I’ve been talking to my longtime friend who teaches at Shalem, a college in Jerusalem grounded in the defining ideas of the Western and Jewish traditions. I’ve wanted to understand better how the virtue tradition is taught in a classical Jewish context—what the language is, how it is summarized, how to incorporate it in a course Christopher Perrin and I teach on the subject called The Architecture of Happiness.  I’m not sure yet but it seems that Judaism is allergic to dogma surrounding virtue, though it is full of virtue contemplation and action.  I’m wondering if it has anything to do with the end of Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation” where the respectable Mrs. Turpin has a vision of heaven and sees the other respectable people in this parade this way: “They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away”.  

What is it about virtue that must be learned and then has to be burned away? Have you, like me, struggled with the ambivalence of the question of human excellence or virtue? Here’s how the problem works for me: Humans have always valued excellence, and we’ve called this virtue. The cardinal virtues in pagan society are the breadcrumbs in this long leaning toward goodness built into the human heart and conscience and codes of behavior. Some have argued that this is simply expedient because it prevents us from destroying each other. Others think that we are fashioned to mirror our Creator; our creatureliness is shaped like clay around a mold, and we thus have a conscience with a dao written on it. (I will grant that the probity of Ruby Turpin is not the same thing as virtue and so does Marilynne Robinson).

I’ve been talking to my longtime friend who teaches at Shalem, a college in Jerusalem grounded in the defining ideas of the Western and Jewish traditions. I’ve wanted to understand better how the virtue tradition is taught in a classical Jewish context—what the language is, how it is summarized, how to incorporate it in a course Christopher Perrin and I teach on the subject called The Architecture of Happiness. I’m not sure yet, but it seems that Judaism is allergic to dogma surrounding virtue, though it is full of virtue contemplation and action. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with the end of Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation,” in which the respectable Mrs. Turpin has a vision of heaven and sees the other respectable people in this parade in this way: “They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away”. 

What is it about virtue that must be learned and then has to be burned away? Have you, like me, struggled with the ambivalence of the question of human excellence or virtue? Here’s how the problem works for me: Humans have always valued excellence, and we’ve called this virtue. The cardinal virtues in pagan society are the breadcrumbs in this long leaning toward goodness built into the human heart and conscience and codes of behavior. Some have argued that this is simply expedient because it prevents us from destroying each other. Others think that we are fashioned to mirror our Creator; our creatureliness is shaped like clay around a mold, and we thus have a conscience with a dao written on it. (I will grant that the probity of Ruby Turpin is not the same thing as virtue and so does Marilynne Robinson.)

The cardinal virtues have been admired by all, including the Romans. And you might call them pagan virtues (not to deride them but to show their ubiquity in human life): prudence that seeks to know reality, justice that orders reality to give all their due, temperance that curbs the passions to do these things with proper measure, and fortitude that spurs us toward these things with courage. These goods are basic to all the old stories, heroes, heroines, and social codes. We differ on what is just but not on the need for justice. 

In this pursuit of understanding how human excellence and degradation fit together with Christian excellence, we might also face the problem of moral luck and moral damage. In our striving toward goodness, we encounter conditions that damage our excellence for which we are not entirely or even partially responsible, experiences that influence and circumstances that overwhelm our integrity. We might include such disasters as disability, abuse, poverty, poor parenting, and ill health as examples of such experiences and circumstances. And what do we do with this if we view virtue simply as a ladder to climb and find in ourselves the smugness or self-satisfaction that naturally attends this view? In myself and in many of the great novelists, this circumstance creates ambivalence toward the situation of virtue. Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky (his stars in Crime and Punishment are a murderer and a prostitute), and Marilynne Robinson all engage this tension. 

The Beatitudes are where this thinking about happiness and virtue converge for the Christian. They are the healing of our disordered thirst for power. They are the way that our faith answers the question of power that this conference is posing. They are the place where heaven and earth meet, and they are utterly mysterious. 

I spent a long time groping to understand how the Beatitudes are the reconciliation of the virtue tradition, how human excellence might arrive at this place where we can say, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, / that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71 [ESV]) or “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! / Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8 [ESV]). What is it that leads us to take refuge not in our wealth and strength but in our poverty of spirit, in our hunger and thirst, in our mourning? How do we let go of what we thought we came for? How do we look at the world—its pain, grief, delight, hunger, and hope—with God’s eyes and be able to stay with the mysteriousness of Christ’s presence rather than create an accessible but false picture to hang on to? This is what the Beatitudes have compressed into their enigmatic poetry. 

The Beatitudes assume that we are because God is, and in this is radical dependence. To be fully ourselves, to become fully human, is to grow in our awareness of God. When we have illusions of strength or control, when we forget our need for God or forget God, we are fantasizing. Being at the mercy of others undoes these illusions, these passions that grip our lives. They are the healing of our thirst for power; they are the place where heaven and earth meet. Refuge is the blessing. Whatever leads us that way, and overcomes our reflexive rest in wealth, strength, and invulnerability, saves us. 

Christ did not save the world from suffering. But scripture identifies him with the sufferer, with the least. How we react to the crucified Christ judges us. The very thing that might help us, the Theophany or God-revelation, comes to us so often in a difficult guise, such as an illegitimate child. But if we curse every blessing that holds a grain of difficulty such that our entire disposition and way of life becomes opposed to the Crucified One, what appeal would heaven, guarded by a cross, hold for us (from Timothy Patitsas)? Marilynne Robinson, our living sister in Christ, through John Ames in the novel Gilead, teaches us what the Beatitudinal life is: The capacity to bless and be blessed out of our poverty. If we are poor, we are closer to knowing and giving blessing.

Yes, we must habitually learn to practice the cardinal and Christian virtues. Then we must unlearn them in the Beatitudes so that we can enter the kingdom of heaven. In our course, we teach philosophy to give categories then we teach stories to complicate them and show how wise our Jewish brothers and sisters are to complicate the subject of virtue still further to never be caught feeling self-satisfied on the subject. It is almost the end of education. 

Christine Perrin, Classical Academic Press

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