New Paperback Release: “Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance” by Matthew Levering

Jesus made it possible for us to know and obey God’s law for human flourishing as individuals and communities, reorienting our lives toward the goal of beatific communion with him in charity, which affects the exercise of the moral virtues that pertain to human flourishing. 

Amid struggles in the modern perception of Catholic ethics, Levering suggests that these ethics might only make sense in light of the biblical worldview that Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom of God by pouring out his spirit. Without this context, Catholic ethics as they traditionally conceived will seem like an effort to find a middle ground between legalistic rigorism and relativistic laxism, most especially, as Levering emphasizes, in the case of the virtue of temperance. 

Offering a biblical and Thomistic portrait of the cardinal virtue of temperance and its allied virtues, Aquinas’ Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance engages with an ecumenical range of theologians and scholars and Aquinas’s theology of temperance in the Summa theologiae to demonstrate that the theology of temperance is profoundly biblical. 

Described by Patrick Clark as “an impressive tour through an enormous range of scholarship on the various aspects of this cardinal virtue and its relation to the biblical account of salvation history”, Levering’s work develops new vistas for scholars and students interested in moral theology. 

The new paperback edition is available for purchase on our website.

Matthew Levering is the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary and co-director of the Chicago Theological Initiative. He is the author or editor of over fifty-five books, including Mary’s Bodily Assumption.

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