On Charity: Article 2: Whether charity is a virtue
Article is a thing in something else. However, nothing prevents an accident from being of more worth than a substance insofar as it is an activity and a form of the substance. For then the accident is related to the substance as an actualisation to its capacity, or as something that perfects to something capable of being perfected. It is in this sense that charity is of more worth than the soul.
() Although the law by which we love God and our neighbour is uncreated, the thing by which, as a formal cause, we love them, is something created. For the uncreated law is the first standard and measure of our love.
() Charity brings back to life those who are spiritually dead as a formal, rather than efficient, cause. That is why it does not need infinite power. Similarly with Lazarus's soul, which in a formal sense brought
Lazarus back to life, in that Lazarus was brought back to life through its union with his body.
Article : Whether charity is a virtue Objections It seems not, because:
() A virtue deals with something difficult, as Aristotle says [NE .., a]. But charity does not deal with difficult things. Rather, as Augustine says [Serm .], 'Everything that is harsh and daunting, love makes easy and practically nothing.' Therefore charity is not a virtue.
() Rejoinder: whatever comes under virtue is difficult to begin, but easy to complete. On the other hand at the beginning it is not yet a virtue. If, then, something is only difficult at the beginning, difficult things will not be dealt with by virtue.
() What is difficult for virtues happens as a result of things that are contrary to them. For example, it is difficult to preserve temperateness, because of sensual desires that are contrary to it. But charity concerns the highest good, and there is nothing that is contrary to this. Therefore charity deals with something that is difficult neither at the beginning nor at the end.
() To have love or affection for something is to want it. But St Paul says in Romans :, 'To want lies with me.' Therefore loving is something that 'lies with' us. Therefore we do not need any virtue of charity for this.
On Charity () In our minds there is nothing except understanding and desire. It is faith that raises the understanding to God, and hope that raises the feelings. Therefore we should not posit a third thing, the virtue of charity, to raise the mind to God.
() Rejoinder: hope raises, but does not join, the mind to God. Therefore charity is needed to do the joining. But on the other hand hope, because it does not join things together, always belongs to something that is still separate. That is why hope is inappropriate for those who are joined to God through enjoying blessedness. Therefore by the same reasoning, if charity joins us to God, it will not be possessed by those who are not yet joined to him, but are still on their journey. Virtue perfects us on our journey; for it is the tendency of something complete towards what is best {Phys ., b}. Therefore charity is not a virtue.
() Grace is sufficient to join us to God. Therefore we do not need the virtue of charity as a means to join us to God.
() Charity is a sort of friendship between human beings and God.
However, the philosophers do not include friendships between human beings among the political virtues. Therefore charity towards God should not be included among the theological virtues.
() No emotion is a virtue; but love is an emotion. Therefore it is not a virtue.
() According to Aristotle [NE .., a], virtue lies in a midpoint. But charity does not lie in a mid-point, because you cannot have too much love for God. Therefore charity is not a virtue.
() Sin corrupts the feelings more than it does the intelligence, because sin is found in the will, as Augustine said [TwoSouls –]. But our intelligencecannotseeGoddirectlyinhimselfwhilewearestillonourjourney.
Therefore neither can our feelings love God directly in himself while we are still on our journey. But to love God in himself is a characteristic of charity. Therefore charity ought not to be numbered among the virtues which perfect us when we are on our journey.
() Virtue is the limit of a thing's capacity, as Aristotle says [Heav ., a]. But pleasure is the limit relevant to the feelings. Therefore pleasure ought to be a virtue rather than love.
() Every virtue has its due measure; that is why Augustine says [NatGood –] that sin, which opposes virtue, is an absence of measure, type, and order. However, charity does not have a measure, as Bernard says
Article [LovGod ]: the measure of charity is to love without measure. Therefore charity is not a virtue.
() One virtue is not described by using another, since all the types within a given class are distinguished by means of opposites. However, charityisdescribedbyusingtheothervirtues,asCorinthians:shows:
'Charity is patient and kind.' Therefore charity is not a virtue.
() According to Aristotle [NE .., b], friendship consists in a sort of equality. But there is the greatest inequality between God and us, as between two things that are infinitely distant. Therefore God cannot have friendship towards us, nor can we towards God. Therefore charity, which implies friendship of this sort, does not seem to be a virtue.
() The love of the highest good is natural to us. But nothing natural is a virtue, because the virtues are not in us by nature, as Aristotle makes clear [NE .., a]. Therefore love of the highest good, which is charity, is not a virtue.
() Love is a finer thing than fear. But fear is fine enough to count as a gift rather than a virtue (a gift, of course, is a finer thing than a virtue).
Therefore charity is not a virtue, either, but rather a gift.
But on the other hand The precepts of the law concern virtuous activities. But the law includes precepts about acting with charity. For Matthew :–says that the first and greatest commandment is 'Love the Lord your God.' Therefore charity is a virtue.
My reply There is no doubt that charity is a virtue: for a virtue is what makes its possessor, and whatever he does, good {NE .., a}. It is clear therefore that human beings are ordered towards their distinctive good by a virtue distinctive of them.
Now we need to understand a human being's distinctive good in different ways, corresponding to the different ways we understand a human being:
(i) A human being's distinctive good qua human being is the good of reason, because to be a human being is to be a rational being.
On Charity (ii) The good of a human being qua craftsman is the good of skill.
Similarly, (iii) the good of a human being qua political is the common good of the city.
Since, then, virtue works towards the good, for someone to have virtue he must be disposed to work towards the good in a good manner, that is, willingly, readily, with pleasure, and also reliably. Such are the criteria for doing things in a virtuous way; they can only be met where those who are doing something love that good for the sake of which they are doing it. This is because love is the principle of all willing feelings.
For when we love something, as long as we do not possess it, we long for it; when we do possess it, we take pleasure in this; anything that gets in the way of our possessing what we love distresses us. Moreover, whatever is done out of love is done reliably and readily and with pleasure. In this way, virtue needs the love of that good which virtue works towards.
Now the virtue of a human being qua human being works towards a good that is natural to human beings. That is why there exists naturally in our will the love of this good, which is the good of reason {cf. (i)}. But suppose we take the virtue of a human being under a different aspect, one that is not innate in human beings; then, for virtue of this sort, the love of the good to which virtue directs us will need to be something extra in addition to our natural will. In this way, a craftsman will only work well if he also has a love for that good which is the aim of exercising the skill in question {cf. (ii)}. Relatedly, as Aristotle says [Pol ., a], in order to be a good citizen, you need to love the good of the city. Now if someone is allowed to share in the good of some city, he becomes its citizen and needs certain virtues for doing what a citizen does, and for loving the good of that city {cf. (iii)}.
In a similar way, when someone is, by divine grace, allowed to share in the blessedness of heaven, which consists in seeing and enjoying God, then he becomes a citizen and associate, so to speak, in that blessed society, which is called the heavenly Jerusalem in Ephesians :: 'You are fellowcitizens of the saints and members of the household of God.' That is why someone who is in this way admitted to heavenly things is freely granted certain virtues, which are the infused virtues. For these to work as they should, they also require the love of the good of the whole society, that is the divine good; for that is the object of blessedness.
Article Now there are two senses of loving the good of some city: (i') to possess it; (ii') to preserve it. (i') Loving the good of some city in order to possess and to own it does not make a good citizen; that is how a tyrant loves the good of a city, in order to control it. In such a case, in fact, he loves himself more than the city, for he covets this good for himself rather than for the city. (ii') To love the good of a city in order to preserve and defend it is to love it in a real sense, and this makes someone a good citizen, in that some people are prepared to subject themselves to the risk of death in order to preserve or increase the city's good, and to ignore their own personal good.
Therefore to love for the purpose of possessing it or owning it that good in which the blessed share does not put someone in the right state for blessedness; indeed even the wicked covet this good. However, to love it in itself, wanting it to remain and spread, and wanting nothing to act against it, does put someone in the right state for the society of the blessed.
This, then, is charity, which loves God for himself and which also loves as themselves those neighbours who are capable of blessedness. It also resists everything that hinders this, whether in itself or in others. That is why it cannot coexist with mortal sin, which is an obstacle to blessedness.
From all this it is clear that charity is not only a virtue, but the most powerful of the virtues.
Replies to objections () Virtue deals with things that are difficult in themselves, but become easy for someone who possesses the relevant virtues.
The answer to () is clear from this. The point is not proven. For the matter with which it deals remains difficult in itself even when virtue is present; it does, however, becomes easy for the virtuous person, thanks to the perfecting power of virtue.
() Difficulties arise not only from contrary impulses, but also where the object of the virtue is especially exalted. Similarly, something can be saidtobedifficultforustounderstandwithreferencetotheexaltednature of what is to be understood, rather than for any contradictions in it.
() The wanting that 'lies with' us by nature is weak and incomplete with respect to what is given to us freely through the spirit. That is why
St Paul adds in the same place, 'For the good that I want I do not do'
[Romans :]. That is why we need the help of a freely given gift.
On Charity () Hope lifts human feelings towards acquiring the highest good; on top of this, however, the good of human beings requires us to love that good, as I said in my reply.
() It is part of the character of charity or love to join things through feeling. This type of joining can be understood in the sense in which you think of your friend as 'another yourself', and want the friend's good just as much as your own. However, it is not part of the character of charity to join in the sense of actually connecting two things. That is why we can love either something that we have or something that we do not have. When we do not have it, love makes us long for it; when we do have it, love gives us pleasure in having it.
() Grace joins us to God by making us like him. However, we still need to be united to him through the actions of our intelligence and feelings, and this happens through charity.
() Friendship is not held to be a virtue, but the result of a virtue. The reason is that when people possess virtue and love the good of reason, as a result, by virtue's own inclination, they love those who are like them, i.e. other virtuous people, in whom the good of reason flourishes. But friendship towards God, insofar as God is blessed and the cause of blessedness, needs to precede those virtues that order us towards blessedness. That is why, since it does not follow, but comes before, the other virtues, as I have shown, it needs to be a virtue in itself.
() Love is an emotion insofar as it is found in our sensory part; then it is love of a sensory good. That type of love, though, is not the love of charity. Therefore the argument does not follow.
() Aristotle's statement that virtue lies in a mid-point should be taken to apply to the moral virtues. It is not true of the theological virtues, which include charity, as I showed previously {DQVirtGen }.
() What moves the will is something understood as good. Now it is true that our intelligence understands God as the highest good only by means of intermediaries. However, by this means God moves the will in such a way that he can be loved directly, even though he is known through intermediaries. This is because the very things that the intelligence's understanding finds as its goal also move the feelings.
()'Pleasure'doesnotrefertoanactivity,buttosomethingthatfollows from activity. That is why, since virtue is a principle of activity, pleasure is not included among the virtues, but among the fruits of virtue, as is