27. Love of God and self
The Love of God, Self, and Neighbor
27. Love of God and self In the third distinction devoted to the infused virtue of charity
Scotus asks: "Is everyone bound to love self most after God?"
From what he has said in the previous question, it is clear that what is said of love of neighbor applies also to oneself.
For insofar as charity is the principle of tending directly towards God by a direct act, it is also the principle for reflecting on those acts whereby one tends to God; and on this account, as was pointed out there, it is the principle for wanting everyone able to love God to do so.
Hence, the real question being asked here is, why does the above apply to oneself more than it does to one's neighbor? An obvious psychological answer would be that in the last analysis, it is only the individual person as a free and responsible agent who has the power to make the ultimate decision to love God. We may hope that our neighbor makes that choice, we may encourage, exhort, help him or her to do so, but we cannot force the issue. As Scotus remarked earlier, even
God, by his absolute power, cannot force the will, for this implies a contradiction. Though, in virtue of principles he expresses elsewhere,
Scotus could have argued in this way, he chooses here to take another tack, based on the fact that both neighbor and self represent "reflex objects" of the infused virtue of charity.
Among all the acts of the same nature, however, the principle of tending to God is also the principle of reflecting most directly upon the act one elicits; this is the act by which one having charity loves God. Therefore, most directly after loving God, charity inclines a person to love that by which he tends to God, or by which he wants himself to love God. In wanting himself to love God, he loves himself out of charity, because he wills for himself a just and honorable good. Therefore, immediately after love of God, he loves himself out of charity.
Scotus adds a confirmatory argument based on one's natural inclination, which seeks self-perfection as its highest aim. What he says there should be read in light of his earlier remarks in selection 6 about the third meaning of "natural will" (Le., "the will insofar as it elicits an act in conformity with its natural inclination, which would always be aimed at its own advantage") and in selection 7 about our natural inclination to seek happiness, and also what he said in selection 29 about how this desire for happiness may be willed out of "an affection for justice," as well as out of an affection for the advantageous, since it is only under the former aspect that charity, rather than the virtue of hope, is involved.