The Theological Virtues
The theological virtues are three dispositions that God infuses into the soul: faith, hope and charity. They are called “theological”, from the Greek theos (θεός), “God”, and logos (λόγος), “word”: they have God for their origin (he gives them), their motive (he is the reason that grounds them) and their object (he is what they attain). Received with sanctifying grace, they make man capable of living in relation with the Trinity. “Now, therefore, these three remain: faith, hope and charity; but the greatest of the three is charity.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
Virtues that God infuses
A virtue is a stable disposition to act well. Human virtues are acquired by exercise: by dint of just or courageous acts, man takes within himself the bent of the good, and so forms the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. They are called cardinal from the Latin cardo, the hinge of a door, because the whole moral life turns upon them. The theological virtues are not acquired in this way: they attain God himself, who surpasses every created nature, and no exercise could produce them. It is God who places them in the soul, together with sanctifying grace: for this reason they are called infused. They belong to a supernatural order, that is, to the proper life of God, in which he makes man share. “…so that you may become partakers of the divine nature.” 2 Peter 1:4
Three, for the three movements toward God
God is the end that man does not yet possess. To be united to such a good, one must first know it, then tend toward it in the expectation of attaining it, and finally be united to it by love. To these three movements the three virtues correspond: faith knows God, hope desires him, charity loves him and is united to him. Faith comes first, for one neither hopes for nor loves a good one does not know; hope rests upon it; charity crowns them and gives them their fulfilment, ordering them all to God.
A gift received from God
By faith, man holds fast to God and holds true all that he has revealed, because God is truth itself and can neither deceive nor be deceived. It rests on the authority of the one who reveals and attains what it does not see. “faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.” Hebrews 11:1
Faith is a gift that God infuses into the soul together with sanctifying grace. It surpasses the powers of reason left to itself, for it attains truths that the human mind cannot discover on its own. The initiative comes from God, who opens the heart to his word. “No man can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him.” John 6:44 The very act of believing is thus a grace, offered to all and welcomed in freedom. “For by grace you are saved through faith: and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8
Faith and reason
Faith surpasses reason without contradicting it. Reason cannot attain the revealed truths on its own; it recognises nonetheless the signs that make the act of believing reasonable: Christ confirmed his word by works that surpass it. “Believe you not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” John 14:11 The act of believing thus rests on motives that make its reasonableness clear, and remains free.
To believe God and to believe in God
To believe is to hold true what God says because it is he who says it, and to entrust oneself wholly to him. The intellect recognises the revealed truth, and the will, moved by grace, freely consents to it. This adherence is born of hearing the word proclaimed. “Faith then cometh by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ.” Romans 10:17 Abraham is its model: called by God, he sets out toward a land he does not know and entrusts himself to the promise on the sole word of the one who makes it. “By faith he that is called Abraham obeyed to go out into a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing whither he went.” Hebrews 11:8 His trust was counted to him as righteousness. “Abraham believed God: and it was reputed to him unto justice.” Romans 4:3
One does not believe alone. The faith received is that of the Church, which transmits and keeps it through the centuries; the believer makes it his own and professes it with her in the Creed, where the Church says together what she holds from God.
Certain and obscure
Faith joins two traits one would think far apart. It is more certain than any human knowledge, because it rests on God himself, who cannot deceive. It remains nonetheless obscure, for it adheres to what it does not yet see: the believer advances toward God in confidence, without yet seeing him. “We walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7 This obscurity is the state of the traveller still on the way; at the end, faith will be fulfilled in vision. “We see now through a glass in a dark manner: but then face to face.” 1 Corinthians 13:12
A faith that works through charity
Faith receives its full life from charity, which puts it into action. United to the love of God, it is expressed in deeds and bears fruit. “Faith: if it has no works, it is dead in itself.” James 2:17 It is charity that gives it its worth before God. “…but faith that worketh by Charity.” Galatians 5:6
The necessity of faith
Faith is necessary for salvation. It is the beginning of life with God and the foundation of all that follows, for one draws near to him by believing that he is and that he rewards those who seek him. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews 11:6 Christ joined it to baptism as the way of salvation offered to all. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Mark 16:16 Kept and nourished by prayer, the hearing of the word and the sacraments, faith grows throughout life.
An expectation founded on God’s promise
By hope, man desires the Kingdom of heaven and eternal life as his happiness, and awaits it from God with firm confidence. It has its foundation in the victory of Christ over death, who opened heaven to man. “according to his great mercy hath regenerated us unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3 What God has promised, he brings to pass. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he is faithful that hath promised.” Hebrews 10:23 Its certainty is that of a firm confidence: the soul already holds as assured what it still awaits.
A hope of unseen goods
Hope clings to goods still to come, which one does not see: it is in this waiting that it unfolds its strength, and salvation itself is given to us under this mode. “we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why doth he hope for?” Romans 8:24 Hope thus sustains the believer’s journey through time, his eyes fixed on what is promised to him.
A reliance on the grace of God
Man does not attain eternal life by his own strength alone. Hope places its confidence in the help of the Holy Spirit, who quickens the desire for eternal life and leads the soul toward that end. It awaits everything from the goodness of God: pardon, perseverance and the promised happiness. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in faith, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13 This hope extends to others as well: the salvation one awaits from God for oneself, one awaits also for those one loves.
An anchor in trial
Hope holds the soul firm in the midst of trials, for it is fixed in God himself, whom nothing shakes. It is to the soul what the anchor is to the ship. “Which we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm.” Hebrews 6:19 In suffering itself it grows firm. “tribulation worketh patience; And patience trial; and trial hope; And hope confoundeth not.” Romans 5:3-5
The sin against hope
Two opposite errors wound hope. Despair abandons the expectation of salvation, as if God could fail his promise or refuse his pardon. Presumption awaits salvation without God, counting on one’s own strength alone, or awaits it from God without conversion, as if he pardoned one who does not turn to him. Hope holds the right measure: it awaits everything from God, and it labours at it with him.
A love that gives itself
By charity, man loves God above all things, because he is the supreme good, and his neighbour as himself for the love of God. Christ made it the first of all the commandments. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind… Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Matthew 22:37-39 The Greek word rendered by “charity” is agapē (ἀγάπη): the love that gives itself and wills the good of the other for the other’s sake. It gives itself first, freely, expecting nothing in return. “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 It is the love with which God loves us. “God is charity: and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him.” 1 John 4:16
A love poured into the heart
Charity is a gift of God, poured into the heart together with sanctifying grace. It comes from him, who loves first and places in man the power to love him in return. “the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost who is given to us.” Romans 5:5 Man then loves with a love that surpasses him, sharing in the very love with which God loves us. “We love, because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
A friendship with God
This shared love makes man the friend of God. Following Saint Thomas Aquinas, one may say that charity is a friendship: a mutual love, where God gives himself and man responds, admitted into the intimacy of his Lord. Christ said it to his own on the evening of his life. “I will not now call you servants… But I have called you friends, because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.” John 15:15
To love God, to love one’s neighbour
The love of God and the love of neighbour form one single charity, for one loves one’s neighbour for God and in God. The one is the measure and the proof of the other. “he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not?” 1 John 4:20 Christ made it his commandment, to the measure of his own love. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples.” John 13:34-35
Order, and love of enemies
Charity loves every being in God, according to an order: God first, loved above all; then others, each according to the bonds God has woven, leaving out no one. It reaches its furthest point in love of enemies, where it loves the one who does not deserve it, as God loves first. “Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.” Matthew 5:44
The face of charity
Charity takes a concrete face in everyday life. “Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, seeketh not her own… Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 These are the gestures in which the love of God passes into the life of man.
What wounds it, and how it grows
Charity is opposed by hatred of God or neighbour, by the indifference that closes itself to the love received, and by the scandal that turns another away from the good. Grave sin causes it to be lost, breaking the union with God. Faith and hope can nonetheless remain in the soul that has broken with God, unless a direct sin strikes at them, the denial of revealed truth or despair of salvation. But, separated from charity, the faith that remains stays without life and no longer unites to God, as James already said of dead faith. “if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:2 The Council of Trent affirmed this against those who held that in losing grace one always loses faith. Thus one sees why charity is the highest of the three: it alone gives life to the other two.
Living, it is also made to grow: each act of love increases it, throughout life. This is what Paul asks for the Philippians: “that your charity may more and more abound in knowledge and in all understanding.” Philippians 1:9
The virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit
The theological virtues go together with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which tradition names wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of God, and which it reads in Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah. “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” Isaiah 11:2 The virtues dispose man to act under the guidance of his reason enlightened by faith; the gifts make him docile to the motions of the Spirit himself, who then moves him with a readiness that surpasses effort alone. Received with grace and given life by charity, they bring the virtues to their fulfilment.
The form of all the virtues
Charity gives the other virtues their completion and animates them from within, ordering them all toward God. Without it, the greatest works remain empty before him; with it, the smallest act becomes precious. It binds together the whole Christian life. “Above all this, put on charity, which is the bond of perfection.” Colossians 3:14
The greatest, and that which abides
Charity surpasses faith and hope, because it attains God himself and abides when the other two reach their end. In heaven, faith will give way to vision and hope to possession. “Charity never falleth away.” 1 Corinthians 13:8 It is the greatest of the three and the summit of all life with God.