Chapter II. The Problem of Pure Love

This we know: God's love for us demands a return. How pure, how disinterested should our return be ? Will it always be tainted by a certain self-love ? How far must we sacrifice love of self to arrive at a truly pure love of Him who first loved us?

In the Encyclical Studiorum ducem of June 27, 1923, His Holiness Pope Pius XI strongly emphasized the following point of St. Thomas' doctrine: the commandment to love God has no limits; the perfection of charity falls under this precept, of course, not as matter or that which is to be immediately realized, but as die end toward which every Christian ought to tend, each according to his condition.¹ Whether in religious life or in the world, all ought to draw ever nearer to God, their last end. As nature's law requires a child to grow under penalty of becoming a dwarf, so the law of our earthly pilgrimage requires that travelers on the road toward eternity go ever forward by steps of love, as St. Gregory the Great says, until we reach our journey's end. A road is not for rest or sleep, but for travel. In the way of virtue, according to a traditional adage, "He who does not go forward slips back"; for the law demands advancement and even increasing advancement. The speed of falling bodies increases as they approach the earth's surface; so souls ought in principle to go

5 6 THE LOVE OF GOD more quickly towards God the nearer they come to Him and are more attracted by Him.²

The doctrine concerning the compass of the commandment of love has often been misunderstood, 3 although it was clearly formulated by the Fathers of the Church, particularly St. Augustine." In the encyclical of January 26, 1923, written for the third centenary of St. Francis de Sales, His Holiness Pius XI remarked that the author of the Treatise on the Love of God was cognizant of this traditional teaching and gave it clear expression in his works. 5

If our love of God ought to keep growing until death, evidently it should become ever purer, freer from all egotism and every inordinate love of our own good. This point of doctrine leads us to consider fully the problem of love that we may better understand the relationship of our desire for our own highest good with pure love of God and of His glory. First, we shall recall the way this problem has been stated and the principal solutions it received in the Middle Ages. One of these appears more as an evident tendency then as an explicit theory in some of the works of St. Bernard, Richard of St. Victor, and other medieval mystics. The other, together with its chief consequences, St. Thomas plainly formulated. A statement of the first viewpoint and the difficulties it leaves unsolved will lead us to an examination of the second, a logical and chronological procedure for, as we shall see, in proposing

8 The objections made by Suarez and answered by Passerini have been examined elsewhere. Cf. Christian Perfection and Contemplation, tr. Doyle, footnotes pp. 179,

• Cf De perfection justitiae, c. viii: "Cur ergo non praeaperetur homtnt tsta perfeclio, quamvis earn in hoc vita nemo habeat?" It is commanded as the end toward which all ought to tend.

6 Cf. St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. Ill, chap. I.

his own solution St. Thomas was aware of the insufficiency of the one already proposed. His has its foundation in Aristotle's views on human nature and the teaching of St. Augustine and Dionysius on the love of God.

We shall draw inspiration from the works of the Dominicans of the seventeenth century, Chardon, Piny, 6 and Massoulie. 7 We shall also make use of the thought-provoking work of Father Pierre Rousselot, S.J. 8 However, instead of turning aside from St. Thomas' doctrine with him, we shall keep to it, bringing our study to a close with St. Thomas' solution of the difficulties raised by the other opinion. The recent study of Abbe Eugene Kulesza on Richard of St. Victor 8 contains a criticism of some of Father Rousselot's conclusions and can be read with profit. We may throw open to question whether these two conceptions are as opposed as the latter says and ask ourselves whether we can find, within the metaphors of the first, the rough draft of the second, which alone achieves an exact terminology. 10

• Chardon and Piny appeal to experience and introduce a more personal note in their writings than Massoulic, who follows the letter of St. Thomas more closely. In his Histoire litterairc du sentiment religieux en France, Vol. VIII, pp. 25 ff., and 91 ff., Bremond gives a just appreciation of these too little known spiritual writers.

7 See Massoulie, Traite de V amour de Dieu (Brussels ed., 1866), in which he explains the nature, purity, and perfection of charity according to the principles of the Fathers and especially of St. Thomas. Cf. also the articles published in the Revue Thomiste, 1905-1907, "La charite d'apres Saint Thomas d'Aquin."

8 L'histoire du problime de Vamour au Moyen-Age, Collection CI. Baeumker, Beitrage zur Ceschichte der Philosophic des Mittelalters (Miinstcr, 1908), Vol. VI.

8 La doctrine mystique de Richard de Saint-Victor, University of Fribourg thesis, pub. by La Vie Spirituelle.

10 This seems to be Massoulii's opinion. Cf. op. cil., pp. 290-315. Chardon and Piny must have leaned toward it. Father Rousselot makes several remarks (p. 57) moderating his own stand. The reasoning of Roland-Gosselin, O.P., in the article "Le desir du bonheur et l'existcnce de Dieu," Revue des Sciences Phil, et Thiol. (April, 1924, p. 165), inclines one to moderate it still further. See also Richard F.gcnter, Gotiesfreundschaft, "Die Lchre von der Gottesfreundschaft in der Scholastik und Mystik des 12 und 13 Jahrhunderts" (Augsburg: Filser Verlag, 1929).

When reading good works like Massoulie's on the subject, we should like to see at the very beginning, before any search for a solution is instituted, a deep study of the problem itself. This was St. Thomas' method. Following Aristotle, he first examined the difficulties of the question and the frequently contrary answers already given by earlier authors; afterward he revealed the lofty intellectual reaches of those principles to which recourse must be had, leading us up to them little by litde as toward a summit from which the light of the solution emanates. 11

This method of procedure has lead St. Thomas, apropos of the question "Ought man, by charity, to love God more than himself?" to give an apt statement of the problem of love in the following difficulty: "One loves a thing in so far as it is one's own good. Now the reason for loving a thing is more loved than the thing itself which is loved for that reason, even as the principles which are the reason for knowing a thing are more known. Therefore man loves himself more than any other good loved by him. Therefore he does not love God more than himself." 12 Elsewhere St. Thomas has proposed

« Massoulie brings out the difficulties of the problem only in the seventh chapter of the first part of his work, after having explained St Thomas P«™P'«' * n approach which fails to reveal their value. St. Thomas had good reasons for howing us the difficulty of a question before proposing the ^f^^'ZlV^ The objections placed at the beginning of his articles are a part of the Summa too

*&'S£iU q-6. '-3, * °b- 1° I ^ * °°" * e difficulty lated as follows: "Further, that which is cause of anything having a certain quality, must possess that quality in a higher degree. But everyone loves anothc r w «h nawral love for his own personal sake: because he loves it as good for himself. Therefore the angel does not love God more than self with natural love.

the same difficulty in another form. "Nature," he says, "is always self -centered in its operation, for we behold every agent acting naturally for its own preservation. But nature's operation would not be self-centered were it to tend toward anything else more than nature itself." 13

In the light of these texts of St. Thomas, Fadier Rousselot writes: "In abstract terms the problem of love could be formulated like this : Is love without egotism possible ? And if it is possible, what relationship has such pure love of another to love of self, seemingly the basis of all natural tendencies ? The problem of love is analogous to the problem of knowledge. In the latter we ask how a being can have consciousness (or at least knowledge) of that which is not himself; in the former, how a being can be drawn by desire toward that which is not its own good." 14

This seems to be a good statement of the problem, except the word "egotism," which, to my mind, creates an equivocation, for it generally denotes a disordered love of self, which cannot be found, as we shall see, in the very essence of the primary natural inclination. 15 Hence it is better to avoid using the expression and to keep St. Thomas' terms as quoted.

After asking ourselves how a knowing being can acquire knowledge not only of its own impressions but of extra-

15 See Aristode, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. IX, chap. 8, for the two meanings of love of self. One is noble and commendable; the other, the opposite kind, we call egoism. Because the word "egoism" has an essentially derogatory meaning, we cannot apply it to God and speak of "the transcendental egoism by which He made all things for His own glory." To do so would be a stupid error, for egoism, unlike goodness, is not an absolute perfection without any trace of imperfection. The egoist loves himself more than his family, his country, even the Sovereign Good, and certainly God cannot love Himself more than the Essential Good which is Himself, and if He had not made all things to manifest His own glory. He would not have ordered them all to their supreme good.

mental realities, how our intellect can attain to that which is true in itself and universally, independently of us, we seek to discover how we can love another with a love not subordinated to the desire for our own good. Is pure love of another— above all, of God— possible? And if it is, what relation has it to our desire for personal happiness ?

Extreme and evidently erroneous philosophical solutions

To the two great problems so stated, two radically extreme and contrary solutions have been given. These are subjectivism and pantheistic realism. Subjectivism denies or throws open to doubt the objective value of our intellect and, consequently, the authority of its object, extra-mental being or the truly real. Likewise subjectivism does not recognize the rights of the object of the will, the good, and particularly the right of the Sovereign Good to be loved above all things. In antiquity a tendency toward this position marked the Sophists and Skeptics; today it characterizes the modern subjectivists. It plainly leads to utilitarianism 16 or, at best, to a certain love of human dignity that makes a pretense of having no special obligation toward God, as though He were not the clearly evident author of every good and Himself the supreme good. 17

18 The empirical nominalism of men like John Stuart Mill prevents them from getting beyond utilitarianism to the correct idea of the true good, which stands above the delectable and the useful and, because it is beyond the reach of both the external and internal senses, can be grasped only by reason.

*' Although Kant maintains that morality presupposes disinterestedness and has nothing to do with the desire for happiness, which he, like Rousseau, connects too closely with sensual appetency, he fails to reach the notion of love of God for His own sake, since he docs not recognize that we have special duties towards God. The principle maintained by Rousseau in the social order, that man himself formulates the law which he obeys, was applied by Kant to the moral sphere. To his mind, it is befitting that we fulfill our duties toward ourselves and our fellow men re-

The solution radically contrary to this, absolute realism, is no less erroneous. It confounds being in general, or universal being, with the divine Being, and good in general or the universal good, with the divine Good. It leads to pantheism, reduces all things to God, identifies all things with Him, and so denies their own proper existence. Parmenides held this doctrine in antiquity; Spinoza with his pantheistic ontologism maintains it among the moderns. It implicitly denies personal beatitude, contenting itself with an impersonal immortality entirely different from the immortality about which Christian faith speaks to us. 18

Evidently Catholic theologians could not go so far astray as these two extremes, although the nominalists of the fourteenth century came strikingly close to the subjectivist position 19 and, inversely, Master Eckhart apparently arrived at the frontiers of pantheism when, after having taught in mystical language that creatures are nothing, that is, nothing of themselves, he seems to have asserted that in strict philosophical terms they are absolutely nothing. 20 This view ligiously, as if their obligation for us depended on God, and he concedes that morality does imply the postulate of a future life and allow for an accord between happiness and virtue. For Kant, however, all this serves as a complement to morality, not as its foundation. Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Methodology, chap. 2, sect. 2. He thinks that God could not have created us for His own glory but only for our happiness and personal dignity; humanity is an end in itself, and for God to have created all things for His own glory would have been egoism. Kant fails to see that, as the councils express it, God so willed to manifest His sovereign goodness and He is neither greater nor happier for having created the universe.

18 In Spinoza's eyes, intellectual love of self and love of God are one and the same thing. The love of God is identified with the uncreated love God has for Himself. It is God Himself who loves Himself in us with a necessary love, excluding free will. Hence man can neither sin nor merit, properly speaking. Cf. Ethica, V, p. 36.

1B Denzinger, Enchiridion, nos. 553 ff.

20 Ibid., nos. 526 f. Eckhart sets off toward the opposite extreme of nominalism in the direction of absolute realism which confounds, as can be seen in Spinoza, amounts to a denial of the very effect of the creative act But, be these indefensible and quite exceptional paradoxes as they may, it can be said that Catholic theologians have been preserved from these extreme errors by faith in the existence of God, the sovereignly free Creator, really and essentially distinct from the world and from all created spirits. They have been saved, too, by the great commandment that dominates the Decalogue in the Old Testament and is the spirit of the New: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole strength and with thy whole mind." 21

The Scholastics generally have stated the problem of love in the loftiest and most profound concrete terms possible: Are men and angels led by their nature to love God more than themselves or can divine grace alone effect this? Father Rousselot says: "It seems that Scholasticism could not have concentrated the question in a happier formula. No other would have been at once so concrete and so profound." 22 Are not free creatures commanded to love virtuously the same God who is both the author of their natural appetites and their only last end ? Is He not the sum of all goodness ? If, therefore, love of our own good and pure love of another can be reconciled, that reconciliation should take place in love of God, an analysis of which ought to give us principles for judging other disinterested affections. 23 being in general with the divine being, intellect in general with the divine intellect. This way of thought leads to the statement that all created substances and their faculties "are only words," flatus vocis. In this sense pantheistic realism leads to nominalism, and the two extremes meet.

Contrary heresies to be avoided

The problem has not been solved by the fact that all scholastic theologians recognize God as our last end and the object of our eternal beatitude. The difficulty reappears as expressed by St. Thomas: "A man loves God as much as he loves to enjoy God. But a man loves himself as much as he loves to enjoy God; since this is the highest good a man can wish for himself. Therefore man is not bound, out of charity, to love God more than himself." 24 In other words, if we have two loves, love of personal happiness and love of God more than self, which is the more fundamental, which is the primordial love — if not in the concrete order of psychological phenomenon, at least metaphysically, in the very essence of the first natural inclination of our will ?

It seems that, if love of God is derived from love of our own good, it lacks purity and can become purified only if grace in some way destroys nature by demanding the sacrifice of our desire for personal happiness. To retain diat desire would entail a certain affective subjectivism. If, on the contrary, our nature itself inclines us to love God in Himself, objectively, more than ourselves, grace seems unnecessary to attain to it and we lean, it will be said, toward a Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian naturalism reminiscent of the pantheistic confusion of our nature with the nature of God.

In the Middle Ages the question had not yet been stated with the sharpness Fenelon gave to it later. Nevertheless theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did have to explain in their treatises on charity how we are to understand St. Paul's words: "I have great sadness and continual

sorrow in my heart. For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren; who are my kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites." 25 Moses had said the same thing in Exodus 32: 31-33: "This people hath sinned a heinous sin, and they have made to themselves gods of gold. Either forgive them this trespass, or if thou do not, strike me out of the book that Thou hast written." And the Lord answered: "He that hath sinned against Me, him will I strike out of My book." St. Thomas has given a sublime and fearless explanation of these words of both St. Paul and Moses. 20 We shall quote it later.

It was inevitable that the problem should be stated thus: What is primordial in the natural tendency of our will : love of our own good or love of God for Himself ? If, in a virtuous life, these two loves converge, they are either coordinated or subordinated. But every coordination supposes subordination to a principle of order. As St. Thomas says, many soldiers are coordinated in view of a common action only if all are subordinated to their leader. 27 Neither natural love of our own good nor love of God in preference to ourselves can be subordinated to some more radical principle or higher end. Necessarily, then, one of these two loves has to be subordinated to the other. Which of the two is more fundamental ? So the question becomes clearer and clearer and we can more easily foresee what errors we are to avoid.

If every created nature, ours, the angels' too, tends to love its own good, its own personal happiness first and most, how can this primordial tendency be reconciled with the certainly

realizable precept to love God more than ourselves and above all things ? If this natural tendency is truly primordial, will it not be found even in our love of God ? Will not our love of Him be always more or less mercenary, touched by selfinterest and tainted by egotism, unless grace, by remitting original sin and gradually healing us of its effects, comes to correct our very nature, particularly the essential constitution of our will ? Must not grace in some way destroy nature by inspiring us to the heroic sacrifice of our desire for personal happiness ? Fenelon thought so. 28 If he is right, then, despite the loftiness of the words "pure love," such a grace, being in some way destructive of nature, is (as Baius later and erroneously held) 29 a hard remedy for nature's defect rather than a life principle of an infinitely higher order. If, on the contrary, a primordial tendency impels both men and angels to love God more than themselves, grace seems necessary only to make us accomplish more easily what nature can already do, as die Pelagians say. 30 In neither idea is grace a life principle of a higher order. The Pelagian views it as the complement of a fortunate nature, quite close to the divine, whereas Fenelon and those of his opinion see it as a remedy for a "natural disorder." We may ask: if the farthest extremes of subjectivism and pantheism are avoided, does the mind still waver between the two less distant extremes: either toward Pelagian naturalism or toward the pseudo-supernaturalism of Baius, revived, in a sense, by the Modernists? If here, as in other cases too, there are masters who well deserve the title of doctor oscillans, no one can say the same of St. Thomas, as we are about to see.

28 Cf. Denzingcr, Enchiridion, nos. 1328, 1333, 1336. 20 Cf. ibid., nos. 1021, 1023, 1024, 1034, 1038. 80 Ibid., nos. 105, 178 ff.

All theologians are plainly in accord on this point: to arrive at a pure love of God we must mortify in ourselves the concupiscence of the flesh and of the eyes, the pride of life, and all disordered appetites. And we must do it even to arrive at that contempt of self spoken of by all Christian authors when explaining the words of our Lord, "Let him deny himself," and in treating of sin and its effects, of contrition, and the degrees of humility. But in grievous purifying trials, when a man's own misery is so apparent to him that he thinks his salvation is in grave danger, how is perfect abandonment to God's good pleasure to be reconciled with desire for personal happiness? St. Thomas was aware of this question, 31 for the problem it contains is of interest not only in these extreme cases but for the orientation of the whole of life, since it concerns the essence of charity and our will's fundamental natural inclination. Without doubt original sin wounded and weakened this faculty's natural inclination to virtue, and our personal sins have weakened it still more. None the less it has kept its intangible essence as a purely spiritual faculty, 32 and the question now under consideration concerns the intimate relations that actually exist between nature and grace within the will.

Hence the importance of the question: What primordial inclination lies within the very essence of our natural will ? Love of our own good ? Or a natural love of God ? Is it, at the very least, a natural love of a true good transcending the useful and the pleasurable, a good that is good in itself? For ex-

81 Not only St. Thomas' Commentary on die Epistle to the Romans, be, 3, but many other passages in his works make this plain to us.

ample, do we love truth and justice in themselves and above ourselves, more than any particular personal perfection diey bring to us? The true solution of this problem treated by the great theologians of the Middle Ages, later by Bossuet and Fenelon and in a lower order by Spinoza, Kant, and the German idealists, should contain virtually, if it is satisfactorily formulated, the whole theology and the whole metaphysics of love.

To the problem so stated two solutions were given in the twelfth and thirteendi centuries. For some, they really differ; for others, one is a rough draft, the other, a finished work literally rather than metaphorically expressed. The latter, explicitly formulated by St. Thomas, reached the status of doctrine; the former is found implicit in many sermons and commentaries on the Psalms, the Canticle of Canticles, and the Epistles of St. Paul, wherever there is a question of the intensity of the love of God in the hearts of the saints. The works of St. Bernard produced in the latter half of his life presented it in a mystical form kept within fitting limits. 33 Richard of St. Victor emphasized it in his decidedly debatable theory of the Trinity. 34 Abelard gave it a speculative and dialectical form, believing that from it the necessity of creation had to be deduced (a conclusion incompatible with dogma), and reaching an idea of pure love approximating Fenelon's later view. Abelard died in 1142; St. Bernard, who combatted his errors and, therefore, his doctrine of the necessity of creation, lived until 11 53; Richard of St. Victor, probably until

83 Cf. Sermones in Canlica, P.L., CLXXXIII; De gradibiis humilitatis, CLXXXII.

84 De Trinitate, Bk. Ill, q.2 (P.L., CXCVI, 916); De quatuor s-radibus violenttu caritatis (P.L., CXCVI, 1213 fT.).

THE VIEWS OF ST. BERNARD AND RICHARD OF ST. VICTOR

Using numerous texts that can be supplemented by others, — we shall cite the most important — Father Rousselot apparently establishes the characteristics of true love as discussed in the views of St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor. On examination we find that, according to Father Rousselot, 35 disinterestedness, based on the distinction of persons it unites, is true love's first trait; violence and holy folly distinguish it when it becomes intense; and an inherent sufficiency for uniting us to God marks it from first to last.

The disinterestedness of true love

St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor insist particularly on the point that the only perfect love worthy of the name is love of friendship, love of another not for our own but for his sake. Love of self becomes perfect only when we love self for God by going out of self, as it were, to come to Him. 36 Like some theologians of the twelfth century who shared their thoughts, St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor are fond of quoting the classical text of St. Gregory the Great: "Charity cannot exist between less than two. Therefore, no one can be said, properly speaking, to have charity for himself, but love of another is potential charity." 37 As charity, like friendship, supposes at least two persons, St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor are led, according to Father Rousselot, 38 to form an ec-

36 St. Bernard, On the Love oj God, chap. 8; Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitatc, Bk. Ill, 2.

37 In Evang. horn. 17, no. I; P.L., LXXVI, 1 139. »» Op. cit., pp. 57 ff- static conception of love founded, he says, much less on the notion of nature or a natural inclination than on the duality of persons loving each other. By love of friendship we are carried outside of self, extra se, toward the beloved: a kind of ecstasy wherein we no longer love our own personal good but the good of another. In the case of love for God, we desire His glory more than anything else and, if need be, even to the sacrifice of our own good. This being so, the principle of this idea is not a natural inclination or a nature which has God for its author, and grace as its elevating principle, but rather the duality of persons united and drawn out of egotism by love. 39

In the thirteenth century Duns Scotus said that even if God were not our good, our last end, even if He had no relation to the basic inclination of our nature and will, we still could and should love Him above all things, even to sacrificing ourselves for Him, because He is in Himself the sovereign good. 40

For Richard of St. Victor, true love is so different from love of self and supposes so necessarily a distinction of persons that he thinks he can demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity in this way: Perfect love certainly exists in God; love's first requirement demands two and even three persons loving each other equally; thus to be absolutely pure and disinterested, free from every trace of self-love, envy, and jealousy, the highest of all loves, God's own, demands a distinction of persons, the Trinity. 41

40 Cf. Scotus, Oxon., Ill, d.27, q.i, no. 13; IV, d.49, q.2, no. 19. St. Thomas says that, on the contrary, "if we make the impossible supposition that God were not man's good, He would not be man's reason for loving."

41 Cf. De Trinitatc, Bk. HI, a.i. Richard thought it possible to prove by this reasoning not only that there must be two persons in God but that there must be three, for it seemed to him that only then could divine love be absolutely pure and disinterested. St. Thomas disproves this theory by showing the inadequacy

7 o THE LOVE OF GOD

The same idea is found in another form in Abelard's condemned theory of the necessity of creation. He says, in substance, that perfect love is manifestly a perfection of God and that, since love requires the duality of lover and beloved, God of necessity willed to create us and gave us existence. 42 St. Bernard combated this consequence, as he did Abelard's other errors.

Love of God in His great servants

True love of another, thus conceived as founded on the distinction of persons rather than on the notion of nature, seems in some way independent of our natural inclination; it even seems contrary to it, in a sense, for it draws us out of ourselves and, when intense, becomes violent, demanding in holy folly the sacrifice of all self-love.

In the De diligendo Deo* 3 where St. Bernard formulates some principles which anticipate St. Thomas' doctrine, he shows that man, who begins by loving himself for his own sake, ought in heaven to come to love himself only for God's of concepts derived from creatures to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity. In the Summa, la, q.32, a. I, ad 211m, he says: "When it is said that joyous possession of good requires partnership, this holds in the case of one not having perfect goodness: hence it needs to share some other's good in order to have the goodness of complete happiness." In addition to this error, Richard seems to have confused the essential love common to the three Persons of the Trinity with the notional love by which the Father and Son spirate the Holy Ghost.

42 Theoiogia Christiana, Bk. V; P.L., CLXXVIII, 1330: "Necessario itaque Dcus mundum esse voluit ac fecit." In the Summa, la, q.19, a. 3, St. Thomas refutes Abelard's error, saying: "But we do not necessarily will things without which the end is attainable, such as a horse for a journey which we can take on foot, for we can make the journey without one. The same applies to other means. Hence, since the goodness of God is perfect and can exist widiout other things inasmuch as no perfection can accrue to Him from them, it follows that His willing things apart from Himself is not absolutely necessary."

sake. 44 In his sermons on the Canticle of Canticles composed later, he speaks more explicidy, according to his own experience, of the violence of divine love triumphing over all that is other than itself. Not infrequently he writes, as in Sermon 79:

O divine love, impetuous, vehement, burning, irresistible love, which allows no thought but of thee, scorning and despising all else besides, thou art thy own sufficiency. . . .

How great love is . . . yet it has its degrees. The spouse has reached love's summit. The children love, too, but they are mindful of their inheritance and fear to lose it, and are more respectful and less loving. I am suspicious of that love which needs to be sustained by the hope of acquiring any other good. Love is feeble when its warmth and strength grow less with the loss of hope's support. Love is not pure when desiring anything else. Pure love is not mercenary, does not draw new strength from hope. The spouse loves purely; for by love alone is she all that she is; her every hope, her every good, is love alone. 48

Massoulie should be consulted on this text. 48 From this point of view more than any other, intense love, becoming violent, "wounds" him who loves and "makes him die to self" by making him live for another, by leading him to "go out of himself" and give himself generously to the beloved. 47 Intense love is, therefore, not without a certain

44 In this passage St. Bernard is speaking of the first manifestations of our natural tendency in the concrete rather than, as St. Thomas considers it, that natural tendency in its very essence. From the concrete point of view, St. Thomas agrees that hope disposes us for charity. Cf. Ia Ilac, q.62, a. 4; q.27, a. 3.

"Sotio LXXXlll in Cantica, nos. 4, 5; P.L., CLXXXID, 1183. See also Sermo VIII, no. 8.

46 Cf. Traite de I'amour de Dieu, Part II, chap. 14. We can accept it as certain that for St. Bernard perfect love implied a desire for union with God and in this sense sufficed; it made no sacrifice of eternal life, as we shall see later.

47 Rousselot thinks that any author who holds the ecstatic conception of love is destruction of the lover, not without that interior immolation represented by exterior sacrifice and spoken of by the Scriptures. It implies a martyrdom of heart known to all the saints and a mystical death symbolized in the Gospel by the death of the grain of wheat that becomes the seed of new life. Happily, love causes this death, destroying all that is contrary to it. According to the words of The Canticle, "love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell." 48

We are familiar with the enumeration of the ten degrees of charity, attributed to St. Bernard, commented on later in an opusculum published under St. Thomas' name, 49 and explained by St. John of the Cross in The Dar\ Night of the Soul: "Wise is the love of God, for it makes us dull to all else besides; it drives us to seek Him always and in all things, constrains us to work without rest and to endure without fatigue, 50 to desire Him eagerly, seek Him swiftly, dare for Him courageously, cleave to Him inseparably, and burn with loving for Him until, in heaven, He assimilates us wholly to Himself." 51

In a treatise on charity compiled of texts from St. Bernard, Pierre de Blois, and Richard of St. Victor, we read: "Love takes no account of the impossible and in this reason praises and restrains not its eagerness. . . . Love's hunger is in- blameworthy in proportion to his concern to sever all the bonds uniting love of another with our natural inclination toward our own proper good. Cf. op. at., p. 3. Father Rousselot elsewhere gives recognition to the fact that St. Bernard also held another, and corrective, tendency of thought, later developed by St. Thomas. 48 Opusc. 61.

48 Cf. Opera S. Thomac (Parm. ed., 1864), XVII, 254. Opusc. de dileclione Dei et proximi, chap. 38.

60 St. John of the Cross thinks this expression relates to the dark night of the soul, and the words "languere utiliter" to the dark night of the senses.

S1 The Dark, Night of the Soul, Bk. D, chaps. 18-20. On this subject see Sermon LXXXV in Cantica; P.L., CLXXXIII, 11 57.

satiable. . . . Love itself is its own merit and its own reward. . . . In this world none of us can perfectly fulfill the precept to love God, but all of us should desire its perfect fulfillment." 52

Richard of St. Victor develops these ideas in his celebrated opusculum De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis:

In the first degree, the soul is unable to resist its desire; in the second, it is continually preoccupied by it; in the third, it can take pleasure in nought else besides; in the fourth and last, it can no longer find any satisfaction for its desire. In other words, in the first degree love is invincible; in the second, possessive; in the third, exclusive; in the fourth, insatiable. . . . These four degrees of love differ according to whether it is a question of sentiment towards God or affection for men. In spiritual desires, the stronger the love, the better it is. In sensual desires, love degenerates as it grows and, because nothing can satiate mutual passion, 53 at last becomes hate, a changeling that matches its former ardor by its present implacability, burning with desire while hating and never ceasing to hate even while loving. 54

In human affections, only the first degree of love can be good ; even the second is undoubtedly evil. But if, in human desires, the fourth degree of love is the worst of all, it is otherwise with our sentiment for God, since the last and greatest degree of love for Him is the best of all. 05

Richard points out these four degrees of intense love of God in the Canticle of Canticles, the Psalms, and the Epistles

63 When we make any creature our ultimate end we demand that it give us what God alone can give, and the transformation of love into hate that follows, St. Thomas would say, is evidence that our will has, as it were, an infinite capacity which God alone can fully satisfy and forever attract. Cf. Ia Ilae, q. 10, a. 2; q.5, a. 4, 8.

54 Farther on Richard remarks that this reaction is an "image of damnation" when the soul hates God but is drawn to Him by its natural desire for happiness. "Cf. P.L., CXCVI, 1213-15.

7 4 THE LOVE OF GOD of St. Paul: "Even in the first degree, 'Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods drown it' 50 for it is invincible. In the second degree, the soul puts its beloved 'as a seal upon its heart,' 57 for no longer can it cease thinking of him. In the third degree, 'If a man should give all the substance of his house for love, he shall despise it as nothing,' 68 for he no longer finds any enjoyment elsewhere. Finally, in the fourth degree, 'Love is strong as death; jealousy as hard as hell,' 59 for all that love does or endures for its God is as nothing."

Likewise in the Psalms, "In the first degree, love is invincible: 'I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.' 60 In the second, it is inseparable: 'Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee.' 61 In the third, it is exclusive: 'My soul refused to be comforted: I remembered God and was delighted.' 62 In the fourth, love is insatiable: 'What shall I render to the Lord for all the things that He hath rendered tome?'" 63

Again in St. Paul, "In the first degree, love is invincible: 'Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation ? or distress ? or famine ? or nakedness ? or danger ? or persecution? or the sword?' 64 In the second degree, die lover never loses sight of his love, no separation can part them: whence it is said, 'My soul hath stuck close to Thee,' 85 for

66 Cant. 8:7. " Ibid., v. 6. 68 Ibid., v. 7. »» Ibid., v. 6. 60 Ps. 17: 2. "Ibid., 136:6. "Ibid., 76:3-4. "Slbid., 115: 12. M Rom. 8: 35. « Ps. 62: 9.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 75 nothing can tear it away. In the third degree, the soul counts all diings as dung that it may gain Christ. 66 In the fourth, Christ is its life, and death for Him is gain, 67 for the lover of Christ desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ." 08

In the four degrees of ardent charity thus enumerated by Richard we get a foreshadowing of St. Teresa's four inner mansions. 69 For these authors of the twelfth century, the vehemence and violence they hold characteristic of intense love exists even in uncreated love. They speak of God as being "overcome" by His love for us when He created us, and, still more, when He sent us His only Son and delivered Him up for our salvation. 70 Although writing with occasional brilliance on this subject, diey do not seem to have made any real distinction between the metaphorical and the literal; they well knew, however, that God cannot properly be said to be "overcome" by anything whatever, even by His own love, since there can be no passivity in Him.

When they speak of "the spiritual wound of love," of "the destruction" worked in us by love of God, we encounter more difficulty in distinguishing between the metaphorical and the proper sense of their expressions. Their absolute manner of speaking about death to self, of mystical death, they shared in common with most theologians of their period. The latter had not yet distinguished explicidy enough between human nature considered in itself, in its essence, and fallen nature

60 Cf. Kulesza, op. at., pp. 74-96. He is of the opinion that Richard's first degree of love (amor insuperabilis) corresponds to the prayer of quiet, his second degree {amor inseparabUis) to simple union, his third degree (amor singula™, cxclusivus) to ecstatic union, and his fourth (amor insatiabilis) to transforming union.

70 Cf. St. Bernard, Cant. 64, 10; P.L., CI.XXXIII, 1088. Richard of St. Victor, Traclatiu dc gradibus caritatis, c. z; P.L., CXCVI, 1196.

corrupted by original sin and still wounded after baptism. They considered man as he is concretely and practically. Like the author of The Imitation 71 and unlike St. Thomas, they failed to study, in an abstract and speculative fashion, what essentially constitutes human nature, independently of the consequences of original and personal sin.

As a result, they came to assert more or less explicitly that the primordial tendency of our nature is a love tainted with egoism, love of our own good. 72 The testimony of our first concrete psychological experiences, even as manifested in the baptized, evidently led them to think that, metaphysically speaking, the primordial inclination of the will's nature is toward self. For some of them, the will was, if not perverse, at least feeble, feebler than our intellect, since the intellect suffices to show us we ought to love God as the author of our nature more than ourselves.

Among these theologians are those who, like William of Auxerre and Alexander of Hales, attributed this weakness even to the natural will of the unfallen Adam and to the angelic wills as well, although in both these cases there clearly could be no question of original sin. They dared not say we are naturally inclined to love God more than ourselves, fearing to lean toward Pelagianism, which holds that grace

« The Imitation of Christ, Bk. m, chap. 54. It would be difficult to find a better account of the condition in which we actually find ourselves, but we need to know as well the true state of our nature in its very essence as a work of God.

72 For a proof of this we have only to quote the text from St. Bernard referred to earlier: "Love is a natural affection, one of four. ... It would therefore be just that what is natural should serve its own Author before all others. . . . But since nature is rather weak and feeble, it is impelled at the bidding of necessity to serve itself first. And there is carnal love by which before all other things man loves himself for his own sake. . . . And it is not imposed by a command but implanted in nature" On the Love of God, chap. 8, tr. Connolly (New York: Spiritual Book Associates, 1937). P- 37- is necessary only to accomplish more easily what nature can do by itself.

They like to cite the classical texts of St. Augustine on the radical opposition between cupidity and charity, their favorite being: "Two loves have built two cities; the earthly city has for its principle love of self even unto contempt of God ; and the heavenly city, love of God even unto contempt of self. One glories in itself; the other is glorified in the Lord." 73

We err, however, if we think that these theologians of the twelfth century prepared the way for the doctrine of Baius. 74 For there is an immense difference between: (1) not distinguishing explicitly enough between nature and grace; and (2) formally denying, as Baius did, 75 this essential distinction after it has been expressly formulated by great theologians.

Some theologians of the twelfth century certainly conceived of intense love of God as violent and even, one might say, as essentially violent or contrary to our natural appetite for our own good. 76 We can understand then why, in treating of the order of charity, some maintained that, although we ought to help our parents more than we help others who are equally pleasing to God, we ought not to love them more. 77 Intense

74 Cf . also St. Augustine, Sermo 3 1 , "De amove Dei et de amore saeculi."

75 The theologians spoken of here certainly did not quote St. Augustine's texts as meaning what Baius took them to mean when he said: "Omnis amor creaturac rationulis atil vitiosa est cupiditas, qua mundtts diligitur, quae a \oanne prohibetur, out laudabilis ilia caritas qua per Spiritum Sanctum in corde diffusa Deus amatur." Dcnzingcr, nos. 1038, 1034. However, they had not arrived at St. Thomas' exactness in this matter. Cf. Ia, q.6o, a. 5, ad 5um; la Ilae, q.84, a.i; la Ilae, q.109, a. 3.

77 Cf. Guigo Carthusicnsis, Epistola ad Fratres de Monte Dei; P.L., CLXXXIV, 360. St. Thomas is of the opposite opinion: "The inclination of grace which is the effect of charity must needs be proportionate to those actions which have to be performed outwardly, so that, to wit, the affection of our charity be more intense

7 8 THE LOVE OF GOD love of God becomes like a purifying and wholly consuming fire, insatiable, alleviated only by a certain destruction of the lover by his absorption into the beloved, by mystical death, die blessed effect of love. Some beautiful scriptural texts are to be understood in this sense: "Love is strong as death." 78 "He that shall lose his life for Me, shall find it." 79 "Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me." 80 "Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ." 81 "For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God." S2

Abelard strained the point and so erred in the direction Fenelon took later; but for St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor this blessed death most surely led to life. 83 They saw intense love as a holy folly surpassing reason, the folly of the Cross, the only efficacious remedy of that other folly called sin. 84 St. Paul's words must have deeply impressed these great contemplatives: "For the word of the cross to them indeed that perish is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; and the prudence of the prudent I will reject.' . . . For, seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both Jews require signs; and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we toward those to whom wc ought to behave with greater kindness. ... In matters pertaining to nature we should love our kindred most ... on the battlefield, our fellow soldiers."

preach Christ crucified: unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness ; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. . . . We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. . . . We are reviled ; and we bless. . . . We are blasphemed ; and we entreat. We are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all, even until now." 83

Prompted by St. Paul's words, St. Bernard and Richard love to speak of the holy folly of love "which knows no measure, overcomes all distances, ignores every necessity, and triumphs over the opportune and the reasonable." 86

Love alone the bond of union

These two twelfth-century masters of mysticism do not go so far as to require die sacrifice of our natural desire for personal beatitude; but they do insist on this, that in itself die perfect love of charity is all-sufficient, even in the greatest aridity, for it unites us to God. "True love is its own happiness." 87 "O chaste and holy love! . . . O pure intention of the will! becoming more and more pure as it loses every admixture of self-interest, growing sweeter as it comes to experience only the divine. To love like this is to be made like to God." 88 '

"Love itself is enough. ... It is its own merit, its own reward ; it needs no other motive, no other profit; is content to be and to grow. I love because I love, I love that I may love.

. . . God Himself when He loves asks nothing but love in return . . . knowing that love is a lover's only happiness." 86

Scripture contains some readily available support for this thought. According to the words of the Gospel, he who loves the Lord ardently is happy even in persecution: "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 90 Eternal life has begun in their hearts, for "he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him." 91 "Charity ... is the bond of perfection." 92 "Charity never falleth away" 93 ... it is "the fulfilling of the law." 94 "Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods drown it." 95 As St. Augustine says, "Love God and do what you will"; 96 for what you do will be good, if you love in truth. Before Pascal, St. Bernard wrote, "No one can seek Thee, Lord, without already having found Thee." 97

Certainly love, even in the midst of persecution, and, in a sense, especially then, unites us to God and formally constitutes, as St. Thomas puts it, an "affective union" with God by making us desire the "real union" of the beatific vision. 98 St. Bernard, while not making this explicit distinction, never wearies of writing about affective union with God. After speaking of die love of God in the servants of His household, then in His children, he says of the spouse's love: "Her heart

87 Actual grace leads the sinner to seek God and then, when he has charity, God is in him.

having been entirely purified, the spouse reaches a degree of love in which she desires and seeks God alone, asking nothing of God save God Himself, ... no longer desiring anything out of self-love, 99 either her own happiness or glory, being drawn only towards God ... to cleave to Him and to enjoy Him." 100

Quietists have made this quotation their own. Massoulie, 101 to reconcile the first part of it with the last and with other sayings of St. Bernard, makes this apt commentary : "Love must will to be united with the beloved. True, a soul in the transports and ardors of love does not actually think of the possession of this good under the aspect of its own good; but by simply following love's inclination it tends toward the beloved. However, this disposition cannot constitute a permanent state; it is composed only of particular acts which do not equal the full compass of , the habit of charity; for, if we consider this virtue in its permanent state, the desire for the possession of God as the Sovereign Good belongs inseparably to it." 102

St. Bernard was by no means speaking of the sacrifice of future beatitude. So little does he separate possession of God from love of God that for him, at least in this world and for such time as we lack the beatific vision, we possess God and are united to Him chiefly by love. Love is union, and both as union and as love it wills to endure and increase until death and to last on through all eternity, as St. Bernard would

90 This proposition can be reconciled with that which follows it only by insisting on the importance of this term.

100 Cf. Sermo VIII, De diversis affeclionibus animae, 9; P.L., CLXXXIII, 565.

101 Traite de I'amour de Dieu, Part II, chap. 14.

102 A supercminent act of charity that would be above hope lacks the fullness of the virtue of charity, which has as its secondary act love of self and desire of our own beatitude for God's sake, to glorify Him eternally.

never deny. In the texts quoted he simply made evident his recognition of the superiority of charity, as pure love of God, over hope.

Richard of St. Victor speaks in the same vein: "There is nothing better, nothing lovelier than charity. This, nature itself teaches us and experience daily testifies to us." 103 "God requires of us only our love. Charity is the fulfillment of the law; it contains the law and the prophets; because all that divine law commands or forbids can be reduced to love. If we pay Him the tribute of love, God is satisfied." 104 "O good God, to love You is to be fed by You . . . and the more You give us, the more our hunger grows ... for the more they are heaped upon us, the less do die good things of love satisfy our hearts. . . . Implevit bonis. . . . What are these good things of love? Things eye has not seen, ear has not heard, things that have not entered into the heart of man to conceive: the things God has prepared for those who love Him ... the delights of eternity." 105

Forgetting, it would seem, what St. Augustine had written on the intellectual generation of the Word in God, Richard chose to consider the Blessed Trinity solely, as it were, from the point of view of love and thus he wandered from the path of tradition and encountered grave difficulties. During the diirteenth century, Scotus, too, manifested a tendency to place charity even above the beatific vision and adopted the position that, even in God, charity enjoys primacy. For Scotus, the happiness of heaven or the "possession of God" consists essen- ios "Nihil caruate melius, nihil caritate /ucundius. Hoc nos doccl ipsa natura, idem ipsum multiplex experienua." De Trinilate, III, 2; P.L., CXCVI, 916. It is open to question here whether Richard puts charity not only above faith and hope but even above the beatific vision.

tially and formally not in the beatific vision but in the "love of God seen face to face." 100

St. Bernard is silent on this point but, for the rest, the qualities Father Rousselot describes as characteristic of his conception of love seem properly ascribed to him : love draws us, not without violence, outside ourselves ; it has its holy follies; and, in this world, it suffices to unite us to God. This being true, should we acknowledge that the views of St. Bernard and St. Thomas are as different as Father Rousselot thinks ? Massoulie seems to have admitted that a search into St. Bernard's metaphors reveals, even if only obscurely, the principles clearly formulated later by the Angelic Doctor. We are inclined to agree with him, especially since Father Rousselot has forgotten to bring out a key point of St. Thomas' doctrine: that love, far from drawing what we love toward us, draws us toward what' we love. 107

108 Cf. Scotus, In IV Sent., d.49, q.4. "(Dicendtim) beatitudinem essentialiter et formaliter consistere in actu voluntatis, quo simpliciter et solum attingitttr bonum optimum cuius fruitionc est natura beatificalibus perfecte beata." St. Thomas thinks that he rcc0gni7.es the truth in this position when he says (la Ilac, q.28, a. 2) that mutual indwelling is an effect of love. For him, however, beatitude, or the possession of God, consists essentially in the immediate vision of God. Widiout this, love would constitute not real but only affective union, such as that existing between separated friends. For St. Thomas the blessed in heaven are united to God by an immediate apprehension of Him, a sort of intussusception that unites two into a oneness closer than food is assimilated into flesh, for it is the union of the knowcr with the known which — especially if the known is apprehended in an absolutely immediate way without any idea serving as an intermediary — is more intimate than the union of matter and form. Matter docs not become form, but the knowcr becomes in one way (intentionaliter) the known and thus possesses it. Love in the form of desire precedes possession by immediate vision, while in the form of joy (fruitio) it comes after, flowing from it necessarily, like a property from an essence. Cf. Ia Ilac, q.3, a. 4; q.28, a. 1.

107 Ia, q. 16, a. 1. Father Roland-Gosselin's remark that Rousselot has completely neglected the realism of love in St. Thomas' theory seems fully justified. Cf. his excellent article. "Lc desir du bonheur et I'existcncc de Dicu," Revue des Sciences philosophiques et thiohgiqucs (April, 1924), p. 165. See too C. V. Heris, O.P., •'L'amour naturel de Dicu," Melanges Thomistes (Belgium: Bibliotheque Thomiste, 1923), pp. 289-310.

St. Thomas frequently states this principle, which is founded on the fact that the good, unlike to the true, is formally not in the mind but in the thing, as Aristode aptly observed. By this principle St. Thomas establishes 108 that, although the intellect is superior to the will, which it directs, love of God is, in this world, better than knowledge of God, "melior est amor Dei, quam cognitio." By the same principle, St. Thomas also explains 109 how love, especially the love of friendship, produces ecstasy, taking us out of self by drawing us toward the one we love, the more and more perfectly so when we love one not our equal but our superior. "We ought to love God," says St. Thomas, "in such a way that there is nothing in us not ordered to Him." 110 The case differs entirely when we love an inferior or an equal with the love of friendship. St. Thomas, following Dionysius, says that St. Paul was drawn out of himself by no longer living his own life but the life of Christ for the sake of Christ: "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me." 111

All this is closely akin to St. Bernard's way of thinking. His idea, however, remains obscure on one important point. Aldiough it certainly brings out the generosity and purity of love in God's great servants, it achieves far less success in showing the relationship between disinterested love and love of self, a seemingly indestructible inclination of our nature. So the second part of the problem of love, intimately bound up with the first, apparently remains unsolved and, to solve it, we must make a deeper study of the problem and the basic ideas it implies.

108 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, chap. 4, lect. 10. 1,0 Ibid., Ila Ilae, q.17, a. 6, ad 311m. Gal. 2: 20.

st. thomas' view

St. Thomas was familiar with St. Bernard's ideas and with Richard's. We know this from what he has to say about the duality of persons required for the friendship of charity, 112 and the relationship of this infused virtue to the natural fundamental inclination of our will. 113 He gives evidence of this familiarity, too, when he touches on the question of the violence of love, 114 and of the foolishness of that preaching by which God has been pleased to save believers; 115 and, again, when he distinguishes between "affective union" formally constituted by love, even of persons separated by distance, and "real union," which love desires but does not constitute. 116 Whoever meditates on this part of St. Thomas' doctrine can testify how profound are the metaphysics and theology of love to be found there.

Difficulties of the preceding view

The Angelic Doctor does not deny any of the characteristics of love mentioned in St. Bernard's works. He recognizes that love for God, especially when intense, draws us out of ourselves, not without violence; that it has its holy follies; and that, in this world, it, more than any other act, unites us

112 De potcntia, q.8, a. 9. Sec the answer to the second objection for a refutation of Richard's theory of the Trinity. Ibid., 5 ob.; q. 10, a.4, ad 8um; q. 10, a. 5, scd contra 3, 4, 8, and corp. art. and ad ium. Also Ila llae, q.25, a.4; la Ilae, q.28, a.3.

"* Commenlum in I Cor., I, 21 IT.; Ila Ilae, q.46, a.i, ad 2um. 1,6 la Ilae, q.28, a. I, 2.

to God. 117 But how, he asks, can union with God bring us repose if love of Him has an essentially, and not merely accidentally, violent character? How can charity give joy and peace if it is not in conformity or in harmony with our deepest natural inclinations and aspirations? 118 This chief difficulty contains virtually all others relative to each of the characteristics of love remarked by St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor.

Love of friendship as such certainly makes us will good to another and brings us to love him for himself. St. Gregory certainly said that charity can exist only betwen distinct persons. Yet should we not love ourselves supernaturally ? Should we not, in charity, will life eternal for ourselves? It is said: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 119 After God, the author of all natural and supernatural good, we apparently should then love ourselves. Apparently, too, we must desire our own participation in the divine good before we can desire to share that good in common with our neighbor. My unity, my identity, with myself is surely a closer bond than my union with anyone else. The subordination of each of us to the principle of order is prior to the coordination of all so subordinated. True love of another, even the most generous love of friendship, seems founded on natural likeness even more than on the distinction of persons. Every living creature loves its own kind, finding itself in some way in its counterparts. Why

117 Father Rousselot himself recognizes that "St. Thomas' theory is not a reaction against the medieval conception but an attempt to unify and clarify it." Op. cit., pp. 43, 50 ff. Compare St. Bernard's letter to the monks of Mont-Dieu (P.L., CLXXXIV) with the Summa, la Ilae, q.68, a.i, 2, 5; Ha Hae, q.45.

should there not be a natural love of self diat is legitimate? There is no apparent reason why such a love cannot rightly belong to die primordial inclination of our nature, if it is subordinated to a natural love of God as the author and preserver of our existence. St. Bernard and Richard failed to examine diis point sufficiently, but St. Thomas probed it to its depths. 120 Undoubtedly, intense love of God is at times violent; sin, because it offends God and condemns souls to hell, inflicts keen suffering upon it. St. Thomas recognizes that our Lord, because of His profound knowledge of men's sins and their quasi-infinite gravity and, most of all, because of His great charity, suffered more during His passion than all contrite hearts put together. 121 The Angelic Doctor gives an excellent explanation of St. Paul's words about the folly of the Cross and the text, "love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell," 122 from the Canticle of Canticles. Our crucified "Lord has loved us witii a love stronger than death, stronger than hell. The infinite value which His love drew from the person of the Word gave Him victory over sin, over Satan, and over death.

The holy violence of the Cross restored love's higher order and gave to mankind a wonderful remedy against those violations of the divine law which, if not forgiven in this world, incur the terrible punishment of eternal privation of God. But it need not follow that intense love possesses a character essentially violent or contrary to our nature. Certainly any disordered love of an apparent good runs counter to nature; but, just as surely, intense love of the truly good, and especially

of God, follows nature's law. Intense love can, indeed, have reverberations on the human body that wear it out; but, no matter what its intensity, it seems to conform to our deepest natural inclinations and aspirations and to possess an essential connaturality. God created our nature. He gave it certain inclinations. Into these He, the source of all good, could inject no essential disorder. Anyone who fails to grasp this truths should seek light from St. Thomas. 188 Can we say with absolute truth that in this world love suffices to unite us with God and really constitutes our union with Him ? Of course, it formally constitutes an affective union with Him, the kind of union existing between separated lovers. It certainly provides joy and peace, even in the midst of trials. But the question still remains: Does love formally constitute real union with God; or does it not rather drive us to desire that real and perfect union formally constituted by the immediate vision of the divine essence ? 124

In relation to this matter, St. Thomas introduces some nice and necessary distinctions. Most of the truth contained in the views about love's violence just discussed applies not only to the distinction of persons united by love but also, and particularly, to the consequences of original and personal sin, to egotism properly so called, and to the disorder it implies. We are to understand the holy folly of love in contrast to the j wisdom of the world, a consequence of sin. And, if we compare it with right reason, we do so only to learn how far it surpasses, not how much it contradicts, reason. The idea so dear to St. Bernard and Richard fails signally to bring out the good in the very essence of our will's primordial inclina-

tion, an inclination charity ought not to contradict but elevate.

The principle of St. Thomas' solution

These difficulties made St. Thomas formulate precisely certain views of Aristotle, pseudo-Dionysius, and St. Augustine on the fundamental inclination of our nature. They also led him to show the relationship between this inclination and grace, which should elevate it, not destroy it. In this way he came to discover some things but dimly glimpsed by theologians of the twelfth century.

St. Thomas differs from St. Bernard and from Richard, as well as frora-the author of The Imitation, in method rather than in doctrine. St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor keep to the concrete. And we must admit that, in the concrete, and even among the baptized, a disordered love of self or egotism properly so called is usually the prime psychological manifestation. 125 But truth demands a deeper study of human nature and requires us to consider the very essence of our nature's primordial inclination, taking our nature as it is in itself, abstractly, from the metaphysical point of view, as God conceived it from all eternity. Nominalists would pronounce such a study futile. We hold it of utmost importance, if men and angels really have determinate natures and if grace also has its essence, really distinct from all things in the merely natural order.

Aristotle observed that everything in nature is attracted to God, pure act, the immovable mover, the last end of the universe. 120 Certain writings circulated under the name of

i« Sec Metaphysics, Bk. XII, chap. 7, and St. Thomas' commentary, lect. 7.

9 o THE LOVE OF GOD

Dionysius 127 expressed the same thing in a variety of ways. St. Augustine, in his book De natura boni, clearly asserted in opposition to the Manichaeans that all nature as such, since God created it, is good ; in some texts quoted by St. Bonaventure he even stated that all created nature, in a more or less confused way, tends toward the Supreme Good. 128 In his book De diligendo Deo, St. Bernard himself frequently alludes to this principle. Richard implicitly affirms it also. 129 And Holy Scripture expresses the same truth clearly in its own manner, were it only in die Canticle of the Three Children: "All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord; praise and exalt Him above all forever."

St. Thomas, whose thought on the subject is notably in advance of St. Albert the Great's, 130 gave clear and definite formulation to these views by establishing, without leaning in the slightest way toward pantheism, that every created nature, especially when endowed with intellect and will, naturally tends to love God its author more than itself: just as in an organism each part naturally loves the whole more than itself. 131 No less clearly has the Angelic Doctor shown what an infinite distance lies between the natural love of God as the

127 De divinis nominibus, chap. 4, nos. 4, 10; chap. 10, nos. I, 10, 14, 16. St. Thomas frequently quotes from the fourth chapter the following sentence: "Deus convertit omnia ad amorcm sui ipsius," Cf. Ia llae, q. 109, a-3.

128 St. Augustine often says that man naturally desires happiness and that true happiness is found only in God: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee." Confessions, I, 1. "Whoever learns to love himself, loves God." De Trinilate, 14, 14; P.L., XL, 1051. Also In loannem, exxiv, 21; P.L., XXXV, 1968.

"° In his Summa theologica, St. Albert the Great follows William of Auxcrre in not daring to attribute to men and angels the natural capacity to love God more than themselves. Cf. II, q. 14, m.4, a. 2. In his Summa de crealuris he recognizes this power in them. Cf. I, tr.4, q.25.

author of nature and the supernatural love of God considered in His inner life and as the author of grace. 132 St. Thomas' clear teaching on this important point raises him above both Pelagian naturalism or Semi-pelagianism and what will later be called the pseudo-naturalism of Baius. 133

The principle of St. Thomas' doctrine of love rests not merely on the 1 distinction of persons loving one another or the necessity of overcoming egotism's disorders but on our very nature itself, as fashioned by its Author. Therefore in regard to the order of charity, St. Thomas never neglects to consider our natural inclinations but shows how charity perfects diem by elevating them to a higher order. The problem whether pure love ought to sacrifice the desire for personal beatitude does not really exist; for this desire, as it exists in the very essence of our nature's primordial inclination, is not disordered but, on the contrary, is initially subordinated to love of God. 134 Man possesses a natural inclination to virtue, weakened, indeed, by original and personal sin 135 but not

132 la, q.12, a.4, 5; q.62, a.2: Ila llae, q.5, a. 5; q.62, a.i; q.109 per totam.

138 Thomists generally teach that, whereas in the state of perfect nature man would have needed only his natural endowments to be able to love God as the author of nature above all things, in the state of fallen nature he needs the help of grace {gratia sanans) to do so.

134 Although St. Bernard follows Aristotle less closely and shows less concern about the metaphysical aspect of the question, he and St. Thomas fully agree on this important point. He says of the soul created and preserved by God, particularly when raised to the order of grace, "Melius est Deus ei quam ipsa sibi." Ill Sent, d.29, q.2, c et ad 6um. Scotus disagrees with St. Thomas' statement in the Summa (Ila llae, q.26, a. 13, ad 3um), that if, by an impossible supposition, God were not man's good. He would not be man's reason for loving. Scotus, Oxon., Ill, d.27, q.l, no. 13; IV, d.49, q.2, no. 19, takes the opposite view that even if God were not our good, our final end, we could still love Him with a love which would have as its object neither our final end nor the means ordered to that end — an impossibility, in Thomistic opinion. Scotus' abstract theory fails to take into consideration the relationship between the good in itself, the loving subject, and his affective faculty. Cajetan refutes Scotus in lam q.82, a.2, no. v ff. and in lam llae, q. 1, a. 6. Sec too the Summa, Ia, q.6o, a. 5, ad 2um.

destroyed. Mortification and the Cross should remove every stain from this inclination, together with our natural desire for happiness. Purification, however, differs from destruction. Infused hope, 136 and charity even more, elevate our nature to a higher level, and we come to love our eternal happiness for God's sake, wishing to glorify Him eternally. The desire for happiness belongs essentially both to our nature and to the virtue of charity, which unites us to God and which, for the sake of God Himself, desires to continue united with Him forever. 137

A closer study of St. Thomas' works reveals to us the nature of our initial love for our Creator, the character of our inclination to love Him more than self. St. Thomas' thought unfolds gradually, chronologically, and brings us step by step to a complete and satisfying solution of the questions raised by others.

In the second book of his Commentary on the Sentences, 139 he gives an excellent statement of the problem of love in the difficulties presented at the beginning. Every being seems inclined, he says, to seek what is good for itself {bonum sibi), or its own particular good, before everything else; for nature refers everything to self; only supernatural charity can make us love God more than self. Were the inclination to love God first and most jiature's own, then wherever we find nans We want bread, a<«ing below us—mihi et propter me— subordinating it to ourselves; but by hope we desire God and the possession or God for ourselves yet for His own sake, as infinitely above us—mihi sed non formaliter propter me. Cf. Ilallac, q.17, a. 5, and Cajetan, ibid.

13' St. Bonavcnture teaches the same thing, saying (III, dist. 27, q.2} mat tne desire expressed by St. Paul to be dissolved and to be with Christ is a true act of charity and that (7/7 Sent., d.29, q-3 ad 6um), when he wishes to be anathema, it is only for a time, conditionally, "si optabile esset." "8 Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. II, dist. 3, q.3.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 93 ture we should also find this tendency, even in the worst sinners, even in Satan.

In answer to this, St. Thomas first gives the opinion of William of Auxerre without, however, naming him. This thought is summarized elsewhere even more clearly as follows : "There have been some who maintained that an angel loves God more than himself with natural love, both as to the love of concupiscence, through his seeking the divine good for himself rather than his own good; and in a fashion with regard to the love of friendship, so far as he naturally desires a greater good for God than for himself; because he naturally wishes God to be God, while, as for himself, he wills to have his own nature. But absolutely speaking, out of natural love he loves himself more than he does God, because he naturally loves himself before God, and with greater intensity." 189

Even in his early works, St. Thomas judged William of Auxerre's opinion as improbable for the general reason that an angel's nature, as well as man's, is good in itself, fashioned to the image of God and, as a result, unmarked by any perverse inclination, such as love of self above love of God, the author of angelic life. 140

A little later, when writing his Commentary on Boo\ 111 of the Sentences, 1 * 1 he rejected William of Auxerre's opinion for a more exact reason, and his rejection contains the principle that now interests us, the genesis of which we are study-

130 la, q.6o, a. 5. Fear of falling into the Pelagian heresy more than any other reason led William of Auxerre to take the stand he did. He had not learned to distinguish between God as the author of nature and God considered in His intimate life and as the author of grace.

ing. It is expressed, however, with complex cleverness and has an air of effort about it quite foreign to the lofty simplicity of the Summa theologica. Although labored and extremely involved, the article can be resolved into two lines of reasoning: both men and angels prefer the good most suitable to them, the good most conformed to their appetites or desires, and they desire to preserve this good, especially where it exists perfectly and principally. But our good exists more perfectly in God than in ourselves, for it is in Him as in the first, universal, creative, and conserving cause of every good ; in much the same way as the good of the part is more in the whole than in itself, for, as we know, a hand by itself, separated from the body, loses its life. So it follows that we all naturally delight in the good in God more than the good in ourselves. For example, we delight more in the existence, life, intellect, and goodness of the Author of our nature than in our own individual life, just as in the body the hand's natural bent is to love the body more than itself, even, when necessary, to the point of sacrificing itself for the body. 1 ' 12 Besides, as it is said in the same passage, the end ought to be loved more than the means; and God, even in the natural order, is the end of all things, as He is, by His preservative act, more intimate to all than each is to itself.

In contradiction of William of Auxerre, St. Thomas further remarks: The natural love under consideration is not only a love of concupiscence but a love of benevolence as well, for we all naturally delight in the goodness in God our Creator, more than the goodness we find in ourselves, 143 naturally choosing the source of light and heat in preference to any of

its rays. The love referred to here falls far short of infused charity, of course, yet it remains the normal consequence of the good bent God has given our very nature.

In the Summa theologica, 1 " written at least ten years after the Commentary on the Third Boo\ of the Sentences, St. Thomas achieves a simpler and more perfect expression of the same principle and definitely discards the opinion of William of Auxerre as false. As we learn from his manuscripts, the Angelic Doctor usually perfected his line of reasoning not by amplification but by condensation. His progressive conciseness shows that his thought advances more by penetration than by extension. As is fitting in a contemplative, his thought rises toward the highest, simplest, and most universal principles and offers a human parallel to the hierarchy of angelic i ntellec ts. The higher angels grasp by a few ideas, in a single glance, and reduced to a sort of supra-sensible panorama or metaphysical view, a multitude of intelligible realities which the lower angels can achieve only by means of many less universal ideas. 145 So St. Thomas' thought progressed from the more complex development of his Commentary to the simplified exposition of the Summa, 1 * 6 wherein he rises above the sensible order and attains to a principle that throws light on the full compass of the problem of love.

A part of this text has been quoted elsewhere. The preceding discussion will now enable us to grasp more fully and deeply the meaning and implication of the whole.

The natural tendency of things devoid of reason shows the nature of the natural inclination residing in the will of an intellectual

nature. Now, in the natural order of things, everything which of its nature belongs to another, is principally and more strongly inclined to that other to which it belongs, than toward itself. Such a natural tendency is evidenced from things which are moved to act according to nature: because whatever is moved of its nature to act in a certain manner, has the inborn aptitude for such action, as the Philosopher says (Phys., ii). For we observe that the part naturally exposes itself to safeguard the whole; as, for instance, the hand is without deliberation exposed to the blow for the whole body's safety. And since reason copies nature, we find the same inclination among the social virtues; for it behooves the virtuous citizen to expose himself to the danger of death for the public weal of the state; and if man were a natural part of the city, then such inclination would be natural to him.

Consequently, since God is the universal good, and under this good both man and angel and every creature is comprised, because every creature in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to God; it follows that from natural love angel and man alike love God before themselves and with a greater love. Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than God, it would follow that natural love would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by charity.

In this beautiful text St. Thomas emphasizes the inner structure of his reasoning— major, minor, and conclusion — and takes up the consideration of God not only as the first efficient, creative, and conserving cause of our nature and existence but also as our last end and supreme good.

The order of agents corresponds to the order of ends: a principle properly and profitably invoked in relation to any being and therefore to any creature on any level. Even the lowliest beings, by tending toward their natural perfection, tend toward a certain likeness of the divine perfection, and toward

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 97 the good of the whole universe even more than their own. 147 This is true of the stone that tends toward the earth's center, of the earth that turns round the sun, of the sun that is drawn by a still greater force. It is true of plant and of animal: they naturally tend more toward the conservation of their species than to self-preservation. As our Lord said, "the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings" and will expose her own life, as St. Thomas remarks, to defend them from the hawk. 148 So all creation moves toward the good of the universe and toward God its author, a truth called to our minds by Aristotle and Dionysius and triumphantly proclaimed by the Old Testament: "All ye works of the Lord, bless die Lord; praise and exalt Him above all forever." 149

In commenting on this canticle, St. Bernard, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas all join in saying: "All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord . . . angels of the Lord . . . , heavens . . . , waters that are above the heavens . . . , stars of heaven . . , shower and dew . . . , ice and snow . . . , light and darkness . . . , bless the Lord; mountains and hills . . . , seas and rivers . . . , birds of the air, bless the Lord; sons of men . . . , priests, servants of God . . . , spirits and souls of the just . . . , the holy and humble of heart, bless the Lord: praise and exalt Him above all forever . . . because He is good: because His mercy endureth forever and ever."

Chanted by the Church at daybreak, this lovely canticle of Lauds expresses with a magnificence full of praise, contemplation, and love the same principle St. Thomas cast into a meta-

147 Contra Ccntes, Bk. Ill, chap. 24, no. 3; Summa, la Ilac, q.109, a. 3 . 118 St. Thomas In Matth., 23: 37. 110 Dan. 3:57.

physical formula in his Summa: "In its own way everything loves God more than itself." 150

Elsewhere in his works St. Thomas has expressed the same great truth in approximately the same terms. 151 In the Summa he makes more explicit the distinction between natural love of God and supernatural charity: "The good we receive from God is twofold, the good of nature and the good of grace. But the fellowship of natural goods bestowed on us by God is the foundation of natural love, in virtue of which not only man, so long as his nature remains unimpaired, loves God above all things and more than himself, but also every creature, each in its own way (that is, by an intellectual or rational or animal or at least natural love, as stones do, for instance, and other things bereft of knowledge), because each part naturally loves the common good of the whole more than its own particular good. This is evidenced by its operation, since the principal inclination of each part is toward common action conducive to the good of the whole. It may be seen also in civic virtues whereby sometimes the citizens suffer damage even to their own property and persons for the sake of the common good. Therefore much more is this realized with regard to the friendship of charity which is based on the fellowship of the gifts of grace.

"Therefore man ought, out of charity, to love God, who is the common good of all, more than himself: since happiness is in God as in the universal and fountain principle of all who are able to have a share of that happiness." 152

Duns Scotus has made the objection: "Even conceding that

151 Commentary on De nom. dip., chap. 4, lect 9, 10; Quodlibet, I, q.4, a. 3; la Kac, q. 109, a. 3.

the part does expose itself for the whole, it acts thus only because of its identity with the whole and to save itself, for it can exist only in the whole. Besides, no creature is a part of God." 153 Is St. Thomas' doctrine, then, in danger of falling into pantheism ? Cajetan has answered this objection as follows:

The reason why the part exposes itself for the whole is not because of its identity with it. The proof of which lies in this: that it will expose itself, if necessary, to the point of losing its identity that it may save the whole (as a hand will sacrifice itself for the body). The reason for this natural inclination is that given by St. Thomas: by its nature and very being the part is first and essentially for the whole and from the whole. This is fittingly applied to every creature in relation to God. Each is, according to its nature, a natural part of the universe and, as a result, naturally loves the universe more than itself. With far greater reason it naturally prefers to self the universal or essential good which as eminent or first cause contains the good of the whole universe. 154

No pantheism lurks in this doctrine; for it maintains an infinite distance between God and the highest of creatures: God alone is existent by essence; He is Being itself; no creature is its own existence; every created essence is really distinct from its existence; God alone is essential goodness; every creature, no matter how great, is good only by participation.

Without at all approaching pantheism, we can say that God possesses goodness in its entirety, as the eminent cause in which every good is virtually contained. Angels and men do not love themselves as their last end. They love themselves as

creatures subordinated to a last end, God. They naturally love themselves for God, and so love God more than themselves. 155

Solution of the problem

The principle that "every created nature tends to love its Author more than itself" has innumerable consequences. Only the principal ones will be noted. The first marks a certain hierarchy: the higher a nature is, the more perfect it is, and the stronger is its natural inclination to love God. The gravitating stone, the growing, seed-bearing plant, the living, breeding animal, the loving, thinking man, the matter-free and flesh-unfettered angel, all move in an ascending order of perfection toward the good of the universe. Thinking upon this, St. Thomas reached the conclusion that, at the moment of their creation, God gave to His angels grace in proportion to their natural capacity and the natural energy of their will. 156

The principle now under discussion has another and no less remarkable consequence. The natural motion resulting from this inclination of all creatures becomes more and more rapid as it nears its fitting term, the natural end toward which they move and in which they come to rest. As any child knows who throws a ball into the air, movement that is violent or contrary to nature slows down progressively until it stops, whereas movement in conformity with nature, following her law of gravity, increases steadily in speed. So spirits gravitating toward God naturally (and connaturally by infused charity) advance toward Him more and more quickly as they come

155 Cf. Salmanticcnses, In lam, q.6o, a. 5. Also Gonet, ibid. > s «Cf. la, q.62, a. 6.

closer to Him and are more drawn by Him, until they see Him face to face. 157 The law here at work, to be seen later as manifest in the progress of the saints, is more general and therefore higher than Newton's law of gravity, which comes within its wider compass.

A third consequence of this principle results from its application to a sphere above matter, the spiritual order, and contains die solution to the problem of love. True spiritual goods coincide with what is good in itself. By rightly desiring its own perfection, by loving itself as it ought, the created spirit loves its Creator still more; further, by ceasing to love its own perfection, it ceases to love God. Here, in plain opposition to quietism, St. Thomas proposes his solution to the problem of love, making no demand, under pretext of purifying our love for God, that we sacrifice our desire for perfection, virtue, sanctity, and salvation. 158 Having made his expert deductions, he turns to the spiritual realm to find them verified in the natural and supernatural life of those pure spirits, the angels, and, in due proportion, in man's as well.

In the natural order conflict arises between two individuals of the same species because they desire die same material good, whether useful or pleasurable; for example, the same field, the same house, the same profits, things which cannot properly belong to them both at the same time. Between several spirits desiring the same spiritual good (for example, the same light of truth, the same virtue, the same beatitude) conflict is impossible. Why? St. Thomas gives the answer by putting into exact terms the profound thought of St. Augustine that includes a virtual solution of the social question.

167 Cf. St Thomas, In Epistolam ad Hebraeos, X, 25; also la Ilae, q.35, a.6. 188 Cf. Denzingcr, no. 1232.

Matter, by individualizing, divides. Material goods, because individualized and limited, cannot belong to all at the same time. On the contrary, spirit universalizes and can acquire immaterial goods which, because of their universality, can belong to all at the same time. These immaterial goods, far from dividing, unite us, if pride does not go seeking apparent goods and falsifying all things. 158 The true good of created spirits is identical with good in itself, with real good. Right reason's evaluation of a true good is independent of any individual pleasure or particular utility resulting from its possession. It recognizes, for example, that to tell the truth and refrain from lying is good even though it should cost life itself. There can be no question of sacrificing a spiritual good, because by efficaciously loving it and ourselves through it we love God our Sovereign Good more than self. By ceasing to love it, we turn from God. 160

St. Thomas has examined this consequence with particular thoroughness in his treatise on the angels. His thought may be summarized as follows : Even in the order of animal life, when "the hen gathers her chickens under her wings" to defend them from the hawk, she naturally loves the good of her species, and her motherhood more than her individual life, more than her own good, which she will sacrifice if need be. No parallel obtains in regard to any goods proper to the soul, such as virtue or spiritual perfection. And because no such parallel exists, the propositions of Molinos and Fenelon

1M Summa, Ilia, q.23, a.i, ad 311m; la Ilae, q.28, a. 5, ad 2um; Tabula aurea S. Thotnae: Bonum, no. 227.

leo a virtuous man loves the good of virtue more because it is good in itself than because it perfects him and is good for him; in fact, the formal reason for this good becoming a perfection for him is that it is good in itself and lovable as an end having intrinsic value. See St. Thomas' Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, Bk. IX, chap. 8, lect. 9; also la, q.6o, a. 5, ad 2um; Ha Ilae, q.26, a. 3, ad 2um.

declaring that the truly interior soul should not desire its own perfection, have been condemned. 161

St. Thomas points out the profound reason why the quietist view is wrong when he shows how the proper perfection of created spirits coincides with what is good in itself and ultimately with the Sovereign Good. He remarks it again when he reasons that the angels could not have sinned directly against the natural law, which was absolutely evident to them, but must have done so indirectly by turning away from the supernatural law known to them only in the obscurity of faith.

If the multiplicity of individuals of the same species actually proceeds from matter which receives the same specific form many times — as wax receives the imprint of a seal over and over again — and if, in consequence, each pure spirit, being without matter, is the only one of his species, 182 then no spirit could suffer inner conflict because of opposition between the good of his species and his individual good. Furthermore, as each pure spirit always intuitively sees his own essence and the natural law imprinted therein, he cannot be deceived in regard to the law, nor can he cease to consider the law. The voluntary disorder of sin always presupposes some error of practical judgment or at least a certain failure to consider the law when it could and should be considered. It follows, according to St. Thomas, that the angels could never sin directly against the natural law, which is absolutely evident to them. As has been remarked, the nature of each draws him to love God more than himself and, as a result, to observe

181 Cf. Dcnzinger, no. 1232, for Molinos" proposition, the same error later repeated by Fenelon in a less exaggerated form. Cf. Denzingcr, nos. 1344, 1345. "* Cf. Ia, q. 5 o, a.4.

io 4 THE LOVE OF GOD the whole natural law as seen written in his own essence. So he sees intuitively that his own true good as a pure spirit coincides with that which is good in itself; and by loving it he loves yet more the Sovereign Source of all good. Although one of the greatest corollaries of the principle formulated above, this truth has not always been understood by modern theologians despite St. Thomas' full and satisfying explanation of it. The fact is that not only could the angels sin indirectly against the natural law, but many of them actually did. How ? Before receiving the immediate vision of the divine essence, they knew die supernatural law only in the obscurity of faith ; so they could sin against it, particularly through pride. As a result they could also sin indirectly against the natural law, which obliges them to obey God in whatever He commands eidier in die natural or in the supernatural order. 163

By sinning, the devil stopped loving God directly as author of grace; consequently he stopped loving God indirectly as the author of the natural moral law. He no longer loves himself rightly, no longer loves his own true good, pride making him seek it where it is not to be found. While hating his just Judge and the punishment inflicted by Him, he keeps on loving life itself and, in a wholly natural, physical, and in no way moral or supernatural sense, and in despite of everything, he keeps on loving the Author of nature and of life. 104

The consequence of the principle appealed to above does not apply to man exactly in die same way. However, so far as man is a spirit, the good proper to his higher part coincides with the good in itself as willed by God ; and, by loving himself according to the higher part of his nature, man loves his

103 Cf. St. Thomas, De malo, q.16, a.3; Summa. la, q.63, a.i, ad 311m. 184 la, q.6o, a. 5, ad sum.

Creator still more. Not to so love himself would be to turn from God.

In this respect man differs from the angels because his intellect is the last and least of intellects, and its proper object is the lowest of intelligibles and lies in the shadow of sensible things; yet in the mirror of material things he can know purely spiritual realities. His intellect cannot see the very essence of his own soul intuitively or the natural law written there. Moreover, through his imagination, which does not always follow reason, sensible things exert an attraction upon him and provoke his emotions to disorder. These in turn influence his judgment and lead him into error, especially in practical matters. Consequently they lead to sin, even to sins directly opposed to the natural law. Besides, since no man comprises the whole of his species but each is only one among many, conflict can exist between the good of the species and the sensible good of the individual ; and only too often man sins by preferring his personal good, whether useful or pleasurable, and sometimes comes at last to sin even against nature itself. 165

However, in man too, spiritual good and essential good are at one, according to the words of Psalm 10: "He that loveth iniquity hateth his own soul." From the lips of Christ Himself we hear: "He that shall lose his life for Me shall find

Aristotle presented the same truth from a philosophical point of view in his Ethics:

The question is also debated, whether a man should love himself most, or someone else. People criticize those who love themselves

most, and call them self-lovers, using this as an epithet of disgrace. . . . But the facts clash with these arguments, and this is not surprising. For men say that one ought to love best one's best friend, and a man's best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it; and these attributes are found most of all in a man's attitude toward himseE . . .

Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other and determine how far and in what respects each view is right. Now if we grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase "lover of self," the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures; for these are what most people desire. ... So those who are grasping with regard to these things gratify their appetites and in general their feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and most men are of this nature (which is the reason why the epithet has come to be used as it is— it takes its meaning from the prevailing type of self-love, which is a bad one); it is just, therefore, that men who are lovers of self in this way are reproached for being so. That it is those who give themselves the preference in regard to objects of this sort that most people usually call lovers of self is plain; for if a man were always anxious that he himself, above all things, should act justly, temperately, or in accordance with any other of the virtues, and in general were always to try to secure for himself the honourable course, no one will call such a man a lover of self or blame him.

But such a man would seem more than the other a lover of self; at all events he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and best, and gratifies the most authoritative element in himself and in all things obeys this; and just as a city or any other systematic whole is most properly identified with the most authoritative element in it, so is a man; and therefore the man who loves this and gratifies it is most of all a lover of self. . . . Whence it follows that he is most truly a lover of self, of another type than that which is a

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 107 matter of reproach, and as different from that as living according to a rational principle is from living as passion dictates, and desiring what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous. . . .

For he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelve-month of noble life to many years of humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for themselves. They will throw away wealth too on condition that their friends will gain more; for while a man's friend gains wealth he himself achieves nobility; he is therefore assigning the greater good to himself. The same too is true of honour and office; all these things he will sacrifice to his friend; for this is noble and laudable for himself. Rightly then is he thought to be good, since he chooses nobility before all else. But he may even give up actions to his friend; it may be nobler to become the cause of his friend's acting than to act himself. ... In this sense, then, as has been said, a man should be a lover of self; but in the sense in which most men are so, he ought not. 187

Both when treating of magnanimity or greatness of soul 168 and when inquiring whether sinners truly love themselves, 169 St. Thomas carefully examines Aristotle's noble thought in the light of the Gospel, remarking:

For it is common to all for each one to love what he thinks himself to be. ... In this way too. all men, both good and wicked, love themselves, in so far as they love their own preservation.

187 Probably in Bk. IX, chap. 8, of his Ethics, Aristotle set out to refute Plato's error on the same subject in his Laws, Bk. V., thinking that a distinction based on the exact observation of nature was necessary to offset his teacher's absolute condemnation of all love of self.

Secondly, a man is said to be something in respect of some predominance, as the sovereign of a state is spoken of as being the state, and so, what the sovereign does, the state is said to do. In this way, all do not think themselves to be what they are. For the reasoning mind is the predominant part of man, while the sensitive and corporeal nature takes the second place, the former of which the Apostle calls the inward man, and the latter, the outward man (II Cor. 4: 16). Now the good look upon their rational nature or the inward man as being die chief thing in them, wherefore in this way they think themselves to be what they are. On the other hand, the wicked reckon their sensitive and corporeal nature, or the outward man, to hold the first place. Wherefore, since they know not themselves aright, they do not love themselves aright, but love what they think themselves to be. But the good know themselves truly, and therefore truly love themselves. . . .

In this way the good love themselves, as to the inward man, because they wish the preservation thereof in its integrity, they desire good things for him, namely spiritual goods, indeed they do their best to obtain them, and they take pleasure in entering into their own hearts, because they find there good thoughts in the present, the memory of past good, and the hope of future good, all of which are sources of pleasure. Likewise they experience no clashing of wills, since their whole soul tends to one thing.

On the other hand, the wicked have no wish to be preserved in the integrity of the inward man, nor do they desire spiritual goods for him, nor do they work for that end, nor do they take pleasure in their own company by entering into their own hearts, because whatever they find there, present, past and future, is evil and horrible; nor do they agree with themselves, on account of the gnawings of conscience. . . .

In the same manner it may be shown that the wicked love themselves, as regards the corruption of the outward man, whereas the good do not love themselves thus.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 109 The love of self which is the principle of sin is that which is proper to the wicked, and reaches to the contempt of God, . . . because the wicked so desire external goods as to despise spiritual goods.

The wicked have some share of self-love, in so far as they think themselves good. Yet such love of self is not true but apparent: and even this is not possible in those who are very wicked." 170

The damned, in fact, hate themselves and, in a sense, will their own annihilation that they may escape suffering.

Everything we have been considering drives home to us the fact that spiritual creatures love God by perfectly loving themselves and turn from God by failing to love themselves as they should; for, though men can love money, sensual pleasures, and honors too much, no one can, contrary to quictist teaching, love virtue too much. 171 To love virtue is to love our best self, and to love our best self is to love the best of all goods, God Himself.

Truths found in St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard, but emphasized and synthesized by St. Thomas, have formed this simple solution of a great problem. 172 Father Rousselot may have forgotten to note that love, contrary to knowledge, draws us toward reality instead of bringing reality to us, but he has thoroughly grasped St. Thomas' solution. He writes: "St. Thomas thus reconciles two apparently contradictory statements: (1) that disinterested love is possible and even profoundly natural (since man's nature leads him to love God more than self) : (2) that purely 'ecstatic' love, a love of

171 Quaest. disp. de caritate, a. 7, ad 1311m; De perfeclionc Mae spirilualis, c.15.

172 Cf. St. Augustine, De Trinitalc, Bk. XIV, 14 (P.L., XLII, 1050); in Tract, in loan., CXXIV, 21 (P.L., XXXV, 1968); St. Bernard, De diligendo Deo, 2 (P.L., CLXXXn, 978) ; Richard of St. Victor, De gradibus caritatis, 4 (P.L., CXCVI, 1206).

no THE LOVE OF GOD

'pure duality,' is impossible." 173 As a matter of fact, a love that would take us entirely out of ourselves, so to speak, would not at all conform to our nature's basic inclination toward good, and especially our own good as properly subordinated to the supreme and incomparable Good.

Putting this problem into words, we ask ourselves : Can man love God with a really pure and truly disinterested love ? And, if he can, how reconcile this love with self-love, commonly and correcdy recognized as fundamental to his nature? Apparently man can love God only as his own particular good; for him to love God in any other way would conflict widi his nature and is, therefore, impossible.

St. Thomas' answer is to distinguish between the_end and the subject of love. Regarding the end, he declares that our nature leads us to love God not for ourselves, as subordinating Him to us, but for Himself and more than ourselves, as our first cause and last end. At the same time, concerning the nature of our love for God, he admits that none of us could love Him were we not dependent on that good which is Himself. 174 In other words, if our faculty for loving had no relation to God, we surely could not love Him; but such a relationship exists, is absolutely fundamental, and pertains to our first cause and last end.

Man's existence, personal unity, and goodness depend entirely upon God, his creator and conserver. In this single fact the following two truths find reconciliation: (1) a man really loves himself only when he loves God still more and, dierefore, with a pure and disinterested love; and (2) no man

174 la, q.6o, a. 5, ad 2um; Ha Hae, q.26, a. 13, ad 311m. As remarked earlier, Scotus is far from agreement with St. Thomas on this point. C£. also 111 Sent., d.29, q.i, a.3, ad 211m.

can love God without loving himself in God, as the Canticle of Canticles expresses it, "My beloved to me, and I to Him." 175

The disciple speaks to the Master, saying: "I abandon myself and lose myself that I may find Thee; yet I know that nothing is lost to him who finds the treasure of Thy heart, where love is disinterested and faithful and makes us hunger to reproduce it in our own hearts." 176

"He that shall lose his life for Me shall find it." When St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor make use of this passage for the purpose of exhorting the faithful, they emphasize the first part of our Savior's words ; but obviously, like St. Thomas, they accept the second. The same cannot be said of the quietists.

Much more clearly than either St. Bernard or Richard, the Angelic Doctor has perceived that by loving God and neighbor disinterestedly man's free will does not play the rebel against nature, as though his nature could not rise above the selfish love of concupiscence. Admittedly, original sin has weakened his natural inclination to virtue, 177 but, together with every creature, he still holds to his original bent to love God more than his particular good and even to love himself for God. Grace perfects and uplifts this inclination without destroying it, without demanding the sacrifice of his desire for perfection and happiness, a desire initially good and one essentially subordinated to love of God and therefore never to be sacrificed.

A further consequence of St. Thomas' principle relates to love of neighbor and can be stated thus: According to his spiritual nature, man ought to love himself less dian God and

176 Prayer o£ consecration to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.

ii2 THE LOVE OF GOD more than his neighbor; to do so is neither egoism nor inordinate love of self — even should his neighbor be better than he.

St. Thomas gives the reason for this when he says: "A man is not a friend to himself, but something more than a friend, since friendship implies union, for . . . love is a unitive force, whereas a man is one with himself, which is more than being united to another. Hence, just as unity is the principle of union, so the love with which a man loves himself is the form and root of friendship." 178 A friend is anodier self, and so Holy Scripture admonishes us, "Thou shalt love thy friend as thyself," 179 bidding us, in other words, to will for our friend the same good things we will for ourselves. Love of neighbor rises no higher than the level of concupiscence if founded on mutual pleasure seeking; it becomes true friendship only when based on the common quest for goodness, when friend wants for friend what he himself most desires. 180 To this, St. Thomas adds: "Just as unity surpasses union, the fact that man himself has a share of the divine good is a more potent reason for loving than that another should be a partner with him in that share. Therefore man, out of charity, ought to love himself more than his neighbor," 181 at least according to his higher part.

The objection may be made that, as the poet expresses it, "we needs must love the highest when we see it," and my neighbor is often a better man than I. To this St. Thomas 182 replies that we must love those who are better than ourselves

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE n 3 by desiring for them their merited and greater reward ; on the other hand, no other human being is so close to us as we arc to ourselves; God, and God alone, is more intimately present. Every just man, then, prizes the charity uniting him to God more than the charity of any other just man. A child loves its own poor and far from faultless mother much more than some one else's who may be rich and virtuous; and would rather wear, as St. Augustine observes, its own clothes than some one else's richer and finer garments.

Undoubtedly saints have laid down their lives for others; yet, even in dying they love themselves more, according to the higher part of their souls, than those for whom diey die, St. Thomas says, 183 for never may they sacrifice their own spiritual good to free another from sin. The good of our country can indeed demand the sacrifice of a man's life, but not of his spiritual good ; it cannot require him to sin or lose his virtue. If, considered in this matter (the principle of individualization), an individual is subordinate to the state, the latter is subordinate to the human person as having a spiritual and immortal soul in immediate relation with God. 184

184 Individuality and personality must not be confused. Individuation, even in our Savior's humanity, proceeds from matter; personality makes us capable of existing in ourselves, of acting for ourselves, of being tut juris. In Christ, His personality is the uncreated personality of the Word.

For the subordination of the individual to social authority, see la Ilae, q.96, a.4. St. Thomas tells us that just human laws bind in conscience. For the superiority of the person over human laws, see ibid., where St. Thomas continues by saying that unjust laws do not bind in conscience and, if they are contrary to religion and, for example, induce us to practice idolatry, they must be disobeyed, even if such disobedience leads to martyrdom. Cf. also Ha Ilae, q.104, a. 5, ad 2um: men are not obliged to obey their superiors in all things; for in certain things they are dirccdy subject to God, who instructs them by the natural law or the written law.

II4 THE LOVE OF GOD

After this enumeration of the chief consequences of the principle that every creature's natural bent is to love God the Creator first and most, an examination of the difficulties that may be raised concerning the principle itself will give us a deeper understanding of it and reveal to us, by the way, other conclusions flowing from the same principle and sounding the fully harmony of nature and grace as realized in the unitive life on earth and the life of glory in heaven.

Confirmation of the Thomistic solution of the problem of love

As stated in the Summa (la, q. 60, a. 5; Ha Ilae, q. 26, a. 3), these difficulties have reference to the end of our primordial natural inclination and to its relations, on one hand, with infused charity and, on the other, with sin and reparation.

One objection contends that natural love is founded on natural union; and that our nature, being separated by its own inferiority from the divine, can have no natural attraction drawing it to love God more than itself. St. Thomas answers by agreeing that natural love is based on natural union, pointing this out as the reason why a man loves himself more than his neighbor with whom he can have, at most, union, whereas with himself he enjoys true unity. The Angelic Doctor goes on to drive home the truth that this unity of a man with himself necessarily depends, in turn, upon God, the creator and conserver of man's nature, the whole reason or total cause of his existence and participated goodness. To Him man's affection naturally first turns. In any species, the individual loves the good of the species more than its own individual good, as observation of the way mothers defend their young will teach us. God is not merely the good of the human species,

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 115 He is the absolutely universal and essential good. Our love turns towards him first. The proximate cause of this natural inclination is our own nature; its ultimate cause is God. 185

The end of our primordial natural inclination

At this point, let us return to the difficulty expressed in the statement of the problems: All that we love we love as our own goodj now we love whatever is the reason for love more than the object of love, just as we know principles better than conclusions; man, therefore, loves himself more than any other good whatever, even the Supreme Good.

Now the meaning and implication of St. Thomas' distinction between the end of love and the loving subject, whose good it is to love God more than self, becomes clearer to us. "When it is said that God is loved by an angel in so far as He is good to the angel, if the expression in so far denotes an end, then it is false ; for he does not naturally love God for his own good, but for God's own sake. If it denotes the nature of love on the part of the one loving, then it is true; for it would not be in the nature of anyone to love God, except from this, that everything is dependent on that good which is God." 186

Does not a man wish his friend well even when it will mean no personal advantage for himself? With how much greater reason ought he not to love God in the same way ? 137 "The part does indeed love the good of the whole, as becomes a part, not however so as to refer the good of the whole to itself, but rather itself to the good of the whole." 188

185 Cf. Ia, q.6o, a. 5, ad ium; Ila Ilac, q.26, a.3, ad turn. 188 la, q.6o, a. 5, ad 2um; Ila Ilae, q.26, a.13, ad 311m. 187 St. Thomas, /// Sent., d.29, q.x, a.3, ad 211m. 188 Ua Ilae, q.26, a.3, ad 211m.

n6 THE LOVE OF GOD

To love is to will good to another. If we will good to ourselves, this good can be either inferior or superior to us. If, like our daily food, it is inferior to us, we will it to ourselves and for ourselves, subordinating it to us as to an end. If it is superior to us, we should will it to ourselves but not for ourselves ; far from subordinating it to us, we should subordinate ourselves to it, as is done in that higher love of concupiscence called hope, especially when this virtue is united to charity. By charity we will to God His glory and to ourselves our own salvation that we may glorify God eternally. These two forms of supernatural love of God, far from being contrary to our nature, are perfectly conformed to it, His handiwork. 189

The following division of love into its various kinds is based on St. Thomas' note: "To love is to wish good to someone. Hence the movement of love has a twofold tendency: toward the good which a man wishes to someone (to himself or to another) and toward that to which he wishes some good. Accordingly man has love of concupiscence toward the good that he wishes to another, and love of friendship toward him to whom he wishes good." 190

In the natural order, every creature is naturally inclined to love its own good for the common good of the universe and, in a more or less obscure fashion, to manifest die goodness of the Creator whose might is the source and support of the universe. 191

The two preceding difficulties about the basis and end of nature's primordial inclination can be combined into one: Nature's acts are all fundamentally self -centered : the way

1S0 Ibid. For the divisions of love, see Ila Ilae, q.17, a. 5, 8, and Cajctan't commentary; also q.23, a.i; q.25, a.4; q.27, a.2, 3. 191 la Dae, q.ioo, a.3; Contra Gentes, Bk. Ill, chap. 24.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 117 I will the glory of God, the

In the order of grace : charity o a

In die order of nature-

Of God

In the order of grace

In the order of nature-

Of inferior things author of grace.

I will my own salvation that I may glorify God eternally.

I will the glory of God, the author of my nature, in which He manifests His [goodness.

Hope enlivened by charityj. I efficaciously desire that God be loved more than myself.

Hope without charity: I inefficaciously desire that God be loved more than myself.

I desire God by subordinating myself to Him, as to that which is good for me, but which I desire ultimately, for His own sake, not for mine.

I desire food as a good to be obtained for myself, subordinating it to my life, las to an end.

n8 THE LOVE OF GOD creatures act for their own self-preservation reveals this to us. Nature, then, inclines no creature to love God more than itself. 1 " 2 St. Thomas concedes this to be true of fallen nature which, because of original sin and its consequences, certainly does tend toward egoism. 193 He denies it to be true of nature as it came from the hand of God. "Nature's operation is selfcentered not merely with regard to certain particular details, but much more with regard to what is common; for everything is inclined to preserve not merely its individuality, but likewise its species. And much more has everything a natural inclination toward what is die absolutely universal good." 184

When this objection persists, maintaing that love of God is really a desire to enjoy Him and therefore remains nothing but self love whereby we desire good for ourselves, St. Thomas replies: "That a man wishes to enjoy God pertains to that love of God which is love of concupiscence. But we love God with the love of friendship more than widi the love of concupiscence, because the divine good is greater in itself than our share of good in enjoying Him." 19S Another observation of his bearing on this subject really composes a theological commentary on the expression of the Canticle of Canticles, "My beloved to me, and I to him." "Hope makes us tend to God, as to a good to be obtained finally, and as to a helper strong to assist: whereas charity, properly speaking, makes us tend to God, by uniting our affections to Him, so that we live, not

193 la Ilae, q.109, a. 3; ibid., q.85, a. I. Cf. the index to St. Bernard's works for the word curvitas to find those passages where the saint speaks of our downbent souls that God created upright. The author of The Imitation has the same thing to say, Bk. Ill, chap. 54.

184 la, q.6o, a. 5, ad 3um; // Sent., d.3, q.3, ad 2um; Quodlibet, I, a. 8, ad 3.11m.

for ourselves, but for God." 196 This supernatural inclination of charity, far from being contrary to our natural desire for happiness, is conformed to it; charity's pure love could not, as a result, require us to sacrifice this desire but raises it to a new height in us by making us will our salvation chiefly that we may glorify God eternally.

Nature and charity

William of Auxerre held that anyone maintaining that an angel can, without grace, love God more than himself, practically asserts that he can, without grace, live a just and holy life; but to maintain this view is to fall into the Pelagian heresy. 197 In fact, he continues, quoting St. Augustine 198 as his authority, the words of St. Paul, "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost who is given to us," apply to angels as well as to men.

St. Thomas does not subtract anything from St. Augustine's meaning; rather he gives it greater clarity by replying: "God, in so far as He is the universal good, on whom every natural good depends, is loved by everything with natural love. So far as He is the good which of its very nature, beatifies all with supernatural beatitude, He is loved with the love of charity." 199 This is the distinction between God, the author of nature (regarded as outside God), and God in His intimate life (that is, as the author of grace). This distinction was always taught by the Church and explicitly formulated in the condemnation of Baius. 200 Grace and charity belong to the

i»s The City of God, Bk. XII, chap. 9.

199 la, q.6o, a. 5, ad 4um; la, q.12, a.4; III Sent., d.29, q.I. 100 Denzinger, no. 1034.

i2o THE LOVE OF GOD same order as the beatific vision ; they are indeed the seed of the state of glory. Neither man nor angel can, solely by natural intellectual power, see God directly; they can apprehend Him naturally only through the reflection of His perfections— man in the mirror of sensible things, angels in the mirror of His own essence. 201

Without stating it as clearly as St. Thomas does, St. Augustine had formulated this distinction, not only in regard to men but also in regard to the angels, for he says:

Who gave them good will, if not He who created them with good will and a chaste love whereby to cleave to Him, who produced their natures and gave them grace by one and the same act? We believe that the good angels never were without good will or love of God. As to the bad angels, they were created good but became bad by their own will, itself made evil not by its own good nature but by its defection from the good; for evil springs not from goodness but from defection from goodness. The angels who fell either received less of the grace of divine love than those who persevered or, all having been created in equal goodness, they fell by their own evil will while the others were more strongly aided to a fullness of happiness which, when they had attained, they could never lose. . . . We must therefore give due glory to our Creator, because of angels as well as of men it can be said that the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who has been given to us. 202

This text contains a clear distinction between nature and grace and, inasmuch as it concerns the angels, there can be no question of St. Augustine's purpose. He intended to differentiate not only between fallen nature and healing grace

but also between the most perfect and unspoiled angelic nature and the grace that raises that nature to a higher order, the divine, where it lives and acts in the realm of God by participating in His intimate life and, in heaven, enjoys the immediate vision which He has of Himself.

Nature and sin

The mystery of iniquity contained in all sin raises a special difficulty formulated by St. Thomas thus: "Natural love lasts while nature endures. But the love of God more than self does not remain in the angel or man who sins. . . . Therefore it is not natural to love God more than self."

The substance of St. Thomas' replies amounts to this: The sinner and die devil certainly do not love God as the author of the moral law and their own just judge; they turn away from Him in this guise. Nevertheless their natures still incline them to love God as the author of existence and life and to love Him even more dian themselves, for, in spite of everything, they continue to love the existence and life God conserves in them and, as a result, to love its source still more, not willing the good of God as an object distinct from their own, but as identified with it.

Because of this primordial inclination, sin is not possible for those who see God face to face and recognize His sovereign goodness. On the contrary, sin is possible for all those who still know the Creator only through His effects and His precepts, some of which gall them. So they can turn from God as the author of the moral law while continuing to love physical and intellectual life and, in a confused way, its supreme source. By loving existence, the sinner, without reflecting or heeding, loves what conserves existence, just as in i22 THE LOVE OF GOD an organism a sick part still clings to the life coming to it from the whole body. 203

But how, it will be asked, can such a difference exist between the very essence of our will's primordial inclination and those concrete psychological manifestations which, even in the baptized, generally appear at the very beginning of moral life and testify to our inordinate love of self, our real egoism? How does it happen that only in the unitive way does a man come to conform his individual life to the first and fundamental inclination of the nature of man? If man's nature is as upright as has just been claimed, why are mortification and the cross so necessary? How can St. Thomas' doctrine be reconciled with what The Imitation 204 says about the different motions of nature and grace ?

St. Thomas has not left this difficulty unanswered. He shows that the natural inclination to virtue is weakened by sin, which, especially when repeated, gives rise to a contrary habit. 205 Nature remains the same, but any natural inclination ordered to a good action is weakened by an evil act, and this weakness remains after the act as an obstacle to good. Original sin itself has four resultant wounds: (1) the will, turned from God, its natural and supernatural last end, becomes weak in well doing; (2) the intellect tends to err, especially in the guidance of life; and the sensible appetite is inclined (3) to impatience and cowardice, and (4) to sensuality. 206

After baptism, faithfulness heals these wounds; personal sins magnify them until they serve as the source for concupiscence of the flesh, and of the eyes, the pride of life, and the

seven capital sins, principles of so many others. 207 If we read the nineteen long questions St. Thomas devoted to these subjects, we shall see diat, although his method differs from that of The Imitation because he keeps to the speculative and abstract rather than die practical and concrete, he stresses quite as strongly the necessity of mortification.

Evidence of this accord stands out in what St. Thomas tells us about love of self: "Now self-love may stand in a threefold relationship to charity. In one way it is contrary to charity, when a man places his end in the love of his own good. In another way it is included in charity, when a man loves himself for the sake of God in Cod. In a third way. it is indeed distinct from charity, but is not contrary thereto, as when a man loves himself from the point of view of his own good yet not so as to place his end in this his own good." 208 Hope of divine benefits disposes us to love our Benefactor Himself for Himself. 200

The Angelic Doctor's teaching provides us with a satisfactory explanation of the sinner's weak natural love of God and inclination to virtue. Passion and vice have attenuated them. Mortification and the cross, on the contrary, bring man's individual life into harmony with the very essence of his nature's ultimate inclination.

There is a last difficulty relative to suffering in reparation for others. How can St. Paul say, "For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren"? 210 Instead of harmonizing with man's natural inclination, this act of supreme charity seems contrary to it. The same can be said

of St. John of die Cross who, when asked by our Lord what he desired, answered : "Lord, to suffer and to be despised for Your sake"; and of St. Teresa, whose reply was: "To suffer or to die."

Apropos of St. Paul's words, "For I wished myself to be an anadiema from Christ, for my brethren," all that St. Thomas concedes is that a saint transported by love for Christ's honor and die salvation of his brethren, can desire, should Christ's honor and the salvation of souls require it, to be deprived of the joy of divine union — though not of that union itself, which can be lost only through mortal sin. 211 Besides, as Massoulie remarked, 212 such a desire belongs to the transports of love, is an intense act of charity and not a permanent state. 213

Moreover, St. Paul's words, far from being contrary to our nature, conform to its deepest inclination since fundamentally we love God the author of our nature more than ourselves and are ready to sacrifice ourselves for His sake, if need be, even as the hand endangers itself to save the head. St. Paul makes not an absolute but a conditional sacrifice of his personal beatitude — if necessary for the honor of Christ and the salvation of his brethren. 214 His act includes rather than ex-

211 Cf. Commentarium in Episl. ad Romanos, IX, 3, concerning the words, "For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren." Sec also Ila Ilae, q. 182, a.2; q.27, a. 8, ad ium.

218 As stated earlier, should God reveal to a man his future damnation (a thing God would never do), die man would still be bound to love God, the Sovereign Good, above all things, just as the apostle Peter was obliged, even after Christ had foretold his triple denial, to tell the truth and to be loyal to his Lord. To desire eternal life is not the first and highest act of charity, this act is rather to love God for Himself and for His sake alone. Cf. Ila Ilae, q. 26, a. 3; q.27, a. 3.

214 In her Life, chap. 35, St. Teresa explains this kind of sacrifice and the joy it brings: "Our Lord had already told me that I was going to carry a heavy cross, — though I never thought it would be so heavy as I afterwards found it to be — and eludes hope, because he bids us to hope like Abraham who, when God asked of him the sacrifice of his only son Isaac, "accounting that God is able to raise up even from the dead," 215 hoped on heroically, hoped on against all hope. 216 So St. Thomas' principle applies, as we see, to the highest interior states and, at the same time, serves to help us avoid the extreme and contrary errors of naturalism and pseudo-supematuralism. Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian naturalism unconsciously supposes a certain pantheistic confusion of human nature with the divine. Contrarily, the pseudosupernaturalism of Baius, following a subjectivist tendency, blindly assumes an original disorder in our nature itself, which absolutely requires the remedy of grace. 217 In the latter view, the original disorder so unthinkingly accepted is seen as tainting our every affection and evidently can be destroyed only at the sacrifice of personal beatitude.

St. Thomas' doctrine rises above these two contrary errors and brings out effectively the harmony of nature and grace without detracting in the least from the gratuitousness and yet I went forth rejoicing. I was distressed because I had not already begun the fight, since it was our Lord's will that I should be in it. Thus His Majesty gave me strength, and established it in my weakness.

"As I have just said, I could not understand how this could be. I thought of this illustration: if I were possessed of a jewel, or any other thing which gave me great pleasure, and it came to my knowledge that a person whom I love more than myself, and whose satisfaction I preferred to my own, wished to have it, it would give me great pleasure to deprive myself of it, because I would give all I possessed to please that person."

The same joy in sacrifice is expressed by St. Paul in II Cor. 12:9: "Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful."

218 Abraham's heroic hope, so much praised by St. Paul, is at opposite poles from the absolute sacrifice required by the quictists. Cf. Denzingef, nos. 1331, 1333,

sublimity of grace. According to him, man's first natural love is for God. Original and personal sin weaken this tendency and leave traces in the soul of man that require purification and even, it may be, violent purification. But after his soul is purified, the initial harmony of his God-given nature shines forth transfigured in his supernatural love of God, the author of grace. Nature surfers no loss at the hands of grace, which destroys sin and its consequences only that it may raise nature to an infinitely higher order where, in the immediate and eternal vision of a loving and beloved God, every human aspiration finds satisfaction beyond the scope of any man's desire.

ST. THOMAS AND NEWTON

Newton, noticing the accelerating fall of an apple, saw the law of gravity ; St. Thomas watched it and beheld a figure of the natural or connatural 218 movement of all spiritual creatures toward God.

Reflection and further observation led Newton to conclude that all bodies fall toward the earth with increasing speed and that their speed is affected by their mass and the distance of their fall. He went further in his generalization and concluded that all bodies in the universe mutually attract one another in direct ratio to their mass and in inverse ratio to the square of their distance. He had discovered the law of universal gravity, which rules not only the solar system but the entire physical universe, the whole concourse of heavenly

218 Acts of the infused virtues such as hope and charity, although essentially supernatural, are called connatural because they conform to our nature and proceed from the virtues, a sort of second nature.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE 127 bodies, those forming, those dying, fixed stars, suns, planets, satellites, comets, and meteorites.

All men had seen fruit fall from trees ; few had asked themselves with that admiring wonder which is the beginning of science and the quest for causes, "Why do bodies fall ?" And so far no one had seen in this commonplace fact the law of universal gravity. The word "intellect" comes from intelligere or intus legere, to read in a sensible fact the intelligible law written there by the Creator. Wisdom, the greatest science, should consist in connecting an intelligible law so discovered with the most general laws of real being and, in die last analysis, with the Supreme Intelligible, the First Being.

Being a mathematician and astronomer more than anything else, Newton did not go that far but stopped at grasping a particular instance of a more general law. And experience verified that all bodies falling freely through space move with uniform acceleration. At the end of the eighteenth century, the English physician Atwood invented a means of demonstrating experimentally the laws governing the fall of bodies, and it was observed that, if in the first second of its fall the speed of a body is 20, then in the next second it is 40, in the third 60, in the fourth 80, and in the fifdi 100. And thus a law was established: falling bodies move with uniformly accelerated speed. Why? Modern physics makes no inquiries into final causes and goes only a short distance in the search for efficient causes. Being first and foremost phenomenal, quantitative, and practical, it is limited to studying and measuring phenomena, to establishing their unvarying relations or laws with a view to reproducing them, contenting itself with proving, for example, that the speed of falling bodies increases proportionately with the duration of their fall and that the

I2 8 THE LOVE OF GOD contrary takes place when a stone is thrown vertically into the air, for then its speed decreases proportionately until the moving object no longer rises but falls back in virtue of its own weight— the intimate nature of which eludes us.

Innumerable consequences of these physical and verifiable principles are being realized every moment in the universe, whether on our earth or in the most remote nebulae. The law of acceleration is one of die most beautiful things in the whole order of inanimate bodies. At bottom it contains a mystery which thinkers have dwelt on too little in wonder, admiration, and meditation, a mystery which becomes a contradiction if we refuse to admit the existence of a first unmoved Mover who is at once the first cause and last end of all motion in the universe, attracting all things to Himself and being drawn by nothing whatever. The ship rests upon the sea, the sea leans upon the bosom of the earth, the earth is upheld by the long-reaching sun, the sun turns for support to some mightier sphere; but a series of actually subordinate causes cannot go on to infinity. In the last analysis we shall reach a first Mover without need of premotion, who will be his own act, very act, and, since action presupposes being, very being eternally subsistent, Pure Act, as Aristotle called him, without admixture of imperfection or limit: God. 219

Men of antiquity did not demonstrate the laws governing falling bodies, but they observed that the speed of bodies falling toward the earth increases both with their weight and with the distance they fall. In Aristotle's De Coelo 220 we read that bodies with weight fall ever more quickly as they come closer to the center of the earth. In St. Thomas' commentary

on this work, 221 the same law is formulated in his statement that the speed of falling bodies with mass increases in proportion to the height from which they fall. Of old, men searched for the "why" of this fact. Natural philosophy as they conceived it, was not, like modern physics, concerned only with the phenomenal, quantitative, and practical; it sought to know being, the substance of things, their qualities, their properties, studying their movements in relation to their nature, determining which are natural, which unnatural, striving to make things intelligible through their four causes, and coming finally, by simply following the exigencies of the laws of thought and reality, to the First Mover and Last End. Thus the natural philosophy of the ancients was not only quantitative and practical but qualitative and speculative, seeking to make things and their movements intelligible by connecting them with the first principles of reason and ultimately with the supreme Intellect, God, the first being and ordainer of all things.

To the question, "Why do bodies fall faster and faster ?" St. Thomas answered, following Aristotle, that they do so because such movement is natural to bodies and because, in falling, they draw ever nearer the place naturally fitting for them. He adds that, on the contrary, a stone thrown vertically into the air moves more and more slowly because this movement, far from being natural to it, is violent or contrary to its natural attraction toward the center of the earth.

Unlike the natural philosophy of other and earlier days, modern physics makes little reference to the distinction between natural and unnatural movement because, in a way, it abstracts from the intimate nature of bodies and the finality of

their movements. However, it would not dare to deny this distinction absolutely and, in more than one instance, admits it at least implicitly, particularly when treating of the state toward which the universe is tending.

Having classified the movement of falling bodies as natural in contradistinction to unnatural movement, the early philosophers of nature went on to enunciate a law relative to all movement properly called natural, not only in the order of bodies but in the order of spirits as well since these, too, have their natures and natural properties. St. Thomas expressed their further and more general conclusion when he wrote: "For every natural movement is more intense in the end, when a thing approaches the term that is suitable to its nature, than at the beginning, when it leaves the term that is unsuitable to its nature: as though nature were more eager in tending to what is suitable to it than in shunning what is unsuitable. Therefore the inclination of the appetitive power is, of itself, more eager in tending to pleasure than in shunning sorrow." 222

St. Thomas purposely wrote the omnis, "every natural movement," with which this text begins, for he was formulating a universal law applying with equal truth to the movement of all things — stones, plants, animals, men, and angels. 223 Of old, men sought to symbolize this law in a poetic fancy, the swan song; and, resultantly, fell into the habit of giving that title to the last work of any great poet whenever they considered it the culminating point of his genius.

Newton, seeing an apple drop from a tree, reasoned that the

223 If a man happens to shun sorrow more than he seeks joy, St. Thomas says, this is only accidentally, for example, if the sorrow he experiences robs him not of one but of every joy. Ibid.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE . 131 law of its accelerating fall applied to all bodies in the universe; St. Thomas glimpsed in it the tiny mirroring of an incomparably greater law applying to the movement of all creatures, especially the natural or connatural movement of created spirits gravitating toward God in response to the attraction of His sovereign goodness. 224

As we have seen, St. Thomas also remarks that the part loves more than itself the whole to which it naturally belongs because it exists for the whole, the hand naturally endangering and even sacrificing itself to preserve the body. It follows that every creature has a natural inclination to love the good of the universe and God, its author and end, more than itself. As a matter of fact, every creature aspires to a more or less

221 The objection will be made that the sun moves at an apparently uniform speed, that animals slow down from fatigue, that vivid sensations grow dim, and that ordinary things which we once found striking no longer attract us.

St. Thomas knew these objections and set himself to meet them. He says that the motion of the heavenly bodies is circular and that it is neither more natural for the sun to approach our western sky nor for it to move on past it beyond our sight. The planets move in such wonderful harmony because dicy are directed by higher and free intellects, themselves subject to God. Their movements are not, therefore, natural in the sense of being actively their own but only as due to a certain natural capacity for being moved. (Ia, q.70, a.3, ad 4um; q.32, a.i, ad 2um.)

Further, the heavenly bodies are moved at the same time in two ways, each sharing a motion common to all, and having another motion individual to itself (Ia, q.67, a.4, ad 3um; q.68, a.2, ad 3um; q. 104, a.2).

Finally, the uniform circular motion of the heavenly bodies represents a tendency which has already reached its term and has no further perfection to seek (Ia, q-55, a.2; Decoelo. II, 8).

St. Thomas recognized, too, that fatigue slows down the morion of animals to their goals, but this morion is not properly speaking natural or determined by nature itself but only by certain things necessary for the animal's subsistence; even so, the tired horse picks up speed as it ncars home.

In regard to vivid sensations becoming dull, this happens because sensation, being caused by something external to us, is, in a sense, violent, and not properly speaking a natural movement; like all violent movements its intensity lessens. And if ordinary things no longer arrest us, this is true in regard to knowledge only since our desire for the things necessary for life (air, water, food) never falls away. Formally considered, any natural movement to a natural end can be said to conform to the principle, "Omnis motus naiurdis intensior est in fine."

i 3 2 THE LOVE OF GOD dim likeness of the divine perfection, a likeness that manifests the goodness of the Author of creation. 225

Natural love of God, unconscious in a being unendowed with reason, becomes more and more conscious and ever and ever stronger in proportion as it rises in the hierarchy of intellectual natures until it reaches the level of the highest angel. "The angel is not," St. Thomas says, "a compound of different natures, so that the inclination of the one thwarts or retards the tendency of the other; as happens in man, in whom the motion of his intellective part is either hindered or thwarted by the inclination of his sensitive part. But when there is nothing to retard or diwart it, nature is moved with its whole energy. Hence it is reasonable to suppose that the angels, who had a higher nature, were turned to God more mightily and efficaciously." 226

Infused charity, essentially supernatural in men and angels alike, does not destroy this fundamentally natural inclination, but perfects and elevates it. 227 The nearer a Christian draws to his God the more quickly he ought to advance towards Him, according to St. Paul's words, "And let us consider one another, to provoke unto charity and to good works; . . . and so much the more as you see the day approaching." 228 In his commentary on this epistle, St. Thomas writes that, in perfecting us, grace inclines us to what is good for our nature which, in this case, is increasing progress toward our natural end. Hence the charity of those in the state of grace ought to increase as they draw nearer and nearer their last end, because, as we read in the Scriptures, "The night is passed and the day la, q.6, a.i;q.6o, a. 5 - 228 la, q.62, a. 6.

is at hand" 229 and "the path of the just, as a shining light, goeth forward and increaseth even to perfect day." 230 St. Thomas' comment is clear. The curve of the saints' lives rises to a zenith from winch it never falls away. They know no spiritual twilight; only their bodily powers grow dim with age.

Our Lord expressed the law of universal attraction as it operates in the spiritual order when He said: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself." 281 And again, "No one can come to Me except the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him" 232 and unless My Father draw him through the universal mediator and savior of humanity.

The higher the scale of being the more closely efficient and final causes draw together: our Savior draws us to Himself diat He may bring us to the Father, the principle and end of all things, the sovereign and increasingly attractive good. In die lives of the saints, dieir progress in love quickens with the passing of the years. In spite of the heaviness of age and a certain attendant dulling of the senses, their steps of strong love move on towards God at an ever-increasing pace. Grace, and charity particularly, never cease to grow in their souls. The Blessed Virgin's love for God began under the impulse of a great grace and, meeting no obstacle in her who was without sin, made such eminent progress that nature can give us, in the phenomena of gravity, only a faint, far image of her increasing attraction towards God.

Something analogous to this should take place in us, particularly if we receive Communion daily. Substantially each

Communion ought to be more fervent than the preceding, since each should not merely preserve but increase our charity and so dispose us to receive more and more perfectly the Author of grace. The readiness of our will to reach out to Him constitutes substantial devotion and ought in principle to wax stronger and stronger when not bound down with a growing attachment to venial sin.

The consideration of these facts reveals that St. Thomas grasped die universal validity of a law which Newton saw at work in one particular class of things. Newton's conclusions were limited to the order of bodies. St. Thomas was particularly interested in applying to the spiritual realm a law which he held as universal and which he used as a principle from which to reason concerning the hierarchy of angelic natures, grace, and increasing charity, the constant growth of the Mother of God in holiness, and the instantaneous and absolute fullness of grace granted to the soul of Christ. 233

Every soul journeying to God is a world gravitating toward its cosmic center: this is the law of gravity glorified. As St. Augustine has put it in his own case, Amor meus pondus meum, "Love is the weight that draws me." The modern world sees the law of universal attraction only in its material and inferior aspect in the order of inanimate bodies; we dare look at its full beauty. To the modern philosopher die material world may be only a condition for the development of consciousness; for St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and for us, it is a mirror truly though imperfectly reflecting the perfections of the spiritual order. Angels see material things from above, through spiritual things; men see spiritual things from be-

low, through material things. 234 We must not halt at the reflection but go on to grasp the reality it reveals to us, above all, that supreme reality which is at once the efficient and final cause, the attraction center, for the material and spiritual universe. As the Psalmist says, the heavens declare the glory of the Lord, making manifest to us a supreme cause moving, ordering, and attracting all things, especially those spiritual worlds, our souls, which should move faster and ever faster toward dieir center of gravity the closer they come to Him.

Rei um tenax vigor lmmotus in te permanens, Lucis diurnae tetnpora Successibus determinans.

Footnotes

1. Encyclical Studiorum ducem: "Haec igilur a Deo delapsa seu injusa sapientia." ↩

2. Cf. SMmmo, la Ilae, q.35, a.6. ↩