Where the good, the true, the human, and the real meet

In the second of his series on virtue, Andrew Davison explores the underrated virtue of prudence as the ability to live aligned with the grain of the universe.

Andrew Davison

Andrew works at the intersection of theology, science and philosophy. He is Canon and Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford.

A carving tool is pressed into a groove in wood.

Photo: Dominik Scythe on Unsplash.

A full human life is a virtuous one, and vice versa. In the second of these eight discussions of virtue, starting in Lent and moving into Easter, we come to the first of the virtues, namely prudence. It’s not a common word today, but you simply can’t have virtue without it, at least according to such luminaries as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Prudence, Aquinas recalls, is:

‘the mother, custodian, and moderator of the virtues.’

That’s because, for him, prudence is nothing less than the meeting point between the good, the true, the human, and the real.

'That to act well – to be virtuous – is to act rationally.'

Thomas Aquinas

Virtue, as we saw last time, is all about being fully and characterfully human. Human beings are ‘rational animals’, as Aristotle put it, so to be fully and characterfully oneself, someone has to act rationally, to the fullest extent that she is able. (This is also a tradition that has fiercely upheld the humanity and worth of people with disabilities, including mental disabilities.) There is something deeply counter-cultural about placing that sort of emphasis on reason. Isn’t fulfilment about following our desires, with rational interrogation just getting in the way? Moreover, we’ve lived through decades in universities where reason has been treated with suspicion (that’s the technical term), as ultimately an expression of power or some vested interest, such that ‘truth’ more about the speaker than what is spoken about. In contrast to that, Aquinas insists that to act well – to be virtuous – is to act rationally.

‘Reason is an openness to the reality of things’

Thomas Aquinas

That, however, is no cult of abstract or rarefied reason, nor the preserve of some intellectual elite. For one thing, while reason is important, it’s also secondary. Reason matters because of reality. To be virtuous is to live with the grain of how things are: with the grain of being human, of being in a human community, and with the grain of the universe more generally. The place of reason in virtue, according to Aquinas is not so much for its own sake, but because reason is an openness to the reality of things. Second, the rationality of prudence is a matter of keen-sightedness, especially in keeping two things in view, and coordinating between them: moral principles, and the contingencies of the situation to hand. Such clarity of vision is by no means limited to the highly educated, nor is primarily to be learned from books. It is picked up from good examples, and a well-honed common culture. Third, prudence is a virtue – a ‘second nature’, as we saw in the previous article – and that is as much about the honing of instinct, as anything else. It ends up as much a matter of the body as of the soul. It is about being a rational animal, so it shapes us as animals, and not only as minds.

To be virtuous is to be prudent – to be practically wise and rational – because of the need to attend to reality, and work with its grain, not against it. A good life is lived in a way that’s in-keeping with human nature, and with nature more widely, so as to flourish within it. That’s not simply a matter of living sensibly, although that’s also not a bad start, since living sensibly is also harder than we might think. We don’t naturally always make healthy use of the good things of life – food, sleep, sexual intimacy, responsibility, or authority – as good sense would suggest.

On fraught territory

The association of prudence with the reality of things, especially with the shape of human nature, is fraught territory. Human beings are prone to read all sorts of morally charged things into nature, some of them deeply flawed. Even the great Aristotle thought that some human races were ‘obviously’ and ‘naturally’ slaves. He also bequeathed the idea that human nature at its most authentic is male, such that women turn up when a foetus doesn’t develop along those, better, lines. All of that once seemed natural, which is a problem, but it doesn’t invalidate the place of prudence among the virtues, and the place of reason in a well-lived life. It makes careful use of prudence and reason all the more important.

On the good life

Reflecting on what a healthy, flourishing human nature is like, and a healthy, flourishing society, is a tricky business. That’s why it calls for life-long growth in the virtue of prudence: getting better at knowing what that looks like, knowing it more and more instinctually, and in being able to weigh up what it demands in any particular situation, rapidly in some cases. We won’t all agree on what a flourishing life looks like, individually or community, but there may be room for agreement in on the idea that a good life – a virtuous life – involves following that path, which is to say, the path of prudence.

Article

Christmas culture

Creed

Middle East

Royalty

13 December 2024

6 min read

Magi: where did the wise men come from?

The origin story of the Middle East's ancient king makers.

Mark Gilbert

Mark is a research mathematician who writes on ethics, human identity and the nature of intelligence.

An arts and crafts image of the three kings adoring the new born Christ.

The Adoration of the Magi.

Edward Burne-Jones, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

You’ve probably heard they weren’t really kings, but the wise men or magi had some impressive royal connections. Far from being one-off royal visitors to the infant Jesus, the magi had a long history of involvement with monarchy, crossing paths with illustrious kings including Cyrus the Great of Persia, Alexander the Great and the Roman Emperor Nero.

Originally a tribe of the Medes who lived in Northern Iran 600 years before Jesus’ birth, the Persian magi were hereditary priests. Writing around 425BCE, Greek historian Herodotus tells us how these magi became known throughout the ancient Middle East for their ability to interpret dreams and knowledge of the stars. They were followers of the Zoroastrian religion, and were responsible for the holy fires central to Zoroastrian worship.

To the Greeks, the Zoroastrians and the magi were exotic objects of fascination. Many later Greek written philosophical and occult works claimed Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) as their author. Much like some twentieth century Western conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Greek and Roman conceptions of Persian religion often had only a passing resemblance to the original. This may have included the "mystery cult" of Mithras that would become popular throughout the Roman Empire in the first century. This also means that references to 'magi' may not refer to the Persian magi, but to other astrologers or dream interpreters who lived to the east of the Mediterranean.

A hundred years before Herodotus, we find the first mention of magi in the bible, in the Book of Daniel. This was the period of Jewish exile and captivity in Babylon. Jehoikim, King of Judea and descendent of Kings David and Solomon, was defeated in battle and killed by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and many Judean nobles were taken as prisoners. Daniel was one of these hostages and is taken to the Babylonian court, where God gives him the ability to interpret the king’s dreams. Impressed by his abilities, Nebuchadnezzar puts Daniel in charge over all his wise men. It’s unclear what relationship these Babylonian ‘magi’ had with the Medean ones, but strong Medean influence on the Babylonian court suggests that the Babylonian wise men could well have included Zoroastrian magi.

Daniel remained in the Babylonian court, until the Babylonians were invaded by Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return from exile and to begin restoring Jerusalem.

Cyrus' Persian Empire lasted for two hundred years, until it was invaded by Alexander the Great and his army in 331BCE. Alexander sought the advice of magi, but had many of them violently killed and extinguished their holy fires when he razed the Persian capital, Persepolis in revenge for the Persian destruction of the Acropolis by Xerxes 150 years earlier. Alexander’s Greek successors were characterised by bloody rivalries and in-fighting and were later overthrown by the Parthian empire, which would become Rome’s most formidable rival to the east. The magi consolidated their king-making reputation during the Parthian period, with a council of magi (the Megistanes) responsible for choosing Parthian kings.

The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too.

By Jesus' day, there were ‘magi’ throughout the Middle East, and it was in this context that Roman historian Pliny the Elder records the journey of Armenian magi to visit Emperor Nero in 66CE. By this time Parthia and Rome were a century into their protracted struggle and had just fought a five-year war over the Armenian succession. Despite suffering a humiliating defeat, Rome saved some face through a very one-sided treaty that had Parthia choose the next Armenian king, but with the Roman Emperor getting to place the crown on his head! Nero turned this to his advantage by having the new King Tridates I come to Rome to receive his crown. Tridates, who was a Zoroastrian priest as well as a king, came with a huge retinue including other magi and thousands of horsemen to receive his crown. The huge procession culminated in the magi king bowing before the emperor and acknowledging him as his god.

The visit of the Armenian magi has clear resonances with the familiar account of magi visiting the infant Jesus found in Matthew’s gospel. Given the many embellishments added to the magi story over the centuries, it's hardly surprising that some have suggested that the magi story was a fabrication and a remixed version of King Tridates’ visit to Emperor Nero. It’s a compelling theory, but I’m not convinced by this. If magi were stock characters in the ancient near east, and were also really interested in monarchs (who were often also treated as gods), then it wouldn’t be that surprising that there’d be more than one royal magi visit with emotionally charged religious overtones. What makes a fabricated magi story less likely to me is what the gospel writer Matthew’s Jewish audience would have thought of the magi. Although the Greeks and Romans were enthusiastic about foreign gods and exotic wisdom, first century Jews were not. To them and to early Christians, the magi would have been charlatans and followers of a false foreign god. A visit from some foreign astrologers would have been an embarrassment rather than the type of story you'd choose to make up.

So, who were the magi in Matthew's gospel? The two dominant theories have been that they were either Persian or else they were a later fiction. More fanciful theories include origins in India, China and even Mongolia. Another perhaps more realistic possibility, convincingly argued by Fr Dwight Longernecker in The Mystery of the Magi is that the magi were from the Arabian kingdom of Nabatea. The Nabateans were known for using irrigation to farm the desert and for controlling the trade routes across the Arabian desert. Two cash crops in which Nabatea dominated trade were frankincense and myrrh. The wealth generated from this lucrative trade was used to build Petra, the world-famous valley city of rock-face monuments. The Nabateans had close connections with Israel and may have been familiar with the prophecies of Daniel and Isaiah. They would also have been interested in the Judean monarchy and would have been natural visitors to the paranoid king Herod. Herod's mother was a Nabatean princess and the Nabatean king Aretas IV needed to shore up favour with Herod so the Nabateans would have had an interest in any new King of the Jews.

Barring some improbable Indiana Jones style archaeological discoveries, we’ll never know for sure who the wise men from the east were. But to me there’s something deeply fascinating about these mysterious visitors to the infant Jesus. Partly they seem to represent higher things – with their wisdom and wealth correctly put in divine service. It can seem as though their excellent learning and astronomical skills have cracked a cosmic puzzle, with the magi following the star and dodging a despot to find the baby at the end of the treasure hunt. This doesn’t hold up - the magi’s knowledge isn’t the object of wonder. The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too. But God uses the foolish things to confound the wise, and inside the crackpot mess of horoscopes and divination, God leaves the magi an invitation. To accept the invitation is to take a risk – to risk the long journey, the wrath of Herod and even to risk being wrong. But as they accept this invitation, they realise its an invitation to meet God Himself.