Aquinas's Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance

by Matthew Levering

Overview

Matthew Levering offers a biblical and Thomistic portrait of the cardinal virtue of temperance and its allied virtues, in dialogue with an ecumenical range of theologians and scholars.

In Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, Levering argues that Catholic ethics make sense only in light of the biblical worldview that Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom of God by pouring out his spirit. Jesus has made it possible for us to know and obey God’s law for human flourishing as individuals and communities. He has reoriented our lives toward the goal of beatific communion with him in charity, which affects the exercise of the moral virtues that pertain to human flourishing.

Without the context of the inaugurated kingdom, Catholic ethics as traditionally conceived will seem like an effort to find a middle ground between legalistic rigorism and relativistic laxism, which is especially the case with the virtue of temperance, the focus of Levering’s book. After an opening chapter on the eschatological/biblical character of Catholic ethics, the ensuing chapters engage Aquinas’s theology of temperance in the Summa theologiae, which identifies and examines a number of virtues associated with temperance. Levering demonstrates that the theology of temperance is profoundly biblical, and that Aquinas’s theology of temperance relies for its intelligibility upon Christ’s inauguration of the kingdom of God as the graced fulfillment of our created nature. The book develops new vistas for scholars and students interested in moral theology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268106331
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	11/15/2019
Pages:	466
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Matthew Levering is the James N. and Mary D. Perry, Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary and co-director of the Chicago Theological Initiative. He is the author or editor of over fifty-five books, including Mary's Bodily Assumption.

Read an Excerpt

The biblical scholar Reinhard Feldmeier notes that in Greco-Roman literature prior to the New Testament, humility generally has “a negative meaning that lies, depending on the context, somewhere between sycophancy and pusillanimity, servility and shabbiness.” By contrast, Paul gives humility high praise: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves” (Phil 2:3). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus himself begins his Beatitudes by stating, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:3). It might seem, however, that by placing humility under temperance, the lowliest of the four cardinal virtues, Aquinas has failed to appreciate or convey the greatness of humility in the Christian narrative of creation and redemption. Jean Porter comments in this regard that “humility, which plays a secondary role in a doctrinal analysis of the virtues [as exemplified by Aquinas’s approach], is regarded as a leading virtue within monastic and pastoral traditions.” Has Aquinas, by comparison with Paul, Augustine, and the monastic tradition, wrongly humbled humility?

In response to this concern, Servais Pinckaers has observed that the Summa theologiae’s question on humility needs to be read in light of “the two following questions on pride and Adam’s sin, in which…the fundamental importance of humility appears to better advantage.” In his discussion of pride, Aquinas argues that pride should be easy to avoid, since pride is completely irrational for a mortal and finite creature. Yet pride is actually highly difficult for fallen humans to avoid, and pride stimulates the growth of all the other vices in us. The problem consists in our rebellion against creatureliness; we simply do not want to be “subject to God and his rule.” We constantly wish to deny our creaturely dependence, as though there were “a good which is not from God” or as though grace were “given to men for their merits.” Humility is at the center of the moral life because it enables us to embrace our true creatureliness, our “subjection…to God.” The inaugurated kingdom of God belongs to the humble, because only the humble allow God to be King.

The embeddedness of humility within the lowly virtue of temperance, then, should instruct us about the importance of what is lowly. No contemporary theologian has recognized this importance more profoundly than the theologian John Webster. Lowly dependence upon God stands continually at the heart of his thinking. As he says of our stance before God, “Holy reason is mortified reason…. [T]he Spirit of holiness reproves reason’s idolatry, pride, vain curiosity and ambition.” Certainly, for Webster, only God is holy (cf. Mt 19:17). Yet “God’s holiness…is a fellowship-creating holiness,” because God’s holiness is love. God’s holiness creates such fellowship, however, only among those who receive and embrace the Spirit’s humbling. To be human properly is to be humble.

Although Aquinas’s Summa gives a relatively low place to humility, this will mislead only those who do not look for God’s power in what is lowly. The philosopher Julia Annas states that the person who is growing in the virtue of humility undergoes “revisions in her opinions of the respect due to other people” and “development of a different conception of the kind of life she aims at living, the kind of person she now aims to be.” This may sound easy, but in fact, as Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange has observed, “to reach this humility of mind and heart, a profound purification is needed,” which only the Holy Spirit, poured out for the forgiveness of sins, can bring about.

My exploration of the virtue of humility in this chapter turns first to two important essays by John Webster. Grounding himself in Colossians 1, Webster shows that Christ’s inauguration of the kingdom of God through “the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:14) depends upon the spiritual temperance that enables us to embrace our condition of creatureliness. Armed with Webster’s account of human creatureliness, I then examine Aquinas’s treatment of humility and pride. I propose that Aquinas’s understanding of the humble person exemplifies the renewed relational creaturehood that Webster articulates. After surveying Aquinas’s discussion of humility, I set forth Aquinas’s understanding of sinful pride and especially of the sin of Adam (and Eve). For Aquinas and Webster, the eschatological forgiveness of sins and outpouring of the Spirit are concretely manifested in the humble human creature, freed from the original sin of idolatrous pride.

(excerpted from chapter 6)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Aquinas and the Ethics of the Inaugurated Kingdom

2. Shame and Honestas

3. Abstinence and Sobriety

4. Chastity

5. Clemency and Meekness

6. Humility

7. Studiousness

Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"Matthew Levering's study on temperance is an impressive tour through an enormous range of scholarship on the various aspects of this cardinal virtue and its relation to the biblical account of salvation history. Those familiar with Levering's astounding knowledge of theological texts both ancient and modern, and his well-established method of approaching theological topics with careful attention to their treatment in biblical and magisterial sources, will not be disappointed by this latest endeavor. The manner in which the book brings together prominent scholarship in the fields of moral theology, biblical studies, and modern Thomism represents a huge contribution to theological virtue ethics."

Patrick Clark

”Matthew Levering’s Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics is an extraordinary contribution to Thomistic moral theology and will now serve as the 'go to' book on temperance. Levering offers a thoroughly Thomistic account of temperance, which models moral theology robustly informed by eschatology. The book displays a stupendous command of the best and most recent scholarship on Thomistic moral theology, and an extraordinary knowledge of Scripture. Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics is utterly scholastic in its modelling of grace perfecting nature, since it explains temperance as accessible to unaided human reason but also shows how temperance in the life of discipleship to Christ is utterly transformed by God’s grace.

William C. Mattison III

"Matthew Levering examines temperance, a virtue many people might rather avoid than confront. Tempering our daily eating and drinking, our desires, our anger, and more, can seem impossible in contemporary context. Yet by deftly reflecting on scripture and Thomas Aquinas, Levering argues for multiple ways that practicing temperance leads us inexorably toward the kingdom of God."

Jana M. Bennett

”Matthew Levering’s Aquinas's Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance is an extraordinary contribution to Thomistic moral theology and will now serve as the 'go to' book on temperance. The book is utterly scholastic in its modeling of grace perfecting nature, since it explains temperance as accessible to unaided human reason but also shows how temperance in the life of discipleship to Christ is utterly transformed by God’s grace.” —William C. Mattison III, author of Growing in Virtue

"Matthew Levering's study on temperance is an impressive tour through an enormous range of scholarship on the various aspects of this cardinal virtue and its relation to the biblical account of salvation history." —Patrick Clark, author of Perfection in Death

"Matthew Levering examines temperance, a virtue many people might rather avoid than confront. Tempering our daily eating and drinking, our desires, our anger, and more, can seem impossible in contemporary context. Yet by deftly reflecting on scripture and Thomas Aquinas, Levering argues for multiple ways that practicing temperance leads us inexorably toward the kingdom of God." —Jana M. Bennett, author of Aquinas on the Web?

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