The theological and cardinal virtues
Nov 13 '02
The Bottom Line Looks at the theological and cardinal virtues.
The theological virtues are “the foundation of Christian moral activity” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 498) and they are infused into our soul by God and enable us to attain the cardinal virtues; we are not able to practice the theological virtues to acquire them. The three virtues, faith, hope, and charity, are something that we all need and they are supernatural. The theological virtues are what make the cardinal virtues possible for us because they are rooted in love and when we put them to use we are expressing our love to God. The theological virtues are the three-fold form of the trinification in our soul. The theological virtues are what trinify the cardinal virtues.
Of the three theological virtues, faith gives us a new goal; charity gives us a new motive; and hope gives us a new power. To begin with, faith is the virtue in which we believe in God and everything that he has taught us. Faith can sometimes not fully unite the believer to Christ if it is deprived of hope and love, and this also does not make the believer a living member of his Body. Faith also means belief when it is regarded as a virtue. Faith is when you can hold onto things that your senses once accepted despite your changing moods. Faith is a necessary virtue unless you are “able to teach your moods ‘where they get off’ you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion” (Lewis 125).
Hope is the second of the three theological virtues. It is the virtue in which we desire the kingdom of heaven as happiness; for us, heaven is a promised land. We as Christians put our trust into Christ’s promises and we realize that our power is not going to get us anywhere, but the help of the Holy Spirit will. God put the idea to aspire to happiness into the heart of each man and that is where the virtue of hope comes into play. Hope keeps man from becoming discouraged by things. In Mere Christianity Lewis talks about the three ways of dealing with the fact that there is something, which is grasped, in the first moments of learning that just fades away in reality. The two wrong ways are the Fool’s Way, in which the blame is placed on things themselves, and the Way of the Disillusioned “Sensible Man” in which the man settles down, does not expect too much and represses part of himself.
The third way, which is the right way, is the Christian Way. Lewis stated, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists” (Lewis 121). If a person feels desire that no experience can satisfy, then he was made for another world.
The third theological virtue is Charity. “Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 501). In the Christian sense charity means Love. Charity is not an emotion rather it is a state of the will. This state of the will is something we have naturally about ourselves and we must learn to have it about other people. When we can love each other we are imitating the love of Jesus. When you can act, as you love someone you will sooner or later come to love that person, but when you injure someone you dislike you will begin to dislike them even more.
The three theological virtues are a very important part of learning about Christianity. They are what make the cardinal virtues possible for us because they are rooted in Love. Each of us has a need for the theological virtues, but they are all supernatural. Each of the theological virtues trinifies our soul. Faith, hope and charity are infused into us and they are of the three-fold form.
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