Far from destroying ancient notions of moral luck (the notion that we must have good fortune to be ethically good), or following Stoicism in pulling back the moral into the inner soul, Christianity, in Milbank’s view, “embraces moral luck to such an extreme degree that it transforms all received ideas of the ethical.” Summarizing John Bowlin’s work on Thomas’ ethic, Milbank says that Christianity “generalizes and extends moral luck as providential grace and so offers good fortune to all. The context of grace and universal providence means that it does not need to modify the Aristotelian position in a Stoic direction which sees achieved virtue as essentially interior, and luck or success as an extrinsic added element less essentially to do with the ethical.”
I have some questions about what Milbank means by the universalization of “providential grace” here, but otherwise this seems sound, and soundly counter-intuitive, in that Christianity is so often thought of as bringing an end to concerns of moral luck.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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