On Charity: Article 4: Whether charity is a single virtue
On Charity () The grace of God is said to be the form of the virtues in that it gives spiritual being to a soul, to make it receptive to virtue. But charity is the form of the virtues in that it gives form to what they do, as I said in my reply.
Article : Whether charity is a single virtue Objections It seems not, because:
() Dispositions are distinguished by their actions, and actions by their objects. But charity has two objects: God and neighbour. Therefore it is not one virtue, but two.
() Rejoinder: one of these objects is primary, i.e. God: for charity only loves a neighbour for the sake of God. But on the other hand Aristotle says
[NE .., b] that friendliness to another arises out of friendliness to oneself. But the preeminent thing in every class is its principle and cause. Therefore out of charity people love themselves as the principal object, and not God.
() John :says, 'If you do not love your brother whom you see, how can you love God, whom you do not see?' Therefore it seems that we ought to love our neighbours more than we ought to love God. Therefore our neighbour is more lovable than God. Therefore our neighbour, rather, seems to be the primary object of charity.
() We do not love anything unless we know it, as Augustine says [Trin ..]. But we know our neighbour better than we know God. Therefore we love our neighbour better. Therefore it seems that charity is not a single virtue.
() Every virtue has its own distinctive measure, which it sets for its own actions. A just person, for example, not only does just things, but does them in a just way. Charity, however, provides two measures for its actions: for through charity we love God with our whole heart, but our neighbour as ourselves. Therefore charity is not a single virtue.
() The precepts of the law are ordered towards the virtues, because a lawmaker intends to make people virtuous, as Aristotle says [NE .., a]. But two precepts are given concerning charity, i.e., 'You will love the Lord your God, and you will love your neighbour' [Matt :–].
Therefore charity is not a single virtue.
Article () Just as we love God and our neighbour, so we ought to honour them.
But we honour God in a different way from our neighbour: we honour God with worship and our neighbour only with reverence.Therefore the charity with which we love God is different from that with which we love our neighbour.
() Virtue is what enables us to live rightly. But loving God belongs to one sort of life and loving our neighbour to another. For loving God seems to belong to the life of contemplation, and loving our neighbour to the active life. Therefore charity towards God and towards a neighbour are not a single virtue.
() According to Aristotle [Phys ., a], something is said to be one in three ways: (i) by continuity, (ii) by indivisibility, and (iii) in meaning.
(i) But charity is not one by continuity, because it is neither a body nor the form of a body.
(ii) Nor is it one through being indivisible, because if so it would be neither finite nor infinite.
(iii) Nor is it one in meaning, in the way that synonyms are, like 'clothing' and 'garment'. Therefore charity is not a single thing.
() Things that are one only in a proportional sense possess the character of oneness in the minimum sense. Consequently, if things are not even one in a proportional sense, then neither are they one in type or class or number, as Aristotle says [Met ., b]. But charity concerns
(i) what is eternal, i.e. God, and (ii) one's neighbour, and two such things cannot be proportional. Therefore charity cannot in any way be a single virtue.
() According to Aristotle [NE .., b; .., a] we cannot have friendship in the full sense with many people. But the charity by which we love God is friendship in the fullest sense. Therefore we cannot have it with many people. Therefore we do not love God and our neighbour with the same sort of charity.
() A virtue for which it is enough if its actions do not distress you is different from a virtue which brings pleasure when you do things; so, for example, courage differs from justice. But in acting charitably towards some objects, for example when we love our enemy, it is enough if this
The word translated 'reverence' is dulia, the standard term for the kind of veneration shown to the saints.
Because what is indivisible has no magnitude and so a fortiori has neither finite nor infinite magnitude.
On Charity does not distress us. In other cases, we ought actually to take pleasure in it, as when we love God or our friends. Therefore charity is not one single virtue, but different virtues.
But on the other hand () If two things are related so that the one is included in the understanding of the other, then they are one thing. But love of God is included in our understanding of love of neighbour, and vice versa, as Augustine says [Trin ..]. Therefore the charity by which we love God and that by which we love our neighbour is the same.
() There is a single first moving cause in every class of things. But charity is what moves all the virtues. Therefore it must be single.
My reply Charity is a single virtue. To prove this, we need to know that the unity of any capacity or disposition must be seen from its object. This is because the capacity is called the thing that it is from being ordered towards the thing for which it is a capacity, which is its object. Similarly, the character and the type of a capacity are given by its object. The same is true of a disposition, which is nothing other than the perfected tendency of a capacity towards its object.
We can consider the object, however, from the point of view either (i) of its form or (ii) of its matter. (i) The formal element in an object is that by which it is related to the relevant capacity or disposition; (ii) the material element is what this is grounded in. For example, if we talk about the object of the capacity of sight, its formal object is its colour, or something similar: for a thing is visible insofar as it is coloured. Its material object is the body to which the colour belongs.
This makes it clear that a capacity or a disposition relates per se to the formal character of an object, but only per accidens to its material element.
Accidental attributes do not change what a thing is; only per se attributes can do that. That is why when the material object changes, the capacity or disposition does not; it only changes if the formal object does so: the capacity to see is the same whether we are looking at stones or people or the sky. That is because the object changes only qua matter, not qua form, i.e. what it is to be visible. On the other hand, the senses of taste and smell
Article are different because flavour and scent are different things (though these are both per se perceptible).
We ought also to think about the following when it comes to charity. It is clear that I can love you in two senses: (i') for your own sake; (ii') for the sake of someone else. (i') I love you for your own sake when I love you for the sake of a good that is yours, for example, because you are honourable in yourself, or else pleasant company for me, or useful to me. (ii') I love you for the sake of someone else when I love you because you are connected to someone else whom I love. For when I love him in himself, I also love all his acquaintances, relations, and friends insofar as they are connected to him. In all these matters, however, there is a single formal character of love, that is, the good of the person whom we love for his own sake, and whom we love, in some sense, in all those other people.
In this way, we should say that charity loves God for his own sake, and loves other things for the sake of God, insofar as they are ordered towards
God. In this way it loves God in some sense in every neighbour, because a neighbour is loved by charity either because God is in him, or so that God may be in him.
From all this, it is clear that it is the same disposition of charity which enables us to love God and our neighbour. But if we were to love our neighbours for their own sake, and not for the sake of God, this would derive from a different sort of love, whether natural or political, or one of the other sorts that Aristotle discusses [NE ..–, aff.].
Replies to objections () The neighbour is loved only for the sake of God. Therefore formally speaking both are a single object of love, though materially speaking they are two.
() Since love directs itself towards what is good, love differs as the good differs. Now (i) a human being qua individual person has his own good, and with respect to the love that looks to this good, each person is his own principal object of love. (ii) There is also a common good that relates to one person or another qua part of a whole; for example, to a soldier qua part of the army, or to a citizen qua part of the city. With regard to the love that looks to this good, the principal object of love is whatever the good principally resides in: for example, with an army, the commander, or with a state, the king. Consequently, it is part of the duty
On Charity of a good soldier to ignore even his own safety in order to preserve the good of the commander; similarly, you would naturally expose your own arm in order to protect your head.
Inthisway,charitylookstowardsdivinegoodnessasitsprincipalobject; butthatbelongstoeveryoneinsofarastheyareabletoshareinblessedness.
That is why we love with charity only those that are able to share with us in blessedness, as Augustine says [CT ..].
() John reasons from the greater, by negation,not that a neighbour ought to be loved more, but that he is more easily loved. For we are more prone to loving what we can see than what we cannot see.
() Although we can only love what is known, it does not follow that what is better known is better loved. For something is not loved by reason of being known, but by reason of being good; that is why something that has more goodness is more to be loved, even if it is not better known.
For example, people may love a slave, or even a horse, that they use all the time less than they love a good man of whom they know only by reputation.
() Charity looks towards divine goodness as its formal object, as I have argued. This good is differently related to God and to our neighbour.
That is why there ought to be a different measure for the primary and the secondary object. But there is only one measure for the principal object.
() The precepts of the law deal with virtuous acts but not with dispositions. That is why different precepts do not imply different dispositions, only different acts. The latter, however, relate to one disposition because of their formal character.
() We honour also in our neighbours the good that is distinctive of them; that is why we owe a different sort of honour to God and to our neighbour.
() Both love of neighbour and love of God are included under the life of contemplation, as Gregory says [HomEzek ..]. For prayer, which seems to belong particularly to the contemplative life, is offered to God on our neighbour's behalf. At the same time, the principle of the active life is above all the love of God in himself. It does not follow, just because charity is the principle of different things, that it is not itself a single thing.
This is technical language, classifying the argument in terms of the medieval doctrine of 'topics'.
The non-technical upshot of this language is simply what Aquinas proceeds to say in the remainder of the reply.