Teaching Christianity
and unchanging, while the rest are to be used, in order that we may come at last to the enjoyment of the former sort. And so we, who both enjoy and use other things, are ourselves also things. Yes, a great thing indeed is man, made to the image and likeness of God (Gn 1:26–27), not insofar as he is enclosed in a mortal body, but insofar as he takes precedence over the animals in the dignity of a rational soul. And so the great question is whether human beings ought to regard themselves as things to be enjoyed, or to be used, or both.
We have been commanded, after all, to love one another; but the question is whether people are to be loved by others for their own sake, or for the sake of something else. If it is for their own sake, then they are things for us to enjoy; if for the sake of something else, they are for us to use. Now it seems to me that they are to be loved for the sake of something else, because if a thing is to be loved for its own sake, it means that it constitutes the life of bliss, which consoles us in this present time with the hope of it, even though not yet with its reality. Cursed, however, is the one who places his hopes in man (Jer 17:5).
21. But none of us ought either to find enjoyment in ourselves, if you consider the matter straightforwardly, because we ought not either to love ourselves for our own sakes, but for the sake of the one whom we are to enjoy. Then indeed are people as good as can be, when they aim all their lives long at that unchanging life,[21] and cling to it with all their hearts. But if they love themselves for their own sakes, they are not relating themselves to God; rather, in turning to themselves, they are not turning to anything unchangeable. And that is why their enjoyment of themselves is to some extent defective, because they are better when they cleave to the unchangeable good and are tightly bound to it, than when they release themselves from it to cling even to themselves.
So if you ought not to love yourself for your own sake, but for the sake of the one to whom your love is most rightly directed as its end, other people must not take offense if you also love them for God's sake and not their own.[22] This, after all, is the rule of love that God has set for us: You shall love, he says, your neighbor as yourself; God, however, with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole mind (Mk 12:31.30; Lv 19:18; Dt 6:5). Thus all your thoughts and your whole life and all your intelligence should be focused on him from whom you have received the very things you devote to him. Now when he said with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, he did not leave out any part of our life, which could be left vacant, so to speak, and leave room for wanting to enjoy something else. Instead, whatever else occurs to you as fit to be loved must be whisked along toward that point to which the whole impetus of your love is hastening.
So all who love their neighbors in the right way ought so to deal with them that they too love God with all their heart, all their soul, all their mind. By loving them, you see, in this way as themselves, they are relating all their love of themselves and of the others to that love of God, which allows no channel to be led off from itself that will diminish its own flow.
We had no need of a commandment to love ourselves and our bodies
23, 22. Not all things, however, which are to be used are also to be loved, but only those which can be related to God together with ourselves in a kind of social companionship, such as human beings or angels or which being related to ourselves are in need of God's benefits through us, such as our bodies. Because of course the martyrs did not love the crimes their persecutors were committing against them, but still they made use of them in order to deserve well of God.