“Charity” (caritas/agape) is universal, indiscriminate, unconditional and selfless love. It is the highest theological virtue and is therefore distinct from the other types of love, including amor (passion/emotion), éros (lust), and philia (friendship between equals). Aquinas defines charity as ‘the friendship of man for God’ which unites us to God (S.T. II-II, q. 23). However, charity is not limited to man’s relation to God as it superabundantly overflows into human relationships and our connection with neighbours and enemies. 1 John 4:11 states, ‘since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another’. Without God’s prior, eternal and pre-existence love (‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’, Jeremiah 31:3), we would not be able to love others or God. 1 John 4:19 declares, ‘We love because he first loved us’. God’s charity is an enabling love, granting us the capacity to unconditionally love others and providing the perfect exemplar for the application of love in Christ. 1 John 3:16 states, ‘This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us’, and John 13:34 proclaims: ‘as I have loved you, you also should love one another’.
God’s perfect charity uniquely and paradoxically enables us to love our neighbours and enemies alike as ends in themselves, rather than as mere means to selfish or even divine ends. Yes, we love our neighbours and enemies because Christ first loved us and because, through such deeds, we wish to love God in return, but God’s enabling charity allows us to love others as ends in themselves ‘for God’s sake’ (S.T. II-II, q. 25, a. 1, ad. 3) without instrumentalising them. The capacity to indiscriminately love, which God’s enabling charity uniquely provides us with, is explained in 1 John 4:7: ‘let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God’. As they are made in God’s image, they are worthy of love because of God’s free choice to create them for His glory. Aquinas writes, ‘“we ought to look upon every man as our neighbour”. Now sinners do not cease to be men, for sin does not destroy nature. Therefore, we ought to love sinners out of charity’ (S.T. II-II, q. 25, a. 6, s.c.). He declares, ‘we ought to love sinners, out of charity, in respect of their nature’ (S.T. II-II, q. 25, a. 6, co.). We should love in our neighbour not their sinfulness but their nature as being ‘capable of bliss’ (S.T. II-II, q. 25, a. 6, co.). Aquinas is not saying we should love others because they are themselves our ultimate, final end but instead that they are temporal, lesser ends under God: ‘It is wrong to hope in man as though he were the principle author of salvation, but not to hope in man as helping us ministerially under God […] It would be wrong if a man loved his neighbour as though he were his last end, but not, if he loved him for God’s sake; and this is what charity does’ (S.T. II-II, q. 25, a. 1, ad. 3). As charity is a universal and indiscriminate form of love, it bestows upon an obligation to love not just our neighbours but also our enemies. Aquinas writes, ‘to love our enemies as such: this is perverse […] we love them as to their nature […] charity requires that […] we should not exclude our enemies from the love given to our neighbour in general […] charity […] does not require that we should have a special movement of love to every individual man […] charity does require […] that we should be ready to love our enemies individually […] That man should […] love his enemy for God’s sake, without it being necessary for him to do so, belongs to the perfection of charity’ (S.T. II-II, q. 26, a. 8, co.). Charity is wonderful as it is voluntarily employed so is gracious and self-giving transforming all our relationships, including our relationship to God.
Aquinas believes that we should love ourselves, drawing on Leviticus 19:18: ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’, and arguing that our love of ourselves overflows into our love of others and God. We need to love ourselves before we can love others. It is possible for us to love ourselves as our knowledge of ourselves is much more intimate than our knowledge of friends and therefore our capacity to love ourselves exceeds our capacity to love our friends. Aquinas employs Matthew 7:12: ‘do to others as you would have them do to you’, arguing that it shows that we inevitably and rightly love ourselves through charity. In summary, Aquinas argues that charity is the highest theological virtue, that it is ‘the friendship of man for God’, and uniquely enables us to love others as ends in themselves. We should love ourselves out of charity because the Scriptures tell us to.
By Ben Somervell
Theology Seeking Faith in Durham 