The theological virtues are founded on faith, in opposition to the natural, which are founded on reason; and as faith with Aquinas is always belief in a proposition, not trust in a personal Saviour, conformably with his idea that revelation is a new knowledge rather than a new life, the relation of unbelief to virtue is very strictly and narrowly laid down and enforced.
In ethics the distinction he drew between natural and theological virtues is common to him with the rest of the schoolmen.
Again, more reasonably, they have been taken as types severally of the moral, the intellectual and the theological virtues.
Elsewhere we see prophets and sibyls, personifications of the theological virtues and of the sciences.
In his ethical discussions (a full account of which is given under Ethics) Aquinas distinguishes theological from natural virtues and vices; the theological virtues are faith, hope and charity; the natural, justice, prudence and the like.
