One of the most interesting passages in the entire Bible is Romans 7:12-25. It is here that St. Paul allows us to see his own personal struggle with conflicting moral motivations. Anyone who has read this passage and is honest will identify with Paul’s struggle where he often found himself agreeing with God’s law while disobeying it. You may be surprised to discover that Paul was not the first person to recognize the cognitive dissonance between knowing what is right and, yet, doing evil. As you may now realize I have a healthy respect for the ancient philosophers. Therefore allow me to share some Plato and Aristotle written several hundred years before Paul penned Romans.

Plato writes, "…we often see this elsewhere, when his appetites are forcing a man to act contrary to reason, and he rails at himself with that within himself which is compelling him to do so” (Republic, 4. 440a-b). Plato speaks in the third person but he still sounds strikingly similar to Paul. Plato describes this internal moral conflict as a sort of civil war within the soul between the reason, spirit, and appetite. Each of the three parts of the soul has its own pleasures, desires, and motivations.

Aristotle defines the same moral dissonance as a person who, "knowing that what he does is bad, does it as a result of passion” (NE 7. 1. 1145b12). His analogy is a person whose paralyzed limb goes right instead of left as the person intended, or like a city which enacts good laws and then disregards them (NE 1. 13. 1102b15-21. and NE 7. 10. 1152a19-24).

In order to deal with the human moral dilemma Aristotle proposed the famous analogy that becoming good is just as much a craft as developing a skill -- virtuous dispositions and a skillful craftsman both require persistent practice. The specific means for the development of one’s virtuous disposition, of course, are the moral virtues (i.e. temperance, fortitude, justice, etc.). However, from a Christian perspective this strategy, while commendable, is very deficient.

The Christian virtue ethic differs from Aristotle’s ethics in two very significant ways. First, Christians take seriously the dark spiritual dimension of our moral conflict. In other words, our moral conflict is not merely a struggle against flesh and blood, but also against spiritual forces. Our moral choices are not made in a vacuum, but in the shadow of the influence of a personal evil being named Satan. If we are to overcome our moral weakness it requires spiritual resources that go beyond our own (Eph. 6:10-18). To put it simply, the Christian virtue ethic is by nature God-centered and Christ-centered embracing both divine forgiveness and empowerment.

A second way that the Christian virtue ethic differs from Aristotle’s is that we strongly affirm our need for God’s grace in order to grow in virtue and improve in godly character. In Galatians 5, Paul makes a stark contrast between the works of the flesh and of the Spirit. Unaided human effort ends in frustration and evil. The fruit of the Spirit are produced by God but the works of the flesh are produced by human effort. Ultimately, Christian character is the product of God’s Spirit taking up residence in our lives. On the other had, Christians are not let off the hook. There are plenty of Scriptural admonitions that the believer is to “put on” godly virtues and behavior (Col. 3). We are to work in conjunction with God’s grace to produce godly character and action.

The bottom line is that the moral weakness that Paul identifies in Romans 7 and that Aristotle and Plato wrote about can be overcome only through human cooperation with the grace of God to produce godly habits and character.