The Virtue of Religio in Thomas Aquinas: Between Justice and Love

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments are attached as a Word document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Cover letter 1

We would like to express sur special thanks to the reviewer for his comments.

We revised the manuscript according to his comments. We used “Track Changes” function to make all changes easily viewed.

 

Details of the revision:

1. We introduced the virtue religio as a virtue connected with justice (means – end relation) in the beginning of chapter 2.
2. We have expanded Aristotle's reflection on the virtue of justice. We have supported it with more references.
3. We have mentioned other virtues associated with justice in Thomas that relate to an unpayable debt.
4. We have completed the second part of the article from the viewpoint of intent and clarity.

First (chapter 3), we described religio in Thomas as a potential part of justice. We have clarified what its object is. Then we showed that acquired religio comes from developing the inclination to know the truth and to submit to it in one's life. We then posed the question of whether the adoption of the theological virtues changes the form of the acquired virtue of religio (chapter 4). We introduced Thomas' concept of infused moral virtue. We removed Flannery's explanation, but we have retained Lottin's view because it exemplifies an interpretation of the relationship between acquired and infused virtue that emphasizes the object (duty of justice) but disregards the intention of love. This interpretation actually makes infused moral virtue just a useless duplicate of acquired moral virtue. We have proposed a different model of this relationship, for which justice is a close form of virtue religio, but love is its distant form. That is, love begets infused religio and infused religio strengthens love. We think that in such a model original form of the moral virtue of religio is not lost, but its act takes on the added form of charity and a new participation in life with God.

Many thanx!

Reviewer 2 Report

- Most of the introduction could be formulated in a footnote. Now it is too cautionary and detracts from the substance of the paper.

- One misses a short introduction of the virtue of religion in Aquinas.

- The last section on page 10 before the conclusion should be rewritten; it is unclear as it is.

- I will submit detailed comments in a separate file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We would like to express our special thanks to the reviewer for his comments.

We revised the manuscript according to his comments. We used “Track Changes” function to make all changes easily viewed.

 

Details of the revision:

1. We contextualised the research in the introduction. We introduced the virtue religio as a virtue connected with justice in the beginning of chapter 2.
2. We have supported the text with more references.
3. We worked on the coherence of arguments. We simplified the structure of the text and maintained only four chapters. With respect to clarity, we have removed Flannery's view and retained only Lottin's view as an example of a solution to the problem.
4. We rewrote several parts of the text from the viewpoint of intent and clarity.
5. We put an unnecessary part of the introduction in the footnote.
6. We had a native speaker proofread the text.

many thanx!

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

There are a few places where Latin words and book titles need to be italicized.

This draft is a significant improvement over the previous draft.