, which has been reviewed by Reinhard Hütter of Duke University Divinity School (a Lutheran convert to Catholicism on the feast day of Holy Innocents, December 28, 2004). Hütter's review, in Pro Ecclesia (Winter 2006), pp. 134-137, is published online by Théologie morale fondamentale Université de Fribourg .Hütter begins by observing that virtue ethics, once on the margins of (if not completely absent from, Catholic moral theology, Protestant ethics, and moral philosophy), has enjoyed a remarkable comeback in the last two or three decades. "In philosophy," he notes, "this comeback has been associated primarily with Alasdair MacIntyre, but also with G. E. M. Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and Martha Nussbaum; in Protestant ethics, first and foremost with Stanley Hauerwas; and in Catholic moral theology, primarily but not exclusively with students of Thomas Aquinas, such as Romanus Cessario, Servais Pinckaers, and Jean Porter. With the Dominican and Thomist Michael Sherwin, successor of Servais Pinckaers to the chair of fundamental moral theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, an important new voice has joined the conversation."
Not only is By Knowledge & By Love a notable achievement, says Hütter; but it's most remarkable achievement lies in "its penetrating analysis and interpretation of some of the most complex aspects of Aquinas’s moral theology."
Hütter writes:
By way of a sustained reappreciation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics among Protestants and Catholics alike, the centrality for the moral life of virtues in general and the cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, courage, and justice) in particular is by now fairly well established. But should-and indeed can-these virtues play a role in the Christian life proper ? Or does a focus on the virtues encourage a way of life that must ultimately end in absorption with the self’s operation instead of the love of God and neighbor, that is, with self- and works-righteousness ? These concerns, among others, fuel the deep Protestant reservations about virtue ethics, particularly in its Aristotelian version. And indeed, Aristotle’s account of the virtues offers no fully satisfying way to address these theological worries. Only by moving on, via Augustine, and attending to Thomas Aquinas’s comprehensive account of the cardinal and the theological virtues, fully integrated into a psychology of intellect and will, can one address the legitimate Augustinian concern regarding the limits of virtue and the illegitimate Protestant conviction regarding the sheer impossibility if not active harmfulness of virtues in the Christian life. It is precisely here that charity becomes critical and the broader significance of Sherwin’s book obvious. (Emphasis added)I will leave it to readers to follow up on the details of Hütter's analysis of Aquinas' treatment of the virtues for themselves. However, there are two paragraphs of Hütter's review that I find especially provocative in their implications for contemporary moral theology, which I would like to reproduce here for your reading pleasure. Notice especially the import of the first few sentences for those contemporary Catholic ethicists who argue in behalf of a moral theology of "fundamental option," "proportionalism," or some form or other of "situationism" or ethics of subjective "motive":
An influential current in contemporary moral theology, represented most prominently by Josef Fuchs and James Keenan, draws upon a distinction of the late Rahner between the deeper, “transcendental” freedom of a person’s “total self disposal” (option fondamentale) and the “categorical” freedom of practical moral judgment (freedom of choice) to distinguish between the fundamental orientation of a person (goodness) and the person’s concrete moral judgment and actions (rightness). Charity pertains to the first, transcendental level of freedom, while prudential judgment under the law of reason pertains to the second, categorical level. According to these “theologians of moral motivation” (Sherwin’s term), charity operates completely antecedently to and independently of reason, because of the will’s alleged autonomy from the intellect. Hence, a person can have a fundamental orientation to God (charity), that is, completely submit to God on the level of transcendental freedom, and simultaneously commit objectively sinful actions. In short, the theologians of moral motivation stress that wrongness on the categorical level does not undercut goodness on the transcendental level. In a weighty study, Keenan has argued that the late Aquinas’s account of the will and of charity precisely entails such a distinction between goodness and rightness. The particular point of Sherwin’s study is to show systematically in Aquinas’s theology of charity how the intellect and the will are profoundly interdependent, with a structural priority of the intellect over the will. Hence charity, while being in one regard superior to the knowledge of faith, always depends structurally on faith’s knowledge : “For Aquinas, an act of charity is impossible without the knowledge of faith” (162). Furthermore, Sherwin convincingly points out a number of fundamental problems in the program of moral motivation as developed by Fuchs and especially Keenan. I shall mention only the two that strike me as most salient. First, transcendental freedom is wrongly likened to angelic freedom-a perfectly realized freedom, rooted in the non-discursive angelic nature-over against the thoroughly embodied character of human freedom, which is acquired only on the journey of a life increasingly transformed by faith, hope, and charity. Second, if charity does not depend on any prior knowledge, it loses its character as a virtue and turns into “a purely formal willingness to surrender to God and to engage in right action” (206). “Moral goodness, therefore, becomes the result of an ephemeral action disembodied from any storied account of human life and the actions proper to it. It becomes the product of a charity that ceases to be a virtue in any recognizably human way” (224). Sherwin has put his finger on two vital issues that deserve the full attention of the theologians of moral motivation. (Emphasis added)Tantalizing, isn't it? I'm putting this book on my wish list.
While the question of how knowledge and love interrelate is undoubtedly of critical importance for the ongoing discourse of Catholic moral theology, it should not be relegated to a regional discourse. To the contrary, the question is of fundamental importance to Christian theology and ethics across the board. Does charity depend on knowledge and hence on truth? Or is charity thoroughly independent of the questions of knowledge and truth? In a culture of sentimentality and “cheap love,” in which sympathy is quickly offered to all who “mean well” while the question of truth is conveniently bracketed, this is an urgent topic to address. For Augustine, nothing is loved that is not first known, but at the same time our loves profoundly shape our judgments. That this indeed obtains, and why so, is the great achievement of Aquinas’s theology of charity. And Sherwin’s related achievement consists in providing a cogent and illuminating access to this theology-and in making its normative implications stick in regard to the alternative account of the theologians of moral motivation. (Emphasis added)
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