On Hope: Article 3: Whether hope is prior to charity
Article I have said above. It follows that it must be found in the desiring power of reason, which is the will, according to Aristotle [Soul ., a].
Hence, hope is found in the will as its possessor.
This power of desire, i.e. the rational one, is not divided into an aggressive and a sensual part, as some hold;the reason is that the object of the will is something good under the general description of good, and the intelligence, rather than the sense, is able to grasp this. Conversely, the sensory desire, which has as its object something good under a particular description, is divided between aggression and sensual desire, in accordance with the different descriptions of the goods perceived by the senses. For some of these give sensory pleasure, and sensual desire deals with these; others possess a certain loftiness that lifts them above any obstacles that pleasure may put in their way; aggression deals with those.
That is why aggression and sensory desire are not located in the higher faculty of desire {i.e. the will}.
Inthisway,then,hopeispossessednotbytheaggression,butbythewill.
Replies to objections ()Thehopethatwearediscussingisforanintelligiblegoodthatishardto get. That is not the object of any capacity related to the latter specifically; rather the will inclines towards it qua good in general.
() Charity completes the will fully in respect of one of the will's movements, i.e. loving. But it lacks some completeness in respect of another of its movements, i.e. hoping.
() When many things are ordered towards one thing, they can be grasped by the intelligence at the same time. In a similar way, a movement of hope can coexist with a movement of charity, because they are mutually interconnected.
() The certainty possessed by hope stems from the certainty possessed by faith: hope shares to some extent in the certainty of faith insofar as the movements of a power of desire are guided by a cognitive power.
Article : Whether hope is prior to charity Objections It seems not, because:
See ST a ..
On Hope () Ambrose comments [CommLuke .] on Luke :, 'If you had faith equal to a grain of mustard, etc.' as follows: 'Charity comes from faith and hope from charity.' Now faith is prior to charity. Therefore charity is prior to hope.
() Augustine says [Hand .] that faith without charity is of no benefit; hope, though, cannot exist without charity. But if hope were prior to charity, it would be able to exist without it, just as faith can, even if it were of no benefit. Therefore hope is not prior to charity.
() Augustine says [CG .] that movements and feelings that are good come from love and from holy charity. Hoping, insofar as it is an activity of the virtue of hope, is a praiseworthy movement and feeling. Therefore it stems from holy charity. Thus charity is prior to hope.
() Hope involves longing, as I explained above. But longing can only be for a good that is loved. Therefore hope presupposes love. Therefore hope comes after charity.
() Love is first among the feelings in the soul. For everything done or felt by the soul is a result of love, as Dionysius makes clear [DivNames
.]. But hope involves certain feelings in the soul. Therefore charity, which is love, is prior to hope.
() Hope and longing are only for one's own good. But a good becomes one's own when one seeks it through love. That is what makes it suitable for one. Therefore hope and longing both presuppose love.
() Augustine says [CG .] that a rightly ordered will is charity.
But hope presupposes that the will is rightly ordered. Therefore hope presupposes charity.
() When two things are simultaneous, one is not prior to the other.
But faith, hope, and charity are simultaneous, because, as Gregory says [HomEzek ..], someone possesses them all equally. Therefore hope is not prior to charity.
() A thing cannot be prior to itself. But hope and charity seem to be the same thing, for they both have the same object, i.e. the supreme good.
Therefore hope is not prior to charity.
() Peter Lombard says [Sent ..] that hope flows from merits, and these precede not only the thing that we hope for, but also hope itself, which charity precedes. Therefore hope is not prior to charity.
() Despair is opposed to hope. Every mortal sin, though, is opposed to charity. But people fall into mortal sin before they fall into despair.
Therefore charity is prior to hope.
Article () The ordering of dispositions and actions follows that of objects.
But goodness, which is the object of charity, comes before what is hard, which is the object of hope, because what is hard includes something on top of the goodness. Therefore charity is prior to hope.
() If something that is an incomplete specimen of its class has a given standing, then something that is a complete specimen of that class will have as much standing. But it is clear that sometimes an incomplete love can come before hope. Therefore far more will complete love, which is charity, come before hope.
But on the other hand () The gloss comments on Matthew :, 'Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob', as follows: 'That is, faith begot hope and hope begot charity.'
But what begets is prior to what is begotten. Therefore hope is prior to charity.
() The gloss comments on Psalm :, 'Hope in God and do good,' as follows: 'Hope is the gateway to faith and the beginning of human salvation', and this seems to show that hope is prior to faith. But faith is prior to charity. Therefore so is hope.
() St Paul says in Timothy :, 'The end of the precept is charity from a pure heart and a pure conscience.' The gloss comments, 'That is, hope.' Therefore hope is prior to charity.
() Augustine says [Trin ..] that you never love anything unless you hope that you will be able to attain it. If you are not hopeful of getting something, then you will love it at most in a lukewarm way. Therefore love presupposes hope.
() A is prior to B if B implies A but not vice versa. But hope is like this: for while we are on our journey, anyone who has charity has hope, but not vice versa. Therefore hope is prior to charity.
My reply 'Prior' is predicated of something with respect to some principle; in other words, if A is prior to B, A is nearer to that principle than B. But each thing possesses two intrinsic principles, matter and form. 'Before' means different things with respect to these two different principles. (i) A can be prior to B in terms of completeness, as actualisation is prior to capacity, or as the complete to the incomplete. This sort of priority corresponds
On Hope to form as principle. (ii) A can be prior to B in the process of coming into being, i.e. in time. In this sense, within the same specimen capacity is priortoactualisation,orwhatisincompletetowhatiscomplete.(Speaking simply and in general, of course, what is complete is also prior in time, because incomplete things are changed only by something complete that already exists.) This sort of priority corresponds to matter as a principle.
According to (i), then, charity is naturally prior to hope. However, according to (ii), within a single person, hope precedes charity, because hope is what then leads someone on to charity. To show this, we need to know that all those feelings of the mind that are movements of desire correspond to a natural movement. This is because natural movements arise from a natural inclination that is known as a desire of nature; in a similar way, the movements of the soul's feelings come from an inclination in the soul, that is, a desire of the soul.
What we find in natural movements is the following: (i') a principle of the movement itself, where the natural form that belongs to something changeable gives it form, as, for example, when something heavy or light is brought into being; (ii') the natural movement flowing from such a form, for example, rising or sinking. (iii') The third stage is resting in the thing's own place.
The case is similar with desire in the soul. The desire is formed in a certain way by something good, and the result is love, which unites the one who loves to the thing that is loved {cf. (i')}. From this it follows next that, if the good that is loved is at a distance, desire tends towards it through a movement of longing or hope {cf. (ii')}. The third stage then follows, i.e. joy or pleasure, when one attains the thing one loves {cf. (iii')}.
Just as natural change and rest flow from the form, so every feeling in the soul flows from love. We ought, then, to identify distinctions among the other feelings in the soul in accordance with distinctions within love.
Love, though, can be of two sorts, either (a) imperfect or (b) perfect.
(a) You have imperfect love for something when you love it because you want to have what is good about it for yourself, rather than wanting in itself what is actually good for it. Some people call this sort of love sensual desire. An example would be when we love wine in that we want to savour its taste, or when we love some other person because we can get some benefit or pleasure through him. (b) The second sort of love, perfect love, is found when you love in itself what is someone's good – for example, when I love someone and want him to possess whatever is good even if
Article that will not affect me in any way. This sort is called the love of friendship, and it makes you love your friend in himself. That is why it is also the perfect form of friendship, as Aristotle says [NE .., b].
Now charity is not just any sort of love of God, but only the perfect sort, in which God is loved in himself {cf. (b)}. However, we are led to love the goodness of God in itself by the good things that come from God, which we want to have for ourselves, and by the bad things that we might avoid by holding on to God. Because of avoiding such evils, fear is a part of this love of oneself; because of pursuing such goods, hope is a part of it, and this, as I have explained, is a movement tending towards getting something. Both fear and hope, then, in their own character flow from our love for God in the imperfect sense {cf. (a)}. Because of this, within time and coming into being, i.e. on our journey, fear precedes charity and leads us to it, as Augustine tells us [TEpJn .], and, in the same way, hope leads us to charity, provided that whoever hopes to acquire some good from God is led by this to loving God for himself.
Replies to objections () Ambrose adds in the same place that these all flow back into one another in a virtuous circle, because when you have been led from hope to charity, then you are able to hope more completely and fear more devoutly, just as you also believe more firmly. So when he says that hope flows from charity, he is not talking about the initial arrival of charity, but the second wave of it, since once it is established in us, it makes us both hope and believe more completely.
() The hope that flows from existing merits cannot exist without charity, which is the basis of merit. But unformed hope, which has no merit in its actions, but depends upon merit in its aim, is without charity in its actions, but not without charity in its aim.
() Augustine is speaking there about good movements and meritorious feelings; things of that sort do have charity as their cause.
() The reasoning proves that hope presupposes some sort of love.
However, it need not presuppose love in the sense of charity, but rather love of oneself, which may make one choose divine goodness.
From this the answers to () and () are clear.
() A rightly ordered will is described as 'charity' with reference to its cause, since the will cannot be rightly ordered in the complete sense