Marvin Oxenham was born and raised in Rome as a missionary kid. He went to Canada for his theological studies and returned to Italy. The first half of his work and ministry life was in church planting and evangelism, the second in academia. He is on the faculty of the London School of Theology, supervising doctoral students in the field of character and virtue education; is the General Secretary for the European Council for Theological Education (ECTE), an EEA associate; and is a member of the EEA Board. He is also Director of Quality Assurance for the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE – a WEA partner).

Your recent book, “Character and Virtue in Theological Education,” points out that character and virtues are off the radar in most theological training, and even in church programmes. Why don’t we talk about virtues, have we lost this practice along the way?

As with any historic trend, it is complex. The tradition of virtue runs deep in the European Christian tradition, all the way from the Church fathers, St. Augustine and notably in St. Thomas Aquinas. Some trace its demise in the Protestant tradition back to the Reformation, where the emphasis on virtue was seen as sort of salvation by works approach, where working on being virtuous was seen as a ‘Catholic’ thing.

What is the state of virtue education in Evangelicalism?

Bebbington reminds us that one of the main characteristics of evangelicalism is activism. In a sense, we emphasise the performance virtues. So, to be a good Christian you have your devotions, evangelise, disciple, church plant, give, etc. There is a sound emphasis on the activity of the Christian life.

But, as we look at the parable of the House on the Rock in the Sermon on the Mount, we notice that, in the verse just before this parable, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom…” The objection that comes is, “… but Lord, in your name we prophesied and we turned out demons, we performed many miracles…”  and we could add ‘did we not have evangelistic campaigns, and hand out tracts, and attend church, and make sure that our theology was sound…?’  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the performance virtues, but to these high performers Jesus says, “I never knew you”… even, “away from me evildoers”.

So what does this mean?  Notice that Jesus introduces the parable of the House on the Rock by saying, “… therefore, anyone who hears these words and puts them into practice is like the one who builds his house on the rock.” We know that the “therefores” in the Bible are really important as they provide the context and enable good interpretation.  We also note that ‘these words’ that Jesus is referring to are the entire Sermon on the Mount that he has just delivered. And the Sermon on the Mount is deeply concerned with virtue. Bonhoeffer reminds us that the Sermon on the Mount speaks about becoming like Jesus through conformity to the ethical patterns of his life, and hence putting into practice ‘these words’ means shaping our character according to the virtues of truthfulness, love and humility and removing the vices of wrath, pride and avarice.  So, the parable of the House on the Rock is comparing those who are just performing external religious duties (performance virtues), to those whose character is being shaped to be like Jesus (moral virtues). To put it simply, we are looking at a contrast between doing and being, and Jesus makes it clearer that the latter truly characterize a disciple and provide a solid foundation that will resist the storm.

As evangelicals, we are drawn to activism, but this also comes from modern secular life; we are a very doing society, task-oriented, result-obsessed. It is the way we have organised our economic and work environment — everything is pulling us into this direction. How do we respond as Christians, is it going back to virtues?

Sometimes we fool ourselves that we live in a vacuum, but we don’t. The expression of our religious life is deeply embedded with what is happening in society, and the evangelical movement was birthed in a cultural context of utilitarianism, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution, where the emphasis was placed on the rights of each individual to perform well, build society, increase our wealth and so on. Many religious movements have latched onto these values, which isn’t necessarily wrong as it is an expression of contextualisation. Just as Daniel did in Babylon, we need to accept some things in our cultures, and filter out other things. Daniel went to Babylon, accepted a new name, the curriculum of the king and the duties of his culture. But he also said no to the dainties, and he injected new things into his culture that weren’t there (in his case, dreams and visions). I think as Christians that is a really good example: we are meant to be in our culture and take on a lot of it, but there are also things to which we say no, and things that we want to contribute to our culture. I think the tradition of the virtues is one of the latter, and represent something that as Christians we should be on the forefront to bringing back into our culture.

Are there others wishing to revive the virtues?

Absolutely yes. There is a growing realisation of the extremes of a utilitarian framework and the damage it is doing, and many sectors of society and culture are looking to a return to the values of being and to the specific tradition of the virtues. As Christians, we should be among the movers and leaders of this “Renaissance in virtue” as part of our mission to be salt and light.

In practice how would that work, how could Christian groups and churches practice this more?

Coming back to the text in Matthew, Jesus also talks about the tree — the good tree that bears good fruit and the bad tree that bears bad fruit. Here we seen an emphasis on being that leads to doing. You are a good tree, and out of what you are, comes the good of what you do. Sometimes we have flipped it around, and we give a bucket-list of rules to produce good fruit, mostly made up of ‘dos and don’ts’.  But Jesus says, you need to be a good tree… and then bear good fruit. And that is the essence of virtue ethics.

Could you explain virtue ethics?

We can compare it to other ethical theories, for example, the ethical theory of consequentialism, or of deontology that try to help us we figure out the good is.  But these theories assume that once you have figured out what the good is, you are going to do it. What virtue ethics says it that you need to focus on becoming a virtuous person; and then virtue will come naturally in all occasions. Once you have become a virtuous person, you do not have to continually work out what is right or wrong, and make a wilful decision for one or the other. Doing what is right will become a natural part of your being. A good tree will naturally yield good fruit.

So the transformation of being so that we become good trees is our target. How do we become a good tree?

As in all things, there is a combination of what God does and what we do. Certainly a first step in becoming a good tree is regeneration, by receiving the Holy Spirit, who comes bringing fruit. By the way, notice that the fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians is actually a list of virtues. So the first step is certainly the work of God in us, and the power that comes with the Gospel is a power that we didn’t have before receiving the Holy Spirit.

But then there is a second thing. In 2 Peter, the author talks about ‘adding to your faith virtue’. Here we see that the agent of action is not God, but it is us. In our walk as disciples we should add to our faith virtue, to become like a good tree. There are several things that contribute to this.

First, a transformation of our mind. And the stories of the Bible (preached, taught in Sunday school, etc) are a powerful means for this. As we read the stories in the Bible, we see virtue and vice, and our mind is attracted to what is virtuous and repelled by what is viceful.  So we hear the story of Abraham and we want to imitate the virtue of his faith.  And we hear the story of David and Bathsheba, and we say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be like that guy, that was really wrong, what he did to her husband and then he took her and then he hid it!’ And it is not only the Bible, we can find virtue and vice in so much good literature, from Jane Austen to Dostoyevsky, and even in good Netflix series.  As we see virtue and vice coming out in the stories, this is educational and transformational.  So we should read, read, read…

Another thing is community — and this is probably one of the most powerful shaping factors in character building. If we are part of a virtuous community, virtue is caught. And that starts in the family, our basic micro-community. Sometimes a family is a place of rules, which is not the same as virtue. Our communities should also be places where virtue is embodied. Sadly, at times our communities are mostly places of teaching, places of rules and places of activities. Virtue may certainly be there, because the Holy Spirit is doing his work, but sometimes we are not explicit or intentional enough about being communities of virtue. Most churches have a confession of faith, but what about a confession of virtue? How many churches do we know that have a virtue covenant or that engage in church discipline as described in Matthew 18 to safeguard the virtue of the community of disciples?

There is also an ancient educational approach to virtue, which we find in Aristotle and in a great deal of the medieval Christian faith tradition, which is called habituation. The core idea is that we create a habitus, which has to do with wilful and reasoned shaping of our minds towards virtue. A habitus also contains elements of self-assessment, like we see in James, ‘the man you looks himself in the mirror’.  And this means that we engage in self-assessing ourselves against virtue. We ask ourselves what virtues are we good at — because we are good at some — and what virtues are we a weaker in and need to work on? Take the virtue of generosity. I could say, actually I am good at other things, but I am really not a generous person, I am a little stingy. So there is a habitus that can be created around generosity that is initially intentional, that you actually decide, through a reasoned wilful choice, that generosity is the right thing to be. That you want to be that.  And then you embark on creating habits of generosity in practice that will eventually become second nature.

You mentioned virtue could become natural, and I wanted to connect that to a couple of facets in our modern societies. That we have become very emotive — especially as young people, this is how we make decisions. And individualism, which is not conducive to living in community. Neither are contexts prepared for virtue-thinking and decision, where virtue formation requires time and persistence, and goes very much against the grain.

Yes, it needs to be intentional. Imagine a tree with a branch that is crooked, and you want to straighten it. If you do it very quickly, you are just going to break it. So you put a brace, and maybe next year you push it up a little this way, and then a little bit more, and maybe after five or six years of gradually increasing pressure on that branch, it comes straight; and then you take the brace away and the tree is straight. That is a good image for character-building. We see the branches that are crooked, and we gradually put pressure on that, by reading stories of virtues, imitating others in communities of virtue and creating habits of virtue, all of which may initially be unnatural, unpleasant and as good individualists we would object: ‘oh, this is not who I am’ / ‘you need to accept me for who I am’, ’aren’t we under grace?’ But let us not forget what Jesus said about hearing his words and putting them into practice.  If we do not do this, we fall into what Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace’.

About emotivism, I think that there are two sides to that. When emotivism goes with individualism, it is a recipe for disaster, especially ethically. Because individualism says, I need to feel what I want to do and who I want to be, and there is nothing deeper than my feelings. But all this is rather thin and usually ends up in some form of selfishness. But if you base emotivism on something that is more solid like virtue and you become that good tree, then your feelings also line up with that. When you become a generous person, you feel good about it, and since it has become part of your character you feel you. True freedom is not to do whatever I want, but to do what is right. And virtue is right. So when you educate virtue in your character, you are also educating your emotions, and then your emotions will respond naturally. So you can actually rely on your feelings, and say, I feel like doing this, and you will do the right thing because you are the right tree.

That is great, because we can be so dualistic and polarised — ‘acting out of feelings is wrong, you should just go for duty, it does not matter what you feel.’ But being means the whole thing — our feelings matter.

Yes, and it works in both ways. On the one hand, you need to tame your feelings. Especially if you are developing a virtue that is not developed. Again, in the example of not being generous, your feelings are going in the other direction, of being stingy. So you are doing things that are generous, but your feelings are saying, ‘I don’t want to do this’.  But here it is your will that should say to your feelings, ‘you are going to do it anyway.’  And eventually the feelings fall into the right place. That is why the habitus is a reasoned approach. But the more you do that, the more your feelings are going to align; the more generosity is going to feel good, and stinginess is going to feel bad.

Do you have examples of today, of communities or institutions that intentionally try to shape the outside community through this virtue formation, whether in a larger or smaller scale?

Schools are a natural starting place in society for this to happen. There is a Centre in the UK, operating out of Birmingham University, called the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues and they are doing a fantastic job. Let me give an example. Last year they worked with children in a primary school to instil the virtue of gratitude. Part of what they did is teach these children how to cook. Then they planned a day where the child could invite one or two special people in their life to whom they were particularly grateful and for whom they wanted to cook a meal. Most of the children invited their grandparents. So the grandparents went to the school, and the children, who had learnt how to cook, cooked a meal, simply to say thank you as an expression of gratitude to grandma and grandpa. It is a small example, but you can see the impact that it can have on the character of a child. And it is not just a one-off example, because in that school they worked on this virtue all year doing all sorts of things. So learning how to cook wasn’t just to help children enjoy food, but because cooking a meal was a tool to express gratitude to people that are special to you.

Have you written more about this topic?

Yes, I have published an academic epistolary novel called Character and Virtue in Theological Education that especially focuses on how theological schools might intentionally cultivate virtue as they train the leaders of the future church.

I also have a blog https://charactereducation.blog and a very practical tool that can be used by churches, teams in networks, discipleship groups and individuals that can be freely accessed at https://virtueducation.net  It features some explanations and theory, a test to self-assess against a list of 13 virtues and identify stronger and weaker points, guidelines to develop and put into practice a habituation plan, and re-test after 6 months to check for improvements.

I’m happy to provide further guidance for groups that are interested.