Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CXL.

In so far as God himself is the object of love, and in so far as, in the creature, the divine phase, the image of God, is brought into prominence, the above four virtues appear under a special form expressive of the essence of piety, as piety-virtues, which, however, do not stand along-side of the other virtues, but are in fact the highest and God-directed phase of the same. Fidelity as relating to God appears as moral faith; justness as moral devotedness or pious obedience; temperateness as filially-pious humility, as child-mindedness; and courage as hope or confidence.

The piety-virtues, only partially corresponding to the so-called theological virtues, are the essence proper, the ground, the kernel and the crown of the virtues in general,—are neither super-ordinate nor co-ordinate to the four cardinal virtues, but are their essential substance and spirit itself.

1. Faith, designated in Scripture by the same expression with fidelity, is the loving response to God’s fidelity to us, and, as an expression of our fidelity toward the faithful God, is a high moral requirement,—is a loving confiding of our own being and life to the faithful love and truthfulness of God, a holding-fast of love to God. Were faith a mere holding for true, then it would not be a moral requirement, and hence the possession of it not a virtue; as fidelity, however, it is a virtue (§ 113). Faith is reckoned to man for justness or [Rom. iv, 3; Gal. iii, 6], for the reason that, as fidelity, it is itself justness toward God, and the root and essence of all .

2. Obedience toward God, moral decotedness, ὑπακοή, is the inclination and willingness that God’s claim upon us should be perfectly realized in our moral conduct, and hence that we should do that which, as God’s creditors, we owe to Him [Rom. viii, 12]; we meet God’s claim upon us only by perfect, voluntary and joyous submission to his will [Exod. xix, 8; xxiv, 3, 7; Deut. iv; xi, 1; xii, 1, 32; xiii, 4, 18; Jer. vii, 23; Luke i, 38; James iv, 7; 1 Pet. i, 2, 14, 22; comp. Gen. vi, 22; vii, 5; xii, 4; xxi, 13 sqq.; xxii, 1 sqq.]; the obedient are by that very fact the just [Hos. xiv, 9; Mal. iii, 18; Matt. xxv, 37; 1 John iii, 7]; obedience is the fruit of faith [Heb. xi, 8], the expression of the child-mindedness of believers toward the Father. The Son of man is the holy pattern of obedience [Rom. v, 19; Gal. iv, 4; Phil. ii, 8; Heb. v, 8; Isa. liii].

3. Humility, ταπεινοφροσύνη, the moral and reverential confining of ourselves within the limits fixed by God for us as creatures and for each of us, in his special moral calling, is an absolute duty even of sinless man, inasmuch as the moral creature, as related to God, is and has nothing which is not to be recognized as depending upon God’s support; hence it holds good also of the angels [Col. ii, 18], and of Christ as the Son of man in his subordination to God [Matt. xi, 29; comp. xx, 28; Phil. ii, 6-8; Heb. xii, 2; John xiii, 4 sqq.]. All moral humility is at bottom humility before God [James iv, 10; comp. Gen. xxxii, 10; Luke xviii, 14], even as the first sin consisted in a lack of humility; when humility before men does not rest on this ground, it sinks to abjectness and servile-mindedness; it is only in humility before God that man learns to harmonize humility before men with a proper respect for his own moral dignity. All humility rests on faith and is also obedience; its essence, however, is a keeping within bounds, a self-retention within our divinely-appointed position [Matt. v, 3; xxiii, 11; Luke xxii, 24 sqq.; Acts xx, 19; Rom. xii, 3, 16; Eph. iv, 1, 2; Phil. ii, 3; Col. iii, 12; 1 Pet. v, 5; James iv, 6]. Child-like humility aims not at high things, but only at the highest, which in fact are accessible only to child-mindedness,—retains always toward God its filial character [Matt. xviii, 3, 4]. Humility is a purely Christian virtue; to Greek ethics it was almost unknown (§ 21).

4. Hope, ἐλπίς, mentioned in connection with faith and love as a high virtue [1 Cor. xiii, 13], directs itself with firm confidence toward the highest good as the goal to be attained to, toward the idea of the good [Rom. viii, 24], and is not a mere expecting of a future happiness, but a joyful trusting faith-born confidence that God means it well with us, and will also actually enable us to reach our moral goal, provided we honestly strive toward it,—is, in a word, that moral courage in God that is sure of its victory, and that has consequently already overcome all inward obstacles to the outward victory; it is not merely an involuntary state of feeling, but a morally-acquired good. All hope is faith [Heb. xi, 1], but it is also moral self-surrender and child-like humility, for it expects the victory not from itself but from God. The hope that is fixed merely upon created things is vain and sinful; but moral hoping in God does not end in disappointment [Rom. v, 5], and all moral courage is based upon it [Psa. ix, 10; xxv, 2; xxxi, 15; xl, 4; lvi, 4 sqq.; lxii, 6; xci, 2; cxii, 7; John xvi, 33; Rom. iv, 18; v, 2, 4, 5; xii, 12; Phil. iii, 1; iv, 4; 1 Cor. i, 10; iii, 12, etc.]. God is a God of hope [Rom. xv, 13], because all hope is based on him, and relates to his promises. The word of the faithful God is the ground, the contents and the vitality of all true hope. Hope is a virtue belonging essentially only to the kingdom of God; among heathens only the Persians have as much as a darkly-groping hope; the Greeks looked but dismally into the future, and their ethics knows nothing of hope as a virtue; in the Old Testament, however, we meet with it almost on every page; it is the key-note of the religiously-moral life, constantly bursting out in inspired strains; the Christian’s hope, as fulfilled in Christ, awakens and gives ground for new hope.

As all virtue whatever is a force and a motive to moral action, much more is this true of the piety-virtues. All moral action directs itself essentially toward a yet to be attained good, and which consequently exists primarily only in thought; hence the moral motive is not merely love to an existing entity, but at the same time also love to a, as yet, not existing one, to a merely conceived one, the realization of which, however, is, in virtue of our love to the truly existing primative ground of all morality, absolutely sure to us,—hence it is, essentially, faith in the living and truthful God, and hope of the realization of the highest good. In virtue of this pious believing and hoping, as springing from our love to God, fidelity in our temporal calling becomes joyous ; and in our working for the spiritual and the eternal, it becomes enthusiasm.

Observation. The systematic development of the cardinal virtues has ever been one of the most weighty and difficult points in ethics. Plato was the first to present the four virtues, which were adopted by Sts. Ambrose and Augustine, and which then held sway through the entire Middle Ages and up to the most recent times; and to these were added and superordinated, without any clear connection, the three theological virtues (§ 31). The Greek classification of the virtues is, however, entirely unadapted to the Christian notion of virtue, as the violent construction of them, to which even Augustine had to resort, abundantly manifests; while with the Greeks the fundamental virtue was wisdom, in Christianity it is love, love to the loving, personal God; this love to God was entirely lacking to the Greeks, because with them its certain object was also lacking. Protestant ethics sought out, therefore, with a correcter consciousness, new paths, and that too from the very beginning (§ 37). The three cardinal virtues of Calvin: sobrietas, justitia, pietas, do not, however, exhaust the material, and they admit of no proper organic union, because pietas is not co-ordinate to the other two, but superordinate. Schleiermacher’s cardinal virtues (§ 48): wisdom, love, discretion and , are, in spite of all the dialectical skill bestowed in their development, of a merely artificial character, and are least of all adapted to Christian ethics,—to which in fact he does not apply them; the Platonic virtues admit of a much more natural development. In the system of Schleiermacher, love is by no means presented in its full Christian significancy, least of all as love to God (which is in fact regarded as an unapt expression), but it is presented only as the “vivifying virtue, as working forth out of itself into the world, namely, into nature,”—as manifesting reason in its action upon nature; reason is the loving element, nature the loved; love to God is true only as love to nature (Syst. §§ 296, 303 sqq.); this is almost the very opposite of the Christian notion of love. C. F. Schmid accepts this classification under a more Christian form, without, however, developing it in greater fullness (Christl. Sittenl., p. 528).—Most peculiar of all is Rothe’s classification (Eth. 1 ed., § 645 sqq.). He gives two virtues of the self-consciousness or rationality, and two virtues of self-activity or freedom. (1.) Individually-determined rationality is geniality,—aptness for an absolutely individual cognizing, so that the same can absolutely be accomplished by no other person-the artistic virtue proper; to it belong courage, composedness, modesty, , sympathy, confidence, etc. (2.) Universally-determined rationality is wisdom—aptness for a universal cognizing, so that the same may absolutely be accomplished by every other spirit in the same manner; it appears under the forms of considerateness, impartialness, sobriety, instructiveness, benevolence, fairness, etc. (3.) Individually determined freedom is originality, the virtue which specifically qualifies for individual forming,—the social virtue proper; to it belong valor, temperateness, chastity, dignity, unselfishness, fidelity, etc. (4.) Universally determined freedom is the strength which leads to a universal forming, that is, to laboring and acquiring,—the public or civic virtue proper; it appears under the forms of persistence, patience, self-control, eloquence, beneficence, magnanimity, etc.