Vos investigates how Protestantism ‘relates to the long and multifaceted tradition of virtue ethics’ and how this inheritance might ‘contribute to the development of a viable contemporary virtue ethics’ (p. 1). These objectives are pursued over eight chapters, which give the reader much to ponder.
The first two chapters attend to several preliminary issues. Chapter 1 introduces the virtue tradition with reference to Aristotle, then turning to its reception by Augustine. In this exploration the more modern ‘philosophy of the art of living’ (with its provenance in Foucault) is used as a foil and is forcefully critiqued. Chapter 2 further plumbs Augustine's thought in conversation with Nicholas Wolterstorff. For Wolterstorff, Augustine causes a decisive break with eudaimonism; Vos disagrees. He persuasively argues that Augustine does not in fact disavow eudaimonism but instead ‘transforms it’ in a manner which enables a broadened ‘conception of the good life and the virtues as fully encompassing the good of the other’ (p. 42).
The next three chapters probe the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant reception of the virtue paradigm, beginning in chapter 3 with a study of Calvin. Chapter 4 turns to a selection of less-studied Reformed scholastics, such as Daneau, Keckermann, Walaeus and Ames. While enlightening, these examinations at times elicit confusion. For instance, I found myself wondering about the precise difference between Daneau's ethical philosophising ‘from the Word of God’ and theological ethics proper, which Vos associates with Ames (see pp. 93–104). Nevertheless, a seminal achievement of these chapters is to deconstruct Alastair MacIntyre's and Brad Gregory's claim that the Reformation radically eschewed a teleological view of life and a virtue approach to ethics. Compelling evidence is marshalled to counter this evaluation.
Chapter 5 engages with Kierkegaard, whose relationship with virtue has also been misapprehended, according to Vos. Whereas MacIntyre depicts Kierkegaard as a culprit in the rise of ‘emotivism’, Vos perceptively demonstrates the pervasive, if sometimes subtle, virtue orientation of Kierkegaard's theory of edification.
With debts to the preceding discussions, the final three chapters constructively contemplate what the Protestant legacy offers to contemporary virtue ethics. Chapter 6 ruminates on the ‘kind of exemplarity’ that is implied by ‘a Protestant understanding of imitatio’ (p. 133). Such exemplarity is concerned not with copying Christ's example so much as with coming to resemble Christ in one's own particular life. Mindful of Protestant hamartiology, in chapter 7 Vos takes exception to the doctrine of the unity of the virtues in commending a soberer, non-perfectionistic account virtuosity. Although we can grow morally, we are always ‘flawed saints’ (p. 152). Chapter 8 builds on this theme, with an eye to how ordinary people might exemplify virtues for one another. Here, Vos unveils a twofold distinction: humans can serve as ‘role exemplars’ and as ‘existential exemplars’ (pp. 187–9). If this helpful schematic is to gain traction, further elaboration will be necessary.
I finished the book with a few small questions. Some are more historical, such as how exactly Calvin's notion (or virtue) of moderatio – which is interpreted as inviting creativity and dynamism with respect to our selfhood – squares with his robust affirmation that society has a fixed order ‘rooted in creation’ (p. 78). I also wonder how that pillar of Protestant soteriology, the doctrine of justification by faith, might positively contribute to current theories of virtue. Engagement with this doctrine is minimal, apart from the project's startling assertion that it is not ‘opposed to the concept of gratia infusa as effecting a habitual change in man’ (p. 10). Thirdly, while I welcome Vos's emphasis on learning virtue from imperfect exemplars (cf. Luke 16:1–8), I wonder about the present willingness to do this. After all, within so-called ‘cancel culture’ one vice easily covers over whatever virtues a person might otherwise exhibit. Are we ready to let (even sometimes deeply) flawed saints guide us towards virtue? Finally, and concerning structure, the book would have benefited from a conclusion, given the considerable ground it covers. More systematically oriented readers will undoubtedly want to see the project's various themes woven together in a succinct summation.
Such qualms aside, the volume is an excellent example of retrieval. Vos's engagement with the sources adds to the efforts of Manfred Svensson and David Sytsma to clarify the place of virtue in classical Protestantism. In so doing, he places another nail in the coffin of the MacIntyre-Gregory thesis about the abandonment of eudaimonism in the Reformation. Further, in his constructive proposals, Vos adeptly upends Jennifer Herdt's claim (see pp. 133–6) that the hyper-Augustinian tenor of classical Protestant soteriology is inimical to thinking through habitation in virtue for character development. In all of this, he makes great strides in reconnecting Protestant ethics to the wider Christian tradition.
