170. Virtue and peace
170. VIRTUE AND PEACE
Is virtue our end? Or is it peace? Or is it love?
Virtue is not the last end but the way thereto. But peace is the last end, in a sense, as Augustine says (The City of God). . . .
Since, then, charity causes peace precisely because it is love of God and of our neighbor . . . there is no other virtue except charity whose proper act is peace (II-II,29,4).
Virtue is not our last end, yet its practice is necessary both before and after we attain our last end (which is God, and peace in God) in the real but imperfect way it is attained in this life. Virtue is necessary before this peace because the will to virtue, good will, must exist before repentance for sin can make any sense, and repentance is one of the prerequisites for union with God. It is necessary after peace because faith, which together with repentance is our prerequisite for union with God, necessarily produces good works, the works of virtue: “faith by itself, if it has no works (the works of virtue), is dead” (Jas 2:17).
C. S. Lewis says: “The road to the Promised Land runs past Sinai.” At Mount Sinai God’s chosen people received the world’s most perfect tenfold definition of virtue. It was their road map. It was a means, not an end. The righteous (or self-righteous!) pagan, Platonist or Stoic, says that “virtue is its own reward”; but there are greater rewards than this. No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest confession of failure, (4) repentance, and (5) at least an implicit faith and hope in God as Savior. In that sense, virtue (the acceptance of the demands of virtue) is the way, or an essential part of the way, to the last end. But no one can attain the last end (Heaven) by sufficient virtue, but only by honesty, goodwill, confession, repentance, faith, and hope in God’s forgiveness.
Charity then proceeds from faith and hope because faith and hope let the very life of God, which is charity, into our souls. Our attempts at charity without God, our attempts at charity before faith and hope, all fail because they are based on ourselves and our own false sufficiency and our own righteousness as their foundation and cause. But the charity that comes after faith is God’s own work in and through us, and is part of our own salvation.
The last end is peace, the peace that consists in perfect unity with God and His will.
This last end, this peace, is attained only by charity, which is “the fulfilling of the Law” (Rom 13:10).
Charity transcends mere virtue. Yet once this charity exists, it fulfills all virtue, as the New Law fulfills the Old and as grace fulfills nature. Charity is the heart and soul of all virtue.
Charity to our neighbor is desiring our neighbor’s good; charity to God is rejoicing in God’s good. That means the conformity, submission, and surrender to His good will which is the heart and essence of all true religion. This is the point of the word “Islam”, which means “surrender or submission” to God and His will. But “islam” also means peace (“shalom”), the peace that is the immediate and infallible effect of this surrender. The saints of all religions, despite their theological errors and disagreements, all know this central fact from experience: that “In His will, our peace.”
This peace is not merely the subjective feeling of contentment. It is the objective state of the real attainment of our last end. If we could have a feeling of peace without real peace, it would be worthless: “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace” (Jer 6:14).