Virtue is not its own reward.

Posted on By pukeko

Roosh has shamed me. Because he has managed to get at least part way through the Nicomachean ethics, which I have never attempted. But The logic of the book is fairly simple.

  • To be happy is to be virtuous.
  • You are content and happy when you do what is good and right and true.
  • Virtue is something that a man has to be trained in, or otherwise he will fulfil his brute lusts, and call this happiness.

These ethics were written for those who wanted to he correct: for being virtuous was seen as manly, and those who moved from moderation to excess — either starvation or gluttony, celibacy or sexual licence, were seen as effeminate, for they had no self-control. As such, these ethics are not a closed system, for the evil and stupid need not apply.

The trouble is that the virtuous can and do suffer. The ancients called these people heroes. Something we only accept, now in fantasy or games. Our society rewards instead the stupid and dissolute.

Within the church these ethics were subsumed by some of the early theological geniuses that worked out the implications of the gospel as the Roman Empire (Western Version) entered it’s death spiral. Much of the teaching of the church around sin, for instance, is about extremes being wrong, and the use of our bodily functions in the correct way as useful: from the advice on diet to sexuality. If you consider Augustine’s Confessions (which I have read part thereof: it is as hard as Aristotle) you can see these ethics within: this should be expected, as Augustine had a proper Roman Education, which included introduction to the philosophers (which he hated, as he disliked Greek).

But Christ looks at all this and changes the frame.

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

(John 6:27-40 ESV)

Christ said instead that virtue is not its own reward but the work of God. For in obeying the two commands of the law — you shall love the LORD with all your being, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself — all the commands of the law fall our, and all the qualities that the pagans, quite correctly, call virtues fall out.

For a Christian, virtue is not a reward. instead it is a consequence of love of God. You can judge people by what they do, not what they say: we are all imperfect, and the older I get the more my flaws are apparent to me.

This is one of the issues I have with our current use of the addiction paradigm, We talk about people being addicted to food, to gambling, to sex, to exercise as if these activities had the same biological properties of alcohol, heroin or the two most dependency inducing chemicals I know of, nicotine and caffeine.

We do not talk about useful and destructive habits. We do not talk about ethics. We do not train people in how to live in virtue. We assume that self-control will spring up without encouragement and without active training. And we are shocked to find that the current generation has the morals of a cat.

However, there is a promise in this: if we do the work of CHrist, and we believe on his work for us, he calls us one of his own, And he will preserve us. Despite our failings, despite our faults. Despite the damage we have done.

For no person in this world is virtuous. No person in this world is truly faithful. But God is not man, that he should lie: if he say s it, he will do it.

Virtue is best not seen as its own reward in some kind of circular logic. Instead it a consequence of a series of choices. Made because the incarnate God chose to take the consequences of that very damage we have done, the sins of habit and stress, the evil of our lives, and deal with the just penalty of them.

Any virtue we show is not ours, but Gods.

One thought on “Virtue is not its own reward.”

  1. In a socialist society like this one, your virtue is someone else’s benefit- after of course its taken by force from you.

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