On Charity: Article 10: Whether it is possible in this life to possess complete charity
On Charity and the son a part of the father. That is why the love that someone has for a wife or son is more integrated into the love he has for himself than is the love he has for his father. But this is a case of love of his son not for the son's sake, but for his own sake. (ii) But with regard to the kind of loving by which we love others for their sake, then we should love a father more than a son, in that we have received a greater benefit from our father, and insofar as a son's honour depends more on his father's honour than vice versa. That is why in showing respect, in obedience, in responding to his wishes, and in similar matters, we are obliged to love a father more than a son. However, in providing necessities, we are obliged to care for a son more than a father, because parents ought to store up treasure for their children, and not vice versa, as Corinthians :says.
Article : Whether it is possible in this life to possess complete charity Objections It seems so, because:
() God does not give us impossible precepts, as Jerome says [CommMatt , on Matt :]. But complete charity is included under a precept, as Deuteronomy :makes clear: 'You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart.' For whole and complete are the same. Therefore it is possible to have complete charity within this life.
() Augustine says [TrueRel .] that complete charity requires us to love better things more. But this is possible within this life. Therefore we can have complete charity in this life.
() The character of love consists in some kind of union. But charity in this life can involve the greatest unity, since 'Whoever clings to God is one spirit', as Corinthians :says. Therefore charity can be complete within this life.
() A complete x is as far removed as possible from the contrary of x.
But charity can in this life resist all sin and temptation. Therefore charity in this life can be complete.
() In this life our feelings are drawn to God through love without an intermediary. Now when our intelligence will be drawn to God without The argument of this and the next article often depends on the range of meaning of the Latin words perfectus and perfectio, for which the translation uses several different words. It would be helpful to consult the Glossary under perfectus at this point.
Article an intermediary, then we will know him completely and wholly. Therefore we already love God completely and wholly. Therefore complete charity does exist in this life.
() Our will governs our actions. But loving God is an activity of the will. Therefore the human will can be wholly and perfectly drawn to God.
() The object of charity is God's goodness, which gives the greatest pleasure. But it is not difficult to carry on continuously and without a break when doing something pleasurable. Therefore it seems that in this life it would be easy to possess complete charity.
() If something is simple and indivisible, if you possess it at all, you must possess it wholly. But love in the sense of charity is simple and indivisible, both on the part of the soul that does the loving and on the part of its object, i.e. God. Therefore anyone who possesses charity in this life does so wholly and completely.
() Charity is the finest of the virtues, according to Corinthians :, 'I shall show you a still more excellent way', i.e. the way of charity. But the other virtues can be complete in this life; therefore so can charity.
But on the other hand () Since all sins conflict with charity, as has been said [DQChar ], complete charity requires a person to be without any sin. But this is not possible in this life, according to John :, 'If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.' Therefore we cannot have complete charity in this life.
() Nothing can be loved if it is not known, as Augustine says [Trin ..]. But God cannot be known completely in this life, according to Corinthians :, 'Now we know in part.' Therefore neither can he be completely loved.
() Something that can always make progress is not yet complete. But charity in this life can always make progress, as the saying goes. Therefore charity in this life can never be complete.
() 'Complete charity casts out fear', as John :says. But no human being can be without fear in this life. Therefore no one can possess complete charity.
My reply 'Complete' has three meanings: (i) complete simply speaking; (ii) complete in relation to a thing's nature; (iii) complete in relation to a stage of
On Charity time. (i) Something is said to be complete simply speaking if it is so in all respects, and lacks no type of completeness. (ii) Something is said to be complete in relation to a thing's nature if it lacks nothing that is naturally possessed by that nature. For example, to say that a person's intelligence is complete does not mean that he understands everything intelligible, but that he understands everything that human beings naturally understand. (iii) We call someone complete in relation to a stage of time when he possesses everything that is naturally possessed at that stage: we can call a child 'complete' if it possesses whatever a human being needs to possess at its age.
We have to conclude that only God possesses complete charity simply speaking {cf. (i)}. Human beings may possess charity complete in relation to their nature, but not in this life {cf. (ii)}. Even in this life, we can possess charity complete in relation to the stage of time {cf. (iii)}.
To show this, we need to know that since both actions and dispositions take their type from their object, what it is for them to be complete also derives from that. The object of charity is the supreme good. Charity is complete simply speaking, then, when it is drawn to the supreme good to the extent that that is something lovable. Now the supreme good is infinitely lovable, because it is infinitely good. For this reason a creature, which must be finite, must also be unable to possess complete charity, simply speaking. Only the charity with which God loves himself can be called complete in this sense {cf. (i)}.
We can talk of charity as complete in relation to the nature of a rational creature {cf. (ii)} when that creature is turned towards loving God as wholly as it is able. In this life, three things prevent us from having our minds totally focused on God:
(a) the contrary inclinations of the mind. When the mind, through sin, turns towards some changeable good as its end, it turns away from the good that does not change; (b) being engaged in the business of the world. St Paul says in Corinthians :–[Vulgate], 'Anyone who has a wife is worried about the things of the world, how to please his wife; he is divided'; that is, his heart does not move only towards God; (c) the weakness of this present life, which means that we must engage with, and be distracted by, necessities so that our mind cannot be actively focused on God; I mean sleeping, eating and doing whatever is necessary to live this present life. Furthermore, the soul is dragged down by the
Article very weight of the body so that it cannot see the divine light in its own being, and thus, by seeing this, have its charity made complete. According to St Paul in Corinthians :–, 'As long as we are in the body, we are pilgrims away from God, for we walk by faith and not by sight.'
Now we can in this life be without mortal sin, which turns us away from God {cf. (a)}. Again, we can avoid engaging with affairs of the world, as St Paul says in Corinthians :: 'Anyone who has no wife can concern himself with the things of God, how to please God' {cf. (b)}.
But we cannot, in this life, be free from the burden of our vulnerable flesh {cf. (c)}. Consequently, charity can be complete in this life insofar as we can remove the first two obstacles, but not insofar as we can remove the third. For this reason no one can possess in this life the completeness of charity that will exist after this life. The one exception is Christ, since it was distinctive of him that he was both travelling and in possession of his destination at the same time.
Replies to objections ()Thewords,'YoushalllovetheLordyourGodwithyourwholeheart' should be taken as a precept insofar as wholeness excludes everything contrary to divine love. However, insofar as it excludes everything that hinders our clinging completely to God, it is not a precept, but rather the goal of the precept. For it points us not to what we should do but to where we are going, as Augustine says [CT ..].
() We are not able to love the better things by as much as their goodness demands, and so we cannot possess complete charity, as I have said.
() We can find many levels of union between someone who loves and someone who is loved. Our mind will only be completely one with God when it is always actively drawn to him. That is not possible in this life.
() The completeness that belongs to something on account of its type belongs to it at every stage of time. For example, a man is complete in his rational soul at any time or age. Therefore the completeness that charity possesses at every time is the completeness that belongs to it on account of its type. Now the character of charity is that it loves God above all things, and does not love any other creature in preference to him. That is why, since temptation always originates with the love of some created good, or the fear of a contrary evil (which also derives from love), charity at every stage is, because of its type, able to resist any temptation to the
On Charity extent that the temptation will not lead us to mortal sin, but not so much that we are not affected by temptation at all. The latter will be true only with the completeness proper to our homeland.
() In our homeland God will be wholly seen and wholly loved in the same way, as follows. The 'wholly' can refer (i) to the person who loves and sees, because he will be involved in loving and seeing God to the limit of his powers as a creature. We can also take it (ii) that God will be wholly seen and loved in the sense that there will not be some part of him that is not seen and loved, because he is not composite, but simple. In another sense, however, God will be neither wholly loved nor wholly seen, since he will be neither seen nor loved by any created thing to the degree that he can be seen and loved.
But in this life God cannot be wholly loved and seen in even the first and second ways, because {cf. (ii)} he is not seen in his own being and {cf. (i)} it is not possible for a human being in this life to live in such a way that his feelings are actually focused on God without interruption.
However, God can be wholly loved by human beings in this life in a certain sense, if their feelings include nothing that is contrary to divine love.
() (i) The will governs our actions in doing what we do, but not in persevering continuously in one thing, since the conditions of this life require our wills actually to focus on many different things.
(ii) Or else we can say that the will governs our actions in those things that are natural to human beings, but that complete charity, which will exist most fully in our homeland, is higher than a human being, especially if we are thinking of the human condition in this present life.
() An activity can cease to be pleasurable not only (i) from the side of the object, but also (ii) from the side of an agent that is short of the power neededforthatactivity.(i)Weneed,then,tosaythatbeingactivelyfocused on God is always a pleasurable thing from the side of the object, (ii) but from our side there cannot in this life be such continual pleasure. The reason for this is that the human mind's activity of contemplation requires the exercise of the imaginative power and the other bodily powers;these inevitably tire when they are exercised for a long time, because of the weakness of the body, and that is what hinders the pleasure. For this reason, Ecclesiastes :says, 'Frequent meditation wearies the flesh.'
Cf. ST a .. Aquinas holds that in the conditions of this present life, in which our intelligence is conjoined with the body, we cannot engage in intellectual thought without engaging the physical powers that produce and store images.