¹ See for example David Heyd, Supererogation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Ch. 1.

² For an example of a more precise specification of the concept, see Heyd, Supererogation, p. 115.

³ Except where otherwise indicated, translations of the Summa Theologiae will be taken from the Blackfriars edition, ed. T. Gilby (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode), 1964–74.

⁴ In the rendering of the New International Version, the text of 1 Cor. 9 reads: ‘25Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; 27but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.’

⁵ Hence he writes: ‘Acts produced by an infused habit, do not cause a habit, but strengthen the already existing habit; just as the remedies of medicine given to a man who is naturally health, do not cause a kind of health, but give new strength to the health he had before.’ (ST 1a2ae. 51. 4), translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger Bros edition, 1947), available at: http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/index.html.

⁶ In another context, Aquinas himself notes this teaching with approval: ‘In children there is a most evident reason for not fasting, both on account of their natural weakness, owing to which they need to take food frequently, and not much at a time, and because they need much nourishment owing to the demands of growth, which results from the residuum of nourishment. Wherefore as long as the stage of growth lasts, which as a rule lasts until they have completed the third period of seven years, they are not bound to keep the Church fasts: and yet it is fitting that even during that time they should exercise themselves in fasting, more or less, in accordance with their age. Nevertheless when some great calamity threatens, even children are commanded to fast, in sign of more severe penance, according to Jonas 3:7, “Let neither men nor beasts … taste anything … nor drink water”’ (ST 2a2ae. 147. 4: Reply to Objection 2, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province). When speaking of the abstinence that is proper to infused temperance, I take it that Aquinas has in mind not only the requirement to fast in preparation for religious festivals, or in the face of potential ‘calamity’, but a general habit, which will govern a person's practice throughout the year.

⁷ The importance of meritoriousness for an account of the supererogatory action is evident in, for example, David Heyd's fourth and final condition for supererogation: an action is supererogatory only if ‘It is done voluntarily for the sake of someone else's good, and is thus meritorious’: Heyd, Supererogation, p. 115. Though I shall not consider the matter further here, it is not clear to me that a supererogatory action needs to be performed ‘for the sake of someone else's good’, and I will not be bound by that restriction here. For Heyd's account of the point, see p. 137.

⁸ In Aquinas's view, the two are also related because the infused moral virtues presuppose caritas, since they require the person to be properly directed to their final end. See ST 1a2ae. 65. 2. Allowing that this is so, we can still distinguish conceptually between the infused moral virtues and charity, and consider their different implications for the relationship between obligation and supererogation, as I am doing here.

⁹ Aquinas notes the practical, rather than simply attitudinal, dimension of neighbour love when he remarks that ‘the love of our neighbour requires that not only should we be our neighbour's well-wishers, but also his well-doers' (ST 2a2ae. 32. 5, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province).

¹⁰ Luke Ch. 10. See too those New Testament passages that compare the New Law with the Old, as in this text: ‘You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, “You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment”. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment’ (Matthew 5: 21–2, New International Version). In so far as neighbour love, construed as Jesus construes it, is at the core of the New Law, this suggests that the requirements of that Law are indeed relatively demanding. It is also worth recalling that as it is, for Aquinas, an infused virtue, caritas cannot be produced by any amount of human effort.

¹¹ John was a sixteenth century Spanish Carmelite friar. He is a key figure in the history of Christian spirituality, and gives classic expression to the idea of the ‘dark night of the soul’.

¹² I am simplifying here. For a fuller account, we would need to recall that there are two nights: a night of the senses, and then a spiritual night, each of which has an active and then a passive phase, though the movement through these phases is not a linear progression, so much as a spiral.

¹³ Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, in The Essential St. John of the Cross: Ascent of Mount Carmel; Dark Night of the Soul; A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ; Twenty Poems by St. John of the Cross, tr. E. Allison Peers (Radford, VA: Wilder Publications, LLC, 2008), p. 390.

¹⁴ Dark Night of the Soul, p. 445.

¹⁵ Dark Night of the Soul, p. 433.

¹⁶ The Living Flame of Love by Saint John of the Cross with his Letters, Poems, and Minor Writings, tr. D. Lewis (London: Thomas Baker, 1919), Commentary on Stanza IV, p. 121. Interestingly, John is here echoing, and inverting, a distinction that Thomas Aquinas draws in his preamble to the Five Ways, a text that John would certainly have known. See ST 1a. 2. 2.

¹⁷ In his essay ‘Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists’, William Alston takes a somewhat different line, suggesting that it is a necessary condition of an agent being obliged to do x that it is metaphysically possible for the agent to do other than x. See his Divine Nature and Human Language (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), Section II [page range: pp. 253–73]. On this account, God as essentially perfectly good is subject to no obligation, whereas the saints will remain subject to obligations, even when their desires have been perfected.

¹⁸ Compare George Mavrodes's remark that: ‘Within some families perhaps … people may for a time pass largely beyond morality and live lives of gift and sacrifice. On those occasions nothing would be lost if the moral concepts and the moral language [of rights and duties] were to disappear’: Mavrodes, ‘Religion and the Queerness of Morality’, reproduced in L. Pojman, ed., Ethical Theory; Classical and Contemporary Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 3^rd edn 1998), p. 656 [page range: pp. 649–56]. Mavrodes infers that ‘Christianity perhaps suggests that morality is not the deepest thing, that it is provisional and transitory…’ On the view I am sketching here, John of the Cross's account of the spiritual life points to just that conclusion.

¹⁹ To put the point in Aquinas's own terms, we can distinguish between a commandment (praeceptum) and a counsel (consilium). Hence he remarks: ‘We must therefore understand the commandments of the New Law to have been given about matters that are necessary to gain the end of eternal bliss, to which end the New Law brings us forthwith: but that the counsels are about matters that render the gaining of this end more assured and expeditious’ (ST 1a2ae. 108. 4, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province). For further discussion of Aquinas's understanding of this distinction, see Heyd, Supererogation, pp. 21–3.

²⁰ See for instance Cottingham's discussion of Erik Wielenberg's attempt to produce such counterparts in his Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

²¹ John Cottingham, Why Believe? (London: Continuum, 2009), p. 153.

²² I am abstracting here from the question of what epistemic conditions a person must satisfy if they are to count as a theist; I am considering whether a person who meets those conditions may be moved to be a theist by moral or practical considerations. In this context, it is worth recalling that on standard accounts, religious faith is voluntary.

²³ Allowing for this point, I take it that the theological goods at which abstinence is aimed will remain invisible from the vantage point of the relevant rule of reason, at least on a view such as Aquinas's; for on his view, we would have no reason to believe in the beatific vision independently of the data of revelation.

²⁴ I am grateful to participants in the Dublin conference for comments on an earlier draft of this paper and especially to David Heyd for some very helpful observations provided in subsequent correspondence. I am also most grateful to Christopher Cowley for extensive and illuminating comment on a draft of this paper.