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Aquinas and Hauerwas on the Religious and the Secular
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
This essay supports William Cavanaugh's thesis in The Myth of Religious Violence that the distinction between the “religious” and the “secular” is arbitrary. This essay also accepts the claim that this arbitrary distinction can be used to form unhelpful inversely-valued dichotomies for the sake of ideological or sectarian ends. However, the current essay seeks to show that this binary goes in the opposite direction as well. Sectarian outlooks of various kinds also postulate a strict and inversely valued dichotomy between the believing community and the world, where the former is the locus of truth and life and the latter, falsehood and death. Instead of this model of ethics, I commend an approach that upholds the prospect of concord between the believing community and the world, of the religious and the secular, even if these are somewhat inevitably arbitrary categories. In this approach, religious and civil loyalties are not pitted against each other, but rather exist on a continuum of provenance and perfection.
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References
1 Cavanaugh, William, The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Locating the origin of the debate is obviously somewhat arbitrary. The debate with which this essay is concerned can be traced back to Johnson's, William Hallock The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1916)Google Scholar. Important subsequent works which develop the debate in the modern American context include but are not limited to the following: Machen, J. Gresham, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1923)Google Scholar; Niebuhr, H. Richard, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1951)Google Scholar; Yoder, John Howard, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972)Google Scholar; Hauerwas, Stanley, The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Stout, Jeffrey, Ethics after Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1988)Google Scholar; The debate is not limited to Christian compatibility with liberal democracy. Indeed, the Muslim world has had to face the question with increasing urgency particularly in the post 9/11 context. See Ramadan, Tariq, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Aslan, Reza, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (New York: Random House, 2006)Google Scholar.
3 Niebuhr, H. Richard, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1951Google Scholar). For an up to date critique of this groundbreaking study, see Carson, D.A., Christ and Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008)Google Scholar.
4 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 48–55.
5 In my view, Carson is right to attribute this position to Hauerwas. See Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited, 13–15.
6 Gustafson, James, “The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church and the University” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society 40 (1985), 84–94Google Scholar. For Hauerwas's response see “Why the ‘Sectarian Temptation’ is a Misrepresentation: A Response to James Gustafson” in Berkman, John and Cartwright, Michael eds., The Hauerwas Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 90–110Google Scholar.
7 Hauerwas, Stanley and Pinches, Charles, Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997)Google Scholar. The earlier version authored by Hauerwas is titled “The Difference of Virtue and the Difference it Makes,” Modern Theology 9, no. 3 (July 1993)Google Scholar. In what follows I reference the pagination from “Courage Exemplified,” in Berkman, John and Cartwright, Michael eds., The Hauerwas Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 287–306Google Scholar.
8 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, “Citizenship and Armed Civic Virtue: Some Questions on the Commitment to Public Life,” in Community in America: The Challenge of Habits of the Heart, ed. Reynolds, Charles H. and Norman, Ralph (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 50Google Scholar. Cited in Hauerwas, Courage Exemplefied, 288.
9 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 288.
10 Elshtain, Citizenship and Armed Civic Virtue, 51; Cited in Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 289.
11 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 289.
12 Ibid., 290.
13 Fortitude and courage are synonymous throughout.
14 NE 1115a28–1115b5; Cited in Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 293.
15 Yearley, Lee H., Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990Google Scholar).
16 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 294. Their italics.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 296.
19 Ibid., 297.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Summ. Theo. IIa IIae 123. 4; Cited in Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 298.
23 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 298. Their italics.
24 Summ. Theo. IIa IIae 123. 5; Cited in Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 298.
25 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 299.
26 Ibid., 300.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 301.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 302.
32 Summ. Theo. IIa IIae 123. 5; Cited in Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 303.
33 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 304.
34 Ibid., 303.
35 Ibid., 305. Hauerwas makes a similar argument in “Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group),” in Berkman, John and Cartwright, Michael eds., The Hauerwas Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 519–22Google Scholar.
36 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 294. Their italics.
37 Ibid., 305.
38 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 302.
39 Ibid., 143–44.
40 De virtut. card., a. 2. My translation. Gradus literally translates as “step” or “position.” For more on this topic see Kim, Andrew, “Progress in the Good: A Defense of the Thomistic Unity Thesis,” Journal of Moral Theology 3.1 (January 2014): 147–74.Google Scholar
41 It could be reasonably maintained that a “virtue” which is wholly imperfect is not a virtue at all. I think it is important that Aquinas chooses to include grade 1 virtue in the triplex gradus virtutes. Doing so is consistent with Aquinas's understanding of virtue which is authentic even if imperfect or (wholly imperfect). At the same time, scholars are right to recognize that grade 1 “virtues” are not really virtues since Aquinas explicitly points out that natural dispositions to virtue “do not have the character of virtue, because no one can use virtue badly, according to Augustine; but one can use these inclinations badly and harmfully, if he uses them without discretion.” See De virtut. card., a. 2.
42 For more on Aristotle's account of the human good see Kraut, Richard, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Regarding Aquinas's use of the term see Luke J. Lindon, “The Significance of the term Virtutes Naturalis in the Moral Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (1957): 97–104.
43 De virtut. card., a. 2. My translation. Also see Summ. Theo. Ia IIae q. 65 a. 2. “It is therefore clear from what has been said that only the infused virtues are perfect, and deserve to be called virtues simply: since they direct man well to the ultimate end. But the other virtues, those namely, that are acquired, are virtues in a restricted sense, but not simply, for they direct man well in respect of the last end in some particular genus of action, but not in respect to the last end simply.”
44 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 296.
45 See McKay-Knobel, Angela, “Can Aquinas's Infused and Acquired Virtues Co-Exist in the Christian Life?” Studies in Christian Ethics 23, no. 4 (2010): 381–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mattison, William C. III, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Virtues?” Theological Studies 72 (2011): 558–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently, see Harms, Arielle, “Acquired and Infused Moral Virtue: A Distinction of Ends,” New Blackfriars 75 (2013): 71–87Google Scholar. Harms rightly notices that those who misunderstand Aquinas's account of virtue also tend to misunderstand his view regarding the relationship of the Church to the civil order.
46 Summ. Theo. Ia IIae q. 65 a. 2.
47 De virtut. card. a. 2.
48 Summ. Theo. Ia IIae q. 65 a.1.
49 De virtut. card. a. 3.
50 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 300.
51 IIa IIae q. 125 a. 5. My emphasis.
52 IIa IIae q. 125 a. 5 ad. 3.
53 Hauerwas, Courage Exemplified, 304.
54 Ibid.
55 IIa IIae q. 125 a. 5.
56 Hauerwas, “Why the ‘Sectarian Temptation’ is a Misrepresentation: A Response to James Gustafson,” 105.