Virtue Reborn by N.T. Wright

Author:N.T. Wright
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 9780281063918
Published: 2011-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

6

Three virtues, nine varieties of fruit, and one body

1

“When ‘the perfect’ comes, then ‘the partial’ will be abolished.” Some of Paul’s hearers might have detected echoes of Aristotle, for whom “perfection,” to teleion, was the goal. Paul is undoubtedly aware of the tradition of pagan moral thought, but he has translated it into a different register. The line comes, of course, from the heart of Paul’s greatest chapter on the greatest virtue, which tells us an enormous amount not only about how he saw that virtue in particular, but about how he understood virtue in general. “We know in part,” he says, “and we prophesy in part,” contrasting the temporary gifts with the permanent virtue of love, “but when ‘the perfect’ comes, then ‘the partial’ will be abolished” (1 Corinthians 13.9–10).

1 Corinthians 13 is one of the best-known passages in all of Paul—partly, I suspect, because many couples still choose to have it read in public at their wedding, though if they reflected on it line by line they might find it quite a daunting challenge:

Love is great-hearted; love is kind,

knows no jealousy, makes no fuss,

is not puffed up, has no shameless ways,

doesn’t force its rightful claim;

doesn’t rage, or bear a grudge,

doesn’t cheer at others’ harm,

rejoices, rather, in the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things;

love hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails . . .

Fair enough to hold before yourselves that astonishing portrait. But don’t imagine that you can just step into it on a cheerful sunny morning and stay there effortlessly forever. The last lines tell their own story: bearing, believing, hoping, enduring, never failing—all these speak of moments, hours, days, and perhaps years when there will be things to bear, things to believe against apparent evidence, things to hope for which are not seen at present, things to endure, things which threaten to make love fail. The phrase “tough love” now sounds hackneyed, a relic of social debates from the day before yesterday. But the love of which Paul speaks is tough. In fact, it’s the toughest thing there is.

The love of which Paul speaks is clearly a virtue.

It is not a “rule” of the sort that is so out of fashion nowadays, imposed in an arbitrary fashion and to be obeyed out of a sense of duty. (We shall discuss the more serious question of proper rules and their relation to virtue later on.)

It is not a “principle,” a generalized rule which a person either obeys or disobeys.

It is not a “prudential maxim based on calculated effects”; though it has to be said that if even a few more people lived in the way Paul describes, a lot more people would be a lot more happy.

Nor, especially, is it the result of people “doing what comes naturally.” At every single point in Paul’s catalogue of what love does, and what love doesn’t do, we want to say, “Yes, I see what you mean. However, left to my own inclinations, I would be small-minded, unkind, jealous, fussy, puffed up, shameless, and so on.

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