Aquinas's Ethics: the Infused Virtues and the Indwelling Holy Spirit

This paper explores Aquinas's ethics. For Aquinas, the moral life begins with a surrender to God on the part of a person who comes to faith. That surrender includes a change in the person's will from the state of resisting God's love and grace to quiescence, the cessation of resistance. Once a person's will is in this quiescent state, God infuses grace into his will. On Aquinas's views, in an instant this grace moves the person's will to the will of faith. In that same instant, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell in him and also brings into him also all the infused virtues, as well as all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. The paper explores Aquinas's claims about the infused virtues and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, and it argues that for Aquinas the moral life is first and foremost a matter of having a right second-personal relationship to God.