Theopedia

Virtue

“Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge…”

— 2 Peter 1:5 (RSV)

Definition

Virtue is a habit by which the will is inclined toward doing what is good.1 Scripture commands believers to cultivate it as one of a chain of graces built on faith (2 Pet. 1:5-7), and Paul counts it among the things a Christian mind should dwell on (Phil. 4:8).1 Virtue in this sense is not a natural achievement or a store of merit a person accumulates before God; it is a disposition that only truly exists in someone already accepted by God through faith, and its rule is not human reason but God’s own revealed will in Scripture.2

Confessional Witness

Neither the 1689 London Baptist Confession nor its Reformed confessional siblings devote a chapter to “virtue” by that name; the 1689’s own home for this ground is chapter 16, “Of Good Works.”3 There, good works, meaning the same active righteousness of life Scripture elsewhere calls virtue, “are only such as God hath commanded in his Holy Word,” and, done in obedience to those commandments, “are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith,” by which believers manifest thankfulness, strengthen assurance, and glorify God.4 Believers’ “ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ,” requiring an actual, ongoing influence of the Holy Spirit beyond the graces already received.5 No one can supererogate, doing more than God requires.6 Even the best works cannot merit pardon of sin or eternal life, given the “great disproportion” between them and the glory to come.7

The Second Helvetic Confession states the same substance while explicitly naming Peter’s own vocabulary: “we teach that truly good works grow out of a living faith by the Holy Spirit,” and quotes the apostle: “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control” (2 Pet. 1:5 ff.).8 Both confessions read Peter’s chain of graces the same way: virtue is what a living faith produces, not a human accomplishment that faith is built on or that earns anything alongside it.

Biblical Basis

Peter’s own exhortation is the central text: believers are to make “every effort” to add virtue to their faith, and to build from virtue toward knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love, so that they are not “ineffective or unfruitful” in their knowledge of Christ (2 Pet. 1:5-8). Paul names the same three-part root of the Christian life elsewhere, faith, hope, and love, as what remains once partial gifts pass away (1 Cor. 13:13), and closes his letter to the Philippians by telling them to think on “whatever is… gracious, if there is any excellence [virtue], if there is anything worthy of praise” (Phil. 4:8).

Historical Development

The medieval scheme: infused virtue and merit

Medieval theology, as Rome still teaches it, joined the three theological virtues named in 1 Corinthians 13, faith, hope, and love, to the four “cardinal” virtues inherited from classical philosophy: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.9 On this scheme, baptism confers infused grace that heals and elevates the soul, and with it the three theological virtues are directly infused as “superhuman, or divine” virtues, distinct in kind from the intellectual and cardinal virtues available to unaided human reason.9 By this same grace, believers are enabled to perform supernaturally good works and thereby to merit an increase of grace and a greater or lesser degree of eternal glory; works beyond what is strictly commanded, fasting, renunciation of goods, celibacy, monastic life, martyrdom, were held to generate a surplus of merit that the church could dispense to others as indulgences.9

The Reformation’s repudiation of merit

“The Reformation repudiated this entire scheme and took its position on the doctrine of justification by faith alone.”10 Calvin, rather than cataloguing virtues one by one, treated the whole of the Christian life as a single unity under one rule drawn from Romans 12:1.10 Applied to Peter’s own exhortation to “add to faith virtue,” Calvin read the command as evidence not of an independent human power to contribute something of one’s own, but of the Spirit’s own work rousing believers out of the flesh’s sluggishness:

“he does not concede to us the possession of a second place, as if we could do anything separately. He only arouses the sluggishness of our flesh, by which faith itself is frequently stifled.”11

The Second Helvetic Confession, written within a generation of Calvin, kept Peter’s own “virtue” language while relocating it entirely inside this framework: good works, virtue included, “grow out of a living faith by the Holy Spirit,” not the other way around.8

Reformed scholastic reordering under the Decalogue

The Reformed and Puritan divinity that systematized the Reformation’s teaching kept virtue as a live theological category but re-derived its shape from Scripture rather than from Aristotle or the medieval fourfold scheme. William Ames defined virtue as “an habit whereby the will is inclined to doe well,” located in the will rather than the intellect, because the will, not reason, is Scripture’s own seat of moral and spiritual action.1 Ames argued at length against Aristotle’s own standard for virtue, the “judgement of prudent men,” insisting that “there can be no other discipline of vertue then Divinity, which delivers the whole Will of God revealed, for the directing of our reason, will, and life.”2 Rather than the cardinal fourfold division, Ames organized the whole of Christian obedience, and so of virtue, along the Decalogue’s two tables: “Observance is either Religion, or Iustice.”12 Under Religion, duty toward God, he placed faith, hope, and love, the same triad named in 1 Corinthians 13:13, which he called “those theologicall vertues… reckoned up by the Apostle”;13 under Justice, duty toward neighbor, he placed chastity and other neighbor-directed graces.14

Opposing Views

Roman Catholicism continues to hold the medieval scheme described above: the three theological virtues as gifts infused at baptism, joined to the cardinal virtues, ordered toward a supernatural end and capable of meriting an increase of grace and degrees of glory.9 Rome also ties this to its account of faith itself: because love (caritas) is held to be the “form” that gives faith its character as a genuine Christian virtue, bare intellectual assent without love (fides informis) is distinguished from love-formed faith (fides formata), with the latter alone reckoned a true virtue.15 The Reformed tradition rejects this framework specifically because it rests on “subjective justification, and the merit of good works,” treating what Scripture calls the fruit of a lively faith as instead a partly human-generated ground of merit.15

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t Peter’s command to “add” virtue to faith imply believers contribute something of their own alongside grace? The imperative form of 2 Peter 1:5 can read as though virtue were a further human achievement laid alongside a faith already given. Calvin’s own answer: Peter’s exhortation “does not concede to us the possession of a second place, as if we could do anything separately,” but instead rouses believers out of the flesh’s sluggishness, since “the very diligence which Paul enjoins is derived only from God.”11 The confession states the same point systematically: believers’ ability to do good works “is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ,” even though they are still commanded to be diligent in stirring up the grace already given them.5

Related Doctrines

References

  1. William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity: Drawne out of the Holy Scriptures, and the Interpreters Thereof, and Brought into Method (London: Edward Griffin for Henry Overton, 1642), 223: “Vertue is an habit whereby the will is inclined to doe well.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Ames, 226: “Therefore there can be no other discipline of vertue then Divinity, which delivers the whole Will of God revealed, for the directing of our reason, will, and life.” ↩ ↩2

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 16, “Of Good Works,” para. 1. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 16, “Of Good Works,” para. 2: “These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith.” ↩

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 16, “Of Good Works,” para. 3. ↩ ↩2

  6. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 16, “Of Good Works,” para. 4. ↩

  7. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 16, “Of Good Works,” para. 5. ↩

  8. Heinrich Bullinger, The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), chap. 16, “Of Faith and Good Works, and of Their Reward, and of Man’s Merit,” sect. “Concerning Good Works”: “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control.” ↩ ↩2

  9. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 20, “Justification, Sanctification, and Perseverance.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  10. Bavinck, chap. 20: “The Reformation repudiated this entire scheme and took its position on the doctrine of justification by faith alone.” ↩ ↩2

  11. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), bk. 2, chap. 5, 284: “he does not concede to us the possession of a second place, as if we could do anything separately. He only arouses the sluggishness of our flesh, by which faith itself is frequently stifled.” ↩ ↩2

  12. Ames, 242 (bk. 2, chap. 4, “Of Religion”): “Observance is either Religion, or Iustice.” ↩

  13. Ames, 260 (bk. 2, chap. 6, “Of Hope”): “those theologicall vertues which are reckoned up by the Apostle. 1 Cor. 13. 13.” ↩

  14. Ames, 368 (bk. 2, chap. 19, “Of Chastity”). ↩

  15. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), chap. XVI, 93. ↩ ↩2