The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology A Virtue Perspective

In this volume, William C. Mattison, III demonstrates that virtue ethics provides a helpful key for unlocking the moral wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount. Showing how familiar texts such as the Beatitudes and Petitions of the Lord's Prayer are more richly understood, and can even be aligned with the theological and cardinal virtues, he also locates in the Sermon classic topics in morality, such as the nature of happiness, intentionality, the intelligibility of human action, and the development of virtue. Yet far from merely placing the teaching of Aristotle in the mouth of Jesus, he demonstrates how the Sermon presents an account of happiness and virtue transformed in the light of Christian faith. The happiness portrayed is that of the Kingdom of heaven, and the habits needed to participate in it in the next life, but even initially in this one, are possible only by God's grace through Jesus Christ, and lived in the community that is the Church.

Introduction; 1. The beatitudes and happiness: the Christological and Ecclesiological vision of Matthew 5:1-16; 2. A virtue ethics approach toward the fulfillment of the law in Matthew 5:17-48; 3. Intentionality, growth in virtue, and charity in Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18; 4. Seeking first the kingdom: temporal activities and relations with others in Matthew 6:19-7:12; 5. Hope and the life of discipleship in Matthew 7:13-29; 6. A virtue ethics approach to the Lord's Prayer: Matthew 6:9-15.

William C. Mattison, III is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, with a joint appointment in the Alliance for Catholic Education. He spent ten years at The Catholic University of America, where he served as interim Dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies. He is the author of Introducing Moral Theology: True Happiness and the Virtues (2008), along with numerous articles and edited volumes.