Chapter 11 In the Image and Likeness: Theological Reflections on the Science of Habits
In: Habits in MindSearch for other papers by Charlene P.E. Burns in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Virtue theorists have always taught that the virtues function like skills that can be taught and that their application can be honed with practice. Exciting new psychological and neuro-scientific research into habit formation and the human capacity for compassion seems to lend support to this ancient intuition. This essay is an exercise in dialogue between Christian theology and western science that aims at identifying places of convergence on the development of virtues. My hope is that this endeavor will enhance theological development and contribute to the ongoing conversation with the sciences on issues central to understanding what it means to be a human being. Here I expand on earlier works in which I argued for a theological anthropology grounded in an interpretation of altruism as a manifestation of the divine uncreated energeia and informed by the human capacity for empathy. In classical Christian thought caritas/agape, absolutely self-less love is one of three “infused” virtues that originate from bestowal of the grace of God, not purely from acts of will. As Romanus Cessario argues, development of virtue in the Christian life has at least two points of origin: human effort and divine action, which enables “the graced development of a habitus”. The implications of understanding caritas/agape as an ‘infused’ virtue capable of development as a ‘habit’ of being in the form of empathy are explored.