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The Elephant in the Room
Writing alongside John Cassian has been challenging in the best kind of way, because I’m more terrible than I think I am, and I already don’t think I’m that virtuous of a person1. When I began writing this series on The Institutes, I couldn’t have anticipated that I would get to today’s installment the same week as this happened:
I’ve been writing this for three years now, with the aim to become better at my day job, which is to teach Christian theology and Christian ethics. And so, I’m honored to be one of the Substacks that get some extra daylight shed on them. But God is funny2: and so, in God’s good timing, this notice came the same week that I was scheduled to write about vainglory, the vice associated with being proud of how humble you are.
To be quite clear: I’m beyond honored. There are millions of newsletters doing great things, and mine has a gold foil badge now.
is a true mensch, submitted a few of my essays to the powers that be, and here we are. But within that sense of honor is a deep sense of irony: being honored produces a sense of pride in that fact that you are being honored. Thus, having to write about a very outdated kind of vice associated with a kind of pride in being virtuous or honored was just funny.It’s a vice which Substack as a whole is particularly prone to: the endless comparisons to how amazing longform readers are compared to Twitterers, how calm Notes is when compared to Instagram. Vainglory, after all, rightly recognizes goodness, but gets boasty about it. I get it: we’re all better than them. But Substack is what happens when the Pharisee in the story of the two sinners doesn’t get struck dead, but starts a literary society. If Twitter’s vice is anger, and Instagram is pride, and Facebook is acaedia, then Substack definitely has vainglory cornered3.
Vainglory: The Assassin of Vices
There are two buckets of vices which Cassian has been describing: those which emerge from within and those which require something outside of us. But very few are of the latter kind: the problems really are us. Most vices build off of something interior to us, something which is necessary for us (like desire), or build off of something which emerges in response to a wrong committed (anger). The tricky thing about vice as Cassian describes it is that it has rarely has to do with avoiding something, because when you try to avoid something, it either doesn’t address the problem (like gluttony) or leads us to another problem (as we saw with acaedia).
In other words, vice piggybacks off a good thing being turned sour: a desire for companionship turning into lust, or a desire for pleasure turning into gluttony. But this dynamic gets even harder with vainglory, for unlike many other vices, the thing which vainglory corrupts is virtue itself. So, after having submitted to great discipline, burned the boats and committing oneself to climb the holy hill, vainglory is waiting at the summit of the hill to just nudge us by encouraging us to be proud at the fact that you have done well.
From Cassian:
For our other faults and passions may be said to be simpler and of but one form: but this takes many forms and shapes, and changes about and assails the man who stands up against it from every quarter, and assaults its conqueror on all sides. For it tries to injure the solider of Christ in his dress, in his manner, his walk, his voice, his work, his vigils, his fasts, his prayers…his obedience, his humility, his patience…4
Far from attaching itself to some kind of desire—which are movable and can be directed toward good and bad objects—vainglory waits until we are becoming better and then encourages us to be proud about it.
If he cannot drag a man down by honour, he overthrows him by humility. If he cannot make him puffed up by the grace of knowledge and eloquence, he pulls him down by the weight of silence. If a man fasts openly, he is attacked by the pride of vanity. If he conceals it for the sake of despising the glory of it, he is assailed by the same sin of pride5.
All of this raises a really interesting question: can a person really be virtuous? Because if Cassian is right, then the whole pursuit of goodness feels very fatally flawed. If virtue is the thing we are called to pursue—both because it befits us as creatures of God and because it’s fitting to the kind of society we want to live in—but vainglory attaches itself to any acknowledgment of virtue, we’re in a situation where all other vices can be conquered, but vainglory lives forever. For as soon as you acknowledge the good things that you have in fact done, vainglory slips in.
Cassian goes on to discuss the case of King Hezekiah6, who prayed to have his life extended, and then—because he was so overjoyed with being holy—nearly died from it. Likewise, King Uzziah is described as one who nearly died because he was so proud of what God had done through him. We’re in a quandry: for if the right hand knows what the left is up to, Cassian seems to say that being aware of one’s virtue is to be right where vainglory wants you.
But wait: there’s more problems! If we’re cognizant of the pride that happens when we take stock of our virtue, then giving honor and praise to the virtuous is out the window. One of the underdiscussed (and more controversial) virtues is that of magnanimity: the virtue of knowing that one is great, and then acting toward others in benevolence and generosity. You can imagine vainglory as Deadpool leaning the doorway, cracking a joke just at the moment that the magnanimous opens their mouth to be benevolent, right before he runs a sword through you. Vainglory trades on us having an accurate assessment of having achieved something difficult or having grown morally, so ironically, praising the virtuous is the last thing you’d want to do.
A further difficulty arises here: highlighting virtuous people is how others are inspired to be virtuous: if the good are never lifted up and exalted by their community, then all good deeds are done in anonymity, and never for the praise. Saints never get named or looked to for inspiration; heroes never become the kinds of people you want to emulate, if in fact they are never praised out of concern for the virtuous. You can see where vainglory gets really difficult: not only does it attach itself to actual virtues, but it causes us to be wary of any kind of exaltation of the good, because the last thing you would want to do is to do something to tear down good people…..by praising or acknowledging them.
The Way Home: Deflection and Humility
The way out of this is best summed up by one of our recent presidents:
The basic sentiment here is one which Cassian echoes:
To begin with we should not allow ourselves to do anything at the suggestion of vanity, and for the sake of obtaining vainglory. Next, when we have begun a thing well, we should endeavor to maintain it with just the same care…And anything which is of very little use or value in the common life of the brethren, we should avoid as leading to boasting; and whatever would render us remarkable amongst the others, and for which credit would be gained among men, as if we were the only people who could do it, this should be shunned by us7.
In other words, you didn’t build that. The virtue and excellence you have was one which requires other components: friendship, the challenge of being with other people, confession to others, admiration of others. What do you have that you have not been given, as Paul put it: whether the created world or the ability to be humble?
It’s not an appeal for more group projects, negating the individual entirely, or for saying that you aren’t humble when you have in fact behaved sacrificially or humbly. But it’s a simple acknowledgment that whatever goods appear in and through you belong to others rightly. The magnanimous person, in other words, may be on the right track: that whatever excellence that is there is to be rightly acknowledged, but acknowledged as being for the benefit of others—for what need have the righteous for the benefits that come to them for being good?
All of this cashes out in a very simple prescription: deflecting honor toward others, and letting the accrued honor of virtue be less like a lake and more like a river. Rather than letting honor stagnate in one place, share it around and view ourselves as a passthrough for something good. In doing so, it serves as an encouragement, a good and proportional response to people doing good and an encouragement to press on8.
Vainglory, unlike other vices, will stalk us until death. But such is the mark of being alive in the world where struggle and not satisfaction is field the moral life belongs to.
Work of Note
This conversation between Hartmut Rosa and lots of theologians looks fantastic. This piece from Leah Libresco Sargent on hookup culture points us to a great essay on how disaster led to life change. Holly Taylor Coolman is a personal hero and this essay on Harrison Butker is worth your time.
My wife is truly much better than me, though she would never tell you this.
Maybe she would.
One of the major objections philosophically to virtue is that it’s very hard, and how could something that’s that impossible be a moral norm for all people? I take this to be a misunderstanding, a conflation between what’s good for us and the ideal state. So, exercise is both good for us, beneficial to the mind and body, and a very small percentage of people will be exemplary at it. Also, everyone dies, so your time being excellent is short anyway. That being said, virtue is its own reward, or rather, virtue matters because in it, we taste and see the goodness that is God. All of this means that in the end, virtue for Cassian is not really about trying your best, but participating in the gift that God gives in abundance, for our sake.
If you don’t think God is funny, read Exodus 28:42-43 sometime, and consider that the priests had to wear underwear or die. I understand some of the reasoning for this: Mary Douglas’ book on purity codes and anthropology sheds light on this, and it’s a banger. But at some level, it’s just funny.
Because you’re interested: Pinterest gets gluttony, Tinder is fornication, and LinkedIn is covetousness. Dejection is probably what’s left of MySpace.
Cassian, The Institutes, Book 11, ch. 3.
Ibid., ch. 4.
2 Kings 18
Ibid., ch. 19.
There’s a reason why Thomas Aquinas includes his discussion on magnanimity in his larger section on fortitude: if people don’t recognize goodness and encourage us in it, it’s difficult to develop the capacity to persevere in difficulty.