Chapter 3 (117)
Distinction XXXII | 133 Chapter 2 (116)
1. ACCORDING TO WHAT MEANING IS HE SAID TO LOVE MORE OR LESS
THESE OR THOSE THINGS. But since God's love is immutable, and so it does not expand or decrease, one may ask what is the sense of the statement that God is said to love this thing more or less than that one, or that he loves all things. We say that God's love, like his peace,' surpasses all human understanding, which can hardly aspire to the understanding of such sublimity.
2. IN WHAT SENSE GOD IS SAID TO LOVE ALL THE THINGS WHICH HE HAS
MADE. And yet it may certainly be understood that the reason for saying 'God loves all the things which he has made' is that they all please him and he approves of all of them, insofar as they are his works. Nor did they please him earlier or more when they were made, but even before they were made, nay rather they all pleased him from all eternity no less than after they had come into existence.
3. HOW HE IS SAID TO LOVE SOME PEOPLE MORE AND SOME LESS. And
the fact that, among rational creatures, that is, men and angels, he is said to love some of them more and some less, does not indicate any mutability in his charity, but that he loved some of them for greater goods and others for lesser goods, some for better uses and others for less good ones.
For all our goods come to us from his love. And so, from all eternity and even now, he loved and loves some of the elect more and others less, because out of his love he prepared greater goods for the first and lesser ones for the second, just as in time he confers greater goods on some and lesser ones on others, and as a result of this he is said to love these more and those less.
Chapter 3 (117) 1. THAT GOD'S LOVE IS TO BE REGARDED IN TWO WAYS. For God's love is considered in two ways: according to essence and according to efficacy.
It does not admit of more or less according to its essence, but only according to its efficacy, so that they are said to be more loved for whom, in love and from all eternity, God prepared a greater good and conferred it in time; those on whom not as much [was conferred are called] less loved.
2. So it is also that some, when they are converted and justified, are then said to begin to be loved by God: not that God can love someone by a new love, since he loved those whom he now loves with an eternal love, from before the foundation of the world;' but they are then said to begin
'Cf. Phil. 4, 7.
'Eph. 1, 4.