23. Do men or angels rank higher in God’s love?
23. DO MEN OR ANGELS RANK HIGHER IN GOD’S LOVE?
This last point (#22) says that the reason some things are better than others is that God loves them more, since His love does not respond to and conform to the goodness of things, as our love does, but creates the goodness of things, in various degrees or grades (i.e., hierarchy). Therefore, since angels are superior to humans, it seems that God must love them more, just as He loves man more than animals, and animals more than minerals. If this is so, then why then did He do more for us, in Christ, than He did for the angels?
God loves the human nature assumed by the Word of God in the person of Christ more than He loves all the angels; for that nature is better, especially on the ground of union with the Godhead. But as to natural condition, an angel is better than a man. . . . Hence it is said of man: Thou hast made him a little less than the angels (Ps 8:6). . . . God therefore did not assume human nature because He loved man, absolutely speaking, more, but because the needs of man were greater; just as the master of a house may give some costly delicacy to a sick servant that he does not give to his own son in sound health (I,20,4).
There are two kinds of love: eros and agape. Eros is desire, agape is charity. Eros is getting, agape is giving. Eros, in itself and rightly ordered, is good and natural and necessary, but agape is better and higher, for God is agape, not eros. God is the pure and total gift-of-self of each of the Persons of the Trinity to each other, out of pure charity, not need. God needs nothing and loves everything.
Agape does not passively conform to the value of its object in the way that eros does. Rightly ordered eros does just that; it loves each thing as it deserves. This is justice. In eros, love should conform to justice. Wrongly ordered eros is injustice, loving lesser things more than greater things, e.g., things more than people, pleasure more than virtue, or self more than God. But agape goes beyond justice because it responds to need, not deservingness. Agape is not justice, nor is it sub-justice, but it is super-justice.
The Good Shepherd spent all His time searching for the one “black sheep” that got lost, while the 99 good sheep who more deserved His attention remained faithfully at home without His extra attention—not because He loved the evil sheep more than the good but because the “black sheep of the family” needed Him more than the others. When He designed and created the world, He loved angels into a higher existence than He loved men into; but when He came into the world as the Great Physician, He came to search out and save the needy, the lost, the sinners: us.
We should do the same. We should practice both justice (rightly ordered eros) and charity (agape). We should not treat animals better than men, or reward sinners more than saints, because that is unjust; but we should seek out those who need us most, and those who will most benefit from us (and that always means our own families first), not necessarily those who deserve us most, because that is what charity does. Charity is spiritual triage.
The saints are God’s water: they go to the lowest and driest places. Do you live in a society, or a situation, that is full of evil? Don’t complain; practice nursing. That’s why He put you there.