01. Summary
The Christian tradition holds that the very gift of grace initiates an interior transformation. But it can be difficult to see evidence of that transformation in our own lives and the lives of others, and it can be more difficult still to know what it would mean for the process begun in baptism to be brought fulfillment. In this paper, drawing on some fundamental insights from Thomas Aquinas, I offer an account of how the gifts given in grace might become operative and evident in the life of the believer.
02. Key Quotes
“This paper seeks to offer a model of moral transformation . . . of how the gifts given in Baptism can become operative and evident in the life of the believer . . . Aquinas . . . offers us eminently practical advice about how to go about letting God make the gifts given in grace become manifest in our lives.”
“In all cases, the cultivation of the kind of virtue that perfects us simply as human beings, considered as members of this world and apart from grace, seems to involve creating appetites which, when rightly ordered, assist and guide moral deliberation itself.”
“The repetition of acts that correspond to right reason, in Aquinas’s view, train our appetites, and rightly trained appetites in turn assist reason itself . . . Only by making a point of going out of my way to do actively do courageous things can I gradually become the kind of person who habitually recognizes and takes action in situations in which courage is required.”
“ . . . while Aquinas recognizes the [natural] virtues described above as real virtues . . . he does not think that the cultivation of such virtues is the true goal of the Christian moral life. On his view, true virtue, Christian virtue, orders us to a very different kind of action.”
“Aquinas thinks that with grace we receive a new fundamental orientation analogous to the orientation given in the natural law. The divinely given virtue of faith, Aquinas holds, gives us a knowledge of our supernatural good that is akin to the knowledge of our natural fulfillment given in the natural law, and the divinely given virtues of hope and love unite our desire to it.”
“In order to actually conform our lives to the good given in grace, Aquinas held we need appetites that are ordered to our supernatural good in the same way the natural virtues order us to our natural good.”
“When we look into our hearts, most of us, I think it is fair to say, do not find a burning desire to defend the faith, or to practice self-denial as a means of growing closer to God, or etc. . . . If they are already there in all the baptized, why don’t we feel them? . . . Aquinas’s answer is that those desires, while given in grace, are in most of us obscured and covered over by sin. Only by ‘putting on’ the virtues we have been given can we allow them to become operative.”
“Baptism is an invitation and a call, and answering that call initiates the process of ‘putting on’ Christ. But the call must be answered if the process of ‘putting on’ Christ is to be completed.”
“[Aquinas] seems to be encouraging us to commit scripture passages to memory, so as to have them on hand against temptation . . . Those in whom the infused virtue of faith is fully operative continually have scripture texts ready to mind, to use as weapons against the devil. We, in whom the infused virtue of faith is weakly operative, do not . . . Aquinas is clearly recommending that we try to ‘put on’ the divinely given temperance, justice, and other virtues given in baptism.”
“‘Putting on’ the infused moral virtues . . . means consciously making a point of choosing to do the kinds of acts that our Christian faith enables us to recognize as good, often in spite of any felt inclination to do so.”
“ . . . though Aquinas thinks that we receive the virtues of the Christian moral life directly from God in baptism, he also thinks we have to ‘put on’ those virtues in order to use them: we have to do the types of actions characteristic of the virtues given in grace, and for the sake of the order given in grace, even if we do not at first feel the promptings of those virtues intensely enough to be guided by them. By doing such actions we can both push back against the sinful tendencies of the old man and ‘uncover’ the virtues given in grace, eventually allowing those virtues to begin to direct us in their own right.”
. . . “‘putting on’ the virtues given in grace—i.e. doing the acts characteristic of those virtues, even absent any strong desire—can make room for those virtues to become manifest.”
“When we ‘put on’ the virtues given in grace: when we fast, practice acts of poverty, memorize scripture and the like, we push back against the sinful tendencies of the flesh, tendencies that neither the initial gift of grace nor the cultivation of natural virtue remove.”