 A possible difficulty here is to provide a coherent account, not to mention an empirically verifiable account, of how certain undetermined choices buried in a life history might render one responsible for one’s present motives and character traits. This is a problem in part because, as Manuel Vargas points out, “even freely chosen features of our lives and ourselves can, because of our epistemic limitations, yield unanticipated consequences” (Vargas 2005, 282)—as, for instance, when someone sincerely cultivates moral integrity and inadvertently produces some of the worst character traits: moral rigidity, self-righteousness, and a lack of compassion. Similarly, someone’s worst choices and the lessons learned from them may be the very thing that has the most profound effect on the development of a good character. So given our epistemic limitations and the unanticipated consequences of our free choices, is it any wonder that many Christian theologians view a good character as a gift from God rather than as something for which we can credit ourselves? 