I. To the Question

8. Three things need to be noted about this question: the first is how the habit by which God is loved may have our neighbor for object of love; the second concerns possession of the habit as regard our neighbor; and the third is who our neighbor is.

A. About the Habit of Charity for God and Neighbor

9. About the first [n.8] I say, as was remarked in Ord. I d.17 n.129, that charity is called the habit whereby God is held dear.

10. Now he can be held dear with a private love, whereby the lover refuses to have a fellow lover, as is apparent in zealous types who have excessive love for their wives. But this habit would not be ordered or perfect.

Not ordered, I say, because God, who is the common good, does not want to be the proper and private good of some one person, nor should anyone, according to right reason, appropriate to himself a common good. And so this love, since it inclines to the common good as to a proper good that is not to be loved or had by anyone else, would be a disordered love.

11. It would also not be perfect because he who loves perfectly wants the beloved to be loved by others, as is plain from Richard [of St. Victor], On the Trinity 3.11.

Therefore God, who infuses the love whereby everything tends to him perfectly and in order, gives a habit whereby he may be held dear both as the common good and as a good to be jointly loved by others. In this way the habit that regards God in himself inclines one also to want him to be held dear and loved by others, at least by those whose friendship is welcome to God, or is not displeasing at the time when it is welcome. So just as the habit inclines one to love God in himself perfectly and orderly, so also it inclines one to want him to be loved by any others whose friendship is welcome to him.

12. Hereby becomes apparent how the habit of charity is single. For it does not primarily concern several objects but has for first object God alone as he is good in himself and the first good. Secondarily one’s love of God, if it is perfect, has as ordered object the wanting him to be loved by everyone else, and the wanting him to be possessed as he is in himself by everyone else. And it is in this way that I love myself and my neighbor out of charity, by wanting myself and my neighbor to love God in himself, which is something simply good and an act of justice. Thus, God in himself is alone the first object of charity; all other objects are certain intermediate objects, as it were, of reflex acts, by means of which I tend toward the infinite good that God is. The habit that is the principle for the direct and reflex acts is the same.

13. An objection made against this solution is that I do not with the same habit understand God and understand that another understands God; therefore, by similarity, I do not by the same habit wish God well-being and wish that another wish God well-being.

14. My reply: an act that is reflected on can be meant as a noun, and then it signifies the act in its quiddity; or it can be meant as a verb, and then it signifies the act as it exists in the supposit or as it concerns the supposit. In the first way, the act of reflecting on an act can universally be done by the same habit as the act reflected on is itself done or elicited, both in matters of appetite and in matters of understanding. For I understand something by the same habit by which I understand the understanding of it, whether the act of understanding is in another or in me. In the second way, the act of reflecting is expressed by an infinitive verb and in the infinitive mode (as ‘to know’, ‘to will’, ‘to understand’, and the like). And if one in this way takes the act in its relation to the infinitive ‘to will’, it need not be taken in the present tense; for I can will you ‘to run’ but at some other time and not now. If however the act is taken in its relation to the infinitive ‘to know’, then because knowledge is only of what is true and ‘to know’ is not ‘to act’ (unless the ‘to act’ is now present in the supposit), the ‘to know’ only reflects back on the act of knowing thus signified when it is present in the supposit where it is signified to be. And because knowledge and the reflex act itself can exist together in me, and yet it is not necessary that the act exist in someone other than me, then I do not have a reflex act about the act itself as the act is signified by a verb and as asserted of some other supposit.

15. It is plain therefore that although I do not by the same habit know God and know that you know God, yet I do by the same habit will God and will that you will God. And to this extent I love you with charity, for I hereby will that you will that an act, an act also of justice, exist in you. In this respect the term ‘neighbor’ is not signified as a sort of secondary object of charity but as a sort of object wholly accidental to the object of charity (namely something able to love the Beloved along with me in perfect and ordered fashion). And I love my neighbor in this, that he love [God] along with me. So in this respect I love him accidentally as it were, not because of himself but because of the object that I want to be loved by him. And by wanting this object to be loved by him, I want what is simply good for him, because I want an act of justice for him.

B. About the Habit one must have for one’s Neighbor

16. About the second point [n.8] I say that just as the denial of a conclusion that does not necessarily follow from the premise can stand along with assertion of the premise (for not every error about a conclusion destroys the truth or assertion of the premise), therefore, since love of a finite good does not necessarily follow from love of the infinite Good, the loss of love of God does not, from the nature of the case in acts of love, necessarily follow from loss of love of neighbor, and this too whether the loss of love be understood by way of contrariety or of contradiction. Even less would the contradiction that is love of God and not love of neighbor follow from the nature of the habit.

17. This act of love, therefore, is about something other [than God] insofar as a command has been given about loving something other. And for this act there is required the use of the habit, or at any rate not acting against the habit; otherwise the act and the habit as to God would be destroyed, not by the nature of the contradiction, but by the nature of the demerit. For transgression of a precept does not destroy the act, or even the habit, of loving God in a positive way, but deserves by demerit that God withdraw himself so that neither the habit nor the act can remain.

18. The fact as to the habit is plain also from this, that the habit, which of its nature is not private but common, is naturally inclined toward not loving God in a private way; and so a private act of loving, namely one that destroys loving one’s neighbor, cannot in any way belong to the habit. And herein is apparent the great perfection of this habit, that although acquired zeal could be greater than a small amount of infused charity as regard intensity of eliciting the act here and there, yet the habit of charity, because it is an ordered and perfect habit in the genus of appetitive habits, can only be of God as of a common Good to be loved by others. And so the habit cannot be the principle of any act in which God would be loved along with the opposite of love for one’s neighbor.

19. It is plain from this, then, how the act is necessary from the nature of the habit - at least by understanding that it cannot be elicited as a private act or as contrary to an act toward one’s neighbor.

20. From the nature too of the precept added to the habit, an act toward one’s neighbor must be positively elicited, or at least a contrary one must not be elicited, lest one deserve by demerit the corruption of the habit which concerns God.

C. Who the Neighbor is who is to be Loved by Charity

21. As to the third point [n.8] I say that one’s neighbor is anyone whose friendship is welcome to the Beloved so as to be loved by him; for I ought not rationally to want what is loved supremely by me to be loved by another along with me if the Beloved does not wish to be loved by the other, or if love of the other is not welcome to him.

22. Since then it is certain that the love of good people is welcome to him, I ought to want him to be loved by them; and since this is doubtful about any definite wayfarer, I ought to want God to be loved by this or that wayfarer under a condition, namely if it please God to be loved by this wayfarer either now or at the time when it so pleases him.

23. But as to wayfarers in general, since one must always suppose that some are good and that their love is welcome or not displeasing to God, one can have about them an act of willing that God be absolutely loved by them along with me.

24. As to the damned or demons, or also men who are displeasing to God without limit, I ought not to want them to love him.