The Great Christian Paradox — Magnanimity, Humility, and True Fullness

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From the Essay, “To Be a Man Fully Alive”

Gloria Dei Vivens Homo

By Fr. Bruce Wren

PART 3

The Great Christian Paradox — Magnanimity, Humility, and True Fullness

But one last thing before concluding. What we just said seems strange, because we intuit that there must be something like Christian greatness also, at least in some way mirroring secular or classical greatness. Is the Christian ideal of the man fully alive bereft of classical greatness, or is it true that our greatness consists in becoming slaves to others (even if a humble and charitable slave)?

The answer is the great Christian paradox of magnanimity (a paradox is what seems like a contradiction but isn’t). In the Christian tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas follows Aristotle in speaking about the virtue of “being great.” Both called this virtue “magnanimity,” and both claimed it to be the jewel of all the virtues. They describe magnanimity as the human virtue that aspires to great things: extensio animi ad magna (the extension of the soul to great things). It has its roots in a firm confidence in the highest possibilities of our human nature, and it helps us to decide in favor of what is, at any given moment, the greater possibility for any man in any moment, even if that is more difficult or tedious than the other options open to him. Magnanimity is that virtue that helps us to do such things: it recognizes the greatness of the gifts the person has received, and dares to try to live up to them.

So greatness for both Aristotle and St. Thomas was to be magnanimous: to be courageous enough to “extend or push our souls to the best things.” But here is where they split; here, the Christian answer differs from the classic. For Aristotle, the “best thing” was honor, or glory, typical of the classics. For St. Thomas, this “best thing” was in some ways similar to what Aristotle said; he also noted that it was glory. But it was no longer the honor or glory in the Greek sense. For St. Thomas, the greatest glory in a human life was to attain eternal glory and divine honor; essentially to go to heaven and help others do the same. It is to “win” not a battle on the battlefield, like Napoleon, but the battle of life; to be able to say at the end that I have succeeded in accomplishing the most excellent possibility that there is for human people on earth: gain eternal glory: heaven for me and for those entrusted to my care. To be a magnanimous Christian is to have the virtue to desire heaven and to be courageous enough to work with perseverance for it. Another way of saying this is to be brave enough to fight to be a saint.

Jesus changed the direction of the human race. After Jesus, everyone should still strive for magnanimity and honor. However, for Jesus, greatness wasn’t about having everyone on earth think we were great for a few weeks or even years, but about God thinking we were great forever. Heaven. And for Jesus, the road to this was through love of God and neighbor. Not obtaining power over them, or even their recognition or esteem from them, but obtaining something else: the opportunity to love them; to practice charity.

But what about humility? When St. Augustine was discussing what he called “not the most serious sins, but the most dangerous,” he was speaking about despair (giving up on the chance to make it to heaven or to believe in it) and presumption (thinking that I have it already made!) Do you know what the two virtues are that work against these two vices? Magnanimity and humility. Magnanimity helps me to desire heaven as the greatest thing, and humility allows me to confide that God’s grace will get me there. Magnanimity and humility are not opposites: they go together! For Christians, who is the man fully alive? He whose life is imbued with charity and humility.

One of the greatest books ever written, in my opinion, is War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy. It tells of life in Russia, from about 1805–1812, from the point of view of two aristocratic families, and their involvement in the great political and military upheavals of this time. It ends (more or less: there are still many pages after the event!) with Napoleon’s defeat in Moscow. Much of the book revolves around this “War,” and it appears that the most significant events are related to it. Prince Andrei, one of the heroes of the book, at first, in imitation of Napoleon, is obsessed with his search for glory (classical greatness). But as the book goes on, we begin to realize that for Tolstoy, the important things in life aren’t those great events, the “War” events, but rather the “Peace” events, the multitude of tiny but real things that made up the lives of these families: the debt of a family, young girls falling in love, the love of a mother for her son, a dinner party, a Christmas dance, etc. Little by little, Tolstoy brings us to this conclusion. Speaking of Napoleon, he writes:

And it never enters anyone’s head that the recognition of a greatness not measurable by the measure of good and evil is only a recognition of one’s own insignificance and immeasurable littleness.

For us, with the measures of good and evil given to us by Christ, nothing is immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.

Simplicity, goodness, and truth. That sounds to me like humility, charity, and also truthfulness (we might say integrity). The man who lives and practices these is the man fully alive.

(End of Part 3 / Conclusion of the series)