108. The need for supernatural virtues
108. THE NEED FOR SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES
Why are faith, hope and charity the three greatest things in the world?
. . . man’s happiness is twofold. . . . One is proportionate to human nature . . . which man can obtain by means of his natural principles (powers). The other is a happiness surpassing man’s nature and which man can obtain by the power of God alone, by a kind of participation in the Godhead, about which it is written (2 Pet 1:4) that by Christ we are made partakers of the divine nature. And because such happiness surpasses the capacity of human nature, man’s natural principles which enable him to act well according to his capacity do not suffice to direct man to this same happiness. Hence it is necessary for man to receive from God some additional principles whereby he may be directed to supernatural happiness, even as he is directed to his connatural end by means of his natural principles, albeit not without the divine assistance. Such principles are called theological virtues: first because their object is God, inasmuch as they direct us aright to God; secondly, because they are infused in us by God alone; thirdly, because these virtues are not made known to us save by divine revelation. . . (I-II,62,1).
First, as regards the intellect, man receives certain supernatural principles which are held by means of a divine light. These are the articles of faith. . . . Secondly, the will is directed to this end, both as to the movements of intention, which tends to that end as something attainable—and this pertains to hope—and as to a certain spiritual union whereby the will is, so to speak, transformed into that end—and this belongs to charity (I-II,62,3).
When he distinguishes virtues into natural and supernatural, St. Thomas is not saying that there are or ever were any people who actually lived on the natural level alone, without supernatural virtues or vices. It is a conceptual distinction, not a real one. All men who ever lived have both natural and supernatural dimensions, because all were called, from the beginning, to a relationship with the supernatural God—in fact to be “partakers of the divine nature”. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural is a distinction between two abstract aspects, not two concrete things. It is like the distinction between body and soul. There is no human body without a human soul; a corpse is what once was a human body but no longer is one. And the human soul without the human body is like a ghost: it is not fully human until it receives its human body in the Resurrection. Ghosts and corpses scare us precisely because they are not human.
The four cardinal natural virtues are fertilizer for the spiritual soil in which the three theological virtues are to grow. So even the cardinal virtues are ultimately “theological” in that their ultimate end is God; but the theological virtues are (a) directly and explicitly directed to God, (b) given by God, and (c) revealed by God. (Those are St. Thomas’ three distinctions between the two levels of virtues.)
They are for the whole person, not just a part. (True religion is never a specialty.) Since the intellect and will direct the whole person, including the passions and the acts of the body, these crucial virtues exist in the intellect and will and thus determine and give character to the whole person.
Faith is belief in what God has revealed. Faith is intellectual in the sense that it exists in the intellect; however, its motives are not reasons we discovered by ourselves, but personal trust in God. We believe what God has revealed to us because we trust Him personally, not vice versa.
Hope is our anticipatory union with God. We are already united with Him in hope, as an engaged couple is already married in hope.
Charity is like the marriage itself, and it begins in this life.