becoming more human by becoming more godlike 383Teach me how man makes himself eternal, writes the poet. If we re-
place, in this expression, eternal by greater, more lifelike, more godlike,
and therefore more human, we have described the work of the virtues
of divinization.
Th ey are analogous to the theological virtues of Christian doctrine.
Openness to the other person is the equivalent of charity. Openness to
the new is the equivalent of hope. Ac cep tance of the vulnerability re-
quired by the always inadequately justifi ed commitment of life to a par-
tic u lar direction is the equivalent of faith. It is manifest in a hopeful and
patient availability to the risks of engagement and attachment. Th us
understood, the virtues of divinization are at once the path and the out-
come of an ascent. Th ey promise a greater life, but deliver it only through
forms of experience and engagement that give us this life right now. Th e
prize that they off er, and convey, is to enable us to die only once.
Consider fi rst the last of these three virtues: the ac cep tance of the
risk and of the vulnerability that are implicit in the choice of any com-
mitment of our existence in a par tic u lar direction. Begin with what is
true no matter which direction we choose. We must commit our lives.
Men and women do not ordinarily do so explicitly and knowingly.
Instead, they accept, and half- believe, the ideas prevailing in their
circumstance. Nevertheless, their course of life shows what choice
they have made, even if it is a choice never experienced as a series of
acts of will.
An individual commits his existence, one way or another, not just
when he chooses, to the extent that the constraints of society permit it,
a par tic u lar course of life, but also and above all in the attitudes and
beliefs that he brings to the course of life that society may have imposed
on him. If, at the extreme, he is enslaved, he must still decide how to
respond to enslavement. Moreover, he must respond to it in a way that
also reveals his vision of our place in the world. It forms part of the
condition of embodied spirit that no society and culture are so fi rmly
entrenched and naturalized that they can become ventriloquists and
turn us into puppets.
Yet, although we may make our commitment in the grip of beliefs
that seem to us self- evident, or of signs that appear to us as irresistible
(such as those that religious revelation wears to the eyes of the believer),