The Counsels of the Wise Friend: Aquinas on Religious Life
Aquinas’ spiritual theology, deeply rooted in Scripture, Tradition, and practical human wisdom, and centered on the virtues and the pursuit of happiness, provides an invaluable foundation for reflecting on religious life. This is why his theology addresses a vital question concerning the nature of religious life: How does religious life help me, as a human person, draw closer to God? How does our humanity relate to grace and to the life of religious commitment? Are the evangelical counsels merely an additional layer upon our humanity?
If we cannot provide a valid, reasonable answer to the question of why it is good for a Christian, a human person, to live according to the evangelical counsels, our theology will lack something essential. We religious need the conviction that our lifestyle is worthwhile: Aquinas’ theology offers answers to the why-s and provides reasons.
When considering religious life, this anthropological perspective is, of course, not the only possible one. It is always essential to link the counsels to the person of Christ, whose life is the model for religious life. In Christ, we see humanity in its fullest form. While affirming that the Christological focus is always indispensable for any theological reflection, here I would like to emphasize this anthropological aspect.
Why is Aquinas’ vision refreshing? Primarily because, for centuries, the theology of the counsels and of religious life was largely shaped by an understanding of the spiritual life that saw the vows mainly as super-obligations to be fulfilled. This perspective prevailed from the Protestant Reformation onward, up to Vatican II, and still influences our catechesis, religious education, and formation as religious. Christian life was often viewed as a two-story house: the first story was reserved for the ordinary Christian, whose life was defined by the Ten Commandments, God’s precepts, with the motto, “If you wish to be saved, then keep the commandments, and this is enough for your eternal salvation.” The second story was reserved for the state of perfection—the chosen few who desired a more heroic moral and spiritual life: “If you want more, and want to be perfect, be a religious and keep the religious vows!”
If the vows are principally obligations, then you can define very clearly what you are allowed and prohibited to do as a religious, and this clarity is certainly useful. But at the same time, the vows or counsels become completely dispensable for the whole of Christian life as such: an optional extra, without which Christian life goes the same. Like air-conditioning in a car or whipped cream on the top of a cake. After all, you can drive a car without air-condition and some prefer the cake without whipped cream. If religious vows and religious life as such lose their significance for what it means to be human, the essential question—how the counsels help me to be free and to love better—remains unanswered. A purely functional response, such as, “I live this life to be free for the mission or for the service of others,” may be true but is theologically insufficient.
And the counsels lack an organic relationship to our humanity, it becomes easier to reduce their purpose to a sacrificial one. In this view, the counsels primarily exist to counter sinful human nature and help overcome it. Consequently, chastity may come to be seen merely as repression of sexuality, while passions and emotions are regarded as obstacles to be eradicated entirely. This leads to a kind of Christian stoicism, where obedience takes center stage as the submission of one will to another.
This modern account of religious life and morality is grounded in an anthropology fundamentally different from that of Aquinas. This vision of the human person and morality—which the late Servais Pinckaers OP admirably analyzed in terms of its roots and genesis—relies on a concept of human nature no longer seen as a source of wisdom and orientation. In this framework, natural inclinations are disconnected from human happiness, a sharp departure from Aquinas’ perspective. In contrast, this modern view reduces morality to precepts and obligations to obey. It employs a concept of freedom defined as the ability to choose between indifferent contraries, emanating solely from the will—a notion known as the freedom of indifference. This concept of freedom is detached from our natural inclinations and conceived as an independence from any external or internal influences, including passions, emotions, laws, or obligations.
For Aquinas, morality is fundamentally about how to attain beatitude. Virtues guide us in living a happy life here on earth and lead us to God through our free and good actions. God desires to draw the human person to Himself and provides assistance through the law, grace, and the natural inclinations of our human nature. For Aquinas, there is an original harmony between the law and human nature, a harmony that sin could damage but not utterly destroy.
Freedom, for Aquinas, is a freedom for excellence: “I am free if I am able to choose what is best to fulfill my human vocation, if I am able to perform acts of true quality.”
This theology allowed Aquinas to present a vision of morality and the evangelical counsels that remains deeply connected to our humanity. His reflection on the religious state permeated his entire life. Aquinas’ polemical works on the religious state emerged during the Mendicant debate in Paris, where his aim was to defend the validity of the new charism of the Mendicant orders. Additionally, he systematically explored religious life in his two Summae.
In my view, the most important starting point for understanding Aquinas’ theology of religious life is his identification of the true source of the evangelical counsels: nothing less than the friendship of Christ. The evangelical counsels are a gift arising from the wisdom and the love of Christ, the wise and faithful friend.
“The counsels of a wise friend are of great use, according to Proverbs (27:9): ‘Ointment and perfumes rejoice the heart: and the good counsels of a friend rejoice the soul.’ But Christ is our wisest and greatest friend. Therefore, His counsels are supremely useful and fitting” (STh I-II, q. 108, a. 4, s.c.).
So, the best context in which to understand the evangelical counsels, and consequently religious vows, is the friendship with Christ. It is within this relationship of reciprocal love that the counsels gain their true meaning: friendship embodies freedom, spontaneity, and generosity. Even the very act of listening to a counsel presupposes a certain freedom and generosity on the part of the listener. Christ addresses both our intellect and will; He speaks to the free and open person who is capable of hearing and responding to His call. Friendship with Christ presupposes the life of grace and an openness in the individual towards “the more,” towards spiritual growth. If my primary concern is merely to ask, “How far can I go without breaking the law, without sinning?”—this is a clear indication of the absence of true freedom.
To follow Christ and answer His call is not simply a matter of keeping the law. Christ does not call us to fulfill another obligation. His friendship means that He addresses a person who desires to love the Lord more, and the goal of the vows is to help cultivate and deepen this generosity. Morality and the religious call cannot be rightly understood as mere obedience to a precept that is disconnected from the person. Unfortunately, this proper context of the evangelical counsels—the context of Christ’s friendship—is often neglected in later accounts of religious life, which give way to a voluntaristic morality focused on obligations and precepts.
As Aquinas explains, even the very existence of the counsels points to this new relationship between God and the human person. In the Old Testament, God gave commands to His people, but in the New Law, which is not merely a new set of regulations but the grace of the Holy Spirit within us, it is fitting that God offers counsels. Giving counsels is the proper mode of communication between friends.
The evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, as parts of the New Law, are in principle addressed to every Christian, just as the Sermon on the Mount is. Christ’s purpose in the Sermon on the Mount is not so much to add new precepts, but rather to reveal the horizon of graced human action. Therefore, the counsels are not an optional extra, but rather the privileged ways of evangelical generosity that are addressed in some way to every Christian, at least as praeparatione animi, a preparatory spiritual attitude (see De perfectione vitae spiritualis, cap. 18). Anyone who desires to grow in love and freedom will, in some way and for some time, practice the counsels. The distinction between religious life and Christian life in general lies in the fact that religious commit themselves to intensively nurture this generosity within themselves.
Thus, when someone professes the evangelical counsels, they do not simply vow to do certain things and avoid others. Rather, they profess a commitment to continually cultivate this constant striving toward greater generosity and love. When God commands love, He does not expect everyone to possess the same level of charity; what He expects is the effort to grow in charity. As Aquinas comments, this is why it is not scandalous if a religious is not perfect; the scandal would be if they renounced the intention of seeking spiritual progress (contemptus agendi meliora) (STh II-II, q. 186, a. 2 ad 2). Listening to Christ’s counsels is a sign of generosity and love, qualities that characterize a new relationship with God. At the same time, practicing the counsels serves as a continual inspiration for such generosity. Poverty, chastity, and obedience are powerful aids in expanding the heart, which means an ever-growing capacity to love God and be loved by Him. This dilatatio cordis, as Aquinas calls it (STH II-II, q. 24, a. 7 ad 2), is a growing freedom for God that simultaneously involves free renunciation: when people experience the Lord’s friendship spontaneously want to abandon anything that could hinder them, and so cling more fully to God (as illustrated in the Gospel parable of the pearl and the treasure, Mt 13:43-45). Poverty, chastity, and obedience, which address the main areas of human life, continually help to “sell everything” in order to discover greater freedom and love—greater generosity.
Sr Hedvig Deák, OP
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