First, a quote from Josef Pieper's The Four Cardinal Virtues, spotted over at Minute Particulae, in which Dr. Pieper discusses Saint Thomas Aquinas on wrath:
Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul.
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Anger is "good" if, in accordance with the order of reason, it is brought into service for the true goals of man; one who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is "not entirely" afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm. Gregory the Great says: "Reason opposes evil the more effectively when anger ministers at her side."
Next, a passage on anger from Evagrius Ponticus, Eastern monk and theologian, + 399 A. D.:
Do not pray, when you are being tempted, until you have said a few words in anger against the one who is oppressing you. Because your soul has been assailed by thoughts, it follows that your prayer, too, is not pure when it is offered. Nevertheless, if in fury you say something against them, you thwart and destroy the mental images of the adversary. Indeed, anger usually has this effect even upon good mental images. -- Evagrius, Praktikos 42 (as seen just this evening at the kitchen table in Fr. Gabriel Bunge's Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition)Posted by billw at December 16, 2002 12:54 AM
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
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