772 This resonance is all the more striking given that habituation and character often receded into the background in the moral theologies of the ars moriendi heyday. For Vogt the central virtues of ars moriendi are faith, hope, patience, and compassion. The latter is vastly expanded, with visits to the sick and dying becoming a central practice of an ars vivandi that is simultaneously a preparatory ars moriendi. Vogt also suggests that the patience required in dying can be prepared for somewhat now through the present endurance of illness and misfortunes construed as a little death. He emphasizes the dependence of hope on faith, and insists that “Christian hope is ultimately rooted in God’s mercy,” making it

“imperative that caregivers bring God’s compassion to the minds of the dying.”773

Vogt sees hope as mean between the extremes of despair and incredulity. Aided by reflection on God’s mercy, despair is ruled out by the trust that our communion with

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God is indestructible, and this removes “some of (death’s) sting and power.” Hope’s second opposed vice of incredulity refers in this context to a denial or ignoring of death through exaggerated hopes that the medical-scientific community can perpetually save us. Hope rules out this second extreme by accepting the reality of death and hoping in

“the resurrection and eternal life in the Kingdom of God.”774

Hope is thus a mean between the opposed vices of despair and incredulity, the latter of which amounts to unrealistic optimism or exaggerated hope. So has the vice of presumption been usurped by a newly identified vice of incredulity? Given its nature, it would be more accurate to say that incredulity is a form of presumption which had gone unnoticed as such. We are therefore in Vogt’s debt for rendering it explicit. At the same time, the vice of presumption includes a lot more than escapist denials of death. The consequence is that by replacing presumption with incredulity, Vogt has made an insightful application of presumption even while conceptually shrinking down and provincially narrowing the forms that vice may take.

Vogt also examines the contemporary literature on death and dying, dealing particularly with advocates of physician assisted suicide (PAS) such as Timothy Quill.

Vogt suggests that Quill’s stress on strong autonomy in justifying PAS sits poorly with a

Christian theology of creation. Contrary to Quill and others he insists that compassion does not “demand” the legalization of PAS. Vogt certainly does not take the suffering of the dying lightly, and appreciatively examines the hard cases which PAS advocates appeal to. But Vogt insists that the virtue of compassion does not stand in isolation but

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should be seen as one member of a virtue ensemble which also includes patience and hope.775 He also claims that PAS would tend to validate patients’ anxieties that they are

“a burden,” with the subtly smuggled-in subtext that the compassionate thing for such patients to do is to “stop being a burden others.” Hence Vogt insists that the appeal to compassion is not a trump for the PAS position, and suggests that PAS could in some ways subvert the virtue of compassion itself. Gilbert Meilander, David Cloutier, and

Stanley Hauerwas have made similar arguments, and recently Lisa Cahill has done so as well.776 Though a full treatment of the issue is outside my present scope, I have argued elsewhere that I am in agreement with them.777 But even those who disagree about PAS and euthanasia may agree that such options should be a last resort, and therefore that hope has an important place in both accounts.

Vogt concludes with an examination of Christ’s dying in the Gospel of Luke, proposing a contemporary model of the imitatio Christi in the art of dying. Though Christ in voluntarily accepting death and courageously enduring it is a model of classical heroism, his fear and reluctance to die rule out Stoic apathy as both undesirable and unnecessary and make him someone we can empathize with in extremis.778 Christ’s own compassion for others while dying suggests that the moriens may also have something to give, and really still be a moral agent and not just a moral patient. Lastly, Christ is himself a model of the virtue of hope for the dying. He “relies for comfort on the assurance of God’s constant presence in the midst of suffering,” and Christ’s hope

“includes an eschatological dimension or an expectation that God’s presence is more

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powerful than death and endures beyond it.”779 I will return to this topic in the next section.

Allen Verhey’s The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus hints in its very title that it gravitates toward the imitatio Christi approach to dying. The occasion of the book is the very real and pervasive problem of “medicalized death,” which has changed both the site and the meaning of death. The characteristic place of dying moves from the familiarity of the home to the mechanized and alien hospital. Death goes from an inevitability one must face to an unintelligible monstrosity we not only fight but hide and deny.780 In a trade-off of agency the main actor in death is no longer the dying but the doctor, who as William May puts it, goes from being a caretaker of the patient to the enemy of death: “The patient,” he writes, “is like Poland lying helpless between two rival powers [death and medicine] that fight out their battle across relatively defenseless terrain.”781 Obviously Verhey has no wish to scrap modern medical technology, but he is under stably worried about how the modern establishment has reduced the humanity and agency of the dying process.

Verhey believes that the dominance of medicalized death has fortunately been challenged lately by three movements. The first is professional bioethics and the movement for patient rights. This gave some room for patients to refuse overly aggressive treatments out of respect for patient autonomy. The second is the death awareness movement which put the category of a “natural” death back on the map and advocated the right of patients and their proxies to discontinue some forms of life-

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prolonging treatment with a view to having a less invasive and mechanized form of death. The third is the hospice movement which focuses on the patient rather than the disease. It also introduced the category of “total healing” and “total pain” which regard the whole of the person, from the physical and psychological to the spiritual, thereby regarding them as “an embodied, communal, and spiritual being.”782

Verhey lauds these challenges to medicalized death, particularly the hospice movement with its Christian origins and tone. But he believes that taken alone they are theologically inadequate and very much need supplementing. To this end Verhey, like

Vogt, closely examines the ars moriendi tradition to see what good in it might be kept.

He particularly focuses on Gerson’s 1408 Ars moriendi in both its text and later illustrated woodblock forms, and on the 1490 Crafte and Knowledge For To Dye Well, itself mostly an English translation from Gerson’s French text.783 Verhey sees in Ars moriendi a theologically richer alternative to “medicalized death” than the above three movements. It regards death as a human rather than a medical event, making the patient rather than the doctor the main actor, and it points out the virtues needed to die well.

More generally:

It invites Moriens – and us – to turn our attention to the cross of Christ and to the grace of God. It reminds us of the significance of certain practices of the church, including prayer. It acknowledges the importance of a faithful friend or friends who can care well for the dying.784

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But Verhey also sees major theological gaps in the Ars moriendi. In particular, he thinks it is too indebted to Stoic commendations of death and to a Platonic surliness about embodiment. The Crafte does indeed draw directly on Seneca’s “commendation of death.” The following statement is representative of the Crafte’s tone in this regard:

“Dethe is nothying elles but agoyng owte off pryson and endying off exyle, and dischargying off an hevy burden that ys the body.”785 It is unfair of Verhey to let the early

Ars and the fairly marginal Crafte be the only spokesmen of the whole moriendi tradition.

Why choose only these books and not any others? Verhey would find a charge of guilty far less easy to come by if Erasmus or Taylor were in the dock, for instance. The consequence is that Verhey’s overall criticisms of the overall ars moriendi tradition are based upon an inadequate sampling pool and therefore fail as generalizations. But since the goal of Verhey’s book is more constructive than critical, the lapse is perhaps not that important. Gerson’s Ars and the Crafte do deprecate embodiment, seeing death as a release and barely pausing to consider the resurrection. In that respect they serve as good foils to what emerges as the overwhelming strength of Verhey’s own account.

Verhey proposes a fundamental shift in the ars moriendi which moves from a

“commendation of death” as the soul’s liberation from the body to a “commendation of life” rooted in the resurrection of Christ. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the

God of the living, and death is not to be commended but is a blight upon creation which has been overcome by the Risen Christ. Moreover, the Christian faithful look forward not to a disembodied heaven of naked spirits, but to the resurrection of the dead and the new

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heaven and earth. The resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits of this movement in salvation history, and therefore he is the hope of the Church.786 This stress on the

Resurrection view sets Verhey apart from Vogt. Though Vogt refers in passing to the resurrection, both he and the older tradition put far more stress on dying than on new life.

Vogt’s crucial imitatio Christi chapter, for example, focuses entirely on the dying Christ and leaves the Risen Christ out of the account. As I argued in my section on “Rejoicing on Hope,” I believe this emphasis on Christ’s resurrection is central to Christian hope. Of course, the costliness of the Passion should never be slurred over; and my treatment of the eudaimonia gap, the beatitudes, and social hopes stressed that the limits of happiness must not be downplayed. But while such points must be kept in mind in living as in dying, the overall vision of Christ we embed in the ars moriendi should never meet with the rebuke “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Lk 24: 5). By placing the crucified and Risen Savior firmly in view, I see

Verhey’s “Commendation of Life” as a much-needed and welcome contribution to the ars moriendi tradition.

As with Vogt and the ars moriendi tradition, Jesus himself becomes the model of dying well. From the desolation of Gethsemane to his outreach to the thief on the cross,

Christ is a model of the “Virtues for Dying Well.”787 In particular, Verhey suggests that we learn from Christ “faith, hope, a love that is patient, humility, serenity, and courage.”788 Verhey regards hope not just a good state of mind or as a value but as a virtue. But while he describes in moving and frankly homiletic tones our eschatological

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grounds for believing in “God’s good future,” he leaves it unclear what the virtue of hope is exactly.789 Nothing is said about hope as a habit or disposition, as a mean between opposed vices, or as a theological virtue. Nor does Verhey scuttle these traditional categories of virtue and replace them with new ones. What it means to predicate the term

“virtue” is left vague. Conceptually speaking, hope is therefore treated in a user-ready, hand-to-mouth way which leaves its structure as a virtue unclear. In Verhey’s account, if we substituted “virtue of hope” for “attitude of hope,” “good of hope,” or “value of hope,” nothing in what he says about hope would have to be changed. Moreover, though

Verhey nominally distinguishes faith from hope, his treatment of hope threatens to collapse it into faith. He writes that: “faith exists as hope, as the confidence that God will be faithful to the cause of God, as the trust that God and the cause of God will triumph over sin and death.”790 In effect, hope is future-looking faith. But while the virtue of hope as a concept is patchy, the action of hope is the recognizable sort. By describing hope as buoying up the Christian with confidence and strength in trials, Verhey compensates for any theoretical shakiness. His chapter on Christ’s “Virtues for Dying Well” ends by contrasting Christ’s dying to “medicalized death.” Verhey writes: “everything that needs to be done to win the victory over death has been done; the victory over death is a divine victory, not a technological one.”791

The book concludes with a lengthy section on “practices of dying well and caring well for the dying.”792 Prominent among these is “Gathering on the Lord’s Day” to be formed in the narrative of Scripture, and to partake together in prayer and sacrament. This

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forms the Christian community, and creates the spiritual and social bonds necessary for the faithful to support each other during the dying process. When death is at hand,

Verhey proposes discrete practices that help with dying well. These include discourse and discernment regarding the hard decisions of treatment, the recollection of the saints as exemplars, and the effort to make Christian funerals more theologically rich and less of an inarticulate groan. Particularly good is Verhey’s suggestion that we need to become better mourners. Drawing on Jewish traditions of lament, he suggests that mourning should be less privatized, hidden, and lonely, and instead be expressed actively and with communal solidarity.793

The Ars Moriendi and Theological Hope

The majority of what is said in the older and newer accounts of ars moriendi fits in well with the theological virtue of hope. Though the ars includes many other virtues, considerations, and practices, hope has an important role in the overall art of dying. If hope were removed, the ars moriendi in theistic garb would likely have nowhere left to go but Stoic resignation. This would bring it much closer to Timothy Jackson’s strong agape in which hope’s “future good” is not seen in a glass darkly because it is not seen at all. With future beatitude removed from sight, the best we can aim for at death on

Jacksonian grounds is a somber “willingness to stick it out apagically even to the edge of doom.”794 This radically differs from the traditional ars moriendi and its refusal to give

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up hope for resignation. So while a lot more is going on in the ars moriendi than a practical application of hope, it is also true that hope plays an essential role in it. In keeping with the tradition, Vogt and Verhey both stress this. But they say little about the role of hope at the level of detail. I will therefore augment their accounts by examining more closely how the virtue of hope might contribute to the ars moriendi. I will begin with the question of whether Christ’s Passion is the model for our hope, follow with a consideration of hopeful practices in the ars moriendi, and conclude by looking at what the Christian ars moriendi might have to say to “people who have no hope” (1 Thess

4:13).

4.2.2 Christ the Hopeful Moriens?

Like the earlier tradition, Vogt and Verhey both regard Christ as the model for the virtue of hope in dying. Will this work in an account of Thomistic hope? Answering this question is my first task. To begin with, the overall dependence of theological hope upon

Christ is very great. In terms of hope’s efficient cause, Aquinas distinguishes between the primary efficient cause of auxilium grace, and secondary or instrumental efficient causes by which that grace is mediated to us. As discussed previously, these include instrumental causes such as prayerful reliance, hopeful rejoicing, the forgiveness of sins, the sacraments, and temporal goods which help us on the journey, from virtuous friends

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and good health to the just and virtuous society. But the greatest instrumental cause for hope is Christ’s humanity as the definitive mediation of grace.795

I noted earlier that Aquinas prescribes contemplation or consideratio of divine favors as a central cause for hope and its spiritual rejoicing. Paramount among these is the Incarnation. Aquinas quotes Augustine: "Nothing was so necessary to raise our hope, than that we should be shown how much God loves us. Now what greater proof could we have of this than that God's Son should deign to unite Himself to our nature?” Obviously the Passion raises the “how much God loves us” point about the Incarnation to its highest pitch, and therefore provides grounds for hope. The Eucharist is to the hopeful the enduring presence of the Incarnation, and given that it belongs to friends to “dwell together,” Aquinas states that the Eucharist is “the sign of supreme charity, and the uplifter of our hope, from such familiar union of Christ with us.”796 The Resurrection of

Christ itself vindicates our hope, and is itself one of the main reasons Christ was raised:

“since through seeing Christ, who is our head, rise again, we hope that we likewise shall rise again.”797 One of the main reasons for Christ’s Ascension was likewise to “uplift our hope: hence (Christ) says (John 14:3): "If I shall go, and prepare a place for you.” For by placing in heaven the human nature which He assumed, Christ gave us the hope of going thither.” Moreover, one purpose of the Ascension was to direct our fervor “to heavenly things.” Among other biblical texts, Aquinas quotes as support: “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God” (Col 3:1), and “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also” (Matt 6:21).798 Such considerationes are the

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Christological staples of theological hope. Their focus on God’s mercies and trustworthiness gives grounds for hope itself and for the joyful expression of hope in prayer and praise that is a preventive remedy to sloth.799

In addition, Aquinas presents Christ as the definitive moral exemplar for the Christian faithful. Aquinas understands the second person of the Trinity as the

Word who is the Wisdom of God after whom all of creation has been patterned.

Humans are like the Word in our rationality, but our image has been marred by original sin. “Who better, then,” as Joseph Wawrykow says, “to become incarnate in order to overcome sin and restore the image than the Word according to whom rational creatures are made.”800 Through the hypostatic union Christ is both divine and a sinless human. He therefore shows how to be a perfect human in total concert with divine grace, and thus is the perfect moral exemplar. Aquinas concludes that “every action of Christ is for our instruction” (III 40.1), and that "by

His example He instructs us in the precepts of virtue.”801

The moral imitatio Christi impulse of the later tradition, including Vogt and

Verhey, is therefore borne out. Indeed, a large percentage of the Tertia pars is devoted to unpacking just this theme, explaining how Christ’s actions from his baptism and temptation in the desert to his Ascension perfectly exemplify the virtues from obedience to charity which we are to imitate. This is above all true of

Christ’s Passion, where the supreme performative lesson in virtue is taught.

Aquinas even likens the cross to the “chair” (cathedra) which the university

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professor or “Master” (magister) ascends to teach with authority.802 While all the episodes in Christ’s life are performative treatises on the virtues, the Passion is the magnum opus. Hence the Passion was fitting in part because Christ thereby “set us an example (exemplum) of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues (et ceterarum virtutum) displayed in the Passion, which are necessary for man's salvation. Hence it is written (1 Peter 2:21): ‘Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps.’”803

It seems intuitive that hope is one of the virtues included in the et ceterarum, being eminently “necessary for man’s salvation.” Besides, Christ possesses the fullness of grace, and the theological virtues are the front-and-center habits of habitual grace.804 As Vogt and Verhey both argue, Christ seems to exemplify hope richly during the Passion through his trust in “God’s constant presence in the midst of suffering” and his expectation that “God’s presence is more powerful than death and endures beyond it.”805 Indeed, Christ in the Passion seems to embody a “hoping against hope” which keeps trusting in God even amid the dreadful “why have you forsaken me.” Surely this is the virtue of hope in its perfect embodiment?

The surprising thing is that Aquinas does not ascribe the theological virtue of hope to Christ at all. Recall that unlike charity, faith and hope both cease in heaven. Homo viator possesses faith and hope, but homo comprehensor does not.

This is because we do not need faith when we have clear vision, and we do not still

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hope for something when we have got it. As St. Paul says: “Hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? (Rom 8:24). Hope lacks the full possession of its divine object and looks forward to it as a future good. Imperfection is therefore built into hope. The full attainment of God in the beatific vision confers perfect happiness, thereby ruling out this imperfection and with it the habit of hope, which is replaced with the pure “enjoyment of God.”806 Since Christ enjoyed the beatific vision from the moment of conception, at no point did he have the theological virtue of hope.

If Christ does not have the virtue of hope, he does not instantiate or exemplify it in the Passion. The imitatio Christi moral path may go far and teach most virtues, but apparently it trails off when it comes to hope. This cuts against the general grain of a point from St. Augustine which Aquinas quotes with approval: that Christ wished to “be our Mediator in overcoming temptations, not only by helping us, but also by giving us an example (exemplum).” As Aquinas then quotes from Hebrews: Christ has “compassion on our infirmities,” being

“tempted in all things as we are, but without sin.”807

The above considerations provide a staple consolation in the ars moriendi tradition to the suffering and dying. They effectively say: “Look upon the crucifix and consider that Christ felt terrible pain too; he was tempted to give up; he knows what you’re going through.” This is spiritual food for fortitude and the other virtues for the Moriens who feels worn out by an end-of-life battle of attrition. But

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what about those whose hope is tempted? Apparently this consolation does not apply to them. Christ was not “tempted in all things” that tax a virtue of hope he was too good to have. Insofar as the dying feel a strain on hope, Christ does not in the same sense have “compassion on (their) infirmities;” he does not “know what they’re going through.” Granted, the theological reasons for this are sound. But so much the worse for hope, it seems, since it lacks the strength and substance which the other virtues draw from Christ’s example and empathy. Indeed, the notion that

Christ was too perfect to need hope may from hope’s perspective make Christ seem like a remote and invulnerable figure in Bowlin’s Stoic armor-plating. This grates perturbingly against the whole emphasis of the ars moriendi tradition. Since both theological hope and Christ’s exemplarity are central aspects of the ars moriendi tradition, the notion that these lines do not converge is an anti-climax which threatens to make the overall shape of that tradition look haphazardly assembled.

Yet an encouraging nuance is introduced when Aquinas asks whether

Christ is homo viator and then draws some important implications. Since Christ was always in the beatific vision, he has always been homo comprehensor. Yet

Aquinas insists that Christ alone of all agents was simultaneously homo viator.808

Christ is a viator not in lacking the final end of attaining God, but only in the sense that he needs to complete the journey which merits rewards for us. In addition,

Christ is not just a viator but the via or “way” itself which all viatores must walk:

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the source of our salvation and of moral instruction. But how can the latter be entirely true if Christ does not show us the via of theological hope?

Aquinas’ solution is that while Christ does not have the virtue of hope, he nevertheless has the “perfection” of hope.809 Lacking full possession, hope is imperfect. Hence “it was not necessary that in Christ, Who is the author of grace, there should be any defects such as faith and hope imply.” Yet Aquinas immediately adds that “whatever perfection is in faith and hope was in Christ most perfectly.”810 The Summa leaves the matter vague, but in the De spe Aquinas clarifies what this perfection is. The first object of hope is God as the future good, and this absence of the good leaves hope imperfect and thus inapplicable to Christ.

The second object is the divine auxilium by which we move to God. Insofar as the agent trustfully adheres to this object he or she is perfect, since “human perfection consists in holding on to God.”811 Since Christ did this perfectly, he possessed hope in this sense and completely exemplified hope’s perfection. Aquinas thus states that insofar as hope is perfect, “it has the character of a virtue. Christ possessed hope utterly in this sense, since he held utterly on to God’s help.”812 In this respect, Christ remains the supreme exemplar of hope and the via for the hopeful to imitate and walk.

The intuitions of Vogt and Verhey are from the Thomistic perspective borne out. The vagueness with which they formulate hope as a virtue makes

Aquinas’ issues non-issues for them, but their sense that Moriens may look to

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Christ as a model for hope is correct, though it requires fine print about the relationship of virtues to perfections.

Christ in his humanity needed to rely upon divine auxilium, itself the efficient cause of hope. And he held perfectly onto God during the arduous good of meriting our salvation in the Passion.813 This clinging to God’s auxilium occurred in the most painful possible circumstances. Christ sweats blood, is betrayed with a kiss, abandoned by his friends, reviled by the multitude, is scourged, mocked, crucified, and left hanging to die – and through it all he clings in hope to God’s help, auxilium being needed now more than ever. So Christ does show us how to perfectly hope while dying. In all of the episodes of Christ’s Passion which

Moriens is to model his or her virtues after, hope is eminently applicable as a clinging to God’s grace during our own dying.814

4.2.3 Practices of Hope

Vogt praises the tradition from Erasmus onwards for shifting from a narrow concern with the deathbed scene to a lifelong preparation for dying. As Jeremy Taylor put it, the best way to prepare for a “holy dying” is by a “holy living.” Habituation and character formation therefore become central to the account, and the ars moriendi becomes co-extensive with an ars vivendi. As Vogt points out, this view is highly suited to virtue ethics with its focus not just on what we do but on what kind of people we are or

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may become.815 Moreover, the idea that “holy living” is the best way to prepare for a

“holy dying” accords with virtue ethics’ claim that agents do not come to actions “from scratch,” but come to situations already disposed to act well or badly depending upon their character.816 Precisely this view of virtue’s role was set forth in my first chapter.

This stress on the art of dying as essentially continuous with the art of living does not appear in Gerson and the late medieval works, and while one suspects Verhey would approve of it, at best it is implicit and left to be inferred. By contrast, the correlation of moriendi with vivendi is emphatic in Erasmus and Vogt and from my perspective marks an excellent development.

This focus on one’s own preparation does not downplay the role of grace, whose role in the moral life I have emphasized at length. But grace moves us to moral transformation and cooperates with our created wills. Hope of all virtues gives the intelligibility needed to grasp this. Hope dissuades from the presumption both of moral laziness and of self-sufficiency, insisting on merits but reminding us to make grace our strength. In addition, the hopeful sees life as a journey or itinerarium of imperfect happiness that is “on the way” to the future good of perfect happiness beyond death. By its very nature, the hopeful life both demands and is an ars vivendi that is simultaneously an ars moriendi.

Yet in the account that follows I will suggest that even Vogt and Erasmus have not taken the ars vivendi point far enough. This is especially true when it comes to hope since no practices by which we might prepare for a hopeful death throughout life are

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identified by them. To fill in this gap I will examine practices by which hope might contribute to this dual art of vivendi-moriendi. Many of these simply are the familiar practices construed in a more hope-informed way, but some of them are practices which the literature has neglected.

Momento mori and Poverty of Spirit

An implicit demand for false hopes often exists at the deathbed. As Dr. Ira Byock records in Dying Well, doctors have been known to “protect” people from the full extent of what they are facing in the belief that “a doctor must not destroy hope.”817 The false consolation is not so ridiculous as to believe “you will not death” ever. The temptation, as

Daniel Callahan notes, is to perpetually keep up the impression that “You won’t die now from this.”818 In the absence of theological hope, the demand for such pitiable deceptions is at least understandable. We “must not destroy hope,” and if Moriens has not been formed to have a hope which death cannot destroy, it may seem compassionate to act as if death will never happen.

Against precisely such false hopes and aided self-deception, the historical tradition (and especially St. Robert Bellarmine) recommended the lifelong practice of momemto mori. As I have already suggested, this practice is a fitting pendant for theological hope, particularly when considered as an act of poverty of spirit which voids the spirit of worldliness. This practice vanishes in Vogt and Verhey, as does the earlier

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tradition’s belief that worldliness is one of the five standard temptations posed to the dying. The latter omission is hardly surprising since I have suggested that worldliness as a moral category has been widely neglected in modern ethics. But the older tradition was surely right to see worldliness as a temptation in dying. The worldly place their end in objects they will perforce lose at death. From the worldly perspective death spells total loss and therefore can be viewed with nothing other than what I have called total despair.

The medieval story Aucassin and Nicolette even suggests what John Henry Newman would later plainly assert: that the worldly may find the very idea of the Christian heaven not just implausible but contemptible. When Aucassin is cautioned to prepare himself for

Paradise he declines, saying that he would not like the company there. All the poor and pious and downtrodden types whom Christ preferred would prove uncongenial.

Such are they who go to Paradise ; and what have I to do with them ? Hell is the place for me. For to Hell go the fine churchmen, and the fine knights, killed in the tourney or in some grand war, the brave soldiers and the gallant gentlemen. With them will I go. There go also the fair gracious ladies who have lovers two or three beside their lord. There go the gold and the silver, the sables and ermines. There go the harpers and the minstrels and the kings of the earth. With them will I go.819

Allowing for poetic license, this captures the idea that those who place their end in worldly objects may come to regard any “heaven” that values non-worldly ends as nothing but a boring negation. Aucassin is in the state of I have called “gentle despair,” though literary embellishment makes him more brazen and self-knowing about this than is likely.820

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Poverty of spirit and its related practices are therefore an important part of the ars moriendi. Expressed as forms of memento mori, they call to mind that power, prestige, wealth, pomp, and luxury must ultimately be renounced by the wayfarer at journey’s end, and that at the end one should not “look back” like Orpheus or Lot’s wife. Obviously this is not a practice to defer to the deathbed, but something to make part of one’s ars vivendi as it anticipates and prepares for the moriendi. For if one is excessively attached to worldly goods and has worldly vices, it will be very difficult not to “look back” and see in death nothing but annihilation. One’s habituation will run in the wrong direction.

Hence the importance of momento mori to prepare one for that final renunciation and dissuade one from the worldliness that would impede it.

The late medieval and Renaissance periods honed this momento mori practice to a fine art through the contemplation of poems, paintings, tombs, illuminated manuscripts, and woodcuts.821 Obviously the momento exercise is not automatically edifying or religious. Many read in it the message “You only have one life. Get the most pleasure out of it you can.” But this is an outlier of the medieval and Renaissance tradition, not its pith and marrow. More characteristic were reflections seen as apt for spiritual renewal and an increase of hope. These included reflections on themes like worldly vanitas and the ubi sunt genre in which one ponders people of all conditions and ages and rhetorically asks

“where are now all those who once filled the world with their splendour”?822 As Hamlet soberly reflects while looking at the skull of his old beloved court jester Yorick: “He hath borne me on his back a thousand times… Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know

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not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? … Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at that.”823 As Huizinga points out, the practice of memento also “preached social equality” or at least undermined social disparities, with “Death levelling the various ranks and professions.”824 As Hamlet suddenly realizes in his question to Horatio: “‘Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?’ ‘E’en so, my lord.’” The ubi sunt finale to Hamlet’s memento mori exercise is carried through to this conclusion:

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!825

This is just the sort of exercise which Hamlet as a prince and heir of the kingdom should perform. It is no accident that such reflections allow him to mingle more freely with the gravediggers who are emphatically “beneath his station.” Not only does the momento mori practice vividly bring to mind one’s own mortality and dissuade from vanities, it undermines social disparities by pointing out that death equals the condition of all in the end, thereby offering a good byproduct to social ethics. Should momento mori produce resistance to the allure of vainglory, ambition, and greed, it is a genuine act of poverty of spirit. As such it makes agents amenable to hope’s motion by undermining

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temptations to worldliness and freeing them to regard the bonum futurum beyond death.

This is crucial to a hopeful dying, and should be retained in the ars moriendi tradition.

Contemplation of God’s Mercy

The ars moriendi’s stress on presenting God’s mercy to the moriens is also essential to dying hopefully. Hope believes that its object is possible due to God’s “mercy and omnipotence.” Scrupulous persons or those tempted to think their past sins unforgivable cannot hear this message too much. Consider Scobie, the protagonist of

Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. He persists in an affair in the belief that his mistress will have a nervous breakdown is he leaves her. At the same time, he keeps the adultery secret from his wife to spare her trauma. In the end, hiding his guilt leads him to receive the Eucharist in mortal sin since abstaining would rouse his wife’s suspicions.

Moreover, he continues this routine with no intention to repent. Thinking he is either unforgivable, or that he will never get the grace to repent, he concludes that he is such a moral bungler and blasphemer that the best thing to do would be to free everyone – God included – from the damage he causes them. He commits suicide in the belief that he is damning himself.826 The story may strain credulity, but one does not need to spend much time with the dying to realize that many who are “haunted by their past” are grievously battered by a moral self-loathing that may give rise to the horrible thought “I don’t deserve to be forgiven, I can’t be forgiven.” Compound this with the natural terrors of

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death that often fray the nerves and mind of Moriens, and a stress on mercy is clearly needed to keep hope alive and prevent despair.

In light of this Erasmus never sounded so contemporary as when he saw the need to emphasize God’s mercy to the dying, especially those in a funk of scrupulosity and self-loathing. He did well to compile a whole list of divine mercies for the Moriens to contemplate, from the prodigal son story and the forgiveness of Nineveh to the “good thief” crucified beside Jesus. Also useful in this regard is St. Francis de Sales advice for those with a too militant conscience to practice “gentleness toward oneself,” as is the insistence on God’s mercy and intimacy found in Julian of Norwich.827 To those who regard God as an unappeasable and unapproachable tyrant, she insists upon the familiarity or “homeliness” of God dwelling in the soul.828 Such considerations are an essential food for hope which help overcome the threat of despair.829

Examination of Conscience and Sacramental Confession

Regular examination of conscience and confession are likewise a great aid to a hopeful death. Vogt suggests that these should be part of an ars moriendi, but he says little about why they are needed or what motivates them. Considered as forms of vigilance and recognitions of sinfulness, I suggest that these related practices express hope and ward off presumption. Insofar as one is Moriens, they are forms of spiritual preparedness for the future good hope longs for. As a startling number of Christ’s

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parables aim to remind us, we are to keep our wedding garment undefiled, to keep our lamps lit, and to hold vigil for the master’s return: “for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Lk 12:40). One may be dead long before the Parousia, but even then death and the personal judgment will likely come “at an hour you do not expect.”

Such vigilance therefore goes well with hope’s gift of fear as set forth in the last chapter.

Besides their other uses, regular examination of conscience and sacramental confession are ways in which the hopeful traditionally kept up spiritual readiness for the hour of death and the end of the pilgrimage. This counters presumptuous complacency and alters our estimate of time. Like momento mori, it teaches that not only is time a precious and non-renewable resource, but we don’t know how much of it we will be given and cannot take renewed leases for granted.

The topic is brought up on the eve of Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V as the king walks the camp in disguise. Many of his men fear not just for their lives, but for their souls. As one soldier says to the disguised king: “I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument?” King Henry counters that when we think death is likely we are given a valuable occasion to prepare. So every soldier and every Christian should behave:

…as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained: and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.830

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Bracketing the ethics of war, what is of interest here is that spiritual preparedness is a live concern in these people’s faith. Traditionally this concern motivated the hopeful to enact just those practices of examination and confession which Vogt wants to keep but whose need and nature he does not explain. These practices express other virtues as well, but a major motivation for them is hope’s need to lean upon God for mercy rather than lurching into presumption. Moreover, considered as acknowledgements that one can be forgiven, and as the effort to seek forgiveness, these practices double as remedies to despair. In that respect the stress on communicating God’s mercy to the Moriens, so aptly put by Erasmus, helps prepare the way for the reconciliation which the likes of Scobie miss. Whether it is as a brake on presumption or despair, examination of conscience and confession both rely upon God’s grace and mercy. To the extent the agent leans upon them as “secondary efficient causes” of hope’s “primary efficient cause” of auxilium grace, they are expressions of hope.831

Visits to the Sick and Prayers at the Bedside

The dying are the only ones who can actually lean or rely upon God for strength.

Nobody can make that act of will in their place. In that respect both Vogt and Verhey are right to say that Moriens is the main actor in death. Recall the point from the last chapter about what such leaning looks like. The consideration that God is trustworthy due to divine favors leads to the consolation of hope, which is itself not necessarily anything

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emotional, but the intellect’s belief in possibility flowing into the will as an encouragement which braces the agent to keep going. If all goes well, the will renews its commitment to persevere in the journey of hope with the help of God on whom we rely.

If this is required during the ordinary trials of life, it is a fortiori required during the novel, fearsome, and violent shock of organic decay. In that respect, great suffering and the dying process are often the occasion for strengthening this habit of leaning and therefore the virtue of hope. Someone who previously felt that everything in life was fine may now recognize their utter vulnerability, and perhaps call upon God with a vigor unequalled before in their life: “Out of the depths, I cry unto you, O Lord” (Ps 130:1).

Obviously this good effect on their hope does not mean that suffering and death as such are goods. It simply means that some good may come out of them.

Nevertheless, while only the agent’s own will can lean on the efficient cause of hope, visits to the sick and prayers around the bedside of the dying also pertain to hope.

As stated earlier, through charity we hope not just for ourselves but for our neighbor, and these practices both express and ask for the divine mercy which strengthens our neighbor’s hope. The earlier alluded to abandonment of the suicidal character in Charles

Williams’ Descent into Hell illustrates just how important the love and care of one’s fellows is to preventing a sense of abandonment that can stoke dejection and despair. If one has not been loved by the neighbor whom one has seen, it is harder to believe in the love of the God whom one has not seen.

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But this raises the question of what kind of community can sustain meaningful visits to the sick and prayers around the bedside of the dying. That a community should do this is obvious from the fact that rarely are such practices solicited from or done by strangers. In Vogt this question drops out, and in the earlier tradition the assumption is that family and neighbors in unison with the priest will form the spiritual community.

This may have worked when one could assume one’s family and neighbors would be

Christian, but obviously that cannot simply be assumed now. Hence Vogt’s omission leaves it unclear what community will sustain the practices he advocates.

Verhey’s emphasis on “Gathering on the Lord’s Day” fills up this gap admirably. For unless some ecclesial community has already been built up and forms a real bond of charity, who will be there to offer up prayers and join in the sacraments at one’s bedside, and how many of one’s visitors during the final days will have the beliefs necessary to encourage hope with reminders of divine mercy? Verhey has helpfully drawn our attention to the fact that aiding the dying is not just about “doing” various practices, but about entering into the relationships that will sustain those practices and give them meaning. A genuine Church community with fellow-believers habituated into confessing the Lord together is thus fertile ground for all the practices pertaining to ars moriendi.

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4.2.4 The Christian Ars moriendi and Those without Hope

I have suggested that extending the ars moriendi into an ars vivendi is a worthy goal helpfully brought to our minds by Erasmus, Taylor, and Vogt. The art of dying should not be reserved to those near death. It will do its best work if it is part of the moral, aesthetic, and spiritual education in hope which we should have from early adulthood onwards. At the same time, I suggested that they do not apply this ars vivendi thoroughly enough, failing to embody hope in practices throughout life that prepare the hopeful for the journey’s end. I now suggest that they have not pushed the ars vivendi back early enough either. They only address the hopeful, admonishing them to persevere in hope. But what about the countless people who approach the dying process with no theological hope? Perhaps they are in the state I have called “gentle despair,” yet as death approaches this despair may put off its gentleness and become a horrible bewilderment.832 Has the Christian ars moriendi no word for them? In the conclusion to this chapter I will suggest that it does.

Serious considerations of death are plentifully recorded in the Western tradition from ancient Egypt to the modern period. Questions about what dying will be like, whether I will continue to exist, where I will go, and whether I will meet my loved ones again, are obviously common, and often produce those Hamlet-like anxieties about “what dreams may come” (if any). No less important is the sense that the answers to the above questions determine not just any possible future life, but deeply affect what I make of the

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present life. As St. Paul suggestively remarks in the person of the hedonist: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1 Cor 15:32).833 So the questions concern not just what if anything awaits after death, but the long retroactive shadow which death casts upon one’s whole life and which partly determines how we read life’s meaning. Consider the following Old Testament passage in which the wicked reason thus:

Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a man comes to his end, and no one has been known to return from Hades. Because we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been; because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts. When it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes, and the spirit will dissolve like empty air. Our name will be forgotten in time and no one will remember our works; our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and be scattered like mist that is chased by the rays of the sun and overcome by its heat. For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow, and there is no return from our death, because it is sealed up and no one turns back (Wisdom of Solomon 2: 1-5).

The concerns expressed here are surprisingly contemporary: the worry that one was never purposed, but is a product of blind chance; that everything we are and do has no permanent significance; that we will be ultimately forgotten and “dissolve like empty air;” the anxiety that in the end we simply do not matter. Mortality in such reflections is not just a fate but a hermeneutic. Like a final chapter in a book or final act of a play, its meaning partly determines the meaning of the whole novel or play. In effect, the meaning of death partly determines what genre we inhabit as agents seeking happiness amid the eudaimonia gap. Is that gap an arduous challenge the protagonists finally overcome, so

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that our genre is ultimately comic? Or is death the gap’s final triumph, so that our genre is in the end somewhat tragic? As St. Paul suggests, the way we read death may deeply affect the kind of life we choose. For example, the Wisdom of Solomon passage quoted above ends with the wicked saying that hedonism is the best option given the ultimate meaninglessness and shortness of life: “Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes…

Let none of us fail to share in our revelry, because this is our portion, and this our lot”

(Wisdom of Solomon: 2:7, 9).

Earlier I noted George Orwell’s claim that loss of hope in heaven “has left a big hole, and that we ought to take notice of that fact.”834 Though very much an atheist, he suggests that the average comfortable bourgeois finds it worrisome to think about “man’s destiny and the reason for his existence” since the post-Christian answers tend to be spiritually bleak and best left unsaid.835 Into this spiritual vacuum left by hope’s retreat has settled an existential drift which leads people to distract themselves from a sense of emptiness through “the strip-lighted paradise” of flashy amusements and technological hedonism. This is related to the cult of youth and beauty which seeks to infinitely forestall aging with cosmetics and surgery and which lives in perpetual denial of death. It is also related to the consumeristic lifestyle which Nicholas Boyle describes as making

“life in the shopping mall” the summum bonum. Such escapist efforts to forget death are partly the cause and partly the result of the bread-and-circuses flashiness of the “strip- lighted paradise.” Put in my theological terms, Orwell is suggesting that loss of hope in heaven has led to a widespread “gentle despair” we do not want to face. From it

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undoubtedly flows much contemporary cynicism, flippancy, jadedness, and disillusionment as epiphenomena of despair.

From this perspective the offer of theological hope has a real chance to be seen as highly attractive. Hope restores the sense that one’s own destiny and that of one’s world have a transcendent meaning and purpose: that one was meant to exist, is infinitely loved, and was benevolently purposed for perfect beatitude. Hope assures us that the genre of our life and world is ultimately not a tragedy or an absurdity, but a commedia. Whether it is through what Orwell calls the reflective question about “man’s destiny and the reason for his existence,” or through seriously eyeing the prospect of death, it is possible that religious hope will be recognized by the gently despairing as an existential life-line, and as the only lasting and sure hope they will be able to fall back on in the end. For even the most blinkered escapism from death will one day be exposed. As T.S. Eliot says: “There is one who remembers the way to your door/ Life you may evade, but Death you shall not/ You shall not deny the Stranger.”836

Yet I suggest that hope is relevant not just to the vicious but to the virtuous

Moriens who may lead a life of connatural rather than supernatural happiness. In my treatments of Aristotle, Foot, and Hursthouse, I argued at length that the eudaimonia gap in both its negative and positive effects leaves room for hope to be seen as contributing to happiness. Death is the final triumph of the eudaimonia gap on naturalistic grounds, and so it brings the issues into particularly sharp focus. So does hope have anything to say with respect to the connaturally virtuous Moriens?

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As discussed earlier, Hursthouse and Foot both regret tragedy and death and see the virtue of hope in a vaguely Christian form as beneficial and as a real contribution to human happiness. Consider now the example of Aristotle, who clearly sees death itself as grievous for the eudaimon. He regards the life of the virtuous as a magnificent good, and thinks that the happier you are, the more desirable continued existence will be: “for to such men life is most desirable, and their existence is the most supremely happy.”837 This suggests what countless people regard as obvious: that death is generally “most undesirable.” Moreover, Aristotle thinks that the inevitability of aging and decline are a blight on the eudaimon life. Happiness as virtuous activity is hampered by

“impediments” (empodiai) such as weariness, sickness, and so forth.838 Implicit in

Aristotle is therefore the view that the eudaimon life exists on an arc. At a certain point, the active or contemplative eudaimon will presumably pass his or her prime, and their physical and mental capacities will begin to decline. Even if they do not meet with crippling misfortunes, the impediments to their virtuous activities will themselves increase. One day Pericles will not have the same power, mental dexterity, energy, and influence to lead Athens as he once did in what Aristotle saw as the model active life.

One day Aristotle himself may see his best days as a thinker pass by. Whether due to a decline in mental powers or overall health, he may have no contemplative achievements comparable to the Metaphysics X left in him. Usually this is an inevitability of aging with its characteristic mental and physical deterioration. It is a big part of why even the very accomplished eventually retire or at least “slow down”. But at the very least this decline

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will set in shortly before or at death. As friends, family members, and colleagues with whom one shared virtuous activities also start declining and dying, the scope of one’s enjoyment and virtuous activities will be impeded all the more.839 “Nobody will entirely live well (be eudaimonikos),” Aristotle says, “if he is… both solitary and childless; still less, perhaps, if he has terribly bad children or friends, or has good ones who die”

(emphasis mine).840

So bleak is Aristotle’s own picture of the elderly and those in decline that he thinks they are unlikely to maintain meaningful friendships anyway, “for their capability for enjoyment is short, and nobody can spend his days with someone who is annoying or not pleasant to be with”841 For Aristotle, this is what the eudaimon in his or her prime has to look forward to in the last period of life: diminishing activities, achievements, and enjoyments; and a peevishness and feebleness that make everyone want to avoid you. To say the least, this is a melancholy rather than a hopeful outlook on aging, decline, and death. It is no wonder that Aristotle and the neo-Aristotelians say little about it. The downward trajectory of the eudaimonia arc is a depressing inevitability for which they have no medicine. On naturalistic premises, it may be best to hurry past the subject and get on with the eudaimonia that is still within reach.

Given such discontents, the theological virtue of hope can make a meaningful and intelligible appeal to both the vicious and the virtuous pagan Moriens. Hope should not simply be desperately grasped, like a straw grasped by someone drowning. But if read alongside my earlier arguments about the eudaimonia gap and the strong candidacy of

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hope as a virtue that benefits the human condition, hope can make a serious offer of doing better at death than either the fairly full cup of virtuous paganism or the “strip- lighted paradise” of the vicious.842 Hope therefore has something to contribute not just ad intra but also ad extra when it comes to death and dying.

The older ars moriendi literature neglected the latter audience, probably because most of it was written in the noonday of Christendom when belief in Christian eschatology was assumed as a given. Yet the contemporary ars moriendi literature has also neglected this audience, addressing only those who have hope and with no word for those who need hope. This approach is an anachronism in a post-Christian context. Vogt follows Erasmus and Taylor in insisting that the best ars moriendi will focus not just on the deathbed but on a lifetime of virtuous formation - on an ars vivendi. I fully agree but suggest that by addressing only those with hope and not those who lack hope he has not pushed the ars vivendi back far enough in the spiritual timeline.

4.3 Conclusion

Stepping back from the philosophers and cultural critics, I will generalize the offer of hope to Moriens in a way I think is widely intelligible to our contemporaries. As is commonly witnessed and plentifully recorded in the sociological literature on death, the dying typically reflect upon the narrative of their lives and the possibility of an afterlife.843 Few today may consciously wish for anything like the beatific vision, but as even Timothy Jackson insists, those who hope for an afterlife obviously look forward to 376

enhanced plenitude, healing, freedom, joy, and blessedness. People do not, for example, hope for a heaven in which disease, poverty, and tragedy will continue to threaten them.

The rudimentary concept of a fuller, ideal, or perfect happiness is therefore in play, and it is this which theological hope and the beatific vision assume to exist, explicitly address themselves to, and propose to fulfill.

When lucid and given time, the dying often reflect upon the narrative of their lives from early childhood to the deathbed, consider what events helped them to grow and mature, what setbacks they had to overcome, ponder their accomplishments and failures, ask themselves if they made a real difference in the world, and perhaps consider what they stood for and lived for. This may include a fair amount of regret for wrong turns taken, and wistfulness for future projects and prospects which must now be left behind. One’s life’s work may have been cut off; the great moral cause may still be unfinished; one may never live to see one’s children grow up. If the dying are blessed by the presence of their children, spouse, or other loved ones, the thought I will never see them again is acutely painful. Love would wish it otherwise, yet only something like religious hope can believe it otherwise. These are tangible forms recognizable by our contemporaries in which the imperfection of eudaimonia may be experienced as grievous by the virtuous Moriens. By suggesting that the ultimate future good is indeed possible, hope offers Moriens the prospect of something better than either going “gentle into that good night” or futilely raging “against the dying of the light.”

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Eschatology promises the final conquest of the eudaimonia gap, and so hope changes our perspective on decline, death, and dying. To the overall virtuous and happy whose lives go well but which are still impeded by “the thousand natural shocks/ that flesh is heir to,” hope promises perfect and unimpeded beatitude. To the cynical, the disillusioned, and the despairing, hope promises that life is not a tale told by an idiot, that we are not cosmic accidents or products of blind chance, and that we will not presently sink into Sheol or oblivion. The fact that we and our loved ones will one day die and rot is not the last word in our stories. By the grace of God, we are ordained to perfect beatitude. To the idolatrous who think to find perfect beatitude through falling in love, building an ideal earthly society, or whatever it may be, hope exercises a chastening but not demoralizing effect. The desire for the fullness of good which these finite goods aroused need not be despondently renounced but purposefully redirected. The Christian hopeful may thus regard their earthly desires and projects in a unique way, affirming their goodness while denying their ultimacy considered in themselves, and seeing the partial fruition attained in and through them as the first fruits and the signum of something greater.

To those who feel like moral failures in life, who believe their sins are unforgiveable, or who simply think that God is not interested in saving them, hope promises that God shows “pardon to the repentant sinner” and “turns sinners to himself by sanctifying grace.”844 To those who through weariness, aging, sickness,

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enfeeblement, or the dying process are on the downward trajectory of the eudaimonia arc, hope forestalls despair by holding out the prospect of a perfect and irrevocable beatitude to come. Finally, to victims, to those who lives are marred or ruined and who will never enjoy much happiness in this life, to the bereaved and disappointed, and to those who mourn over injustices this world will never adequately redress, hope offers the consoling promise of final justice and future redemption. Hence all the healing and redressing appeal of eschatological imagery: the lion laying down with the lamb, the swords beaten into ploughshares, the promise that: “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away" (Rev 21:4). This does not trivialize the plight of victims or the wretched but promises that the power of their oppressors cannot in the end define them, holding out the hope that misery or victimhood is not the last word in their stories.

Since we live after the Incarnation and the Resurrection, the joyful anticipation of perfect beatitude, true healing, and lasting peace is all the more credible. Death is not the final victory of the eudaimonia gap. Christ by his Passion and Resurrection has taken captivity captive (Eph 4:8) and he assures us that he is “the living one; I died, and behold

I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades” (Rev 1:18). The consequence is that no peace need be brokered with the eudaimonia gap. No melancholy resignation to it should be counseled, and no thinly-disguised despair should disconsole

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our love. In terms of salvation history and even of our cosmology, we and all of creation live in the light of Easter morning with its twilight mingling of the “already” and the “not yet.” As Paul says: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (Rom 8:22-24). Hence many of the hopeful have been known to “rejoice in hope” even in the dying process, not deprecating their life or this world, but in the firm hope that they are headed to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor

5:8). For the grace of a happy death is the grace of a completed pilgrimage in which the wayfarer successfully reaches the end of the journey.845

Throughout this dissertation I have argued that hope is a major part of this journey, and that it is a major ingredient in the happy life. Because hope informed by charity trusts in God as one’s perfect friend, the hopeful may confidently expect and joyfully anticipate final and perfect beatitude. When the wayfarer's journey is done, he or she goes from the arduous good of life "on the road" (in via) to perfect rest and rejoicing

"in the homeland" (in patria). With the journey complete, homo viator becomes homo comprehensor: one who has “grasped” or “laid hold of” (comprehendit) the perfect beatitude that comes with seeing God “face to face.”

Aquinas believes that the essence of perfect beatitude is immediately attained by homo comprehensor or the glorified soul itself. Yet as rational animals stripped of their bodies, the glorified saints await the resurrection to possess that beatitude “in every way

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(they) would wish to possess it.”846 As Jean Porter states, perfect beatitude is proper to our “distinctively human capacities for knowledge and rationally informed love.”847 At the same time its “stream of delights” (torrens voluptatis) is meant to be partaken of by the passions and the glorified body themselves.848 Verhey was therefore right to insist that the ars moriendi should at bottom not be the “commendation of death” of those eager to shed the body, but the “commendation of life” of those eager to partake in Christ’s resurrection. As St. Paul says: “not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:4).

Lest this beatitude seem narcissistic, the communion of saints implies that perfect beatitude is properly social rather than individualistic. The Church Triumphant is regarded by the Christian tradition not as a long row of hermitages, but as a city united by perfect fellowship and love in the new creation. As Aquinas states, we are to be “fellow- citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”849 The beatific vision of God’s divine essence perfectly satisfies the will of the rational soul created in God’s image. Yet perfect love and friendship befits creatures with a social nature, and so the saints “see one another and rejoice in God at their fellowship.”850 The communion of saints is thus the consummation of the social body and its hopes as referred by theological hope to the eschaton.

In common with his view of imperfect earthly happiness, Aquinas regards the beatific vision as perfection, actuality, and activity (operatio). What is potential rather than actual is imperfect, and so happiness considered as perfection is a pure activity or

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operation.851 The beatific vision of God’s divine essence is this perfect activity. In it we do not just know God through created effects; we know the very essence of God through the light of glory bestowed upon us.852 This everlasting contemplation of Goodness Itself is the greatest possible perfection and activity of the intellect, and it produces utter and complete joy in the will. The beatific vision is thus perfect happiness considered both as perfection and as fulfillment. In it the desiderium of the will for ideal, fuller, or perfect happiness at last and forever attains it proportionate object.

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NOTES

1 For overviews of the philosophical literature on virtue, see Roger Crisp, Virtue Ethics (Oxford [u.a.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 1-26; Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1-25; and Daniel Statman, Virtue Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997), 5-19. For overviews of the theological literature, see especially Jean Porter, “Recent Studies in Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics: A Review Essay,” The Journal of Religious Ethics, 25.2, (1998): 191-215, and Thomas Hibbs, “Interpretations of Aquinas’s Ethics Since Vatican II,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Steven Pope (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2002).

2 The pioneering work here was Peter Geach’s The Virtues, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977. For overviews, see Jean Porter, “Recent Studies in Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics: A Review Essay,” The Journal of Religious Ethics, 25.2, (1998): 191-215, and Thomas Hibbs, “Interpretations of Aquinas’s Ethics Since Vatican II,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Steven Pope (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2002).

3 For an indication of the trend, see the bibliography of Romanus Cessario in “The Theological Virtue of Hope” in The Ethics of Aquinas, 240-243.

4 The last comprehensive Anglophone study of the virtue of hope per se in Aquinas was 29 years ago by Joseph Merkt in Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1983).

5 Not the least of which is the encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi. Washington, D.C., USCCB, 2007.

6 See Mulloney, M. L. Exploration Seeking Reclamation: The Significant, Integrating Distinction of Hope as Irascible Passion and as Theological Virtue in St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae. (Dissertatio doctoralis: Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, 2007).

7 The best treatment is G.M. Conlon, “The Certitude of Hope” The Thomist 10 (1947): 76-119, 226-252.

8 See Josef Pieper, On Hope, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1986), 45-63.

9 See Dominic Doyle, The Promise of True Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope (Herder and Herder, 2011).

10 See Joseph Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (Westminster: Louisville, KY, 2005), 165-167. 394

11 See St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae (hereafter “ST”) II-II.17-22.

12 This is not to say that those who lack the infused virtues cannot acquire the natural virtues (“pagan virtue”), just to say that without the infused they cannot live out the full virtuous and happy life humans are called to. In this I follow Angela McKay, “Prudence and Acquired Moral Virtue,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 535-556.

13 This focus may need some explanation given that “the Theology of Hope” is widespread in the Continental tradition. To choose the latter path would likely lead to Ernst Bloch via Jurgen Moltmann, and through the whole paper trail of the famous post-World War II Theology of Hope movement. But among other reasons, I decline this approach because the explicit anti-Thomism of Moltmann and his school bars the way. See J. Moltmann, “Christliche Hoffnung: Messianisch oder tranzendent? Ein theologisches Gesprach mit Joachim von Fiore und Thomas von Aquin,” MThZ 33 (1982): 241-260, and Doyle, 45-46.

14 See Analytical Thomism, ed. Craig Paterson and Matthew S. Pugh. London, U.K., Ashgate Publishing Co., 2006.

15 Kevin Staley, Jean Porter, George Wieland, J.P. Torrell, and Steven Long will be the main thinkers drawn upon here.

16 See Michael Sherwin, O.P., “”In What Straits They Suffered: St. Thomas’ Use of Aristotle to Transform Augustine’s Critique of Earthly Happiness,” Nova et Vetera, English ed., Vol. 3, No. 2 (2005), 321-334.

17 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1179a11-b26.

18 She writes: “The fact, if it is a fact, that human nature is, at best, harmonious, is a highly contingent one. It is a contingent fact, if it is a fact, that we can, individually, flourish or achieve eudaimonia.” See Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), 264.

19 ST II-II.17.1

20 When it comes to the enormous variety of grace distinctions Aquinas makes such as habitual, auxilium, operative, cooperative, etc., I will closely follow Joseph Wawrykow. See his “Grace” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. R Van Nieuwenhove and J. Wawrkyow. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

21 Aquinas is clear that the refusal to merit is a form of sinful presumption which, unrepented of, precludes salvation. See ST II-II.21.1.

22 While the Scriptum, Summa Contra Gentiles, biblical commentaries, and other works will be drawn upon, pride of place will therefore go to the De spe, the Compendium Theologiae, the Libri Ethicorum, and especially to the Prima Secundae and Secunda Secundae.

23 My position on hope’s “act” is closest to that of Jean-Pierre Torrell. See his Saint Thomas Aquinas: Vol. 2, Spiritual Master (Washington, CUA Press, 2003), 326-336.

395

24 I do not try to absorb all the beatitudes into hope. Rather, I argue that while each beatitude enacts various gifts proximately or directly, they all share the formality of hope remotely or indirectly in that they seek “a future good arduous but possible to attain.”

25 One representative and ever-popular example of this is found in Thomas a Kempis Imitatio Christi 1.1, 1.17.

26 See Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1 (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1984), 53- 58, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Frederick Watkins (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 142-155.

27 For excellent overviews of the topic and its history, see Gerhart B. Ladner, “Homo Viator: Mediaeval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” Speculum 42, no. 2 (April 1, 1967): 233–259; and C. S Lewis, Studies in Words (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 214-269.

28 Hope is not essentially about the world, but about the eschaton. Nevertheless, how refers created goods and earthly projects to the eschaton rather than merely withdrawal from them. See Ch 3 above.

29 See ST II-II.17.2, 21.1, and Doyle, 120-124.

30 For an extended treatment of form and substance, see Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75-89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 45–72.

31 Aquinas writes that: “Natural love is nothing else than the inclination implanted in nature by its Author” (I.60.1), “Love is essentially connected with appetite, since they have the same object, i.e., the good” (I.26.2), and “Every agent acts for some end (which is) the desired and beloved good” (I.28.6).

32 See Elements of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians 1st (first) Edition by William A. Wallace [1977], First Edition edition (Alba House, n.d.), 26.

33 See Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 178, 208.

34 See Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law [...] [...] (Grand Rapids, Mich. [u.a.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2005), 119–121, 158–160, 169–170.

35 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 131–142.

36 Aquinas, ST I-II.94.2.

37 Kenneth White, “The Passions of the Soul,” in Stephen J Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 106–108.

38 Pasnau, 131-142.

39 White, 108.

40 ST I-II.26-28. 396

41 ST I-II.30.

42 ST I.5.6

43 White, 110-112..

44 ST I-II.21.1

45 I-II 23.2

46 See David M. Gallagher, “The Will and Its Acts,” in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 84.

47 ST I 81.2

48 Representative treatments include Porter, Nature as Reason; Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Norman Kretzmann, Anthony John Patrick Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism (Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 1982).

49 ST I.5.1

50 In Hobbes, physical motions lead to “desire” or “appetite”, this “renders” as opposed to “finds” the “object” of desire/appetite to be “good”; and this leads to the “endeavour” to get it. What we call “intention” is in Hobbes simply “endeavour caused by appetite”. See his Leviathan, Pt. 1, Ch. 6. Similarly for Hume, “passions” are the cause of actions, and aiming at anything is the result of passion. See Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, Pt. III.

51 ST I.5.1.

52 ST I-II.1.2.3.

53 See Gallagher Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas.70-72.

54 ST I 80.2.2

55 ST I-II.30.2.

56 I-II.1.2

57 Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 182.

58 ST II-II 17.5.

59 ST I-II.1.1.

60 ST I-II 1.4.

397

61 Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 46.

62 Aristotle et al., The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford (Oxfordshire); New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 5.

63 NE 1097a33.

64 St. Augustine quoted by Aquinas in ST I-II.1.7

65 See Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 134–168.

66 ST I-II.2.8.

67 I-II.1.5

68 Germain Grisez, “Natural Law, God, Religion, and Human Fulfillment,” in American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001): 3, 32.

69 See Scott McDonald, “Aquinas’ Ultimate Ends: A Reply to Grisez,” in American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001):37-49.

70 I-II.1.5.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid. 43.

73 I-II.1.5

74 Quoted in Joel Feinberg, Moral Concepts; (London: Oxford U.P., 1969), 45.

75 Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics 1.9 [116]

76 ST I.62.1.

77 For overviews, see Porter, Nature as Reason; Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature.

78 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 55.

79 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1252b. See also Pasnau 177-178.

80 See Michael J. Loux, Nature, Norm, and Psyche: Explorations in Aristotle’s Philosophical Psychology (Scuola normale superiore, 2004), 29–35.

81 Aquinas writes: “We say a thing is perfect if it is completely made” (ST I.4.1). Such claims are intuitive, as an example will show. When a loved one dies, we naturally mourn. If the loved one is elderly, and “lived a full life”, we mourn a certain way. If the loved one is a child or youth, we mourn in another. 398

This has nothing to do with the assumption that the lives were different in value. It has to do with the sense that the child or youth “never had a chance”, that so much potential went unrealized. Parents will lament the marriage of the grown-up child that will never be, the grandchildren they will never have, the successful maturation of a life they will not be able to rejoice in. There is the sense that something went wrong because the child never had the chance to be a fully actualized or perfected member of the human kind.

82 Porter, Nature as Reason, 159–160.

83 See Aristotle, Politics 1254a.

84 See Gallagher in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 70.

85 In that respect, it is a close neighbor to the concept of “development”, but it is far richer because it includes the idea of the finished product or “the fully developed thing”. Aquinas writes: “A man may be said to be perfect in two ways. First, simply: and this perfection regards that which belongs to a thing’s nature, for instance an animal may be said to be perfect when it lacks nothing in the disposition of its members and in such things as are necessary for an animal’s life.” See ST II-II.184.1

86 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Dumb Ox Books, 1993), 65.

87 ST I-II 3.2.

88 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1102a1.

89 ST I-II 5.1.

90 See ST I-II 5.1, and 2.8.

91 ST I-II.2.8

92 J. L Austin, J. O Urmson, and Warnock, Philosophical Papers (Oxford [Eng.]; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 17.

93 ST I-II.3.2.

94 ST II-II.180.3 and II-II.179.1, respectively.

95 This does not entail the eccentric recommendation of one kind of role, career, or vocation as “the happy life”: as though of the poet, soldier, monk, and miller, only one could be said to lead the happy life. As Jean Porter says: “The complexity of the human creature implies that unlike other animals, we can attain perfection in diverse ways and at disparate levels” (Nature as Reason, 160).

96 See Porter, 159-161.

97 Ibid., 161.

98 See Porter, Nature as Reason, 161. 399

99 Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 18–21.

100 ST I-II.65.3.

101 Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 185, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10273328.

102 See Porter, 173-174. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to think of the enjoyment taken in virtue as always or essentially ebullient – as though only people always in high spirits would be candidates for acting virtuously. Temperaments vary, and it would be rather hard of us to judge a priori that the melancholic and taciturn people of the world were thereby shown to be vicious. It would be better to think of the enjoyment in question as “taking satisfaction in” the virtuous activity. This could often occur in understated ways. Someone may “take satisfaction” in building a house, or in nursing a sick child. But this does not commit us to saying that their satisfaction is emotional in character, or mostly so. Pleasure or delight (delectatio), according to Aquinas, can occur at different levels: bodily, emotional, intellectual, volitional, etc. Concretely they usually overlap, but it is important to point out that emotional enjoyment is not enjoyment as such. Otherwise we might expect from the virtuous perpetual glee, and look upon the less sanguine as vicious. See White, 107-112.

103 See Aquinas, ST II-II.123.8, which quotes and glosses Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 3.9 on this subject.

104 Terry Coleman, The Nelson Touch: The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson (Oxford University Press, 2002), 321.

105 Simon Bradley, London: Westminster (Yale University Press, 2003), 126.

106 General John Moore, shot while saving the British field army against Napoleon’s forces, stated this explicitly: “You know I always wished to die this way” he said to his old friend Colonel Anderson. Cited in Thomas Shorter, A Book of English Prose, Selected Chiefly from Recent and Living Authors, Ed. by T. Shorter, 1862, 347.

107 Alasdair C MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 211–213.

108 Obviously this does not mean they have chosen a praiseworthy or worthwhile ultimate end, regula vitae, and “genre” for their life.

109 ST II-II 123.8

110 ST II-II.179.1.

111 ST II-II 179-182.

112 ST II-II.5.3.

113 ST I-II. 5.4 400

114 Augustine City of God Bk X, Ch 15.

115 “Naturalism” is a term of art and is susceptible to various meanings. By naturalism I mean any worldview that excludes the supernatural for any reason whatsoever. This is how the term is used in philosophy of religion, where it does much of the work of the term “secularism” without being entangled by theories of what secularity means. See Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, N.J.; Cincinnati: Princeton University Press ; Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 19–41.

116 Unless otherwise stated, all citations of Aristotle are taken from The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, revised by J.O. Urmson and J.L. Ackrill (Oxford (Oxfordshire); New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

117 Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1099b.

118 Aristotle Politics 1295a35.

119 Arisottle Nicomachean Ethics 1101a10.

120 Annas, The Morality of Happiness, 367, italics mine.

121 J.L. Ackrill, ““Aristotle on Eudaimonia Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 24.

122 Ibid., 1154b 14-25.

123 Cited in Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 369.

124 Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1170a6.

125 Ibid., 1098b. Note that this is distinct from saying that happiness just is enjoyment or contentment. The reason is that someone can greatly enjoy bad or trivial things. Here contemporary virtue theory joins the Aristotelian chorus. Philippa Foot mentions the case of an asylum patient who was “happy all day collecting bits of garbage in the yard”. Our sense that something important is missing retains the intuition that happiness is not just subjective contentment, but the development of a whole way of life. As Foot notes: who would think that 80 years of giggling or squeaking was the good life, even if it brought contentment? See her Natural Goodness, 86.

126 Ibid., Aristotle 1177a2.

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid., 1178a5.

129 Plato Apology 40a-42.

130 Annas, The Morality of Happiness, 373.

401

131 Aristotle et al., The Nicomachean Ethics, 263–266.

132 Ibid., 263.

133 Ibid., 267.

134 Ibid., 268.

135 Ibid., 267

136 There is much debate over whether this means that contemplation is here being described as one part – i.e., the best part - of eudaimonia (what J.L. Ackrill calls the “inclusive view”), or whether contemplation is being said to singly constitute eudaimonia for anyone happy enough to live the contemplative life (the “dominant view”). There is also much debate over whether Book 10 is in tension with the rest of the Nicomachean Ethics and the overall Aristotelian corpus. I find most persuasive the variant of the “inclusive view” which holds that contemplation in Bk 10 is indeed one part of eudaimonia for those living the contemplative life, but that it is the best part. As Martha Nussbaum puts it: “It is, as it were, the biggest and brightest jewel in a crown full of valuable jewels, in which each jewel has intrinsical value in itself” (Fragility of Goodness, 374). This allows one to say that other virtuous activities and philia also form parts of eudaimonia while being able to take Aristotle’s priviledging of contemplation in Bk X seriously. See Nussbaum, Fragility, 370-380.

137 See Nicomachean Ethics 1178a25: “The excellence of reason is a thing apart… It (the contemplative life) would seem, however, also to need external equipment but little, or less than moral virtue does” (italics mine). The contemplative needs “equipment” such as leisure, health, books, a study, and he or she especially needs theoretical wisdom (sophia). The active person devoted to “just and brave acts” and the other moral virtues needs a lot more equipment to work with in the way of money, tools, power, infrastructure, materials, and social influence, etc., not to mention practical wisdom (phronesis). These are even more dependent upon the goods of fortune than modest contemplative needs (“for actions many things are needed, and more, the greater and nobler the actions are,” 267). Hence Aristotle’s claim that the contemplative needs “external equipment but little, or less than moral virtue does”.

138 See Martha C Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 343–373.

139 Aristotle et al., The Nicomachean Ethics, 23.

140 Ibid.

141 Ibid., 265.

142 NE 1101a10

143 Aristotle et al., The Nicomachean Ethics, 265.

144 Ibid.

402

145 See Daniel Statman, Virtue Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997), 4– 15.

146 My views here are indebted especially to Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: a Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids, Mich. [u.a.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2005), 141–221.

147 Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford; New York: Clarendon ; Oxford University Press, 2001), 2.

148 Ibid., 25–38.

149 Ibid., 97.

150 Ibid., 94.

151 Nussbaum 330-331.

152 Among Aristotle commentators, Nussbaum argues for 1), T.H. Irwin argues for 3), and Annas says that the textual evidence in Aristotle is inconsistent.

153 Helmut Gollwitzer et al., Dying We Live; the Final Messages and Records of the Resistance. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2009).

154 Foot, Natural Goodness, 96.

155 Ibid., 97.

156 Ibid.

157 Foot, Natural Goodness, 95–96.

158 Ibid.

159 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 167.

160 Ibid., 208.

161 Ibid., 172.

162 On Virtue Ethics: 171, 184, 265: perhaps 232-233, 243.

163 Ibid., 256-257.

164 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 261.

165 Ibid., 258.

166 Ibid., 264. 403

167 Ibid., 265.

168 Ibid.

169 For a thorough treatment of the issues and debates, see Porter, Nature as Reason, 82–124.

170 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 259.

171 See my section on method above.

172 This is not to say that the Christian thinks suffering has no redemptive value; it is simply to say that it makes sense to evade it.

173 William C Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology: True Happiness and the Virtues (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), 253.

174 Ibid., 254.

175 The dying process being an obvious exception to the way this general formula has put the matter. But that is another topic to be dealt with in Chapter 4.

176 See Porter, Nature as Reason, 145–163.

177 I would argue that this specification is the work of theological faith, meaning that what we are dealing with is not a “natural desire for the supernatural,” but rather a general and unspecified natural desire for perfect beatitude which can be supernaturally specified as having the Triune God for its object.

178 See McGrath, 169.

179 See Rudi A. te Velde, “Evil, Sin, and Death: Thomas Aquinas on Original Sin,” in Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Peter Wawrykow, The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 143–166.

180 The last comprehensive Anglophone study of the virtue of hope per se in Aquinas was 29 years ago by Joseph Merkt in Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1983). For overviews of the Thomistic virtue literature, see Jean Porter, “Recent Studies in Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics: A Review Essay,” The Journal of Religious Ethics, 25.2, (1998): 191-215, and Thomas Hibbs, “Interpretations of Aquinas’s Ethics Since Vatican II,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Steven Pope (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2002).

181 For a thorough treatment of these two aspects of grace, see Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thoughth of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. J. Patout Burns, S.J. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971), 41-54.

182182 ST I-II 109.

183 ST I-II.85.1

404

184 ST I-II 109.8.

185 My treatment of natura integra and original justice substantially follows that of Jean-Pierre Torrell, Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought, ed. Serge- Thomas Bonino, trans. Robert Williams, revised by Matthew Levering. Ave Maria, Fla: Sapientia Press, 2009. My overall interpretation of Thomistic grace is massively indebted to that of Joseph Wawrykow’s “Grace,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. R Van Nieuwenhove and J. Wawrkyow. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 192-221.

186 My interpretation of grace and nature is greatly indebted to Jean Porter, Nature as Reason, 378- 400, whose account, along with that of Wawrykow, I substantially follow. Good additional sources are Steven Long, “On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End for Man.” The Thomist 64 (2006): 211-237; and Kevin Staley, “Happiness: The Natural End of Man?” The Thomist 53.2 (1989): 215-234. My goal here is not to adjudicate the nature-grace controversies, but simply say where I stand so as to put my account of grace in context. Influenced by the above thinkers, my view in brief is that to build grace into the definition of nature is to collapse nature into divinity. Besides wrongly making humans naturally deific, such a collapse leaves it unclear what nature Christ assumed in the Incarnation. It also opens up the door for a Jansenist interpretation of the Fall according to which in losing grace, we effectively lose nature. Also, if the natural human end were a graced end, then it would be exceedingly hard to say that how humans were not therefore the same species as anything else that shared a graced end. But this would result in the reductio ad absurdam that humans and angels are the same natural species.

187 ST I-II 113.

188 Ibid., Torrell, 174-178.

189 Ibid.

190 ST I-II 109.8. See also Wawrykow, “Grace,” 193-196.

191 ST I-II 113.2. Aquinas regards this as God’s greatest work, quoting Augustine’s statement that: “the justification of a sinner is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth” because “heaven and earth will pass away, but the salvation and justification of the elect shall endure.”

192 ST I 20.2.

193 ST I-II 110.1.

194 See Wawrykow, “Grace,” 194. Grace does involve the “motions” (motus) of the Holy Spirit, but the representative sense of grace as a “state” refers in Aquinas to habitual grace.

195 ST I-II 110.

196 The infused cardinal virtues are required since the supernatural end exceeds the proportion of the acquired natural virtues, and yet to attain the supernatural end, a life of justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence is nevertheless required. The solution is for God to infuse cardinal virtues analogous to their acquired counterparts, but differing in that they are proportioned to the supernatural end. See ST I-II.110.4.

405

197 ST I-II.113.1.

198 ST 111.1.

199 ST I-II.109.7.

200 ST III.49.3.

201 ST III.47.2., ST III.69.1, 2, 4.

202 ST III.49.1.ob 3., ST III.84.6.

203 See Porter, 156-162.

204 See ST I-II 5.4.

205 When it comes to the enormous variety of grace distinctions which follow, particularly auxilium, operative, and cooperative grace, I closely follow Wawrykow’s “Grace,” 192-218..

206 ST I 22.3.

207 ST I-II.109.9. 208 ST II-II 17.2.

209 See Wawrykow, “’Perseverance’ in 13th-Century Theology: The Augustinian Contribution.” Augustinian Studies 22: 125-40.

210 See John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. 72-115.

211 ST I-II 68.

212 Quoted in Jennifer Herdt, Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 91.

213 In that respect, it parallels forms of co-agency at the natural level such as a duet or a dance in which the success of my act depends upon rather than competes with the act of my partner. This is true even if I am – as in a supernatural act – most emphatically the junior rather than senior partner in the overall suite or movement. See Doyle, The Promise of True Humanism, 54.

214 ST I-II.111.2.

215 Ibid.

216 ST I-II 114.1. See also Wawrykow, Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas, 92-95.

217 ST II-II 21.

406

218 ST I-II.114.2.

219 See Tomasi, Luigi. “Homo Viator: From Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism via the Journey,” in From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism, edited by William H. Swatos and Luigi Tomasi. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002, 1-15.

220 Besides primiary sources, in this section I draw especially upon the following recent treatments of hope in Aquinas: Joseph T. Merkt, Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology a Test Case for a Study of Method and Content in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas, 1983; Charles André Bernard, Théologie de l’ espérance: selon Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1961); Stephan H. Pfurtner and Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther and Aquinas on Salvation, (Sheed and Ward, n.d.); Dominic Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope ([New York?]: Crossroad Pub., 2011). 221 ST II-II 17.1.

222 ST II-II 17.4, 5.

223 See John R Bowlin, Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’s Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 213–218.

224 ST II-II 17.1.

225 See Westberg, Right Practical Reason; Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas.

226 ST II-II.17.2.3.

227 II-II.25.5.2

228 See Merkt, Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology a Test Case for a Study of Method and Content in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas, 250.

229 See Jean-Pierre Torrell and Robert Royal, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Volume 2, Volume 2, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 328.

230 On the hopeful depredations of youth and drunkards, see ST I-II 40.6.

231 See Merkt, Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology a Test Case for a Study of Method and Content in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas, 131–132.

232 ST II-II 17.4.

233 ST II-II 17.3.

234 ST II-II 17.2.

235 ST II-II 18.4.

407

236 See Gerhart B. Ladner, “Homo Viator: Mediaeval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” Speculum 42, no. 2 (April 1, 1967): 233–59, doi:10.2307/2854675; William H Swatos and Luigi Tomasi, From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety (Westport, Conn [u.a.: Praeger, 2002).

237 One representative and ever-popular example of such denigration is found in Thomas a Kempis Imitatio Christi 1.1, 1.17.

238 ST II-II 17.2.

239 My account here is heavily indebted to Joseph Peter Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). See especially 130-134 and 248-250.

240 ST II-II 17.6.

241 Ibid., Wawrykow 206.

242 Joseph Wawrykow has argued that the change was due to Aquinas’ discovery of late writings of Augustine against semi-Pelagian tendencies which “had passed out of theological circulation after the Carolingian period”. 132. Joseph Peter Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 68.

243 ST II-II 17.1, 4, 5.

244 See Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas, 63–67.

245 The sensibility is captured well in a passage by the Carolingian theologian, Paschasius Radbert: “Christ is held by the hand of hope. We hold him and are held. But it is a greater good that we are held by Christ than that we hold him. For we can hold him only so long as we are held by him Josef Pieper, On Hope (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 33.

246 ST II-II 17.1.

247 See Thomas Aquinas, Cyril Vollert, and Richard A. Munkelt, Compendium of Theology (Angelico Press, 2012), 213–232.

248 To resolve this tension Aquinas distinguishes between primary efficient causes and instrumental efficient causes. God is always the primary efficient cause of auxilium. In fact, hope’s reliance upon this is what distinguishes it from magnanimity. Like hope, magnanimity seeks an arduous good. But magnanimity does this “in the hope of obtaining something that is within one’s power,” whereas theological hope regards the arduous good “to be obtained by another’s help.” In this respect Christian beatitude differs sharply from pagan eudaimonia. See ST II-II 17.5.

249 Indeed, the agent’s own supernaturally elevated capacities and actions are themselves instrumental causes through which divine auxilium works as primary efficient cause – a fact which enables merit. The scope of human life with its basic needs, relationships, efforts, and pursuits may therefore not

408

just be ordained to God as final end, but may also be instruments through which God works to move us to that end. See Cessario, “The Theological Virtue of Hope,” 236.

250 See ST I-II 62; 63.3, 4; 64.4.

251 ST II-II

252 Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism, 80–90.

253 For excellent treatments of the distinction, see Guy Mansini, “Duplex Amor and the Structure of Love in Aquinas,” Thomistica (1995): 127-196, and William Mattison, “Movements of Love: A Thomistic Perspective on Agape and Eros,” in Journal of Moral Theology Love. (Pickwick Pubns, 2014), 31–60.

254 ST II-II 23.2

255 ST II-II 23.1.

256 In addition to ST II-II 17.8., see the excellent discussion by William J. Hill in Thomas (William J. Hill, ed and trans ) Aquinas, Hope, 2a2ae. 17-22. Latin Text. English Translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Glossary. ([New York, Blackfriars / McGraw-Hill Book Company,[, n.d.).

257 ST I-II 26.4. In addition to Hill, see See Gallagher, “The Will and Its Acts,” in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas.

258 Ibid.

259 See Cessario, “The Theological Virtue of Hope,” in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 237.

260 My exposition here follows that of William Hill Aquinas, Hope, 2a2ae. 17-22. Latin Text. English Translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Glossary., 138-157.

261 ST I 82.3.

262 Ibid., Hill, 157.

263 See ST 17.7, 8, and Hill 157-158.

264 ST II-II 23.8.

265 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England Bk II, Ch 13.

266 ST I-II 40.7: “in so far as hope regards one through whom something becomes possible to us, love is caused by hope... Because by the very fact that we hope that good will accrue to us through someone, we are moved towards him as to our own good; and thus we begin to love him.”

267 See Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism, 89.

409

268 ST II-II 17.8.

269 ST II-II 23.1.

270 ST I-II.113.4.

271 ST II-II 17.5, 8.

272 For example, fasting or celibacy may be acts of infused temperance proximately and thus bear the “form” of infused temperance. But they are further ordained to charity’s ultimate end of union with God, and so are “in-formed” by charity remotely. See ST II-II 63.4.

273 ST II-II.23.6, 8.

274 ST II-II.17.3.

275 Ephesians 4:24, Vulgate.

276 See Porter, Nature as Reason; Servais Pinckaers, L’Evangile et la morale (Saint-Paul, 1990).

277 ST I-II 111.1, 5.

278 See ST I-II 114.8., and Wawrykow, 92-95.

279 Of course, beatitude and sanctification differ formally, even if not materially, since beatitude regards actualization, perfection, and attainment of the supernatural end, and sanctification regards this process under the aspect of union with the God to whom one is made pleasing. Materially, this is one process; formally, it is regarded from two different aspects.

280 ST I-II 64.4.

281 Ibid.

282 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Postscript: There is Only One Sadness... Not to be Saints,” in Romanus Cessario, Reinhard Hutter, and Matthew Levering, Ressourcement Thomism Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Romanus Cessario, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 366. Nevertheless, Aquinas says the mean of infused does not lead to destruction of nature; e.g., that one should not fast (an act of infused temperance) to point of damaging one’s health, etc. See Porter, Nature as Reason, 162.

283 As I will later explain, John Bowlin is quite wrong to think that hope represents a “Stoic” modification of Aquinas’ generally Aristotelian virtue ethic.

284 ST II-II 20.1.

285 ST II-II 20.3.

410

286 For Aquinas sloth as a cause of despair, see ST II-II 20.4. For Aquinas on sloth generally, see ST II-II 35 and Aquinas, Thomas, Richard J Regan, and Brian Davies, On Evil (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 361–390. For Gregory’s treatment, see Gregory I. ((st) pope.), Morals on the Book of Job, Tr. with Notes and Indices [by J. Bliss]. 3 Vols. [the 3rd in 2 Pt.]., 1850. See also Pieper for a good contemporary discussion of sloth as a gateway to despair in On Hope, 54-60.

287 ST II-II 20.4. See also Pieper, 67-72.

288 ST II-II 21.1.

289 Ibid.

290 Ibid.

291 ST II-II 19. For a Thomistic overview of the gift of fear, see Merkt, Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology a Test Case for a Study of Method and Content in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas, 279–285.

292 ST II-II 19.3.

293 ST II-II 19.4.

294 ST II-II 19.5, 6.

295 ST II-II 19.6.

296 ST II-II 19.9.1.

297 ST II-II 18.4. My interpretation of certitude follows that of G.M. Conlon, “The Certitude of Hope,” in The Thomist 10 (1947): 76-119, 226-252.

298 ST II-II 18.4.

299 ST II-II 19.12.

300 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Section IX, Part I.

301 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract (Courier Dover Publications, 2012), 95.

302 Algernon Charles Swinburne, Selected Poems (D. C. Heath & Company, 1905), 73.

303 See Ourida Mostefai and John T. Scott, Rousseau and “L’Infame”: Religion, Toleration, and Fanaticism in the Age of Enlightenment (Rodopi, 2009), 9.

304 For example, Jeffrey Stout says that Jackson’s theological ethics plumbs the “ethical significance” of Christian claims “with a degree of eloquence and insight uncommon in recent Christian ethical writing” and seems to think Jackson’s critiques of hope are sound and should alter the landscape of Christian theology. See Democracy and Tradition, 256, 336 n. 43. 411

305 Cited in Robert Merrihew Adams, A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 97.

306 Richard Parish, Catholic Particularity in Seventeenth-Century French Writing: “Christianity Is Strange” (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 177.

307 Cited in Adams, A Theory of Virtue, 97.

308 Ibid., Parish.

309 Besides Parish, an excellent treatment of the Quietists is given by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion : With Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 319–355.

310 One of the merits of keeping amor concupiscentiae in our theology is that it acknowledges one’s neediness before the creator and therefore curbs the pharasaical hubris that often lurks behind tacit spiritual elitism of the Quietist, Gnostic, Catharist, or other varieties.

311 See Parish, 170-185.

312 Timothy P Jackson, Love Disconsoled: Meditations on Christian Charity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 30.

313 Ibid., 162.

314 “If there is a proper place for self-love, as the second love commandment implies, then utter loss of self cannot be the essence of agape” (158).

315 Jackson, Love Disconsoled, ix–xii.

316 Ibid., 169.

317 Ibid., 132.

318 Ibid., xii.

319 Ibid., 200.

320 Ibid., 15.

321 Ibid., 23.

322 Ibid., 147.

323 Ibid., 175.

324 Ibid., 174.

412

325 Ibid., 90.

326 Ibid., 20.

327 See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 173.

328 Jackson, 20.

329 See the discussion in Austin and Urmson, Philosophical Papers, 16–19.

330 Jackson writes: “‘Happiness’ is here defined in modern, more or less Kantian, terms and thus is not synonymous with the Greek word ‘eudaimonia,’ usually translated as “good living” or “human flourishing.” For charity as contrasting with virtue rather than constituting it, consider his statement that “Charity entails willing the good, loving others unconditionally; happiness, in contrast, involves doing well, getting what you want” (p. 20, emphasis mine).

331 Ibid., Jackson, 174. He rejects Simone Weil’s total renunciation of self-love and happiness as a hyper-disonsolation more at home among gnostic Cathars than believing Christians

332 Ibid., 129.

333 Ibid., 132, 164, 174, 177-230.

334 Ibid., 197.

335 Ibid., 174.

336 Ibid., 129.

337 Ibid.., 134.

338 Ibid., 137.

339 Ibid., 43.

340 Jackson even asserts that “Dwelling on (the Resurrection) or being dogmatic about it seems a temptation to take the Passion less seriously” (167). Here as elsewhere, the impression created is of the Passion excluding the Resurrection, not of the Passion as leading to it.

341 I for one would find the willingness to persevere in agape even amid such a ruin heroic and admirable, even though I see no justification for believing we inhabit this ruin. 342 Ibid., x.

343 Ibid., 130. Jackson’s “Boethian” characterizations are idiosyncratic to the point of misrepresentation. As with other false comforts, Jackson ascribes belief in immortality to “a consoling, Boethian view of ethics” (130). The victims of this false consolation, Jackson himself insists, include St. Paul and various New Testament writers as well as almost all subsequent Christian tradition (165-169). In effect, we are being told that St. Paul is Boethian, the early Christians, fathers, and martyrs were Boethian, 413

the Nicene Council was Boethian, the major creeds of the Christian East and West, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Reformed, are all Boethian, and that just about Christian who ever lived has been Boethian. But obviously the particular beliefs of Boethius as propounded in his Consolation are not shared by all these groups and traditions which range across a great variety of historical and theological contexts. Even the parts of Boethius’ thought which Jackson condemns as representing the facility of goodness cannot be imputed to this enormous range of Christian churches, creeds, traditions, and individuals. Jackson does not even try to show, for example, that major theologians from Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, to Luther, Calvin, Newman, and Barth, believe in moral invulnerability and the irrelevance of fortune. (Though he worries that Jesus himself may have. See p. 145) Moreover, the sense in which most Christian thinkers have affirmed immortality differs sharply from Boethius. Far from representing the traditional Christian belief in the resurrection, Boethius’ neo-Platonic ensoulment and disembodied afterlife is not even compatible with it. Implying that Christian eschatology is in any meaningful sense Boethian is wildly inaccurate. As a rhetorical strategy, the image of Jackson rescuing Christianity from a Boethian captivity while refusing wholesale Rortian irony casts him as the moderate locating the mean between the extremes. The adjective “Boethian” becomes a rhetorical foil positioned against other extremes to create a via media that grants to Jackson’s account an optics of moderation. But the consolations which Jackson wants to disabuse Christianity from are not specifically Boethian at all, and nothing is gained from the label but a false impression. In the climax of the Nicene Creed, Christians profess “I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” By effectively relabeling and attacking this article of the faith as “Boethian,” Jackson is able to conceal just how radical his project is. It allows him to subvert the historical Christianity of the major ecumenical councils and later confessions while affecting to just rein in a few “Boethian consolations.”

344 Ibid., 130-131.

345 Ibid., 133.

346 Ibid., 30.

347 Ibid., 153.

348 Ibid., 159.

349 Ibid., 160.

350 Ibid.

351 Ibid., 155, 157.

352 Ibid., 170.

353 Ibid., 159.

354 Ibid.

355 Ibid., 30.

414

356 In Thomistic terms, this sinks hope far below the level of a virtue, perhaps putting it below the ladder of action as what Aquinas calls a velleitas: a passing, spontaneous wish which gives rise to no intentions and is not even an object of deliberation. See Gallagher, “The Will and Its Objects,” in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 81.

357 Ibid., Jackson, 167.

358 Ibid., 170.

359 Ibid., 162.

360 Ibid., 167. Jackson warns us to not make “immortality-as-endless-life” into a “motive for charity” (163) and says that “To insist on resurrection as something owed the life of love smacks of trying to strike a lawlike bargain with God” (30).

361 C. S Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 26–27.

362 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Bk 3, Pt 2, Q. 153. I will cover this section below.

363 Jackson rejects the idea that agape is essentially friendship, thereby distancing him from Aquinas’ view of charity as friendship. Yet he does believe that “a cooperative friendship with God” may be “the ideal consummation of love” (81). Moreover, Jackson does depict agape “as participation in the life of God” (163), and the broader point of both Lewis and Aquinas is that the beatific vision is precisely that “participation” in a consummated and more perfect form rather than an end distinct from the participation.

364 Note that Jackson himself believes the desire to share in the life of God and have God be with us is perfectly compatible with strong agape. Like friendship, Jackson insists that “agape wants communion, to be sure” (82). The desire for communion and fellowship with the divine beloved is thus a motive which Jackson believes is proper to agape rather than alien or mercantile with respect to it. This is precisely the point which Lewis and others make about the desire for the beatific vision as proper to charity. Where Jackson sharply differs is in his belief that “the truly strong agapist is willing to find in the giving and receiving of charity Immanuel enough” (30).

365 Jackson, 163.

366 Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, 43–46.

367 He characterizes belief in the afterlife as no more than the desire for “Literal deathlessness” and “immortality-as-endless-life,” or as belief in “the afterlife” generally rather than as deathlessness and immortality for the sake of a more perfect, unhindered, and consummated relationship with God. See Jackson, 160-166, and especially 167.

368 Ibid, 162, 169.

369 Ibid., 162.

370 Ibid. 415

371 Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, 26–27.

372 Jackson, 163.

373 Ibid., 169.

374 Jackson openly admits that much of the New Testament opposes his views. He thinks St. Paul is his main opponent when it comes to the Resurrection. See Love Disconsoled, 165-169.

375 Ibid., 162, 167.

376 G. E. M Anscombe, Intention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

377 See especially David Allan Hubbard, “Hope in the Old Testament,” Tyndale Bulletin 34 (January 1, 1983): 33–59; See also Ronald E. Clements, “The Messianic Hope in the Old Testament,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, no. 43 (February 1, 1989): 3–19.

378 See William Childs Robinson, “Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews : A Study in the Christian Doctrine of Hope,” Encounter 22, no. 1 (December 1, 1961): 37–51.

379 Jackson, 170.

380 Ibid., 160.

381 See N. T Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 40–79.

382 Jackson, 174.

383 “Dwelling on it or being dogmatic about it (the Resurrection) seems a temptation to take the Passion less seriously” (167). As Jackson handles it, just believing it seems to constitute “dwelling on” and “being dogmatic” about the Resurrection.

384 Ibid., 166.

385 Ibid., 152.

386 Ibid., 165.

387 Ibid, 166.

388 Jackson says that St. Paul was simply mistaken in his claim that: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is vain… If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:14, 19). See Love Disconsoled, 165.

389 Jeffrey Stout, Ethics after Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 186.

416

390 Jackson states: “… we can be supremely confident that an agapic God grants perdurability to the righteous if their ever being loving itself requires this” (170). It is the need to do this rather than the power of God to do this that Jackson doubts, and this is an important difference.

391 Ibid.

392 Ibid., 15.

393 See ST II-II 17.3.

394 Jackson, 169.

395 Ibid.

396 Ibid., 176.

397 Ibid., 159.

398 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Bk 3, Pt 2, Q. 153.

399 Jackson, 173.

400 Ibid., 169-174.

401 Matthew Levering drew my attention to this passage. See his Matthew Levering, The Betrayal of Charity the Sins That Sabotage Divine Love (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2011), 48. Though my overall critique of Jackson differs in important ways from that of Levering, I owe the point about annihilation to him. See 49-50.

402 Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology, 253.

403 Ibid.

404 Ibid., 254.

405 The dying process is an obvious exception to the way this general formula has put the matter. But that is another topic to be dealt with in Chapter 4.

406 ST I-II 2.8.

407 If we truly and finally did “arrive,” we would have attained complete beatitude: what Aquinas calls “the perfect good, which satisfies appetite altogether.” See ST I-II 2.8.

408 Matthew Arnold, cited in Alister E McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2003), 128.

409 Ibid., 129.

417

410 See Dorothy L. Sayers, Further Papers on Dante: His Heirs and His Ancestors (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006), 189.

411 See Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology, 254–256.

412 See the excellent treatment in George Orwell and John Carey, Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 504–506.

413 See Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, N.J.; Cincinnati: Princeton University Press ; Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 105, 133–135, 165, 219.

414 The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, 1904, 340.

415 Orwell and Carey, Essays, 503–510.

416 For instance, see -June 1 1999, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, illustrated edition edition (Vancouver : Seattle: Greystone Books, 1999).

417 Many of these visions have to their credit an ideal of beatitude that is fully social rather than individualistic. They therefore tend to be less repugnant than efforts to slake the desiderium through crass hedonism, avarice, and the like.

418 Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology, 254.

419 ST I-II 4.1.

420 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 6.

421 For an excellent discussion,See Gabriele Taylor, Deadly Vices (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 27–30, 64–66.

422 ST I-II 40.6.

423 On magnanimity and pusillanimity, see ST II-II 129, 133. For an instructive discussion, see Jennifer A. Herdt, Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices, Reprint edition (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2012), 77–80.

424 Dante Alighieri and Mark Musa, The Divine Comedy, Vol. 3: Paradise, Reprint edition (New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1986), 5.

425 Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology, 255–260.

426 Lewis, The Weight of Glory, New edition edition (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), 31.

427 Aquinas wrote that: “Perfect beatitude cannot be attained in this life (but) Since an inherent natural desire is not in vain, we can correctly judge that perfect beatitude is reserved for man after this life.” See Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 86. Lewis took up this so-called “argument from desire”, elaborating it this way: “A baby feels hunger – well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling 418

wants to swim – well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire – well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world”. See -Deckle Edge, Mere Christianity, Revised & Enlarged edition (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2009), 137.

428 Aristotle et al., The Nicomachean Ethics, 265.

429 Ibid., 22.

430 Saint Augustine and F. J. Sheed, Confessions (Second Edition) (Hackett Publishing, 2007), 65.

431 Rousseau, On the Social Contract, 95.

432 ST I-II 69.4.

433 ST I 13.2.

434 Ibid.

435 Aquinas believes that our language of God is neither univocal nor equivocal, but analogous. For it to be univocal, God would have to be a finite being like ourselves. If it were equivocal, we as finite beings could not know or say anything about God. For an extensive treatment of divine predication and analogy, see David B. Burrell, Knowing The Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). 436 ST II-II 17.2.

437 Regarding imperfect and perfect happiness, see Porter, Nature as Reason, 158–162.

438 ST II-II 17.2, 4.

439 As stated in Ch 1, I follow J.L. Ackrill in seeing proximate ends not as instruments to but as constituents in our ultimate end. See J.L. Ackrill, “Aristotle on Eudaimonia,” in Rorty, Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, 18–21.

440 See Sayers, Further Papers on Dante; Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice (Berkeley, Cal.: Apocryphile Press, 2005).

441 Dante, Purgatorio, canto XXXI.

442 ST I-II.11.4.

443 See William Mattison, “Hope,” in Michael W Austin and R. Douglas Geivett, Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2012), 116–119.

444 Aquinas speaks of: “the enjoyment of hope, wherein there is pleasurable conjunction, is not only in respect of apprehension, but also in respect of the faculty or power of obtaining the pleasurable object.” See ST I-II 32.3.

419

445 ST I-II 69.1.

446 Hope may of course give rise not just to joy but to a pining we do not enjoy. Yet the two may be distinguished, and it is the first I am talking about now. As Aquinas says: “Nothing prevents the same thing, in different ways, being the cause of contraries. And so hope, inasmuch as it implies a present appraising of a future good, causes pleasure; whereas, inasmuch as it implies absence of that good, it causes affliction.” See ST I-II 32.3.

447 Orwell and Carey, Essays, 557.

448 Ibid.

449 Ibid., 989.

450 Ibid.

451 See “Breaking News via Seeking Alpha,” accessed June 7, 2014, http://seekingalpha.com/news/70810.

452 Cited in Orwell, Essays, 557.

453 See “Nor Certitude, Nor Peace by Paul J. Griffiths,” First Things, accessed June 7, 2014, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/08/nor-certitude-nor-peace.

454 See Neil Postman and Andrew Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Revised edition (New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books, 2005).

455 In a different but related way Aquinas says that the resurrected saints will have both an aurea or crown indicating their deserved perfect beatitude and an aureole or wreath which indicates the particular quality of their earthly merits. For example, a different aureole will belong to doctors, martyrs, and virgins. He is making a different point from the one I am making now, but what I want to emphasize is that there is a certain continuity to imperfect and perfect happiness. However much the later “transfigures” the former, what is transfigured is not equivocal to what preceded the transfiguring. Aquinas writes: “from the very genus of the act which derives a certain praiseworthiness from its due circumstances, from the habit eliciting it and from its proximate end, and thus is due to it a kind of accidental reward which we call an "aureole.” See ST III Supplementum 96.1.

456 See Walter M. Abbott and Lawrence Shehan, The Documents of Vatican II With Notes and Comments by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Authorities, trans. Joseph Gallagher (America Press, Inc., 2012), 237.

457 ST II-II 69.4.

458 Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism.

459 Stanley Hauerwas and Charles R. Pinches, Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations Modern Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 113–128.

420

460 Bowlin, Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’s Ethics, 213–221.

461 none, The Liturgy of the Hours Volume II - Lent and Easter, Lea edition (New York, NY: Catholic Book Pub Co, 1976), 893.

462 Pieper, On Hope, 41.

463 ST II-II 20.4.

464 ST III 53.1.

465 Happily, such consideratio is in turn a remedy for the creeping onset of sloth: “the more we think about spiritual goods, the more pleasing they become to us, and forthwith sloth dies away” (ST II-II 35.1).

466 See Chapter Four, “Christ the Hopeful Moriens?,” below.

467 ST II-II 20.4. Note that joy (gaudium) is distinct from delight (delectatio) in that the former belongs to the rational and the latter to the sensible appetite. Joy is proper to the will and delight is proper to the passions. As I have said previously, there may be mutually commerce between the two, but the motions themselves are distinct. See Kevin White, “The Passions of the Soul,” in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 110–112.

468 The citation appears in C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Atlantic Publishers & Dist, 2005), 52.

469 As stated in Ch 1, volitional hope may overflow into and stimulate the passions, often giving rise to passions of hope. In addition, the mental reflections which volitional hope gives rise to may also cause passions of hope through mediation of the imagination. So hope in the will is often concurrent with and routinely causes passions of hope. See II-II.25.5.2, and See Merkt, Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology a Test Case for a Study of Method and Content in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas, 250.

470 Cited in William Hazlitt, Table-Talk: Essays on Men and Manners (Grant Richards, 1903), 197.

471 ST II-II 21.1. Pieper is almost alone among Thomistic commentators for treating presumption at any length. See the treatment of presumption by Pieper, On Hope, 65–72..

472 ST II-II 21.4.

473 Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 116.

474 Ibid., 37, 38.

475 See Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 19-21.

476 Ibid., 19.

421

477 Ibid., 30.

478 Ibid, 25.

479 Ibid., 37.

480 Ibid., 31.

481 Jackson, Love Disconsoled, 137.

482 Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 37.

483 See Stout’s comments about how “Democracy… trumpets self-reliance and holds docility in contempt,” in Democracy and Tradition, 25.

484 Ibid., 38.

485 Ibid., 31.

486 Ibid.

487 Ibid., 26.

488 The Emersonian/Augustinian dichotomy runs throughout Ch 1 of Democracy and Tradition. Stout does not explain clearly what he means by “Augustinian,” but certainly he does not just mean strict Augustinians. The label seems used as a convenient catch-all for any and all Christians who believe in Christ’s mediation, the need for the Church, the reality of original sin, and especially the need for grace. In this respect, everyone from Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas to Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey are “Augustinians.” It is in this broad sense that I will use the term for purposes of this section.

489 The point is made throughout Chapter 1 of Democracy and Tradition, where Stout concedes that there are major differences between Augustinian and Emersonian piety, but says we may “discern a bit more common ground” than we “tend to notice.” Charitably interpreted, each side may be seen as “people doing their best to offer appropriate acknowledgment of their dependence. Insofar as they do acknowledge that dependence appropriately, given their own conceptions of the sources of our existence and progress through life, they may be said to exhibit an attitude that is worthy of our respect… We can praise this aspect of character as a virtue for the same reason we can praise the courage, temperance, or wisdom of someone we oppose in battle or debate” (emphasis mine). The reason is that they are exhibiting the same virtue, though they may disagree as to how it is best or most fully expressed. The idea is that Augustinians and Emersonians possess a shared virtue of piety which they bend in different directions. See especially 33- 34.

490 Ibid., 140-161.

491 Ibid., 20.

492 Ibid., 31.

422

493 See Stout, Ethics after Babel, 188.

494 See his comments about the need for the pious to sharply distinguish “just or fitting acknolwedgment” from deferential and undemocratic forms of piety, which as the contrary of the former are thereby implicitly characterized as unjust and unfitting. Making the case that Emerson, Whitman, and his preferred sources do like the virtue of piety, Stout says: “When they denounce piety as a vice, they mean piety as defined in the traditionalist way” (30). Throughout this chapter Augustinian piety is described in such a way that from the canons of Emersonian piety it is precisely a vice.

495 Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Orthodoxy (John Lane Company, 1909), 240.

496 Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 41.

497 Ibid., 25, 37-38.

498 Ibid., 39.

499 Ibid.

500 Ibid., 19.

501 Ibid., 116.

502 Ibid., 33.

503 The phrase “encourages the vice of presumption” is used advisedly. As Stout skillfully narrates, the Emersonian is afoot in majority Christian America. He or she is quite aware of Christian claims about sin and the need for grace, and self-consciously rejects them in the name of self-dependence (25-40). From the Thomistic perspective, this is maximally the sin of presumption itself, and minimally a strong encouragement to presumption.

504 Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem (Harmondsworth, Eng.; New York: Penguin, 1976).

505 “Boston and Other Bishops by Richard John Neuhaus,” First Things, accessed June 7, 2014, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/02/boston-and-other-bishops.

506 Cited in David A. Yamane, The Catholic Church in State Politics: Negotiating Prophetic Demands and Political Realities (Sheed & Ward, 2005), 15.

507 Pieper, On Hope, 68.

508 Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology, 311–318.

509 ST II-II 21.1.

510 See Aquinas, Vollert, and Munkelt, Compendium of Theology.

423

511 Ibid., and ST II-II 17.2.

512 As the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho is beaten, rescued by the Good Samaritan, and then put in the Inn to recuperate, Aquinas follows Augustine and the Venerable Bede in seeing the human race as homo infirmus saved by Christ as the allegorical Good Samaritan. This allegory was made into a cautionary tale against Pelagian rigorism and spiritual elitism. Its message is that the Christian is still homo infirmus: that he or she is “still in the inn, recuperating… through the healing medicine of grace.” See ST I-II. 85 1, and John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 49.

513 ST II-II 21.3.

514 21.4.

515 Jackson, Love Disconsoled, 130–132.

516 Cited in Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free (David C Cook, 2012), 187.

517 ST II-II 21.2.

518 In addition my second chapter, see ST I-II 114. My account is deeply indebted to Joseph Wawrykow account of merit in Joseph Wawrykow, Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas; Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action.

519 ST II-II 28.1.3.

520 ST Supp 93.3.

521 Ibid.

522 See Ch 2, 116-117, above.

523 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Bk 3, Pt 2, Q. 153.

524 See Ch 2, 116-117, above.

525 ST II-II 17.1.

526 ST I-II 40.8.

527 ST II-II 17.1.

528 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford University Press, 2006), 1879.

424

529 Ibid. Scrooge sees one spirit who “who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step,” his chief torment being that he wanted to help her, but “had lost that power forever.” Ibid., 1880.

530 ST II-II 17.3.

531 Charles Williams, Descent into Hell: A Novel (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, n.d.), 27–28.

532 ST II-II 20.4.

533 Acts of justice and charity are distinct from those of hope, but hope for neighbor itself motivates and gives added reasons for performing acts of justice and charity.

534 ST II-II 21.4.

535 Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking, Reprint edition (New York: Touchstone, 2003).

536 Christian Smith and Melina Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Reprint edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2009), 171.

537 Cited by Ross Douthat in http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2009/04/theology-has- consequences/56091/

538 Smith and Denton, Soul Searching, 163–164.

539 Ibid.

540 Ibid., 165.

541 Ibid., Douthat.

542 Cited in J. Jameson, A Glossary to the Obsolete and Unusual Words and Phrases of the Holy Scriptures, in the Authorized English Version (Wertheim and Macintosh, 1850), 29.

543 Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, 46-47.

544 Ibid., Douthat.

545 Ibid.

546 Ibid., 89.

547 Ibid.

548 ST II-II 19.11. 425

549 ST II-II 19.3.

550 ST II-II 19.4.

551 See Daniel Castelo, “The Fear of the Lord as Theological Method,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 2, no. 1 (March 1, 2008): 147–60.

552 Jim Crace, Harvest (Vintage, 2013), 64.

553 Ronald Knox and Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, Pastoral Sermons and Occasional Sermons (Ignatius Press, 2002), 112.

554 For primary sources, see Edmund Burke and Adam Phillips, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Reissue edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, n.d.); Patrick Frierson, Kant: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings, trans. Professor Paul Guyer, 1 edition (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Walter John Hipple Jr, The Beautiful, the Sublime, & the Picturesque: In Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory, 1st Edition edition (Southern Illinois University Press, 1957); Marjorie Hope Nicolson and William Cronon, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, Reprint edition (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997).

555 Ibid., Burke, 53-57.

556 Joseph Addison, Spectator 412, vol. vi, 59.

557 Ibid., Burke, 54.

558 Nicolson and Cronon, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, 271-324.

559 Obviously not all sources of fear are good, and not all instances of fear are good. My claim is only that some sources and experiences of fear are good.

560 The discussion is found in R. Otto and John W. Harvey, The Idea of the Holy, 2 edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958).

561 Ibid., 60–65.

562 Ibid., 31-35, 71-80,

563 Ibid., 52.

564 ST II-II 19.11.

565 ST II-II 19.2.

566 According to Aquinas, wonder is a cause of pleasure (I-II 32.8), and that wonder or amazement is a species of fear (41.4)

426

567 Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Vol. 3., canto 25.

568 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Cosimo, Inc., 2007), 48.

569 Charles Schmidt, The Social Results of Early Christianity (Wm. Isbister, 1889), 328.

570 See Robert Louis Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 2 edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 164–180.

571 Foot, Natural Goodness, 85.

572 Ibid., 95–96.

573 But this tension should not be overstated, for two reasons. First, Aquinas is in my view right that the mean of infused virtue, while it transcends that of acquired virtue, does not abolish the end which acquired virtue is proportioned to. Hence his insistence that while fasting may be an instance of infused rather than acquired temperance, it is wrong to fast to the point of damaging one’s health. His whole view of grace perfecting rather than abolishing nature requires such qualifications generally. Second, sheer finitude means that any happy life involves choices and commitments which exclude other possibilities for a happy life. Consider the choices to become a monk rather than to marry, or to become an artist rather than a politician. Such choices embark one on a way of life which will be happy in a different way from other alternatives, seeking rather different characteristic activities and virtuous pursuits. This is true also of the infused/acquired virtues in the choices they often lead to. See the helpful discussion of the issue in Bonnie Kent, “Habits and Virtues,” in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 123-126.

574 See his helpful discussion in ST I-II 69, 70.

575 As I argued earlier, I do not see such acknowledgements as primary or initial evidence that supernatural virtue contributes to happiness, but I do see it as lesser but valuable corroborating evidence of this claim.

576 ST I-II 5.3, 69.4.

577 Current representative treatments include W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Matthew, Volume I (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1988), Robert Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1982), and Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), William Mattison, III., “The Beatitudes and Moral Theology: A Virtue Ethics Approach”, Theological Studies (forthcoming), and Servais Pinckaers, The Pursuit of Happiness - God’s Way: Living the Beatitudes, Reprint edition (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2011).

578 Concerning the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Aquinas, see M.J. Nicholas, “Les Dons du Saint- Esprit,” in Revue Thomiste 92 (1992):141-153.

579 ST I-II 70.2.

580 ST I-II 108.3. 427

581 ST I-II 18.7.

582 ST I-II 69.4.

583 The case of Tolstoy is discussed along these lines in Orwell and Carey, Essays, 1194.

584 See Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York: Crossroad, n.d.), 12–55.

585 Ibid., McGinn, and Ancius Boethius and Victor Watts, The Consolation of Philosophy (London ; New York: Penguin Classics, 2000); -March 24 1998, The Imitation of Christ, Rev Sub edition (New York: Vintage, 1998).

586 ST I-II 69.2.

587 ST I-II 69.4.

588 Ibid.

589 Augustine and Sheed, Confessions (Second Edition), 65.

590 Bowlin, Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’s Ethics, 12–18.

591 Ibid., 14.

592 Ibid., 216.

593 Ibid., 218.

594 Cited in Jackson, Love Disconsoled, 145.

595 Bowlin, Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’s Ethics, 220.

596 ST I-II 35.1.

597 ST I-II 20.4.

598 Pope Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, trans. and ed. John Henry Parker (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1850), Bk. 13.45.88.

599 ST I-II 20.4.

600 Bowlin, Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’s Ethics, 220.

601 ST I-II 109.9.

428

602 See, for example, his fine explaination of how the comparison of prelapsarian with postlapsarian happiness disposes the agent to not rest content with imperfect happiness, but to desire perfect happiness, in Bowlin, Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’s Ethics, 214-217.

603 ST I-II 20.4.

604 Luke’s Gospel states that in his terrible agony “there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him (ἐνισχύων αὐτὸν)” (Lk 22:43). The Greek ἐνισχύων is sometimes translated as “comforting,” with religious art depicting a consolatory angel providing Christ with much needed solace. But “strengthening” is a much more accurate translation than “comforting,” with its connotations of encouraging and bracing the will to persevere in doing something possible but arduous.

605 See John M. Cooper, "Arisotle on Friendship," in Rorty, Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, 315-339.

606 See Aquinas, Vollert, and Munkelt, Compendium of Theology, 213–232.

607 See Cessario, in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 236.

608 Cited in Legh Richmond, The Fathers of the English Church: Or, A Selection from the Writings of the Reformers and Early Protestant Divines of the Church of England. - (John Hatchard, 1807), 17.

609 These should not be thought of as essentially discrete steps which sequentially follow each other in an act of hope. They will typically overlap and may occur simultaneously. The order is psychological, not necessarily chronological.

610 Mathetes, Epistle to Diognetus 5.

611 Tomasi, “Homo Viator: From Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism via the Journey,” 1-9.

612 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 69–70.

613 See Ladner, “Homo Viator: Medieval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” 233-242.

614 Ladner, “Homo Viator,” 235.

615 For excellent overviews of the topic and its history, see Gerhart B. Ladner, “Homo Viator: Mediaeval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” Speculum 42, 2 (1967): 233–259; and C.S Lewis, Studies in Words (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 214-269.

616 Hope is not essentially about the world, but about the eschaton. Nevertheless, how refers created goods and earthly projects to the eschaton rather than merely withdrawal from them. See Ch 3 above.

617 ST I-II 63.4.

429

618 See for example Josef Pieper, On Hope (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 45-74; Romanus Cessario, "The Theological Virtue of Hope," in The Ethics of Aquinas, 240-243; and Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, “Aquinas on the Vice of Sloth: Three Interpretive Issues,” Thomist 75:1 (2011): 43-64.

619 Ladner, “Homo Viator: Mediaeval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” 250–251.

620 See Stanley B. Marrow, "Kosmos in John," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 64 (2002): 90–102; Richard B Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation : A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 169-181; and Raymond Brown, “The Pater Noster as Eschatological Prayer,” in New Testament Essays. (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co.: 1965): 217-253.

621 Marrow, “Kosmos in John," 95-100.

622 Brown, “The Paternoster as Eschatological Prayer,” 217-225.

623 Tomasi, “Homo Viator: From Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism via the Journey,” 1-9.

624 Mathetes, Epistle to Diognetus 5.

625 Augustine, De Civitate Dei Bk. XIV, Ch. 28.

626 See Ladner, “Homo Viator: Medieval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” 233-242.

627 Aquinas, ST I-II.108.3.4

628 See ST I 114.2, III 41.1; and Episcopal Church, Book of Common Prayer (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2007), 54–60.

629 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy Part II: Purgatory, trans. Mark Musa (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1984), canto 19, p. 133. My interpretation of Dante on worldliness is indebted to Anthony Esolen in Purgatory (New York: Modern Library, 2004), 458.

630 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue 292-298.

631 Ibid., The Parson’s Tale, 390-480, 740-800,

632 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, II, vii, 7-19.

633 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1; Act 5, Scene 4.

634 William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, ed. John Meister et. al. (Westminster John Knox Press, 1968), 110.

635 A good source in Aquinas concerning this topic are the articles on the “divisions of fear” and “worldly fear” in the Treatise on Fear (II-II.19, 2, 3). There Aquinas depicts (inordinate) “worldly love” as the enemy of hope’s love, and consequently “worldly fear” as the opposite of hope’s fear. Elsewhere he describes “the world” qua tempting as: “excessive attachment to the goods of this life” (versus the future 430

life), “worldly riches and fame” (III.41.1), the “ambition for renown and honors,” and 5) “honors, riches, and pleasures” (ST I-II.108.3.4). Undue attachment to such external goods is a nursery of despair: “for the love of those pleasures leads man to have a distaste for spiritual things, and not to hope for them as arduous goods. In this way is despair caused.” (II-II.20.4) Every virtue is a good “stock response” to particular matter; worldliness breaks down hope’s “stock response” by disposing us overmuch to present, this- worldly ends.

636 Ibid.

637 ST II-II 21.1.

638 John Henry Newman, "Temporal Advantages," in Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 1445-1446.

639 Ibid., 1449.

640 Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, trans. Cyril Vollert, and Richard A. Munkelt (Angelico Press, 2012), 314-315.

641 Aquinas, ST II-II 20.1.

642 ST II-II 17.1.

643 ST II-II 20.4.

644 Ibid.

645 Ibid.

646 In Thomistic terms, such consummate idolatry consists in putting one’s ultimate end in something other than God. In addition to constituting theological despair, Aquinas would also regard it as a grave sin against charity (see ST II-II 24.12).

647 Aquinas was therefore quite right to see sloth or acedia as the characteristic cause of depair. He calls it the “sorrow of the world” (II-II 35.3) and regards it as the precursor to the full abandonment of hope (II-II 20.4).

648 Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald, The Odyssey (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998), Bk IX 94-97, p. 148.

649 See Pope Gregory the Great, Moralia VIII, 54, 92, and Registrum Epistolarum IX, 217; and Augustine Sermo xiv, 4, 6, Sermo, Lxxx, 7 and Tractatus in Johannem XL, 10. 650 What in English is called “worldliness” corresponds to what Thomas calls “amor mundanus:” the “worldly love… whereby a man trusts in the world as his end, so that worldly love is always evil” (ST II-II 19.3). Such love is for “worldly goods” (bona mundi): that is, “external goods” (bona exteriora [ST II- II.19.2]) which consist of four things: i) wealth, ii) honor, iii) fame and glory, and by extension iv) power (I-II.2.4.). Elsewhere Aquinas speaks in more general terms of the temptations of the world as excessive attachment to the following: “the goods of this life” (i.e., versus the future life), “worldly riches and fame” 431

(III.41.1), the “ambition for renown and honors” (III.41.1), and 5) “honors, riches, and pleasures” (ST I- II.108.3.4).

651 ST 118.2, and Disputed Questions on Evil XIII.1. and ad 6, XXXI.2.

652 See for instance Dante, The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno, Canto VII.

653 On the seductive pursuit of power as its own end leading to unbridled libido dominandi, see Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Bk II.

654 Aquinas, ST II-II 162.2., II-II 162.4.

655 See ST II-II 130-132, II-II 132.4.

656 See Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 61-68.

657 Obviously these worldly ends are mutually reinforcing and typically overlap. The distinction sought in fame and honors goes in tandem with avarice and its pricy, high end, name-brand lifestyle. Likewise, the avaricious typically do not just want money and possessions but the atmosphere of success, prestige, and glamor that go with them. So while we may analytically dissect different temptations of “the world,” they tend to overlap in the concrete.

658 My account of consumerism is indebted to Benjamin R. Barber, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), especially 3-37, 81-212; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Post-War America (New York: Knopf, 2003); and David Cloutier, “The Problem of Luxury in the Christian Life,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 32, 1 (2012): 3-20.

659 Since multinational corporations owe allegiance to no country, citizenry, or people, it is very difficult for citizens of any particular country to hold them directly accountable, and citizens have little or no influence on the international bureaucracracies which exercise corporate oversight. Widespread boycotting, petitions with signatories in the hundreds of thousands, and media shaming still have a lot of clout, but have been too seldom used to effect much change. See Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, “Transnational Corporations and Public Accountability,” Government and Opposition 39, no. 2 (April 1, 2004): 234–59.

660 On the need to both appeal to and increase greed and vainglory in consumers, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Post-War America (New York: Knopf, 2003), 112-165. On “costly emblems of lifestyle,” see Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 225, 291-294; and David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 15-21.

661 Ronald D. Michman and Edward M. Magee, The Affluent Consumer: Marketing and Selling the Luxury Lifestyle (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 105, 148.

662 Quoted in Cloutier, “The Problem of Luxury,” 13.

432

663 As Pope Gregory the Great says: “when the disturbed heart has lost the satisfaction of joy within, it seeks for sources of consolation without, and is more anxious to possess external goods, the more it has no joy on which to fall back within.” See Morals on the Book of Job, Bk. 13.45.89., trans. John Henry Parker (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1850).

664 See The Book of Common Prayer (The Episcopal Church, 1971), 577.

665 Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, 1429. More generally, see Ladner, “Homo Viator: Mediaeval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” 239–240.

666 Bill Mattison in Nova et Vetera (Vol 11, No 3 [2013]: 829) construes spiritual poverty as a compound of 1) “humility” and as 2) “refusal to seek ultimate comfort in material possessions.” Spiritual poverty as 1) resists pride, arrogance, snobbery, etc. 2) resists avarice, etc. Hence, spiritual poverty is a remedy to worldliness; maybe the chief remedy. As T says, spiritual poverty disengages us from “honors and riches,” voiding both a “proud and puffed up spirit” and the search for “greatness… in external goods” (II-II.19.12). Since the beatitudes are the acts of gifts which makes us “amenable” to the work of their respective infused virtues, and since spiritual poverty is the act of fear, hope’s own gift, this analysis helps unpack just how it is that spiritual poverty makes us “amenable” to hope: i.e., by pushing against that “worldly love” that is so clearly opposed to spiritual poverty, and which tends to a “distaste” for hope’s commitments, main interest, and end.

667 Aquinas, ST I-II 108.3.

668 ST II-II.19.12. See also I-II 69.3, where Aquinas claims that by poverty of spirit “man withdraws from the… pleasures of the world.”

669 ST II-II 19.12.

670 ST II-II 19.12.

671 Aquinas regards literal voluntary poverty as the ideal of spiritual poverty, but not as exhausting all its possibilities. See I-II 69.3 and II-II 19.12.

672 Gregory of Nyssa particularly recommends this practice as an expression of poverty of spirit. See The Lord’s Prayer, The Beatitudes, trans. Hilda C Graef (New York, N.Y: Paulist Press, 1990), 93.

673 See for example Alphonsus Maria de’Liguori, The 12 Steps to Holiness and Salvation, trans. Cornelius J Warren (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books, 1986), 73-91.

674 This is his interpretation of Matthew 24. See Richard Hays, “Scripture-Shaped Community: The Problem of Method in New Testament Ethics.” Interpretation 44 (1990): 53.

675 Augustine, Teaching Christianity: De Doctrina Christiana, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New York: New York City Press, 1996), 101-168.

676 Law, A Serious Call, XVIII, 118.

433

677 What would a lifestyle of simplicity look like today among the middle and upper classes with the means to live luxuriously? Unfortunately this topic is underdeveloped. For excellent and pioneering exceptions, see David Cloutier, “The Problem of Luxury in the Christian Life,” 3-20; and Shannon Hayes, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, (Richmondville, NY: Left to Write Press, 2010). For Metz’s helpful and related distinction between “messianic or bourgeois religion,” see Johann-Baptist Metz and Jurgen Moltmann, Faith and the Future: Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity (Maryknoll, N.Y: SCM Press, 2012).

678 Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, trans. John Ryan (New York, Image Books, 1986), 160.

679 Ibid.

680 To take a contemporary example, Pope Francis has repeatedly sought the poor out personally in unscripted ways and deeply moved people by spending time with the poor in unaffected fellowship. See John Allen, Jr., “Thoughts on Francis as ‘Person of the Year,’” accessed January 10, 2014, http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/thoughts-francis-person-year.

681 Such considerations obviously do not directly address the larger questions of social justice, economic exploitation, and human development which are a central concern of Christian ethics in any age. I have not engaged these at length because my focus is the virtue of hope and associated phenomena. Nevertheless, while poverty of spirit is distinct from the virtues of justice, liberality, humility, and charity, it makes their operation by subverting greed and pomp through its identification and fellowship with the poor.

682 For Augustine’s correlation of poverty of spirit with the gift of fear, see Augustine, The Preaching of St. Augustine, ‘Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,’ ed. Jaroslav (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), 112-116.

683The most recent book on Thomistic hope in English is Dominic Doyle’s The Promise of True Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope. Though in many ways an excellent treatment, it ignores hope’s gift and specific beatitude. Romanus Cessario in “The Theological Virtue of Hope” devotes one sentence to the gift of fear (239) and does not mention spiritual poverty at all. One Thomist commentator who has given attention to poverty of spirit is William Mattison. See his excellent “The Beatitudes and Moral Theology: A Virtue Ethics Approach,” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2013): 819–48, especially 829-830.

684 Besides Ladner, see Thomas a Kempis Imitatio Christi 1.1, 1.17; Ernst Troeltsch and James Luther Adams, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches: 2 Volume Set Vol.I and II, trans. Olive Wyon (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), vol. II, 691-729; Justo L Gonzalez, Story of Christianity: v.1.: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 73- 78, 136-143; The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2 The Reformation to the Present Day by Gonzalez, Justo L. [Harper One,2010] (Paperback) 2nd Edition (Harper,2010, 10AD), 53-60. For Tertullian and Tolstoy, see Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, Some Underlining edition (Harper Torchbooks, n.d.), 49-56.

685 See Ladner, 234-238.

686 Ibid., 252. 434

687 See Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1 (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1984), 53-58, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Frederick Watkins (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 142-155.

688 Rousseau, On the Social Contract, 95.

689 For representative discussions in the literature, see Saul Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,” in Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings, ed. Michael J. Loux (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008); Sydney Shoemaker, “Personal Identity: A Materialist Account,” in Metaphysics: The Big Questions, ed. Peter van Inwagen and Dean W. Zimmerman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008); Peter van Inwagen, Ontology, Identity, and Modality: Essays in Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 144-158; and Michael J. Loux, Nature, Norm, and Psyche: Explorations in Aristotle's Philosophical Psychology (Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore: 2004), 22-40.

690 ST I 75.4.

691 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 172.

692 Orwell and Carey, Essays, 150.

693 ST II-II 101.1.

694 Obviously family and country are not the only sources of individual and social birth and nourishment. But they are representative and serve as convenient book-ends between which we may place the social groups of which we have been a part and to which we are indebted, from one’s town and neighborhood to one’s alma mater and home parish.

695 They may share vast majority of their co-citizens ethical beliefs. But it often takes only a few big differences to cause tensions. Hence the degree of tension may not be pegged to the actual degree of value and practice disparity. This point is important for recognizing the common ground that still exists.

696 See ST II-II 26.6.

697 John Milton, The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors, Principally from the Edition of Thomas Newton, Charles Dunster, and Thomas Warton, to Which Is Prefixed, Newton’s Life of Milton (W. Baxter, 1824), 117.

698 This is not to deny the existence of real martyrs who are persecuted by society. Foot’s Letter Writers would, in my view, fall under this rubric. But ordinary forms of alienation lacking in violence or coercion should not be confused with this state.

699 ST III 40.2.

700 Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 164–183.

701 Charles Wells Moulton, The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors: V. 3 1730-1784 (University of Michigan Library, 2009), 199.

435

702 See ST II-II 33.1.

703 I am indebted here to Jeffrey Stout’s discussion of principled alienation in Democracy and Tradition, 298-300.

704 C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 2nd Printing edition (New York: Mariner Books, 1971), 27–28.

705 Orwell and Carey, Essays, 297.

706 Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, 1 edition (Abingdon Press, 2008), 35.

707 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 Delivered at the Free University of Amsterdam (Kampen, Netherlands: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983), chap. 5; Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 296-300.

708 Alighieri and Musa, The Divine Comedy, Vol. 3, canto xxv, 295–297.

709 Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism, 38.

710 See ibid., 12–16.

711 See ibid., 18–22.

712 Nicholas Boyle, Who Are We Now?: Christian Humanism and the Global Market from Hegel to Heaney (Notre Dame: Univ of Notre Dame Pr, 1999), 86.

713 Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism, 5.

714 Ibid., 124–125.

715 Ibid., 113.

716 Ibid., 115.

717 Dominic Doyle, “The Dialectic Unfolding of the Theological Virtues: “Tayloring” Christian Identity to a Secular Age,” Gregorianum 92 [20111].

718 Ibid., 132.

719 Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism, 126–127.

720 Ibid., 128.

721 In ecclesial terms, Doyle ill-advisedly associates “pessimism” and “optimism” concerning contemporary society with theological conservatism and liberalism, respectively (149-151). But this is a misleading confusion. Many self-identified conservatives or neo-conservatives, such as Michael Novak, George Weigel, and Richard John Neuhaus, are or were social optimists, particularly during the Bush years. 436

By contrast, many self-identified social liberals are deeply pessimistic about the current state of society for reasons such as environmental decay, corporate greed, consumeristic excess, a racist status quo, unjust economic disparity, and political gridlock. As Jeffrey Stout writes: “I take it \for granted that our condition is… bad enough today, surely, to bring a democrat close to despair,” and “Things are very bad indeed” mainly because we have become “corrupted by love of fame, money, and power, and by addiction to the pride and profit that come from dominating other nations economically and militarily” (Democracy and Tradition, 355). Stout insists on the need for hope, but unlike Doyle, he sharply distinguishes it from optimism about the status quo, insisting that hope regards “whether a difference can be made, not whether progress is being made or whether human beings will work it out” (ibid., 58).

722 Ibid., 141.

723 Ibid., 148-149, and 151, respectively.

724 Doyle’s discussion of obstacles to hope gives only one reference to possible social threats to hope. It is the denial of finitude which “an increasingly consumer culture promotes” (114). I fully agree with Doyle, but this solitary social concern, mentioned in passing and without suggesting what hope’s detailed response should be, is the one mote in the sunbeam of Doyle’s consistent social optimism and upbeat social tones.

725 Ibid., 21.

726 Ibid., 39.

727 Consider T.S. Eliot’s 1948 remark that “We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were 50 years ago; and that the evidence of this decline is visible in every department of human activity.” To this pessimistic meta-reading, George Orwell responded not with an optimistic meta-reading, but by suggesting that “This seems true when one thinks of Hollywood films or the atomic bomb, but less true if one thinks of the clothes and architecture of 1898.” The moral as I see it is that optimistic and pessimistic meta-readings are both a bad idea; that our social criticism should be more eclectic and deal with developments more on a case-by-case basis. See Orwell and Carey, Essays, 1346.

728 Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism, 72–95.

729 Ibid., 2.

730 Ibid., 96.

731 Ibid., 98.

732 Ibid., 99.

733 Ibid.

734 See for example, ibid., 2, 5, 38.

735 Ibid., 5. 437

736 Ibid., 102.

737 See Porter, Nature as Reason, 158–162.

738 Ibid., 160.

739 ST I-II 52.1-3.

740 ST I-II 54.2.

741 Dante sees a pageant of angels and apostles processing in front of the Church depicted as a great two-wheeled chariot. Beside the right wheel the thelogical virtues appear as three ladies “in a dance.” Faith and charity take turns leading the dance, but charity alone sings the song from which the dance gets it tempo. Beside the left wheel the cardinal virtues appear as four more ladies “dancing festively” and led by prudence. Re-imagining this in Doyle’s terms, the four ladies representing the cardinal virtues simply vanish from the scene and faith sits the dance out while charity and hope do a private tango. See Purgatorio, canto XXIX.

742 Doyle, The Promise of Christian Humanism, 112.

743 Ibid., 126.

744 ST I-II 17.3.

745 ST I-II 17.4.

746 See Cessario, in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 236.

747 Merkt, Sacra Doctrina and Christian Eschatology a Test Case for a Study of Method and Content in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas, 354.

748 Gaudium et Spes, 39.

749 See Mattison, “Hope,” in Austin and Geivett, Being Good, 122.

750 Ibid.

751 Aquinas, ST II-II 69.4.

752 John E. Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 253.

753 Since I am trying to undermine the appearance of Church/world dualism in this chapter, I have focused more on the good ways in which the hopeful may be related to their homeland. This is not because citizenship is a more important social membership to Christians than the Church, but only because it is the membership I am here concerned to maintain.

754 See John Pollock, Wilberforce (Tring: Chariot Victor Pub, 1986), 51–90. 438

755 Cited in Great Britain Parliament, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (Printed by T.C. Hansard, 1817), 278.

756 Pollock, Wilberforce, 211.

757 Gaudium et Spes, 39.

758 The key claim is this: “For the Platonist, as later for the Cartesian, the soul, preceding all bodily and social existence, must indeed possess and identity prior to all social roles; but for the Catholic Christian, as earlier for the Aristotelian, the body and the soul are not two linked substances. I am my body and my body is social, born to those parents in this community with a specific social identity.” See After Virtue, 172.

759 ST I-II 91.1.

760 I have considered hope’s social stakes in terms of one’s earthly city, but the same relationship obtains for hope’s stake in humanity itself. As embodied and finite beings, hope’s social commitments will typically play out in local settings. But at the same time they will be open to opportunities in global settings

761 Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 59.

762 See Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 2013), 124–135.

763 See Jean Gerson, Selections from "A Deo exivit", "Contra curiositatem studentium" and "De mystica theologia speculativa," Introduced, Edited, Translated and Annotated by Steven E. Ozment (Leiden, Brill: 1969).

764 Cited by Carlos M.N. Eire, "Ars moriendi," in Gordon S. Wakefield, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1983), 21–22.

765 See Christopher P. Vogt, Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 16.

766 -August 8 1998, Spiritualia and Pastoralia: Disputatiuncula de Taedio, Pavore, Tristicia Iesu / Concio de Immensa Dei Misericordia / Modus Orandi Deum / Explanatio ... Volume 70, 74th Revised edition edition (Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 1998), 445.

767 Ibid., 421.

768 Ibid., 415, 421.

769 Ibid., Vogt, Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well, 30–35.

770 Ibid., 36.

771 Ibid., 39-42.

439

772 Ibid., 2-4, 39-42.

773 Ibid., 40..

774 Ibid., 80.

775 Ibid., 8, 56-62, 68-73.

776 Lisa Cahill, “The Art of Dying,” accessed June 23, 2014, http://sojo.net/magazine/2010/06/art- dying; David Cloutier, “The Pressures to Die: Reconceiving the Shape of Christian Life in the Face of Physician-Assisted Suicide.” Growing Old in Christ, Stanley Hauerwas, Carole Stoneking, Keith Meador, David Cloutier, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003) 247-267; Stanley Hauerwas, “Memory, Community, and the Reasons for Living: Reflections on Suicide and Euthanasia, with Richard Bondi,” in The Hauerwas Reader, ed. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 577-595; Gilbert Meilander, “Euthanasia and Christian Vision,” in On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, ed. S. Lammers and A. Verhey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 454-460.

777 In my comprehensive examinations essay, “Killing and Letting Die,” October 11th, 2011 (copy available upon request).

778 Ibid., 97-128.

779 Ibid., 109.

780 Allen Verhey, The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), 9–23.

781 William F. May, “The Right to Die and the Obligation to Care: Allowing to Die, Killing for Mercy, and Suicide,” in Richard L. Purtill, Moral Dilemmas: Readings in Ethics and Social Philosophy (Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth Pub. Co, n.d.), 104.

782 Verhey, The Christian Art of Dying, 59. More generally, see 41-66.

783 Ibid., 85-89.

784 Ibid., 136.

785 Cited in ibid., 89.

786 173-176, 193-197.

787 Ibid., 9.

788 Ibid., 256.

789 Ibid., 269. 440

790 Ibid., 261.

791 Ibid., 277.

792 Ibid., x.

793 Ibid., 333-376.

794 Jackson, Love Disconsoled, 200.

795 See Cessario, “The Theological Virtue of Hope,” in Pope, The Ethics of Aquinas, 236.

796 ST III 75.1.

797 ST III 53.1.

798 ST III 57.1.

799 ST II-II 20.4.

800 Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas, 100.

801 ST III 40.1.

802 ST III 46.4.

803 Aquinas believes that a lot more is done by the cross than moral teaching. He believes the Passion frees us from sin, from the power of the devil, renders satisfaction for the debt of original sin, reconciles us to God, and opens up heaven for us. See ST III 49.1-5.

804 ST III 7.9.

805 Vogt, Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well, 109.

806 ST I-II 67.4.

807 ST III 41.1.

808 ST III 15.10.

809 I am grateful to Joseph Wawrykow for pointing this out to me. See his treatment in “The Theological Virtues,” in Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump, The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, Reprint edition (Place of publication not identified: Oxford University Press, 2014), 287-308.

810 ST II 7.9.

811 Thomas Aquinas, E. M. Atkins, and Thomas Williams, Thomas Aquinas: Disputed Questions on the Virtues (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 222. 441

812 Ibid., 225.

813 ST III 7.5.

814 Christ does not exit the beatific vision to possess the imperfection of hope as a longing for future good. But it is edifying to note that he does not forget but compassionately regards this aspect of hope’s longing, assuring the penitent thief: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43).

815 Vogt, Patience, Compassion, Hope, 2-9.

816 I owe the phrase about not coming to actions “from scratch” to Bill Mattison. But as my first chapter makes abundantly clear, I owe my overall understanding of virtue, habits, perfection, and happiness, to Jean Porter, both through personal instruction and through her written work, especially Nature as Reason.

817 Ira Byock MD, Dying Well, 1 edition (New York, N.Y.: Riverhead Trade, 1998), 10.

818 Daniel Callahan, The Troubled Dream of Life: In Search of a Peaceful Death, 1 edition (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 128.

819 Cited from http://archive.org/stream/aucassinnicolett00bour/aucassinnicolett00bour_djvu.txt

820 Addressing a related point, Newman suggests that heaven itself would be hell, so to speak, to those whose worldly palates would find divine things insipid. See John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 5–13.

821 See Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, 124–135.

822 See ibid., 124. I find the growing and popular practice of making one’s family tree and excellent conduit to the ubi sunt reflection since it concerns not just people of past ages, but one’s own ancestors who prepared the way for oneself.

823 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1.

824 Huizinga, Waning of the Middle Ages, 131

825 Ibid., Shakespeare.

826 Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter, Great Books edition (New York: Penguin, 1999).

827 St. Francis de Sales, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (Westminster John Knox Press, 1968), 111–113.

828 Is this hopeful stress on divine mercy in tension with hope’s gift of fear, especially servile fear? The matter is more nuanced. At certain times and to certain people the well-being of hope may depend more on doses of fear, and at other times on assurances of mercifulness. The complacently presumptuous

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may require a jolt of the former whereas a scrupulous self-hater may require large doses of the latter. As Paul says, some are to be given milk and others are to be given meat (1 Cor 3:2).

829 See Jay Ruud, "I wolde for thy loue dye," in Sandra J. McEntire, Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (Routledge, 2013), 187–189.

830 William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene 1.

831 The qualifier “to the extent” is used advisedly, since obviously examination of conscience and confession may also express and be the acts of other virtues, such as prudence, justice, charity, etc.

832 Another possibility is for Moriens to react not with despair but with presumption. The first corresponds to belief in the gilded afterlife of generic spirituality, where Moriens is assured of “going into the light.” As Elisabeth Kubler-Ross says in Death: The Final Stage of Growth: “When people die, they very simply shed their body, much as a butterfly comes out of its cocoon” (79). The model presupposes either no God or the sort preferred by moralistic therapeutic deism: one who welcomes all the dying without any qualifications “into light, warmth, and peace.” This is the ars moriendi of complacent presumption in intellectually light-weight Gnostic garb. The response of theological hope to it is therefore that which I have already covered in my third chapter. But outright despair is equally possible for the kind of character I will be considering.

833 If the dead are not raised, hedonism is not the only reasonable option. By Aristotelian lights, it is a very foolish and vicious option. But I take St. Paul to be speaking descriptively, not normatively. Disbelief in the afterlife would not make hedonism wise; it just makes it far easier to fall into.

834 Orwell and Carey, Essays, 557.

835 Ibid.

836 T. S. Eliot, The Rock: A Pageant Play (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), Part 1.

837 Aristotle et al., The Nicomachean Ethics, 240.

838 See Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 343–373.

839 Aristotle, 22, 240.

840 Citation in Nussbaum 360, italics mine.

841 Aristotle, 200.

842 Many naturalists, such as the Epicureans and their latter-day heirs, would of course deny that “the problems” which I and the Aristotelians identify with death as problems at all. The Stoics would as well. But for reasons I argued for in the first chapter, I regard the broadly Aristotelian family of philosophical ethics as the best on offer, and as my natural philosophical interlocutor. The larger questions about philosophy of death, and the broader debates between the philosophical camps which they involve, are important but outside my present scope. On the Epicurean, Stoic, and other non-Aristotelian approaches

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to death, see Fred Feldman, “Some Puzzles about the Evil of Death,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. C, No. 2 (April 1991): 205-227.

843 See Callahan, The Troubled Dream of Life, 209-219; and Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, Reprint edition (Carlsbad, Calif: Hay House, 2012), esp. 1-37.

844 ST II-II 20.1.

845 In common with many theologies, I believe in the possibility of purification after death, a point which goes well with virtue ethics’ emphasis on how happiness is internally related to character. Purgatory is a source of contention, and so I have not stressed this point so as to not get carried far afield into debates that pick the old scabs of Catholic-Protestant debates. Yet it is important to make my own position clear to at least be forthcoming. It is summarized in Lumen Gentium as follows: “Until the Lord shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him and death being destroyed, all things are subject to Him, some of His disciples are exiles on earth, some having died are purified, and others are in glory beholding "clearly God Himself triune and one, as He is.” See Lumen Gentium, VII, 49 (emphasis mine). For an interesting recent defense of purgatory by a Protestant philosopher of religion, see Jerry L. Walls, Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

846 ST I-II 4.5.

847 Porter, Nature as Reason, 160.

848 Torrens voluptatis is the Vulgate version of Ps 36:8. Aquinas states that the disembodied beatus enjoys the full intensity of perfect happiness at once, but that he or she does not yet enjoy it in every way appropriate to a rational animal. In other words, one will not become happier after the resurrection, but there will in effect be more a more completed version of oneself to enjoy the happiness. In ST I-II 4.5, Aquinas writes: “separation from the body is said to hold the soul back from tending with all its might to the vision of the Divine Essence. For the soul desires to enjoy God in such a way that the enjoyment also may overflow into the body, as far as possible. And therefore, as long as it enjoys God, without the fellowship of the body, its appetite is at rest in that which it has, in such a way, that it would still wish the body to attain to its share.” See also Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II 4.1-8.

849 ST I-II 63.4.

850 ST I-II 4.8.

851 ST I-II 3.2.

852 See Carlos Leget, “Eschatology,” in Van Nieuwenhove and Wawrykow, The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, 365–385.

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