VIRTUOUS LIVING - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

moving towards God. But the same applies to living by vice. All the virtuous and thevicious shall receive their appropriate deserts.We are encouraged to profess our faith externally in thanksgiving and worship, andconfession of our sins in repentance. Aquinas elucidates: “All external virtuousbehaviour is the work of our inner faith working through love, commanding othervirtues to evoke that behaviour rather than itself. Professing the faith is faith’s ownexternal act, unmediated by any other virtue” (in McDermott 1989:334). Although ourprofession of faith is not necessary for our salvation, it is important to maintain a“living faith”. Aquinas maintains that believing is an act of mental assent commandedby will. To believe perfectly, our mind must turn unreservedly toward the perfectionof truth. This should be achieved through an unfailing service of that ultimate goal (cfin McDermott 1989:335). The life of faith is charity. It evokes in the moral agentunconditional service to God and fellow humanity. Aquinas warns of a lifeless faith,one arrived at by choice from insufficient and uncertain alternatives. He argues:But lifeless faith is no virtue: it has the perfection needed on the part of themind but not the perfection needed on the part of the will. And faith that doesnot rely on divine truth can fail and believe falsehood, so such faith is also novirtue (Aquinas 1989:335).Faith enables the believer who is also a moral agent to draw from inward truth, thestrength of love of charity toward God and fellow human beings with whom he/sheshares the common goods of life. But most of belief is motivated by the anticipatedtruth to be fully revealed. As such, the believer lives daily in increasing expectation.This disposition is the foundation for virtuous living. This is what makes faith thesubstance of what we hope for and evidence of what it is we cannot see. This leads usto the last theological virtue - hope.3.1.3.3 The theological virtue of hopeAquinas describes the virtue of “hope” as “an attitude in keeping with the true belief,and is praiseworthy and virtuous” (Aquinas 1989:348). What we hope always liesahead as “future goods, challenging but possible of achievement either by our ownpower or with others’ help” (Aquinas 1989:344). Typical of Aquinas is the assertionthat “insofar as we hope to achieve something by reliance on God’s help our hope205