“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.” 1
—Edmund Burke
“Liberty can no more exist without virtue than the body can live and move without a soul.” 2
—John Adams
The loss of respect for religious freedom, life, and the boundaries for human sexuality are all symptoms of the loss of virtue. For restoration to occur, we must regain an understanding and appreciation of a virtuous society.
In a surprising twist, after decades of downplaying or even degrading the role of virtue in a stable and healthy society, a number of voices from within the mainstream media have reverted to using virtue-based language. They have come to this realization as the loss of virtue can be seen throughout our nation—whether it be the lack of civility toward others, the lack of respect and disregard for boundaries between the sexes, or the increasing disregard for human life. Christine Emba, a columnist for the Washington Post—hardly a faith-based publication—wrote in November 2018, “Now could be the time to reintroduce virtues such as prudence, temperance, respect, and even love.” 3
Well-known syndicated columnist Cal Thomas added in another column:
In the train wreck of our present culture, we are witnessing the failure over the last 50 years to instruct and discipline our children in ways that as adults they are more likely to embrace the values that can lead to a virtuous life. Why did we expect any other outcome after mostly abandoning those virtues? If you penalize and discourage virtuous things you will get less virtue; conversely, if you subsidize and encourage virtue, you will get more of it.4
This sentiment, expressed by a columnist in the mainstream American media, contains surprising echoes of C. S. Lewis’s words mentioned in the last chapter from The Abolition of Man, where he laments the presence of “men without chests” in society.5 What Lewis was referring to was that without a belief in and the teaching of universal moral laws, we fail to educate the heart and are left with intelligent men who behave like animals, i.e. “men without chests.”
While it is nice to read appeals to classical virtue ethics, there is one reality that lies at the heart of all virtue ethics systems: virtue cannot be the basis of ethics within a relativistic culture. When everyone is left to their own self-determination of what virtue and ethics are, you end up with no virtues at all and all sorts of atrocities can be justified. A manifestation of this was a group of philosophy students at Hamilton College who were reluctant to judge Hitler for murdering six million Jews. “Of course I dislike the Nazis,” one student observed, “but who is to say they are morally wrong?” 6
There must a transcendent, unchanging, and objective source for those virtues or these systems will rapidly degenerate to the utilitarian ethical system we live in today where whatever is useful for providing pleasure or perceived value is ethical. The source for the virtue system on which America was built and to which we must return if we hope to restore our culture is God.
A broad survey of America’s Founders—regardless of their own personal faith and imperfections—shows they understood that faith in God was the foundation for a virtuous society. They appealed to God as a transcendent source of virtue and universal values throughout our nation’s founding documents. This was done most famously in the Declaration of Independence, which includes the well-known words, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
While not all the Founders were virtuous in their behavior, most of them understood the vital role virtue plays in creating and maintaining an ordered society. Signer Benjamin Franklin, whose personal life was not always notably virtuous and whose personal creed is difficult to pin down, nevertheless understood the importance of virtue within a society. He wrote, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” 7 Franklin recognized there is a continuous line from the practice of virtue to a society that allows freedom to flourish. Without virtue, man cannot exercise his unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So, what is virtue? Saint Thomas Aquinas defined moral virtues as “settled dispositions (good habits) of various appetitive powers which incline and allow their possessors to make good moral choices.” 8 Virtuous people are those who have learned to put the needs of others above their own while moderating their behavior in a manner that keeps them from making poor moral choices that would not only negatively impact them, but would impact society, as a whole.
A virtuous society is one in which individuals learn to value personal duty and selflessness. People think about the world in terms of how they, flourishing as individuals, can enhance and support others. Today, however, our society promotes a relentless “all about me” philosophy that celebrates self-indulgence, personal ambition, and self-fulfillment as the ultimate end of human existence. This has led to a diminished appreciation for institutions like marriage and parenthood—both of which require self-sacrifice—and for faith systems that encourage people to adhere to moral standards that may limit or restrict the “free expression” of their appetites.
What are the virtues that for centuries upheld Western societies? While not everyone uses the same terms, traditionally the four cardinal virtues—taken from Plato’s Republic and Saint Augustine—are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. While they placed them in different order, they agreed on what the four cardinal virtues were.
These four virtues, though not explicitly based in Christian theology, have long been understood as being complementary to the fruits of the Spirit listed by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:22–23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (ESV). In addition, the cardinal virtues work in unison with the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity (love).
Scripture is clear that virtues go hand in hand with creedal convictions in the life of the Christian. In 2 Peter 1:4–8, the Apostle Peter says:
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (ESV).
Historically, the Christian church has a robust tradition of integrating the cardinal virtues into this scriptural view of holiness and the human person. Those four virtues—prudence, courage, temperance, and justice—correspond neatly with Christian ideals of human behavior as modeled by Christ and admonished by Scripture. So it is worth studying each of them, both individually and in relation to each other, as we consider what must be present at the core of a virtuous society.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle defined prudence as “the right reason applied to practice.” 9 Prudence was also identified by Plato and Cicero as the first cardinal virtue. Later on, Saint Thomas Aquinas placed prudence as the first cardinal virtue because it is concerned with cognition and intellect. It is the virtue that allows individuals to judge and distinguish between right and wrong in situations they encounter daily.
Prudence requires individuals to seek the counsel of others, as it is impossible for any one person to have perfect knowledge of every possible moral situation. In contemporary language, prudence is the reason for the value people place on having accountability partners who encourage us to think clearly about morality. Such accountability lessens the potential we will fall into sin or error because it helps us look outside of our selfish desires.
In many ways, prudence is the opposite of pride. In a virtuous society, before making decisions, people consult with those who are known to be sound, reliable judges of what is moral and what is not. Everyone who wishes to grow in the virtue of prudence must have these people in their lives. Prudent advisors are individuals who push us to consider the reality of a moral situation more fully; they cannot be people who simply go along with our inclinations and affirm what we already think is true. Part of growing in the virtue of prudence is having the humility to listen to what these individuals have to say—even if it hurts or disappoints us.
Conversely, pride is the epitome of imprudence because the imprudent person cannot bear to hear that he or she may be wrong in desire, thought, or deed. A habit of dismissing counsel simply because it does not affirm what we want to do is a sign of imprudence, which often leads to poorly considered and even vicious decisions. Imprudence, or the inability to perceive and adhere to the good in decision-making, leads us—both as individuals and as a society—to try to justify all sorts of vicious behavior, such as adultery, ethical lapses, anger, and racism, to name just a few.
To illustrate what imprudence looks like in action, we have only to consider the all-too-common situation of a religious leader committing a grievous sin and even embracing a lifestyle of that sin. In many of these situations, these prominent leaders have acted imprudently by having no accountability structures in place. They are often prideful and have surrounded themselves with people who say what they want to hear, rather than with people who will challenge them to think about moral situations differently.
A prudent person is one who is humble, listens to counsel, and then acts accordingly. But prudence is not only active before a decision is made; it affects how a person lives with his decision afterward. If a prudent person realizes he has made a mistake, he accepts responsibility for his actions—including the resulting negative consequences—without complaint. An imprudent person believes he is right in all matters, rejects the counsel of others, and then does whatever he feels is best or “right in his own eyes.” When things go wrong, he tends to blame others rather than accept responsibility for his actions.
Without prudence, we are prone to make snap decisions or say things based on our emotions of the moment, rather than after careful and deliberate thought. We become more prone to think uncritically, fall for demagoguery, or say things that can cause long-term damage to relationships. We do not rely on stable, unchanging standards of reality to evaluate what is true and what is false.
In today’s world of 24/7 news, sound bites, and social media, imprudence tends to be the rule rather than the exception. Imprudence riddles our current political and cultural discourse and leads to irrational anger toward fellow citizens with whom we may disagree. Rather than engaging in reasoned discourse, we resort to blaming our fellow citizens—exacerbating problems rather than solving them. There is perhaps no more urgent time in American history for citizens and leaders to seek the restoration of prudence as a societal virtue.
The next of the cardinal virtues is justice. Aristotle defined justice as a “moral disposition which renders men apt to do just things and which causes them to act justly and to wish what is just.” 10
The concept of imago Dei is a component of the Christian conception of justice, for it is what makes it possible for us to view each individual as having inherent dignity and unalienable rights. If we are all, in fact, created in God’s image, what we believe or think about another person should not affect whether we treat them justly. Father John Hardon, who described justice as the “constant and permanent determination to give everyone his or her rightful due,” perhaps best summarizes this concept.11
Justice can only be present in an unselfish action. Unfortunately, throughout human history and particularly in recent years, it has been twisted by some to be just the opposite. This plays itself out in our culture through constant demands that governments and other institutions must address whatever injustice an individual feels they have received, and, in turn, punish those who they perceive to have perpetuated said “injustice.” But the virtue of justice is not meant to be for us—it is meant to be for others.
In practical terms, we should seek to do just things. Thus, it is justice that inspires us to stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves, such as the innocent child in a woman’s womb who faces the loss of its unalienable right to life. It was justice that inspired millions of Americans to take a stand for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s and for people like Billy Graham to remove the ropes that separated whites from blacks at his crusades. Justice means standing up for the rights of conscience of those compelled by force to violate their unalienable right to religious liberty. It means standing up for those facing persecution for their beliefs. That is the virtue of justice in action.
The third cardinal virtue is fortitude. Fortitude is the strength to choose the good even in the face of difficulty and danger. It allows us to overcome our fears and remain steadfast in our principles despite the obstacles we face. It works in unity with prudence and justice by giving us the strength to do what we have perceived is right.
The virtue of fortitude is active in our lives whenever we face a situation where it is easier to do the wrong thing than to stand strong for what we believe and do the right thing anyway. Fortitude enables us to pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful during those times.
Fortitude can be imagined as the backbone of the other cardinal virtues supporting and holding each of them upright against the gravity of challenges and opposition. It holds up justice, for example, when a person stands up against racial injustice because they know all individuals are created in God’s image. It supports prudence when a person goes against his or her own inclinations to follow the wisdom and advice of a respected accountability partner.
It enables a young woman who is facing an unplanned pregnancy to ignore advice to abort her child and choose life, despite the difficulties and complications this will introduce into her life. It gives a creative professional the strength to adhere to her deeply held beliefs when asked to go against those beliefs by communicating support for something she does not believe is right.
Christ modeled fortitude for us through his willingness to stand up boldly to the Pharisees and other leaders of his time and proclaim God’s Truth. He modeled fortitude when he stood up to Satan and his temptations during his forty days in the desert.
The fourth cardinal virtue is temperance. This virtue is what permits us to moderate our behavior, allowing us to find the proper balance in life by not over-indulging in good things or participating in bad things. While fortitude restrains our fears and provides us with moral and spiritual strength to act boldly, courageously, and rightly, temperance places a natural restraint on our desires and passions. Temperance enables us to keep our emotions in check, to speak carefully, and to withstand the desires of the flesh.
Therefore, temperance is a stabilizing influence. It is temperance that keeps us from responding with anger when we are wronged or feel attacked. It is temperance that gives us the self-discipline to avoid those things tempting us to sin. It is temperance that allows us to remain focused on the needs of others rather than on our self-perceived needs.
It is clear by now how these four virtues, though not explicitly Christian, fit into a Christian vision of holiness. When all four virtues are working in unison through God’s grace, they make it possible for us to adhere to scriptural standards such as being slow to anger, acting unselfishly, standing boldly on conviction, and keeping our desires under control.
For example, a virtuous husband and father puts the emotional and physical needs of his wife and children above his own. A virtuous member of a community treats all people the same, regardless of their position in life, and stands against injustice. A virtuous citizen chooses to stand for what is right—no matter the personal cost—rather than compromise for the sake of personal comfort. A virtuous individual practices restraint, being slow to anger, guarding his tongue, and avoiding those areas that may lead him to destructive behavior.
Ultimately, we cannot have a virtuous society without first returning as people of faith to the practice of these virtues in our own lives. If we do not embody these qualities, if we do not model these virtues—all of which Christ modeled for us—in word and action, then we cannot expect our fellow citizens to do so either.
The road to restoring virtue starts in our own hearts not tomorrow, but today, for the time is urgent and the need is great for a virtuous America. This means as parents, we need to instill these virtues in our children at an early age so they will have a strong sense of right and wrong before they enter a world that tells them that what is right is whatever they feel at the moment. It means we must treat every individual with dignity and respect, regardless of his or her views or station in life. And it means we must exhibit self-control and personal discipline in all areas of our lives.
A virtuous society will be restored by a virtuous people. Let the practice of virtue in our lives be a guiding light for others to follow and ultimately embrace in their own lives. The result will be a spiritual and cultural transformation and an America that is once again a shining city on a hill.