2. On the First Disorder in the ‘Willing of Friendship’

37. The result, therefore, is that the simply first disordered act of will was ‘the first willing of friendship’ with respect to that for which it willed the good. But this object was not God, because the will could not have loved God from friendship in disordered way - by intensity - , for God is a lovable object of such sort that, from the mere idea of him as he is the object, he gives the complete nature of goodness to an act perfectly intense. Nor is it likely that the will too intensely loved with love of friendship something other than itself, both because natural inclination is more inclined to thus loving itself than any other created thing - and because it does not seem that the angel understood any created thing beside himself in the way he understood himself - and because friendship is founded on unity (Ethics 8.71158a10-13) and also the features of friendship toward another proceed from the features of friendship toward oneself (Ethics 9.8.1168b1-10). So the first disordered act of the angel was an act of friendship with respect to himself.

38. And this is what Augustine says City of God 14.28, “Two loves made two cities; the love of God to contempt of self made the city of God, and the love of self to contempt of God made the city of the devil.” The first root, then, of the ‘city of the devil’ was a disordered love of friendship, which ‘root’ germinated into contempt of God -wherein this malice was consummated.

Thus are things plain about the simply first disorder, which was simply in the first disordered willing.