Virtue Depends on Natural Law and Divine Commands

Abstract

Virtue theory has occupied a place of relative prominence within the Christian intellectual tradition. But there is a problem facing it: how one contemplates the virtues and vices will ultimately depend upon deeper accounts of the good and the right. Accordingly, virtue theory is incomplete, at least when taken by itself. Our task in this paper is to show that neither of the standard approaches to explaining the metaphysical foundations of morality within the Christian tradition—natural law theory and divine command theory—are sufficient to fix this incompleteness. We thus propose a combination of natural law theory and divine command theory to remedy the matter. The upshot of our argument, then, is this: what counts as a virtue ultimately depends upon the natural law and divine commands.

1. Introduction

Virtue theory has occupied a place of relative prominence within the Christian intel-lectual tradition. But there is a problem facing it: how one contemplates the virtues and vices will ultimately depend upon deeper accounts of the good and the right. Accordingly, virtue theory is incomplete, at least when taken by itself. Our task in this paper is to show that neither of the standard approaches to explaining the metaphysical foundations of morality within the Christian tradition—natural law theory and divine command theo-ry—are sufficient to fix this incompleteness. We thus propose a combination of natural law theory and divine command theory to remedy the matter. The upshot of our argument, then, is this: what counts as a virtue ultimately depends upon the natural law and divine commands.

2. What Virtue Theory Is, and Initial Considerations in Its Favor

The virtue theory tradition that traces back to Plato and Aristotle places the evaluation of character traits front and center. As philosophers are sometimes fond of saying these days, virtue theory is agent-centered, as opposed to action- or rule-centered. What this means is that, for virtue theory, the heart of morality is less about rules or principles or specific actions and more about the various excellences that humans should cultivate and practice, given the sort of creatures we are. Roughly put, the virtues are those praiseworthy character traits that involve dispositions to perceive, to believe, to feel, to be motivated, and to behave in certain ways in certain situations—and these dispositions equip us to achieve our ultimate teleological end or ends, whatever those might be. Vices, by contrast, are those character traits that steer us away from the bullseye, so to speak. Aristotle famously contemplated the virtues and vices as diachronically stable states of the soul.1 We can think of these states as, collectively, what makes up the internal architecture of a person.

For some, it can be tempting to contemplate virtue theory as something of a first-things-first approach to ethics. The idea here is that, if we concern ourselves first with what is required to become a virtuous person, then the rest will follow. In other words, all the right actions and rules and principles can be discovered downstream from the virtuous character. That is because virtue theory affirms what we might think of as a virtue-indicative thesis, according to which the facts about how a virtuous person would behave in this or that situation indicate whether the action in question is morally obligatory or optional or wrong. In other words, the deontic status of an action—or the correct rules or principles—tracks how the ideal virtuous person would (or would not) behave.

There are, of course, plenty of reasons to smile on a virtue theory approach to ethics. For one thing, a moral theory really needs to do more than merely give us rules or merely explain the conditions under which an action is right or wrong. It also needs to offer practical guidance on who we ought to become, which internal traits we ought to cultivate, how we should live, why we should act in this or that way, and the kind of things we should care about and desire and feel good about. And the proper account of the virtues and vices can offer some of what is needed here. After all, the point of moral theory is not merely to reveal the fundamental structure of morality—like, say, the model of a molecule. It also needs to give us a map or (perhaps even better) a guide to show us the way. So, a comprehensive theory of morality needs to explain what makes a person good from the inside out and the outside in and help us to see which traits enable or hamper our pursuit of the ultimate good. This internal architecture of a person that directs one to (or misdirects one away from) our ultimate good is one’s character (or lack thereof). And, of course, questions of character include, among other things, questions about proper motivation, and one of the striking features of other approaches to moral theorizing is that they can seem to neglect this point in particular. Classical utilitarianism, for example, focuses solely on consequences, thereby ignoring the moral significance of motivation altogether. And Kantian deontology, for its part, recognizes the significance of motivation, but it holds that doing one’s duty for the sake of doing one’s duty is the only morally praiseworthy motive. But surely there are other morally praiseworthy reasons for acting. A virtuous person does not visit her friend in the hospital simply for the sake of doing the dutiful act, for example.2 She acts compassionately out of love for the one who is suffering or, say, for the sake of friendship, or perhaps for the sake of serving Christ or bringing glory to God. Virtue theory, unlike Kant, need not do backflips to accommodate this point.

3. Virtue Theory in the Christian Tradition

The virtue theory tradition predates the advent of Christ by several hundred years, and elements of it appear to have been appropriated throughout the Christian intellectual tradition, tracing at least as far back as the Didache in the first century, as well as to such pre-Nicene Christian thinkers as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, among others.3 By the time of the fourth century, reflections on virtue and vice had clearly permeated the work of a host of important Christian thinkers, including Prudentius, Augustine, and Evagrius Ponticus, from whom emanates an important line of reflection on the vices in particular that extends all the way to Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and hence down to us today.4 In one way, all of this is fairly unsurprising—and in fact it is pretty much what we would expect to see—because at least some elements of virtue theory seem present in several places in the New Testament. Consider, for example, the various lists of virtues and vices seen throughout the New Testament compiled in

Table 1. Some Lists of Virtues and Vices in the New Testament.5

PASSAGE…	VIRTUES (OR, GOOD WORKS)	VICES (OR, SINS)
Matt. 5:3–11	Poor in spirit, Mourn, Meek, Hunger and thirst for righteousness, Merciful, Pure in heart, Peacemakers, Persecuted because of righteousness
Matt. 15:19 and Mark 7:21–23		Evil thoughts, Murder, Sexual immorality, Theft, False testimony (Deceit), Slander, Greed, Malice, Lewdness, Envy, Arrogance, Folly
Rom. 1:29:31		Wickedness, Evil, Greed and depravity, Envy, Murder, Strife, Deceit and malice, Gossips, Slanderers, God-haters, Insolent, Arrogant and boastful, Invent ways of doing evil, Disobey parents, No understanding, No fidelity, No love, No mercy
Rom. 13:13		Sexual immorality, Drunkenness, Debauchery, Dissension, Jealousy
1 Cor. 5:10–11		Sexually immoral, Greedy, Swindlers, Idolators, Slanderer, Drunkard
2 Cor. 6:4–7	Endurance, Hard work, Purity, Understanding, Patience, Kindness, Sincere love, Truthfulness, Righteousness
Gal. 5:19–23	Love, Joy, Peace, Forbearance, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control	Sexual immorality, Impurity and debauchery, Idolatry and witchcraft, Hatred, Discord, Jealousy, Fits of rage, Selfish ambition, Dissensions, Factions and envy, Drunkenness, Orgies
Eph. 4:2–3	Humility, Gentleness, Patience, Bearing with one another in love, Unity, Peace
Eph. 4:25–32	Truthfulness, Diligence, Kind, Compassionate, Forgiving	Falsehood, Anger, Theft, Unwholesome talk, Bitterness, Rage, Brawling, Slander, Malice
Eph. 5:3–6		Sexual immorality, Impurity, Greed, Obscenity, Foolish talk, Coarse joking, Idolatry, Empty words, Disobedience
Col. 3:1–15	Compassion, Kindness, Humility, Gentleness, Patience, Forbearance, Forgiveness, (“And over all these virtues put on Love, which binds them all together in perfect unity”), Peace, Thankfulness, Wisdom	Sexual immorality, Impurity, Lust, Evil desires, Greed, Idolatry, Anger, Rage, Malice, Slander, Filthy language, Lying
1 Thess. 5:12–22	Hard work, Caring, Peace, Helping the weak, Patience, Doing good, Rejoicing, Praying	Idleness, Disruptiveness, Repaying wrong with wrong
1 Tim. 1:9–10		Lawbreakers and rebels, Ungodly and sinful, Unholy and irreligious, Those who kill their fathers or mothers, Murderers, Sexually immoral, Those practicing homosexuality, Slave traders, Liars, Perjurers
1 Tim. 3:2–11	Above reproach, Faithful to spouse, Temperate, Self-Controlled, Respectable, Hospitable, Able to teach, Gentle, Trustworthy	Drunkenness, Violent, Quarrelsome, Love of money, Conceited, Malicious talkers
1 Tim. 6:4–5		Envy, Strife, Malicious talk, Evil suspicions, Constant friction, Corrupt mind
Titus 1:7–10	Blameless, Hospitable, Loves what is good, Self-controlled, Upright, Holy, Disciplined, Holds firm to what is trustworthy	Overbearing, Quick-tempered, Drunkenness, Violent, Dishonest
James 3:13–18	Humility, Wisdom, Pure, Peace-loving, Considerate, Submissive, Full of mercy and good fruit, Impartial, Sincere	Envy, Selfish ambition, Boasting, Dishonesty, Disorder, Evil practices
1 Pet. 4:3–5		Debauchery, Lust, Drunkenness, Orgies, Carousing, Idolatry, Reckless, Wild living
2 Pet. 1:5–8	Faith, Goodness, Knowledge, Self-Control, Perseverance, Godliness, Mutual affection, Love	Ineffective, Unproductive, Near-Sighted, Blind, Forgetful of gifts
Rev. 21:6–8		Cowardly, Unbelieving, Vile, Murderers, Sexually immoral, Those who practice magic, Idolators, Liars

.

To be clear, we are not suggesting that there is an effort in the New Testament to articulate, explain, or defend a full virtue theory of ethics. Our point here is only that such a framework seems to be presumed on at least some level, which can help make some sense out of the various lists found throughout the New Testament.

And it should matter to Christians that Jesus himself seems pretty clearly concerned about the internal features of one’s character—not just one’s outward behavior. Take the Sermon on the Mount, for example, a significant portion of which goes something like this: “You have heard it said, ‘Thou shall not murder’, but I tell you do not be an angry, contemptuous, and unforgiving person. You have heard it said, ‘Thou shall not commit adultery’, but I say do not even lust in your heart.” In fact, there are six different “you have heard it saids” in Matthew 5.6 In each case, Jesus recites a well-known moral law, and then he instructs his disciples on how to honor the law in question while also letting it shape them on the inside, too. So, for example, if one is not angry, contemptuous, and unforgiving, then one is less prone to murder. And it is worth noting that, immediately prior to this particular section of his sermon, Jesus tells his disciples that their righteousness really ought to surpass that of the Pharisees, much of which seemed to be about rote rule-following with insufficient attention given to their internal lives. Notice the basic structure of Jesus’s response to Pharisaical legalism: you have heard that you ought not do this or that, but you really need to cultivate the appropriate perceptions, feelings, motives, and desires if you want to walk in the way of abundant life. This meshes neatly enough with virtue theory.

4. Virtue Theory Rests upon a Prior Account of the Good

It is important to recognize that any account of virtues and vices is going to be dependent on one’s views about the underlying nature of morality and, in turn, about what the final teleological end of human life is supposed to be. In other words, which traits count as virtues in the first place, together with how we explicate those traits and how we order or prioritize them, is going to depend upon other things we believe about what makes something good—and hence upon what we take the final highest aim of human existence to be. This point is neither novel nor especially controversial. In fact, it just explains why, in the first place, there are competing lists of virtues and vices among different theorists throughout history.

Start with Aristotle, for example. In his view, what makes something good for us is that it somehow perfects or completes us, given our nature. And he took the highest final good of human existence to be eudaimonia, understood as living a life that expresses right reason.7 So, given that ultimate end, Aristotle contemplated the requisite virtues to include practical wisdom, justice, courage, temperance, generosity, magnanimity, honesty, wittiness, friendliness, and so on.8

Aquinas, for his part, adopted the basic Aristotelian framework, but he added an important twist. Whereas for Aristotle, eudaimonia is all about this life—that is to say, this earthly life—Aquinas held that our ultimate aim is what is sometimes called the beatific vision, that is, to behold the infinite goodness of God as adopted sons and daughters in the resurrected life to come. So, for Aquinas, then, when we enumerate the various character traits needed to attain that heavenly end, it is not enough to have practical wisdom (or prudence), justice, fortitude (or courage), and temperance—along with the other virtues that Aristotle had extolled. What is needed are the theological virtues that the Apostle Paul mentions in I Corinthians 13—virtues that, according to Aquinas, get infused in us by God’s grace.9 That is to say, in addition to prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, we need infused in us the virtue of faith (that is, the disposition to believe divinely revealed truths), and the virtue of hope (that is, the disposition to strive for and expect final union with God), and most of all we need the virtue of charity (that is, the disposition to love God for his own sake—as one does a friend).

Fast forward a few hundred years. Thomas Hobbes—the other Thomas, we might say—counted as virtues those character traits that would be needed to exit the nasty, brutish, and short life that is the state of nature and to keep the peace thereafter. Accordingly, reciprocity, keeping contracts, justice, gratitude, mercy, sociability, and avoiding hatred, pride, and arrogance are key virtues.10

Other modern thinkers have had a vision of the ultimate end of humanity—and hence a vision of the character virtues—that can seem perfectly at odds with the way of Christ, or even with the way of the two Thomases, for that matter. Nietzsche is perhaps the most notorious thinker in this category. After all, he despised weakness, meekness, humility, and forgiveness. As Nietzsche saw it, power and self-realization are the only real goods, and so a trait is virtuous insofar as it facilitates an honest will-to-power—so things like overcoming resistance, assertiveness, creativity, risk-taking, and mercilessness would effectively emerge as virtues.11 Along similar lines, Ayn Rand argued that productivity, pride, independence, rationality, and selfishness are among the chief virtues precisely because they help the individual secure one’s own self-interest, which is, of course, the ethical egoist’s conception of the ultimate good.12

There are, of course, plenty of other approaches to contemplating the virtues. Our point here is simply that what one takes the proper account of the virtues to be will fundamentally depend on one’s underlying account of the good. And since virtue theory does not by itself present us with such an account of the good when it is contemplated as a standalone theory of ethics, virtue theory is incomplete. It would be difficult to overstate this point. One’s account of the virtues must be supplemented by an underlying account of what is good, especially if one wants to keep virtue theory from reducing to a kind of cultural relativism. Simply put, the virtues have to be anchored to some sort of vision of what is good for us and, hence, some sort of vision of the ultimate aim of human life.

5. Virtue Theory Needs Supplementation to Explain Deontic Status

Not only does virtue theory need a supplementary account of the good, but it also needs to explain what makes an action obligatory, permissible, or wrong. It needs, in other words, an account of the right.

But a problem arises at this very juncture, because pointing to what the virtuous person would or would not do is not by itself enough to explain why some given action has the deontic status that it has. After all, if the fact that a virtuous person would not do some action were the full explanation for why the action in question is wrong, then we would just run into the same sort of Euthyphro-styled problem that is thought to be so damning to other moral theories.13 Here is the dilemma in short: either the virtuous person has reasons for why she should not do the action in question or she lacks such reasons. But if she does have reasons, then surely those reasons are what most fundamentally explain why the action is morally forbidden—not the simple fact that the virtuous person would not do it. Alternatively, if the imaginary virtuous person lacks reasons for her actions altogether, then her choice seems irredeemably arbitrary. But, surely, the virtuous person acts on reasons.

The same basic point can be made more concretely. A virtuous person would never abuse children. But surely the fact that the virtuous person would never abuse children is not the thing that makes it true that child abuse is wrong. Rather, what makes child abuse wrong surely has more to do with, say, facts involving the unreasonable harm, damage, and humiliation inflicted upon innocent and vulnerable persons of immeasurable worth. In fact, those same facts are what explain why the virtuous person would never abuse a child in the first place—not the other way around. An unsupplemented virtue theory—again, when taken by itself—would invariably get the order of explanation exactly backwards.14

So, while it might be that we can discover what is wrong by imagining what the virtuous person would not do, surely it is false to say that an action is wrong if and only if and just because the virtuous person would refrain from doing it. In other words, the fact that a virtuous person would or would not do something could only ever be right-indicative. It surely cannot be right-making. Hence, something else really is going to be needed on final analysis: virtue theory will need to be supplemented by an underlying account of the right, as well as an underlying account of the good. For ease of reference moving forward, let us just call this virtue theory’s “incompleteness problem” for short.

6. Two Dominant Accounts of the Foundations of Morality in the Christian Tradition

The most prominent efforts within the Christian tradition to explain the basic metaphysical foundations of moral obligation have typically fallen into one of two competing camps.15 To one side is natural law theory (hereafter, “NLT”). To the other side is theological voluntarism, or what is probably better known these days as divine command theory (hereafter, “DCT”). Can either of these positions help to solve the incompleteness problem facing virtue theory?

Start with NLT first.16 According to NLT, objective moral values and duties arise in connection to necessary truths and/or facts about the created order, including facts about the sort of creatures we humans are by nature—facts that we can discover and reason about for ourselves, facts that God is responsible for. More specifically, on this view, what makes an action right or wrong at the most basic level depends on whether the action most appropriately or reasonably pursues (versus thwarts) what is good for us as humans, where what is good is connected to what equips us to flourish. Accordingly, morality is ultimately directed toward human flourishing in accordance with right reason. Moral laws are natural in the sense that they are binding on us simply in virtue of our nature as humans. Plus, they are natural in the sense that they are knowable to us by nature (though, of course, God’s commands can aid us in discerning the requirements of the natural law with greater clarity). So, we might say that, according to NLT, there is something like a divinely imprinted grain to the universe, and hence the better part of wisdom is to discern the direction of that grain and act with it and not against it. Within the Christian tradition at least, this view is most often, though not exclusively, associated with Roman Catholicism, thanks in large part to the influence of Aquinas.

In the other corner is DCT, which is often associated with (typically Protestant) traditions that emphasize the supremacy of God’s will and the importance of special revelation. This position can be traced back through Martin Luther and John Calvin to such thinkers as John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, and perhaps especially Andrew of Neufchateau in the fourteenth century.17 On this view, moral obligations arise directly in connection to God’s commands or some other prescriptive act of the divine will. More to the point: what makes an action right is simply that God commands it, and what makes an action wrong is simply that God forbids it. Keep in mind that, on this view, God’s commands do not merely communicate to us what our moral obligations are. Rather, divine commands are the very right-making or wrong-making mechanism itself. And, ultimately, we are dependent on God’s revelation of his will.18

Return now to the natural law account. Can it resolve virtue theory’s incompleteness problem? Notice that, if some version of NLT is correct, we might seem to have a solution: our account of which traits qualify as virtues can be anchored to what NLT says about which things are good and right for us. The virtues will then be dependent upon that deeper natural law account. For Aquinas, an explanation of what makes an act wrong involves three essential pieces. First, it begins with an understanding of the first principle of practical reason: good is to be sought and done, and evil is to be avoided.19 We can apprehend this self-evident first principle simply by knowing the meaning of the terms involved. However, we still need to know how “the good” is manifest or instantiated. What are the various human goods that we should seek? Aquinas argues that, by paying careful attention to the natural order, we can discern that things like life, procreation, knowledge, and sociability are (among other things) concrete goods that we should seek.20 However, while we should seek these goods, there are, of course, morally flawed ways that we could seek them. For example, a man who seeks the good of procreation by means of rape is evil. This brings us to the third essential piece of Aquinas’s account of how an act might be forbidden. For Aquinas, an act can be evil even while seeking concrete human goods by violating what we can think of as adjudicating norms of practical reason.21 For example, one does evil if, in seeking some good thing, one sacrifices a higher good in the pursuit of a lower good. The crucial point at stake here is this: Aquinas’ foundational account of what makes some given act evil does not rely on the fact that a virtuous person would not do the act but instead on the elements of his NLT.

The problem, though, is that NLT is itself incomplete.22 After all, it seems plausible that we have moral obligations that are not, and cannot be, explained by appealing to basic human goods or human flourishing or violations of practical reasonableness or to necessary truths (or by some combination thereof). Why would we say such a thing? Well, surely, theists can all agree that if God sincerely commands us to X—whatever X is—then we have an obligation to X. But notice how NLT’s trademark effort to explain how moral obligations arise implicitly assumes that, if we only knew all of the relevant facts, we could in principle delineate all the reasons why the act in question is morally obligated, such that God would have commanded X in the first place. Accordingly, for NLT, the answer to the question “Why is X morally obligatory?” would never terminate in something like “because God said so”, but rather in the reasons God surely had in mind for saying so to begin with. Further, for Aquinas, to hold that God commanded without reason is to accuse God of commanding arbitrarily, which Aquinas considered blasphemous.23

But what if God were to command someone to X, but not because there were reasons that fully determine how God must command in that situation? Suppose it were possible for a divine command to be underdetermined by all the relevant reasons at God’s disposal. Call these rationally underdetermined divine commands. Now, if rationally underdetermined divine commands are even possible, then it is possible for there to be moral obligations that are not, and cannot be, explained by NLT. Could there be divine commands like that?

We think so, in part because one such command seems to be affirmed by the Jewish and Christian traditions.24 For example, God commanded the Israelites to rest on the seventh day. Accordingly, when God commanded the Israelites to rest on the seventh day (as opposed to, say, the third or fourth day), resting on the seventh day became morally obligatory. And it seems plausible enough that God’s command to rest specifically on the seventh day—as opposed to the third or fourth day—was not somehow fully determined by prior facts about human nature or human flourishing or facts about the created order or facts about the divine nature, and so on. In such cases, prior reasons do not seem to have determined God’s choice with that degree of specificity. Rather, God’s will is what seals the deal, as it were.25 If so, then God’s command was rationally underdetermined—not unlike a choice one might face between, say, equally good options.26 But because the choice is between equally good options, the selection in these cases is not somehow problematically arbitrary.

What this means, then, is that if we were to ask, “Why was resting on the seventh day morally obligatory for the Israelites?” the answer seems to be something like “because God says so”.27 But if that is right, then there are moral obligations that the Christian tradition presumes that NLT cannot fully explain. So, NLT is incomplete. And what this means then is that Christians cannot solve virtue theory’s incompleteness problem by appealing solely to NLT: it does not give us all that is needed to specify a complete account of the virtues and vices. Something else will be needed.

Now circle back to DCT—the other dominant framework in the Christian tradition. Notice how DCT might seem poised to explain our moral obligations: we are obligated to do this or that just because God commands it. Accordingly, we might be tempted to think that Christian ethics is simply a matter of discerning and properly interpreting divine commands, and hence the solution to virtue theory’s incompleteness problem stands ready at hand. Namely, the virtues would simply be those character traits that best equip us to meet our duties as specified by God’s commands in the way that God commands us to meet those commands. Accordingly, things like obedience, reverence to God, honoring of one’s elders, respectfulness toward life and property, chastity, honesty, kindness, and so on would emerge as salient virtues since they would equip us to follow the Decalogue, for example—as well as to love God and one’s neighbors. So, can DCT solve virtue theory’s incompleteness problem?

Unfortunately, no.28 Remember that DCT holds that our most foundational moral imperative is to obey God’s commands. But what makes it morally obligatory to obey God’s commands in the first place? If one accepts DCT, one might be tempted to think that the answer to this question would be that, well, God commands us to obey him. But that answer is insufficient. After all, if the answer to the question at hand is effectively, “God commands us to ‘obey God’s commands’”, notice how a new question inevitably emerges: what makes obeying that prior or meta-level command morally obligatory? A regress problem awaits.

So, there is at least one moral obligation that DCT seems ill-equipped to explain, namely why we have an obligation to obey God’s commands in the first place. What could explain this obligation in a way that avoids the regress problem? Consider three valiant efforts to answer the question, “Why should we obey God’s commands?”. One is simply that, since God is the creator of all good things that we have ever enjoyed or will ever enjoy, we owe God a debt of gratitude, which rightly drives us to accept the authority of the one to whom we are so indebted.29 A second possible answer to the question “Why should we obey God’s commands?” is that we belong to our creator, as John Locke held.30 That is, we are God’s property, so to speak. And insofar as we are his property, God has the legitimate right to command us as he sees fit, and so we have an obligation to obey his commands.31

A third answer to the question hails from John Duns Scotus.32 In his view, it is necessarily true—and self-evident from the terms involved—that God is to be loved. The term “God” refers to a supremely perfect being, and hence to what is maximally good. And the term “good” refers to what is to be loved. So, it is necessarily true that God, a maximally good and hence maximally loveable being, is to be loved. At a minimum, to love God is to will what God wills for us to will, which is just another way of saying that to love God is to obey God. It follows, then, that the claim “God is to be obeyed” is necessarily true and self-evident, at least once we properly understand the terms involved.

Now review the situation here. Suppose we just grant that all three of those answers are plausible enough responses to the question, “What makes obeying God’s commands morally obligatory?” Notice that, in any case, none of those accounts reduce to saying that we are obligated to obey God’s commands simply because God commanded us to obey his commands. That is, none of those accounts tries to answer the question at hand by appealing to, say, some prior or meta-level divine command. And for good reason: doing that would just beg the question and invite the very regress problem that DCT needs to avoid.

What this means, though, is that we have at least one moral obligation that is not caused or constituted by, or ontologically grounded in, a divine command.33 So, DCT is itself incomplete. And if DCT is incomplete, then DCT cannot solve the incompleteness problem facing virtue theory all by itself precisely because DCT cannot provide a complete explanation of the ultimate goods and ends toward which the virtues should direct us.

So, to sum up the matter so far: If we are correct, virtue theory is incomplete. Accordingly, one’s contemplation of the virtues and vices is inevitably dependent upon one’s more fundamental commitments about the nature of the good and the right. The two dominant approaches to provide such an account of the good and the right within the Christian tradition are each incomplete, and so neither can solve virtue theory’s incompleteness problem on its own—at least, not entirely.

7. Conclusion: A Combination Theory as the Way Forward

A potential solution to the problem is hiding in plain sight. In what remains, we want to propose something like a combination of NLT and DCT, which could offer a plausible account of how moral obligations arise. But are NLT and DCT logically consistent with one another in a way that would allow for such a combination?

Obviously enough, any version of DCT that insists that a divine command is a necessary condition for all moral obligations would be incompatible with NLT.34 Likewise, any version of NLT that claims that all moral obligations can be explained by, say, facts about human nature in combination with the norms of practical reason would be incompatible with DCT. This is a key point because we should neither seek, nor accept, cheap pluralism.

Are there non-reductive versions of virtue theory, NLT, and DCT that are logically compatible with one another? By “non-reductive versions”, we simply mean versions that do not insist that all moral obligations are explained in the same way. For example, a non-reductive version of DCT could hold that divine commands could indeed give rise to at least some of our moral obligations, though not necessarily all of our moral obligations. A non-reductive version of NLT could hold that facts about human nature in combination with the adjudicating norms of practical reason could give rise to some of our moral obligations, but not all of them. Happily, there is a relatively simple way that non-reductive versions of virtue theory, NLT, and DCT could all be compatible with one another. Our idea is this: NLT explains one subset of our moral obligations, DCT explains another subset of our moral obligations, and virtue theory in turn provides us with the language and resources to move beyond a discussion of what makes something good or evil or what makes an action right and wrong and into a discussion about what makes a good person or character.

A second question remains, however. Would combining some non-reductive version of NLT, DCT, and virtue theory do any real work for us? Would it help, for example, in eliminating the incompleteness problems mentioned above?

Happily, the answer here seems to be yes. Consider how such a combination approach would help address the objections facing reductive versions of each of these theories taken on their own. Virtue theory requires an underlying account of the good and a supplementary causal account of the right—precisely because it is untenable that an action is made obligatory by the simple fact that a virtuous person would do it. The virtuous person is, after all, acting on reasons. By supplementing virtue theory with NLT and/or DCT, the combination approach can then provide those very reasons, thereby circumventing the concern that reductive and unsupplemented virtue theory entails that virtuous people act arbitrarily.

Taken by itself, reductive versions of NLT cannot explain how we have moral obligations relative to God’s rationally underdetermined commands. That is, if God can issue a rationally underdetermined command, then there would be no way for reductive versions of NLT to explain the moral obligation that arises. But notice how adding in DCT’s account of the right would help things here. If the fact that God commands an action is sufficient for a corresponding moral obligation to occur—which non-reductive versions of DCT should be prepared to accept—then the moral obligations that arise from God’s rationally underdetermined commands become explicable. So, the incompleteness of reductive NLT dissipates when combined with non-reductive DCT.

Along similar lines, notice how the incompleteness of reductive versions of DCT goes away when supplemented by a non-reductive version of NLT. When DCT is supplemented by NLT, it now becomes explicable why we have a moral obligation to obey God’s commands in the first place: given God’s nature as a perfect being and given facts about the kind of creatures we are by nature, it is necessarily true that our ultimate good is to be found in the love of God; and, minimally, love of God entails that we obey God’s commands, which explains why we have a moral obligation to obey divine commands in the first place.

To recap, then: We have good reason to think that non-reductive versions of virtue theory, NLT, and DCT are not logically incompatible with one another. Plus, we have good reason to think that real work can be carried out by combining them. In fact, the combination of these theories allows each of the component parts to overcome the incompleteness problem it faces when taken individually.

So why does any of this matter? For starters, we now have a viable basis upon which to solve the incompleteness problem facing virtue theory. Secondly—and this is important—the ultimately correct contemplation of the virtues or vices—that is, which traits count as virtues, what those virtues are, and how they get ordered and so on—will be profoundly affected by the metaethical substructure on offer. Some traits are virtues simply insofar as they equip us to flourish, where flourishing could be understood in the robust way that, say, Aquinas imagines. But some traits could be virtues not because they facilitate beatitude per se but because they equip us to discern, seek, and obey God’s will and to respect God’s authority, as well as the power of God’s command.

Might this entail a new list of cardinal virtues—that is, hinge virtues—beyond prudence, justice, courage, and temperance? Maybe so. Perhaps, for example, we ought to contemplate obedience or humility or the fear of God as cardinal, to precede even prudence. (Consider Proverbs 9:10: The fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom). Of course, maybe all of that is subsumable under a proper understanding of the virtue of faith, as Aquinas understands it—that is, believing what God says, including his commands. But even if it is subsumable in that way, the proper explication of what faith is would need to attend to those elements of the moral life in relation to God that simply are not explicable by NLT. And, after all, if there are moral duties that can arise from rationally underdetermined divine commands, then there would be just such elements. So, the incompleteness problem matters, as does the proposed solution.

Moreover, the combination approach that we are proposing has the advantage of looking not just to human reason as a lens for thinking about virtue but also to the witness of scripture and hence to divine revelation. In that sense, it provides space for both reason and faith to work in tandem to guide the moral life as a whole. And, lastly, the combination theory of ethics helps to explain why each of its component parts—virtue theory, NLT, and DCT—can each lay claim to at least some scriptural support and why each has enjoyed at least some pride of place within different streams of the broader Christian tradition. And it can do that in a way that does not require biblical or denominational gerrymandering and, hence, in a way that is reasonably ecumenical in outlook. It is, so to speak, neither reductively Catholic (in the sense of being attached to reductive NLT) nor reductively Protestant (in the sense of being attached to reductive DCT). In some sense, it is both Catholic and Protestant. Or to put it another way, this combination approach is (to borrow from C. S. Lewis) merely Christian.