This chapter asks whether Augustine agreed with the Stoics and Platonists that there were no necessary outward differences between the lives of the vicious and the virtuous. Answering this question requires investigating whether he thought in terms of political virtues; this chapter finds that he did not. It finds that, for Augustine, justice – whether human justice or true justice – was not a political virtue, because it was primarily a description of our loves: the humanly just and the truly just differed at the level of their loves, but not at the level of their actions.

Interpreters assume not only that the moral concepts of Proverbs constitute virtues as defined by Aristotle but also that theological concepts in Proverbs resemble Aquinas’ theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. According to the Summa Theologica, these virtues correspond to the human actions of intellectual assent to God, trust in him, and love for him. The questions asked are twofold: how does Proverbs portray human apprehension, trust, and love in or for God, and how do these conceptions relate to the theological virtues of Aquinas’ moral philosophy? I argue that Proverbs contains concepts that meet Aquinas’ criteria for theological virtue. The biblical concepts appear explicitly, as in passages that mention “hope” and “love,” and implicitly, as in passages that portray humans exercising faith in God without mentioning “faith.” I explore texts in Proverbs that most clearly feature the theological virtues (Proverbs 1-3; 30:1-9) and material that supports and qualifies my initial conclusions (Proverbs 10-29).

After a brief summary of the book’s argument, I suggest how understanding Proverbs as a tradition of virtue helps to address other questions about the ethics of the book, such as recent discussions about character. Specifically, I draw together and draw out the book’s conception of human nature, moral action and character, the relation of moral and theological virtue, the human problem, and how Proverbs relates to its moral rivals.