Book Description

For much of Western church history, virtue theory has largely been the province of the Catholic Church. The marriage of Aquinas' dominant Christian virtue model with a medieval Catholic version of nature and grace has left post-Scholastic Protestants largely hesitant to enter the domain of virtue because of its seeming distance from the biblical narrative of salvation history and opposition to justification by faith alone. Yet with the onset of renewed interest in virtue theory in the twentieth century academy, some Protestants--namely, postliberals--began a retrieval of the virtue tradition. Rather than embed discussion in the medieval nature-grace framework, postliberals tended to build upon the postmodern innovation of narrative. Eventually, some Reformed theologians joined the retrieval. As the movement has picked up steam, though, to date no distinctly Reformed account of the economy of virtue has emerged to relieve the perceived tension between Reformed soteriological commitments and Thomist nature-grace foundations that remain dominant in Christian accounts of virtue. The present study seeks to fill this Reformed void, arguing for the economy of Christian virtue rooted in the doctrine of union with Christ by the Spirit.