virtues and vices

Like ‘rational theology’ moral theology has two categories. Into one fall the virtues and into the other fall the vices. Alan's treatise on the Virtues and Vices and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit has a strong claim to be a section of the lost conclusion of the Summa Quoniam Homines. Certainly, Alan treats the subject of moral theology in this work as though it were itself part of speculative or rational theology, in exactly the way he had dealt earlier with topics such as the unity and nature of God. The virtues are the expedimenta, the vices the impedimenta, of this branch of theology. We must pause briefly over this theoretical examination before we come to Alan's practical theology since Alan himself would place it with the speculative.

In this treatise then, Alan attempts a definition of virtue which owes everything to philosophy and nothing to common observation of good men's lives. In man, he begins, a virtue is a quality, not a substance. To call God righteous is to speak of an attribute of his very substance. To call a man righteous is to speak of a quality he may lose at any moment. God is justice; man is just. More precisely, we may describe virtue as the ‘habit of a well-ordered mind’. We must also take into account the further meaning of virtus which makes it a ‘power’. These are our three starting-points.

When Alan frames a definition, he likes to present it readymade for consideration and analysis, rather than to show step by step how he has arrived at it. He knew the formal procedure for arriving at a definition well enough.