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The Difference Between “Virtue” and “Morality”

The Difference Between “Virtue” and “Morality”

Last updated on: February 27, 2026 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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The Difference Between “Virtue” and “Morality” 2026-02-22T18:21:46-05:00 Gene Veith

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Today the word “virtue” is often a synonym for “morality,” so that a “virtuous” person is considered a “moral” person. That’s fine. Words often broaden their meaning. But originally, “virtue” and “morality” meant two different but related things. Knowing that distinction can help us to be both virtuous and moral.

The Greeks and Romans believed there are four “cardinal [that is, most important] virtues.” The Christians would accept them, but with a twist, and add three more. I give them in English, then in Latin, along with the range of meaning that the Latin word covers:

(1) Wisdom (prudentia: prudence, caution, discerning the right action in light of consequences)

(2) Justice (iusticia: fairness, giving people what they deserve)

(2) Courage (fortitudo: fortitude, strength, endurance, bravery)

(3) Self-Control (temperantia: temperance, control of one’s appetites

Now, are any of these in the Ten Commandments? You are not going to find them there.

The word “virtue” previously meant “strength” or “power,” as in statements like “the virtue of this medicine is to cause sleep.” Before that, the term came from vir, meaning “man.” “Virtue” originally meant “manliness,” the strengths that man should exhibit. Those involved in today’s masculinity movement would do well to remember that macho Spartans and Roman legionnaires considered the qualities of true manliness were the “virtues” of wisdom, justice, courage, and self-control.

The point is, the virtues were considered qualities of character that enabled you to do what is right. Not the moral tenets themselves, but the character traits that gave you the “strength” to perform them.

If you are wise–that is, prudent–you will refrain from behaviors that will get you in trouble or land you in prison. If you are just–that is, if you treat people fairly–you won’t steal from them or otherwise mistreat them. If you have courage, you can stand up for what is right against a crowd or rescue a comrade in battle at the risk of your own life. If you have self-control, you can resist the temptations of adultery and harmful pleasures.

The way you cultivate virtue, according to Aristotle, is not by will-power but by forming good habits. Wisdom can be taught (“think what you are doing!”) and then put into practice (“if I do this, I’ll get in trouble”), and eventually it becomes a habit of mind, to your moral benefit. The same is true of justice. Courage comes from experiencing fear but learning to overcome it (“jump off that diving board!”), with endurance growing from putting up with hardship or discomfort (“run five more laps!”). Self-control comes from discipline, learning to refuse to succumb to what the body wants (“this is a fasting day”).

This understanding of virtue as character development can be taught, according to the classic educators. This was the benefit of sports, to teach self-control and fortitude. History, the study of consequences, was thought to teach wisdom. Justice could be learned through the study of law and good government. As the boy became a man, military service was thought to be a type of experience that could form virtuous character, cultivating all four of the cardinal virtues.

Classical thinkers from Aristotle to Cicero wrote much about the virtues. But these said nothing about God. And yet, these character traits clearly have value. When Christianity came to the Greco-Roman world, the cardinal virtues were accepted, but developed, with distinctly Christian virtues added.

Scattered through the Bible, one can find mentions of these virtues separately. The apocryphal deuterocanonical books, accepted as part of the canon by Catholics and still valued by Luther and the early Protestants for their moral instruction, actually list them:

She [Wisdom] teaches temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life. (Wisdom 8:7)

Now the kinds of wisdom are right judgment, justice, courage, and self-control. Right judgment is supreme over all of these since by means of it reason rules over the emotions. (4 Maccabees 1:18-19)

But classical virtue theory assumed that the virtues gave a “man” the “power” to do moral deeds. What about sin? What about the Fall? What about human depravity?

The Christians taught that the virtues could cultivate external compliance with moral tenets–what Luther would call the first use of the Law–though they could not tame the sinful desires, attitudes, and thoughts of the heart. Those are what count before God. And yet, through Christ, Christians could be changed on the inside so that they can do, at least to some degree, what pleases God. But that is gift of God, through faith in the Gospel of forgiveness through Christ’s atonement, to be cultivated through Word and Sacrament. This gift manifests itself in virtues of a different kind.

The Christians renamed the Cardinal Virtues the “Natural Virtues.” Those are the character traits that even non-Christians can develop, for their good and for the good of society. But only Christians can have the “Theological Virtues”:

(1) Faith

(2) Hope

(3) Love (1 Corinthians 13)

These three are not listed with the Ten Commandments either. But, as Luther shows in both of his Catechisms, faith does enable us to keep the first table of those Commandments. By faith, we have no other gods before the God revealed in Scripture; we honor His name; and we keep the Sabbath by hearing His Word. And love, “the greatest of these,” motivates us to keep the second table of the Commandments by loving our neighbors. By love, we are to cherish our parents; to “not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need”; to not commit adultery; to not steal from our neighbor; to “not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way”; to not covet our neighbor’s possessions or relationships.

Hope, in turn, can motivate us to love. As St. Paul says, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:3-5). The hope of Heaven also gives us perspective on this life, which helps us minimize trivial worldly concerns so that we can do what pleases God and serves our neighbor (1 Timothy 6:17).

Notice how St. Paul brings together both one of the cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues in the formation of character (my emphases):

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance [fortitudo], and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:2-5)

So Christians had seven virtues, a good symbolic number to counter the Seven Deadly Sins: The four “Natural Virtues” plus the three “Theological Virtues” equals what would be called the Seven Heavenly Virtues, since God is Lord of both what is natural and what is spiritual.

Illustration: Raphael’s The Cardinal Virtues and the Theological Virtues (1511), with labels by NateBergin – Own work, in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=183693541. [The Virtues are allegorized at the top of the fresco. The classical figures symbolize the four Cardinal Virtues. The cherubs symbolize the Theological Virtues. If you can’t read the labels, go to the link. For further explanations, go to the art work’s Wikipedia page.]

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