Teaching Christianity
the command is extended even to enemies, with the Lord also telling us, Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you (Mt 5:44).
32. The apostle Paul also teaches the same lesson, when he says, For, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment there may be, is summed up in this saying: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to your neighbor[31] (Rom 13:9–10). So if you assume the apostle did not state this commandment with reference to everybody, you will be obliged to admit, which is utterly absurd, not to say criminal, that in the apostle's view it is not a sin if someone defiles the wife of a man who is not a Christian, or is an enemy, or kills him or covets his property. So if saying such a thing is sheer lunacy, it is clear that every single human being is to be counted as a neighbor, because wrong is not to be done to anybody.
33. So now then, if anyone is rightly to be called neighbor, either to whom the duty of compassion is to be extended, or by whom it is to be extended to us, it clearly follows that the holy angels are included as well in this commandment bidding us to love our neighbors. They do, after all, show us so many courtesies and kindnesses, as it is easy to note from so many places in the divine scriptures. For the same reason our Lord and God himself wished to be called our neighbor, because it is himself that the Lord Jesus Christ is indicating as the one who came to the help of that man lying half dead on the road, beaten up and left there by robbers;[32] and the prophet says in prayer, As for a neighbor, as for our brother, so I sought to please[33] (Ps 35:14).
But because the divine substance is altogether more excellent than our nature and high above it, the commandment bidding us to love God was distinguished from the one about love of neighbor.[34] He, after all, takes pity on us because of his own goodness, while we take pity on each other, not because of our goodness but again because of his. In other words, he takes pity on us, so that we may enjoy him, while we take pity on each other, again so that we may all enjoy him, not one another.
How God does not enjoy us, but makes use of us
31, 34. For that reason there still seems to be some uncertainty about what we have been saying: that we enjoy that thing which we love for its own sake, and that only that thing is to be enjoyed by us which makes us perfectly happy, or blissful, while everything else is simply to be used. God, after all, loves us, and the divine scriptures draw our attention to his love for us again and again. So the question is: how does he love us? So as to use us, or to enjoy us? But if he enjoys us, it means he is in need of some good of ours, which nobody in his right mind could possibly say. Every good of ours, after all, is either God himself, or derived from him. And can anyone doubt, or find it an obscure statement, that the light is in no need of the brightness of those things which it has itself illuminated? The prophet, anyway, says as plainly as could be, I said to the Lord, my God are you, since you have no need of my good things (Ps 16:2). So he does not enjoy us, but makes use of us; because if he neither enjoys us nor makes use of us, I cannot find any way in which he can love us.
32, 35. But he does not make use of us, either, in the same way as we use things; because our making use of things is directed to the end of enjoying God's goodness, while God's making use of us is directed to his goodness.[35]
Because he is good, after all, we simply are; and insofar as we are, we are good. Furthermore, because he is also just, we cannot be bad with impunity; and insofar as we are bad, to that extent our very being is diminished. For he is the one who supremely and primordially is, being absolutely unchanging; and so he was able to say in the fullest possible