Published April 3, 2025
It is no profound insight to note that one of the great challenges of our time is how to respond to the speed of technological change. This bites hardest in the realm of ethics. Tomorrow’s technology will raise questions before we’ve had a chance to answer those posed by the innovations of today. Trying to predict what those will be is a fool’s game. Fifty years ago, outside of the sphere of the specialist, not many would have foreseen the challenges posed by gene editing or artificial intelligence. And that raises the question of how we are to bring up the next generation so that it stands a chance of tackling whatever Promethean proposals it will have to face.
Many of the challenges today circle around the issue of what it means to be human. Human beings have always been to some extent creatures of the technology they have developed, whether an ax made from flint or an iPhone. Thus at a time of rapid and unceasing technological change, the very notion of human nature can itself become volatile. The confused executive orders of the Trump administration, where transgenderism is out but IVF is in, are emblematic of our moment in time and an excellent example of the problem. Taste and tech, not a stable concept of human nature, are driving these policies.
We must return to reflecting on and cultivating virtue. While virtue theory has deep Catholic roots and has made significant inroads into the secular academy, it has yet to shape a lot of Protestant thought. Keith Stanglin’s excellent book Ethics Beyond Rules is counterevidence to this, but it is outstanding partly because an orthodox Protestant with an interest in virtue theory is uncommon.
There are some obvious reasons for this. Reflection on virtue is regarded by many as a Catholic preoccupation and is thus a victim, so to speak, of the Reformation divide. Then there are reasons internal to Protestant theology: A preoccupation with virtue and virtues might tilt toward self-righteousness and/or justification by works. But the idea to which the virtues point—a properly formed character that has unified moral intuitions that shape a person’s response to any particular situation—seems vital as we now live in a world where the moral challenges are as novel as they are unpredictable. Virtues make us human. If we are to be humans in this dehumanized world, we need to be virtuous.
There are challenges here beyond the theoretical. Learning the principles of virtue is not the same as learning to be virtuous. Anyone can read the Nicomachean Ethics or the relevant sections of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. But to internalize those principles, to become a virtuous person, is a different and more difficult challenge, against which so much of the way we live today militates. Online existence, for example, incentivizes the mockery and destruction of virtue. X rewards sneers and slander. It deludes its denizens into thinking “courage” is something akin to firing cheap insults at a remote foe from the safety of one’s living room. As for the idea of virtues forming a necessary unity, forget it. Online, all things human are fragmented.
Modern political discourse does much the same. It’s been many decades since Americans could look to their head of state as a virtuous role model for their children. And we know from the last few elections that many Christians, left and right, consider New Testament teaching (such as that found in James 3) to be an effeminate hindrance to achieving whatever political goals they harbor. A political suspension of ethics is apparently necessary due to the lateness of the hour, unlike the “last times” in which the apostles thought they were living. When Paula White is the poster girl for a government’s domestic religious policies, neither Christian orthodoxy nor virtue has a place at the table.
The challenges are immense, but orthodox Protestants can and must start to think about virtue, what it is, and what pedagogical strategies will help to cultivate it. On the former, a return to Thomas is overdue. Orthodox Protestant theology has benefited immensely from re-engaging with the actual theology of the men behind the creeds many of us recite each week. We have been further enriched by appropriating the careful exposition of this theology by the great medievals, not least Thomas. In so doing, we are standing in the line of Protestantism itself, as represented by many of the Westminster Assembly’s delegates and figures such as John Owen.
But we cannot stop at the mere retrieval of the idea of virtue. Catholicism has had Thomas for centuries but there is no evidence that Catholics are on the whole living more virtuous lives than Protestants. Thus we must also cultivate habits of life that are themselves virtuous. That requires critical reflection upon how we use social media and how we speak to and about those with whom we disagree. Our understanding of what it means to be human is reflected in our interactions with other human beings.
The speed of technological change makes virtuous living hard, not only in the obvious temptations that technology itself offers but also in the way it destabilizes our understanding of human nature. We owe it to the next generation to leave them with both thoughtful reflections and real, practical examples of virtuous humanity.
Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping civic leaders and policy makers better understand the deep roots of our current cultural malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and current use of critical theory by progressives. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
