The aim of this illuminating book is not only to argue that St Thomas Aquinas thought that pagans could possess virtue, but that he held this view due to his Christian commitments and not in spite of them. Given the secularisation of much of Western society and the degree of interaction of adherents of different religions today, the views of such an authoritative theologian on non-Christians and virtue is of more than historical interest, but has implications for how Christianity relates to much of the contemporary world.
As David Decosimo presents the theological landscape, one might get the impression that there is little unity on these matters. Contemporary Thomism is presented in terms of two opposing camps: ‘hyper-Augustinian Thomism’ and ‘public reason Thomism’. Hyper-Augustinian Thomism plays down the importance of natural acquired virtue and so tends towards suspicion or even rejection of the possibility of true virtue among pagans. Since we live in a post-Fall world and since pagans lack the infused virtues that come by the grace of God and are ordered to eternal supernatural beatitude, man's truest good, then how could any supposed virtues in the absence of the infused virtues be properly ordered to the good in any deep sense? Public reason Thomism, on the other hand, emphasises the goods present in natural fulfilment, that one can go a long way in ethics with natural reason alone and that there can be significant ethical overlap of believer and unbeliever alike, and so allows for pagan virtue.
Decosimo argues for a middle position, what he calls ‘prophetic Thomism.’ According to this view St Thomas accepts the possibility of pagan virtue as a manifestation of God's work in the created order, and that one can hold that acquired virtue has significant value even whilst being clear that such virtue is intrinsically incomplete or defective due to the absence of the infused virtues. Prophetic Thomism presents a theology of God seeking the good of all, pagan and Christian alike, acknowledging good wherever it might be. This is to interpret St Thomas as combining elements of both the hyper-Augustinian and public reason approaches and treating them as complementary: St Thomas striving to be ‘Aristotelian by being Augustinian and vice versa’, to quote a phrase used on numerous occasions throughout this book.
As I read Decosimo, he gives the impression that a position like prophetic Thomism is fairly novel, minority or neglected; whereas it seems to me that positions along these lines are frequently found among Thomists. Indeed, a number of prominent writers placed by Decosimo in the public reason Thomist camp are arguably cases in point, where the lack of theological focus in much of their writings does not reflect a disregard for the role of the infused virtues, but, rather, that they are writing for a largely secular context, seeking some degree of common ground between believer and unbeliever in the public square.
In Chapter 1 Decosimo examines historical evidence, but the book is principally concerned either with providing detailed readings of a number of relevant passages from St Thomas - a task not aided by the fact that St Thomas frequently failed to indicate whether he was referring to infused or acquired virtues or both - or with looking at ways in which various Thomist positions provide support for the view that St Thomas thought that pagans can have virtue.
A short review cannot do justice to the range of arguments presented by Decosimo. Of particular importance to his overall argument is how St Thomas introduced Aristotelian methods and ideas into his theological scheme and how this shaped his thought. As is well known, St Thomas presents sacra doctrina, the teachings of the Christian religion, using an Aristotelian model of scientia, knowledge organised and following in a demonstrative manner from first principles. Here a model derived from pagan philosophy helps elucidate the relation between revelation, sacra doctrina and how we ought to think about the nature of God. Of course, to accord value to the methods and ideas of pagan philosophers like Aristotle does not establish that pagans are capable of virtue, but it does move things in that direction by providing a space sympathetic to reason regardless of its source, to the extent that the best of pagan thought can be a resource for Christian theology and the internal life of the Church.
This way of doing theology, theology as informed by the method of scientia, allows St Thomas to arrive at a number of substantive positions that Decosimo employs to support his case for pagan virtue. There are many detailed theological and metaphysical arguments here, but the foundation of Decosimo's position is basically that since the good is understood in terms of being, then pagans participate in the good simply by existing; and since all desire the good, pagans are oriented to the good as the rational human beings created by God that they are. This leads to Decosimo arguing that St Thomas ‘views creaturely perfection as participation in the Son, good-seeking as Christ-seeking, and, for that reason, he welcomes Aristotle as a genuine seeker, trusted teacher, and wise friend’ (p.41).
Many of the more general arguments put forward by Decosimo are familiar to Thomists, but the detail of his analysis, the acuity of his insights and the careful distinctions he draws are where the merits of this work reside. This book is also a timely contribution to the current debate, given the recent increase of interest in the infused virtues among Thomists. Where I think Decosimo could have easily improved this book, though, is by giving the reader more guidance as to the aims of individual sections and chapters, explaining step by step how they contribute to the overall argument. Had he done this, I suspect a number of sections would have been shorter and more focused and the arguments clearer. But to mention a reservation like this is implicitly to pay Decosimo a compliment, that some additional argumentative clarity would have allowed the force of his arguments to make the impact they deserve.
