Can we be virtuous in an age of social media?

At the recent Festival of Theology, we heard eight fascinating presentations on a range of subjects. This is a revised version of Alastair Robert’s presentation on virtue ethics in a virtual age and offers a brilliant insight into the dynamics of social media and their impact on discipleship.

The Promise of Virtue Ethics

Over recent decades, partly through the influence of theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas and philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, there has been a renewed appreciation for the concept of virtue in Protestant ethics. Not least because of its attention to the moral agent, the questions of character, and its formation in community, virtue ethics has often represented a welcome movement away from grand yet abstract theories of ethics.

These abstract theories were often, perhaps stereotypically, preoccupied with ethical conundrums that have little relevance to our actual lives. While we can all be amused by far-fetched iterations of the trolley problem, they seldom help us much with the issues that are most immediate to our lives. In contrast to such theories, virtue ethics has tended to encourage greater attention to the integration of the self with community and of action with character. In the work of Hauerwas, this has taken the form of a pronounced particularism, with the church as the community of virtue and an emphasis upon the role of liturgy and scripture in the task of formation.

More recently, writers such as James K.A. Smith have popularized a form of virtue ethics in relation to the discussion of Christian formation, emphasizing the importance of the formation of desires and imaginations through ‘liturgies’. Smith maintains that we need to be mindful of the embodied and imaginative dispositions and habits that shape our Christian belief and practice. We must also seek to address and correct these through healthful forms of practice within the Church.

Although it is limited and should not be the only tool in our toolbox, a virtue ethics approach helpfully foregrounds the question of the sort of people that we ought to be. While many other moral systems concern themselves chiefly with decisions, virtue ethics takes a broader perspective, calling us to attend to our practices, habits, desires, imaginations, to the communities, rituals, and other forces shaping them, and to the character that arises from them.

Community and Virtue

In reflecting upon the significance of social media, many commentators, both Christian and non-Christian, have naturally been drawn to the sorts of language and frameworks afforded by virtue ethics, even when they may not have realized it. Such commentators recognize that social media encourages certain sorts of communities and that it is structuring and forming us, often in disquieting ways. For instance, many have observed that being on social media has led them and others of their acquaintance to become more short-tempered, anxious, distracted, fractious, ungracious, and unkind.

In both the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, Aristotle highlights the connection between the self and the city. Virtue is formed in the political community that is ordered towards the good. We need to be educated and habituated in community if we are to achieve virtue.

In contrast, largely on account of our modern individualistic society, we can often approach the task of ethics as if we were detached, self-grounded, heroic selves, leaving us forgetful of the part played by our structures, systems, and social orders in shaping the our selves and characters and in orienting us towards the good. As we reflect upon social media, virtue ethics can foster an attentiveness to salient features of our contemporary ethical landscape that other approaches may miss or neglect. In particular, the insights of virtue ethics enable us to appreciate certain of the radical changes social media occasions in the ways we form communities, in our practices of expression, discourse, and association, and in the structuring of selves.

Social Media and the Represented Self

I want briefly to draw your attention to just a few of the ways in which both our experience and the very character of the ethical self are structured by the rising prominence of social media environments. My hope is to encourage you to think about some of the ways in which social media shape your understanding, experience, and expression of your self and the ethical practice that arises from these. Alert to the concerns of virtue ethics, specific features of social media and the environments it harbours will be set forth in a sharper relief.

When people talk about the formation of the self, they typically have in mind the education of the self into moral values and practices, orienting and shaping the self towards good ends. The formation of the self on social media runs deeper, though, which is why I use the term ‘structuring’ to distinguish it. The self of social media can take numerous different forms, but, to some degree or other, each of these forms is structured by the more fundamental reality and form of the technologies themselves.

While human beings have always used various media for expressing themselves, these media have historically largely been secondary and peripheral, with the self principally being defined in the realm of concrete social interactions in what some have more recently termed ‘meatspace’. The physical body was the primary medium of the self. Even secondary media often functioned as extensions and expressions of this physicality, rather than mere substitutes for it. If you received a handwritten letter, for instance, you are handling a physical product of someone’s physical activity.

The novelty of the Internet and of social media in particular lies in the extent to which our selves and communities are migrating to a realm of representations, spectacle, and simulation, virtual realms that are steadily replacing many aspects of the realities. As the French philosopher Guy Debord wrote in the 1960s, observing the direction society was heading even in his own day: ‘Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.’

The ‘self’ on social media is primarily a represented self, an artifice or projection, constrained by the media in which it operates. You can be whoever you want on Facebook, provided you express that self in the structures that Facebook affords you. For instance, whatever self you express, that self will exist within a framework that is designed to make you scrutable to algorithms and marketable to advertisers.

The Strangeness of the Social Media Self

If we were to describe the self of social media, how might we do so? Here are a few of the features that we might observe.

First, it is disembodied. On social media we exist as images and words largely abstracted from our physicality. The concreteness, friction, locality, and particularity of the body are all effaced or overcome. Our bodies are sedentary, parked in ungainly postures before screens that occupy the entirety of our attention, upon which we communicate our disembodied consciousness to other disembodied consciousnesses, forgetful and neglectful of our physicality.

Second, it is atomized and decontextualized. On social media, the self is deracinated, uprooted from context and community, and fundamentally functions as a detached individual, defined by its own choices. What notion of ‘locality’ remains is thin and fragile. Families, neighbourhoods, churches, and other such communities are all almost invisible or non-existent on social media. Everything is ordered around the context-free individual.

Third, it is rendered as a spectacle. The self on social media is a projection or representation of the self. While we are always presenting ourselves in particular ways in our day-to-day life, such self-presentation is always grounded in and constrained by our physicality, contexts, and behaviour; online, however, these things fall away and all becomes representation. A consequence of this can be an extreme reflexivity, as we become highly sensitized to and concerned with the image we are projecting of ourselves and how others are perceiving it.

I have previously compared this to a society in which no one has ever seen their face in a mirror or reflective surface before. After the introduction of the mirror to such a society, people would swiftly become acutely aware of the way that they appear to others and the image they are projecting. The reflected image would increasingly start to structure person’s relation to themselves. In place of the self-knowledge resulting from the self-relation developed in true solitude, we can substitute the self-relation that is mediated by virtual self-representations. An introspective self-relation made possible by solitude is displaced by an extrospective self-relation, where social perceptions of the represented self begin to assume a far greater prominence, leaving us much more vulnerable to peer pressure and to others’ negative judgments of us.

The phenomenon of ‘virtue-signalling’, for instance, is something that we all almost inescapably engage in online, as all our statements are self-representations or personal brand management to a degree that they are not in regular in-person conversations. The online self is hyper-performative, creating itself in its acts of representing itself.

Fourth, the social media self is submerged in socially-saturated environments of mutual display, yet lacks both true community and genuine solitude. It does not truly belong anywhere, yet it also lacks robust self-definition. Such a self is highly susceptible to external influence and pressure, as it is without both the external and the internal rootedness to resist the movements of the crowd.

Fifth, the social media self is the cookie-cutter self of the universal individual, variously cosmetically customized as a means of self-representation. Online, the rich variegation of real world selves is lost as all selves are rendered fundamentally comparable and commensurable. Many aspects of our humanity are obscured or rendered invisible as a result. Age, authority, family, disability, poverty, neighbourhood, and other such things are all difficult to perceive on social media, where every profile is much like every other.

Sixth, no longer embedded and grounded in community, online the self can become a consumer of community. The givenness of community, a sort of gravity that grounds the self, is lost. Individual choice becomes the overriding principle governing everything and is no longer held in check by strong belonging. Yet the power of community lies largely in its unchosen character, and in the ways in which it can form us to choose differently.

When detached individuals are radically free to choose communities that fit their preferences, the power of the different characters and perspectives of our unchosen neighbours to challenge and broaden our own perspectives and to knock the rough edges off our characters can be forfeited. Without the powerful balancing and stabilizing presence of such unchosen neighbours, virtual communities can become far more extreme and unbalanced people can easily find others to reinforce them in their problems, gradually inuring them to the influence of loving friends and neighbours who might shepherd them back to health.

Seventh, the social media self is a commoditized self, a self that is sold to advertisers, a self that can be measured, manipulated, and ordered. It is a self that is conformable to the logic of technique.

Eighth, the social media self is fragilized, uprooted, and deracinated. It functions in highly pluralistic contexts, within which it is—or at least feels—subject to intense social judgment. Such selves tend to be reactive and easily threatened. People talk a lot about ‘echo chambers’ online. However, increasingly research is showing that echo chambers don’t generally exist. Rather, the problem is that, as we feel threatened in contexts of repeated exposure to people with whom we differ, we rapidly become reactive and polarized.

Finally, where lots of atomized and uprooted selves interact in realms where contexts are weak, or have collapsed into each other, where the boundaries or friction between people have been lost, one of the predictable results is the rise of herd dynamics. Where human beings cease to function in well-structured communities, they tend to act like the undifferentiated mass or herd. As René Girard and others have noted, when people become undifferentiated in such ways, we become reactive and the scapegoat mechanism often comes into play.

Virtue and the Virtual

What does all of this have to do with virtue and virtue ethics? If we are to think well about the formation of the self, it is imperative that we consider the structural framing of the self on social media. We must recognize the character of the virtual self as a representation and reflect upon the unhealthy relationships that can develop between this self and our immediate embodied and localized selves.

In our conversations about virtue ethics, it is easy to take the fundamental reality of the self for granted and to focus more narrowly upon the question of the best way in which to form this self. Yet, before the self can be properly formed, it needs to be structured. An uncritical posture towards the reality of selfhood in social media leaves us ill-equipped to understand the fracturing and fragilization of the self that many people experience in this realm. The rising prominence of the virtual representation of the self on social media is an event that merits the close attention of virtue ethicists.

Within this talk, I have tried to take the necessary initial step of increasing our mindfulness of the ways in which our selves are structured and ethically formed in the realms of social media. The emphasis that virtue ethics places upon community for the formation of the self in virtue needs to be considered when approaching social media. What might a virtual community of virtue look like? If social media is, as I have argued, a realm where we lack both the capacity to be genuinely together and the capacity to be alone, what does this mean for the formation of virtue? It must also be considered that, unlike the Aristotelian polis, social media isn’t a political community intentionally ordered towards virtue and the common good, but rather is an impersonal technological framework or set of platforms, continually being optimized for ends that are frequently contrary or entirely indifferent to our moral and social well-being.

A Crippling Freedom

As people feel the ways in which their habits and characters are being poorly formed by social media, many resort to heroic moral individualism. The individual user of social media simply needs to increase their mindfulness, redouble their efforts, develop personal strategies of resistance, etc. Now, such an approach may be our only means of pursuing something approximating to well-being in many situations. However, the true development of virtue requires community. The problem is that online community is either weak or disordered and we often have no more robust, resilient, and substantive alternative community to assist us. This leaves us struggling to pursue virtue well.

The Internet and social media hold out to us the possibility of radical freedom and the removal of limitations and boundaries. Yet each freedom it affords us seems to be attended by new forms of bondage. The collapsing of boundaries, the removal of obstacles, the elimination of friction, the extension of possibilities, the amplification of powers, the speeding up of processes, the vanishing of distances, and the overcoming of the constraints of the body all promised liberation, yet we find ourselves the victims of new habits, vices, frustrations, fears, pressures, powers, and limits.

Virtue ethics can help us to understand why this might be the case. The development of virtue and the freedom that comes with a well-formed character, with a nature ordered towards our good, requires limits, boundaries, and authority. The removal of these things will not leave us freer, but will leave us at the mercy of untamed appetites.

A Hopeful Conclusion?

Social media isn’t going to go away, nor are the problems that I have outlined. Indeed, we should expect many of them to be exacerbated in the future. In light of the problems I have highlighted, we might be tempted to abandon social media altogether. This would not be an irrational move for some to make. Social media presents many dangers and many of us may not be able to resist them effectively. Highly selective use of social media or more general or periodic abstaining from them may do us good. Indeed, we may well be better off in communities where many, yet not all, members largely abstain from social media. We need to learn how to resist the inevitability and imperative of technological progress, which requires our uncritical capitulation to every supposed advance; our belief that no other realistic possibility exists to relatively unqualified adoption of each new technology can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, the positive opportunities presented by social media are vast and those who abstain from them on grounds of principle don’t merely avoid certain dangers, but also miss out on much that is good. Besides, ‘directly lived’ society is no longer just there waiting for us to return to it: its members and activities have increasingly relocated to the virtual, leaving it to languish in their neglect and absence. While we should seek to revive such society, even achieving this will require engagement with the virtual.

Rather than simply rejecting social media, which would require both disengaging from our neighbours and the forfeiting of remarkable opportunities, we must, I believe, be inventive and imaginative users and creators of social media, considering ways in which we can make the most of the technological possibilities, without succumbing to the unhealthy tendencies. Achieving this, however, will require the coordination of the efforts of robust communities, rather than simply the individual brilliance of moral mavericks.

If we recognize the insufficiency of social media for supporting communities of virtue and the dysfunctionality of a selfhood pursued in such a realm of shallow representations, we will receive a salutary caution against placing too much weight upon it. However, this does not mean that we need abandon it altogether. The image that I have often returned to is that of scaffolding. Social media, at its best, can be scaffolding that enables us to build up, strengthen, and extend community in the concrete, physical world of localities and bodies. Scaffolding is a completely unsuitable place to make one’s home, but is a very effective tool for extending it and building it up. An event such as this Festival of Theology is a great example of such a use of social media in action, where social media has been used to create concrete and directly lived connections and interactions where they would not otherwise have existed.

Finally, healthy use of social media will be nigh impossible where users are not deeply embedded in robust and weighty communities of virtue that are concrete, physical, and local. The need for such communities is so much greater when we are subject to powerful forces pulling us towards abstraction, atomization, and alienation. Strong communities ground us and equip us with the necessary habits, virtues, and disciplines to navigate contexts that are unable to form the virtues that healthy users of them require. The Church must be such a community for Christians, firmly tethering them to a stable and secure reality, lest in an unchecked ascent into the abstract airiness of social media they were to float away entirely. To use a different metaphor, it is like the boat from which oxygen can be pumped to submerged divers, preventing them from drowning in the abyss, and providing them with somewhere safe to which they can resurface.


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18 thoughts on “Can we be virtuous in an age of social media?”

  1. Thank you for publishing, Ian; thank you for writing, Alistair. It is the first time I have seen virtue ethics brought together with social media and it’s well worth making. I enjoyed the talk on Tuesday, Alistair, and I’m glad to read the extra paras at the end now (although they seem to hedge all the more confident bets you previously made!)

    I think it’s amazing that no Christian has seriously written about this before. Or perhaps they have?

    I think I have a few comments, I might list them separately to enable conversation.

    Reply
  2. My first substantial comment is that I feel unsure about the importance of the distinction between virtue ethics being ‘structured’ and being ‘formed’. While it brings a useful scrutiny (as does all you have written), is it that significant in practice? For example, I found secondary school (a real, physical community) a much harder place to develop my character and behaviour than I find Facebook. In comparing the two, I would say that the power of the community in either simply overwhelms the power of the structure that underlies it.

    Reply
  3. My second is that I really think this essay is not about social media, but about certain types of social media.

    There is no mention, for example, of games, which are the primary social media used by my teenagers. Online games tend to be collaborative team games focussed on certain objectives. They are therefore formative of relationships (in the same way as any mission is) and of communities. These communities are relatively ‘thick’ and enduring. They include conversation, gift-giving, praise and the teens develop a sense of justice and of what is possible in the arena of justice, even in the context of a ‘first person shooter’ game.

    My older son became a volunteer moderator for a Minecraft server: a role is basically an online youth worker. It was a task I urged him to put on his CV. He received training (online), was selected (online), became part of an online team, and was given responsibilities that he lived out diligently. As a by-product of that he built acquaintanceships and friendships across the world that enabled him to get a sense of lived cultures in other places that I have never had access to…. have you ever had a Finnish fishmonger for a friend? He has!

    I see in their daily experience few if any of the ‘8 strangenesses of social media’ given in the post. Instead I see ordinary kids playing in ways similar to the ways they always have done. I DO worry about their physical bodies, but that’s about all.

    Reply
  4. Thanks to Alistair for such a thorough and well-researched post.

    Let me first state that I agree with much of his analysis of the effect of social media on human character. Nevertheless, while I’d agree that virtue ethics has advantages over the theoretical world of far-fetched ethical dilemmas, I still have serious reservations about virtue ethics and not just due to its Hellenistic philosophical foundations.

    James K A Smith (whom Alistair cites) has written on virtue ethics extensively and especially the role of everyday ‘liturgies’ in Christian formation. In his post on the Colossian Forum, Smith compares virtue to vice in this way:
    ’So the virtuous person is someone whose character has been shaped in such a way that she has acquired good habits – these have gradually become a part of her ‘second nature’ so that she is now the kind of person who tends to ‘naturally’ act in that direction, toward ‘the good’…In contrast, the vicious person is someone whose (mal)formation has made him the kind of person who is inclined toward vice’.

    Yes, the virtuous and vicious are characterised by good and evil habits respectively. However, we should not think that because habit is an outcome of virtue and vice, it is also the agent of both.

    Habit per se may be a concomitant, but is the agent of neither virtue nor vice. In fact, it’s the other way around.

    The issue I have with virtue ethics as Smith explains it, is that it implies that the transformation of the gospel is effected through habit formation. As Smith writes: ’All of this raises an important question: How do I acquire virtues? Historically, virtue theory has emphasised two principal means for habit formation-both of which resonate with biblical wisdom.

    First, we follow the model and example of the virtuous person. In other words, we imitate exemplars. We follow those who exemplify virtues. This framework gives us a new way to appreciate Paul’s exhortation in 1 Cor. 11:1: ‘Be imitators of me, just as also I am of Christ’.

    Yet, while discipleship involves imitation, what’s missing from Smith’s framework is the apostle’s own description of how he was able to (and, by inference, how we are able to) imitate Christ.

    I find it hard to associate the virtue ethics’ focus on the self in the habit formation with St. Paul’s distrust of all his natural inclinations and self-effort in developing Christian maturity (cf. Rom. 7:18). Instead of cultivation, he emphasises to the misguided Galatians, who were under the spell of Judaizers, the Spirit-wrought self-despairing reliance on and thankfulness for Christ as the empowerment of his new life:

    ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! (Gal. 2:20-21)

    Smith goes further to suggest that it is ritual which inculcates virtue: ’Second, we acquire virtue and re-form our habits by immersing ourselves in practices that train our hearts on the telos of Christ and his kingdom. In other words, acquiring virtues takes practice. It is through our immersion in rhythms and routines that are prime toward the telos that we become the sort of people who are primed in that direction. So, if we are going to be the sort of people who ‘put on’ Christ’s virtue (Col. 3:12-15), Paul says we’ll need to immerse ourselves in the sorts of practices that inscribe those habits in us.

    Again, this is a back-to-front explanation of how scripture describes sanctification. It sounds harsh, biut to put habit formation first is inimical to grace.

    Of course, we should immerse ourselves in the habit of worship, but not in order to inculcate a love for God until it becomes ‘second nature’. I

    nstead, as Paul explains, it is through our unchosen, but divinely permitted hardships of life and God’s gracious and repeated insights into our glorious future with Christ which motivate us to sacrifice all in pursuit of our promised inheritance: ‘And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Rom. 5:2 – 5)

    In summary, while there is discipline in the Christian life, it is the discipline of despairing of self-reliance to place trust in God’s promises and His transcendent insight.

    Again, I would stress that I agree, for the most part, with Alistair’s analysis of social media’s potential for harm and benefit to human character.

    I would be interested in hearing about other Christian authors who might espouse virtue ethics somewhat differently to James K A Smith.

    Reply
    • Hi David

      I can see what you’re saying, and you are right that these themes are present in the NT, especially Paul, whose conversion from a ‘pharisee of pharisees’ was particularly pronounced.

      However, I think characterising NT ethics as moving from self-effort to self-despair is not a fair portrayal of the whole picture. The NT is full of exhortations and imperatives to choose right and learn to live in the new way of Christ. The NT authors clearly expect a significant amount of moral effort on the part of believers to submit to the law of Christ and persevere in the faith and the way.

      It is interesting you cite Romans 7:18 because that is surely about the sinful nature, the flesh, not about the life in the Spirit set out in Romans 8 which characterises the experience of the believer:
      But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you… if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (8:9,13)

      A couple of other examples of clear practical imperatives for believers:
      Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:12-14)

      Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)… Now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. (Col 3:5-10)

      There are many similar exhortations of course, with a clear instruction for what the hearer must do: lay aside, put on, make no provision, put to death, get rid, you have stripped off, you have clothed yourselves etc. All about what we are doing. The cooperation which you mention between God and the believer involves a lot more initiative on our part – and hence inculcation of virtue – than I think your characterisation really admits. Sanctification is a highly participatory activity.

      Reply
      • Hi Will,

        Thanks for your reply. I used the phrase ‘self-despairing’ to qualify the nature of Christian reliance upon God’s grace, rather than to characterise the Christian persona.

        So, my final mention of a discipline of despairing of self-reliance is related to my earlier remark about spirit-wrought self-despairing reliance on and thankfulness for Christ.

        So, while you explain that ‘the NT authors clearly expect a significant amount of moral effort on the part of believers to submit to the law of Christ and to persevere in the faith’, they just as clearly explain that believers are involved in an ongoing war between flesh and spirit (Gal. 5:17)

        My comments about virtue ethics focused on the ‘how’, which is clarified by Rom. 8:13.

        So, the Spirit is the agent by whom we put to death the deeds of the flesh and, for Paul writing to the Galatians, the agency by which we are sanctified is no different from the agency by which the apostles and other believers spoke in tongues, prophesied, cast our demons and healed the sick (Gal. 3:2 – 5)

        So, yes, sanctification involves cooperation, this but no different from reliance on God in exercising the gift of healing, or performing exorcisms.

        Yes, sanctification is participatory; but, similarly, healing ministry does involve participation in visiting, praying and fasting for the sick.

        Nevertheless, God is credited with the restoration to health itself and it is effected by yielding to the Lord’s transcendent miraculous power through Christ, not our moral effort.

        Likewise, Paul’s parallel of sanctification with miraculous charism means that this exemplifies how Christians yield to God become holy.

        This kind of reliance on God is a far cry from Smith’s reliance on repetition to inculcating virtuous habits until ‘second nature’.

        Reply
        • Hi David

          I can’t agree that the NT teaches that moral effort is not required by the believer. There are so many exhortations to holy and righteous living, and to perseverance, that I just think it is a one-sided presentation of NT ethics to imply that it has replaced moral effort with something more spiritual. Yes, by grace through faith we are given access to the Spirit of Christ to fill us and clothe us with Christ – but none of this replaces the moral effort that is our part in the cooperative process that is sanctification.

          Reply
          • Hi Will,

            Actually I agreed that sanctification involves cooperation and is participatory.

            I simply credited God, rather than moral effort, for effecting the outcome, rather than just giving access to an outcome accomplished by moral effort.

            Regardless of this, nothing in scripture supports the notion that the gospel is compatible with the Aristotelian virtue ethics, which Smith promotes.

  5. Hi David, I’m reading Smith at the moment and I’m interested to know how you see the relationship between a person’s will and sanctification? I’ve (very simply) understood virtue ethics to be the working out of being transformed by the renewing of our minds daily through God’s word and liturgy. Interested to hear your thoughts? Blessings

    Reply
    • Hi Andy,

      Blessings to you too.

      In my understanding, it is the Holy Spirit who infuses the human will with God’s will in order to accomplish our sanctification.

      In correcting the mistaken legalism to which the Galatians had fallen prey, Paul sees sanctification as a continuation of the miraculous outpouring of the Holy Spirit:
      ‘You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

      So, sanctification is as much a miracle of divine intervention as Christ’s healing of the man with the withered hand (Mt. 12:13) Jesus’ command was issued with empowerment to accomplish what was impossible by natural means. So, too, it is only through revelation impossible by natural means, God’s heavenly providence through Christ and the chastening hardships which He permits us that we are repeatedly humbled into full submission to God’s will, whereby our sanctification is accomplished.

      Paul’s reference to Abraham is important. The kind of faith that he urged upon the Galatians was mirrored in the life of Israel’s great progenitor, who obeyed God by continuing and finishing the long, arduous journey from Ur to Canaan; a journey which his father, Terah, had abandoned to settle in Harran (Gen. 11:31 – 12:1).

      However Abraham may have faltered, when challenged to persevere, he never settled for less than God had promised.

      Arguably, ‘never settling’ is an apt description of how a person’s will relates to their sanctification; that God, by granting us a glimpse into that realm in which His will is ‘done on earth as it is in heaven’, stirs up in us an uncompromising striving and hunger to fulfil God’s will (Ps. 42:1; Matt. 5:6).

      That striving makes it impossible for the redeemed to settle for a life which doesn’t grasp with both hands (and at the expense of temporal goals) our eternal blessings in Christ. As Paul put it:
      ‘I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

      Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.’

      There’s no suggestion here that the rhythms and rituals of liturgy were responsible for the apostle’s perseverance in the face of adversity becoming ‘second nature’ . And Paul was focused on completely apprehending Christ Himself, rather than the achievement of virtue.

      While virtue ethics may offer far more than deontology, it still smacks of the self-reliant effort of resorting to liturgy as the mechanism for inculcating good habits.

      Instead, liturgy is the means by which the mystery of God’s grace is re-presented and communicated as a divinely empowered experience for the entire Church through that spiritual semaphore which is our shared catholic heritage.

      The following excerpt from Montaigne’s Essais provides an excellent explanation of the relationship of a person’s will to sanctification:

      ‘It is Faith alone that vividly and with certainty embraces the sublime mysteries of our religion. But that does not mean that it is not a very fine and very laudable undertaking to employ in the service of our faith also the natural and human implements that God has given us. It is not to be doubted that that is the most honourable use that we can put them to, and that there is no occupation or design more worthy of a Christian than to aim … at embellishing, extending and amplifying the truth of his belief …

      We must do the like, and accompany our faith with all the reason that is in us; but always with this reservation, that we must not imagine that it depends upon ourselves, nor that our endeavours and arguments will be able to attain to a knowledge so divine and supernatural

      Phillipians 2:12-13 concurs with this position: ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.’

      Reply
      • Will, David and Andy Thanks. It seems to me that we need to hold both sides with equal robustness. I find this in Philippeans – ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 2.12-13. We are called to be responsible for how we live – there is something here we must work out. But we are to be utterly submitted and consecrated to the life and work of God within us. The over or under-stating of either side of this teaching can lead to significant distortions in our understanding of formation and faith in Christ.

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