Tag: Temperance

Posted on

The Truly Excellent Life: Four Key Characteristics

In one of my graduate classes, we were given time to share how God had worked in our lives. One pastor shared how he lived in college. He was brilliant—but he was a jerk. He used his sharp intellect to tear people down. Other people’s feelings weren’t even on his radar.

This is the exact opposite of moral excellence. You can have intellectual excellence, but without moral excellence, you are not living an excellent life.

The Morally Excellent Faith
The Apostle Peter called the scattered believers of the first century to pursue exactly this sort of life. He said, you believe. That’s good. Now put as much effort as you can into making your life a morally excellent one (1 Pet. 1:5).

The word he used was aretas, or virtue. This word could refer to excellence of any kind, but when applied to human beings it referred especially to living a life of moral excellence.

Peter did not leave the meaning of this moral excellence to their imagination. He explained what this life looks like in concrete terms. He said that virtue must be wise, that wisdom must be self-controlled, that self-control must persevere, that perseverance must be centered on God, that this God-centeredness must produce brotherly love, and that brotherly love must overflow into love for everyone we meet (see 2 Pet. 1:5–7).

The word Peter used for “add” is especially rich. It is derived from the Greek theater and refers to organizing the parts of a chorus so that they sound beautiful together. It can also mean “supply” or “intentionally organize” these specific components. The point is that none of these virtues stands alone. They are meant to work together.

Think about it. If someone is self-controlled but does not persevere or keep going, what good is it? If someone is disciplined but does not care for God or for people, what good is that kind of discipline? Continue reading “The Truly Excellent Life: Four Key Characteristics”

Posted on

The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 4: Deliberate Living (Temperance)

In 2021, my daughter and I went to Egypt for two weeks. In part because of Covid, my daughter ended up homeschooling, so this became her senior trip. It was her first time out of the country. It was my first time out of the country in years. It was awesome and life-changing. It gave her a perspective on the world she had never had before, and it awakened something in me that had been sleeping for a long time.

At the end of the trip, my daughter said to me, “When I have more money, I want to travel.”

I responded immediately, “That’s not the way to think about it. Make it your goal to travel, and you will find the money.”

That’s how the 3rd cardinal virtue works. It’s about deliberate living. It’s about organizing our lives around the best things.

The word often used for this virtue is “temperance.” But that word doesn’t really capture what is in view. It makes people think merely of avoiding something bad or not using good things too much.

But that’s not really the point. The point is not the means. It’s the end. When you aim at good and big things, you begin organizing your life to get there. That’s the point about travel. When you have a clear goal to take a big trip, you start thinking about how you spend money everywhere because you want to gather the resources you need to do something bigger.

That’s the real meaning of temperance—or deliberate living.

How the Apostle Paul Expresses This in 1 Corinthians
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he returns to this theme again and again: clarify how you spend your time by orienting your life toward better things.

In the ancient world, there was often discussion about what was good and what was useful or helpful. You can find this, for example, in Cicero’s On Duties (read about here). Paul takes up this same theme: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

So how are we to judge? We look at our goal. Not everything is useful for achieving it. Continue reading “The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 4: Deliberate Living (Temperance)”

Posted on

The Ancient Path of Moral Excellence (The Four Cardinal Virtues)

Long before Jesus came, people were already asking what it meant to live well. The ancient philosophers said that a good life isn’t just about rules or avoiding bad behavior. It’s about becoming the kind of person who naturally chooses what is good. They spoke of four key habits—prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance—that together form what they called the “cardinal virtues,” the path of moral excellence.

Centuries later, Christian theologians saw that this ancient insight lined up beautifully with the life of Jesus. He didn’t just teach the right way—He lived it perfectly. Jesus saw the truth clearly (prudence), lived for the good of others (justice), endured suffering for the sake of love (fortitude), and remained total self-control and peace (temperance). The virtues, then, aren’t a rival to Jesus’ way—they describe His character and show what His Spirit forms in us as we follow Him.

Josef Pieper, a twentieth-century Christian philosopher, brought this old wisdom to life again in his short book The Four Cardinal Virtues. He called it “the wisdom of the ancients” that had “inexhaustible contemporaneity,” a perpetual relevance (xii). Let’s walk the path together.

Continue reading “The Ancient Path of Moral Excellence (The Four Cardinal Virtues)”

Posted on

The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 2: Fortitude & Temperance

The objects of virtue are defined by prudence and justice. By objects, I mean, the things we are to pursue, such as a relationship with God, a loving family, and scientific discovery. However, knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. There are many hardships and dangers in pursuing the best. This requires fortitude. There are many good things that distract us from the best. This requires temperance.

These are the four cardinal or principle virtues required in the excellent or virtuous person. Josef Pieper has written a helpful explanation of these four virtues for our time in consultation with ancient philosophy, Christian theology, and modern philosophers. In this post, I am considering his discussion of fortitude and temperance. You can read my post on prudence and justice here.

Fortitude
What are you willing to die for? This is the chief question of fortitude. It’s one every single one of us should consider. Preparing for death prepares us to live. As Josef Pieper says, “Fortitude that does not reach down into the depths of the willingness to die is spoiled at its root and devoid of effective power. . . . Readiness to die is therefore one of the foundations of Christian life” (117). This does not mean that death or suffering are valued in and of themselves. Pieper explains, “The brave man suffers injury not for its own sake, but rather as a means to preserve or to acquire a deeper more essential intactness” (119). The flip side is a desperate attempt to keep one’s life at all costs, “All neuroses seem to have as a common symptom an egocentric anxiety, a tense and self-centered concern for security, the inability to ‘let go’; in short, that kind of love for one’s own life that leads straight to the loss of life” (134). Consequently, careful consideration of what is worth living and dying for is at the root of our well-being. Continue reading “The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 2: Fortitude & Temperance”

Proudly powered by WordPress