Single Question. Whether God loves Everything out of Charity Equally

1. About the thirty second distinction I aska whether God loves everything out of charity equally.

a.a [Interpolation] About the thirty first distinction, where the Master deals with the charity by which God loves the creature, the question asked is whether...

2. That he does not:

Charity is a habit and consequently it formally perfects a power; it supposes     therefore that the power is imperfect; God’s will is in itself most perfect; therefore etc     .

3. Further, not everything can be loved out of charity, because inanimate and irrational things cannot;     therefore etc     .

4. Further, God does not choose everyone; he even has anger against some; therefore the non-elect and those whom he has anger against he does not love equally with the elect. Besides, he does not give equal gifts to everyone, but in everyone his will of being well-pleased is fulfilled; therefore he does not will goods to everyone equally.

5. To the opposite:

God understands everything equally, because he understands them through one formal idea; therefore likewise about his loving them out of charity.

I. To the Question

6. Here three things must be looked at: first that God loves everything; second that this act is not proper to any one divine person; third that it is one act -and here will be stated how it is one, and how equal or not equal, or how it is disposed equally or unequally as regard everything.

A. God loves Everything

7. The proof of the first is that (as shown in I d.2 nn.75-88) God of himself naturally understands and wills, and is consequently capable of blessedness [cf. 2 d.1 nn.30-31, 4 d.49 p.1 q.1-2 n.27]. But in him power does not precede act, for then he would be imperfect; so he is blessed in actuality, and just by willing and understanding himself, for no other object can beatify the rational creature (from I d.1 n.15). Therefore, he actually understands and loves himself.

8. But the proof that he also loves other things is that, just as every intellect has power for anything intelligible, so every will has power for anything willable. Therefore the divine will can love all lovables, and not as doing so potentially before doing so actually. Therefore he loves all other lovables in addition to himself.

9. An objection here is that, if so, God would love contraries at the same time, because both contraries have the idea of being lovable.

10. This conclusion must necessarily be conceded of those natures that are in themselves contrary. But God does not love them so that they be present at the same time in the same subject, for this is not something lovable. Certain things he also loves by willing them, and willing them by effective will, namely those that he at some point produces in being. Certain things he loves by a will of simple well-pleasingness, not by effective will; but these things he never produces in being, though they are shown by his intellect capable of having as much goodness as the things he does love with effective will.

11. A reason also put forward in support of this conclusion too (which is a presupposition in the proof in I d.2 n.74, nZ that God is formally willing) is that ‘to be willing’ is a pure perfection [a perfection simply]. For in all things that divide being the more noble divisor is a pure perfection. But if being is divided into willing and non-willing, the willing is simply more perfect; therefore it is a pure perfection.

B. This Sort of Love is not Proper to Any One Divine Person

12. From the above conclusion [n.10] there follows a second, that no pure perfection is proper to any one Divine Person [n.6].

13. For the point [in n.11] may be proved in another way, that if willing were proper to one Person it would be proper to the Holy Spirit, and so either the Holy Spirit would not necessarily proceed [sc. from the other Persons] or the Father would necessarily love something other than himself. By parity of reasoning the same holds of the Son, that he does not state any respect proper to something other than God. For to both the Spirit and the Son there is one common idea, namely that their relation cannot be a necessary prerequisite for the extremes because the relation itself requires both extremes. But nothing in any being whatever other than God is of itself necessary. So no relation to anything other than God in any being whatever can be in itself simply necessary, and so no such relation can be intrinsic to any Divine Person insofar as the Divine Person has the divine nature in the determinate way the Person has it.

14. There is an argument also about the Word, that if the Word were to state its own proper relation to a creature as being declarative of the creature, this would be insofar as the creature has being in the Father’s memory and thus expresses the ‘word’ of the Father,a and from this conclusion there seems to follow a manifold falsehood:

a.a [Interpolation] or insofar as [the Word] manifests everything and makes it to exist in intelligible being.

     First because no creature has being properly in the divine memory as it is memory (as was touched on II d.1 n.32); for it first becomes intelligible by act of the divine intelligence.

     Second because then the creature would be the idea of moving the infinite intellect to a word insofar as this word is the intellect’s word, and so a finite thing would move the infinite intellect and thus the infinite intellect would be cheapened. At any rate if, per impossibile, there were a single stone in the divine memory (as there is sometimes one intelligible thing in our memory), it would then be the reason in the memory for the expressing of its own ‘word’; and then the intended conclusion would follow, namely that a finite thing would be a reason for moving the infinite intellect.a

a.a [Interpolation] and would be the reason for producing infinite knowledge. This seems false.

     Again too, since a creature is not formally infinite in the divine memory or even the divine intellect, how it might found opposite relations of origin does not seem easy to prove.

     This consequence also seems to hold, that there would be as many ‘words’ as there are intelligibles in the Father’s memory; and they would be simply distinct. For if they were in the memory and were thus to be expressive in the memory, they would only be so as each is thus intelligible.

15. But if there is another understanding of what was stated [n.14], namely that the Word declares other things as they have, with respect to the act of declaring, the idea of term in some intelligible being, then this does not seem proper to the Word, because the whole Trinity produces them in intelligible being (as was said in II d.1 nn.32-33). For each Person holds each thing in its memory.

16. Now as to how the Father is admitted to speak properly by the Word, this was expounded in I d.32 nn.24-25, namely that there ‘to speak’ imports a double respect: a real respect of origin (which is of the expressed thing to the expresser of it), and a relation of reason (which is of the thing declared to the declarer of it), so that the Word is that by which he is called both what is expressed by the one speaking and called what declares what is spoken. Now the relation of ‘to declare’ is appropriated to the Word alone, for it proceeds by way of generated knowledge and is thus declarative. Now it is common to the three Persons if one takes ‘to declare’ formally. But when it is taken by way of principal it can be proper to the Father, for the Father declares as a principal insofar as he expresses generated knowledge.

17. And this double way of taking ‘to declare’, namely formally and by way of principal, is seen in other relative terms, as in ‘to assimilate’ and ‘to adequate’ [I d.31 nn.23-29]; for the form whereby something is similar is what formally assimilates it to another, but the agent that gives it its form is what makes it similar.

18. The Father can, in the same way, be admitted to love by the Holy Spirit, as was expounded in I d.32 nn.32-33; and this is appropriated to the Holy Spirit but is not proper to him. And a double relation is connoted there, namely one real, that is, the relation of spiration, and another a relation of reason, namely in what is spirated to what is loved by it - this relation of reason is appropriated to the Holy Spirit yet it belongs to the three Persons.

C. How there is Equality and Inequality in the One act of God’s Love

19. The third point [n.6] is plain, because the will by which God loves is one power and its first object is one; and it has a single infinite act equal to itself. Nor is it necessary that this one act include everything, as if everything were required for the perfection of the act. All that follows from the perfection of the act is that the act tend perfectly to the first term, and also tend to everything of which the first term is the total reason for acting. But in the case of both the divine intellect and the divine will the divine essence alone is able to be the first reason for acting; because if something else could be the first reason the power would be cheapened.

20. From this it is plain that, when we compare the act with the agent, there is no inequality in God in his love of everything.

21. But if we compare the act to what it connotes, or to the things it ranges over, there is inequality - not only because the things willed are unequal or because unequal goods are willed, but also because the act ranges over them according to a certain order. For everyone who wills rationally wills first the end, and immediately second what attains the end, and third the other things that are more remotely ordained for attaining the end. Thus does God also most reasonably will them, although not in diverse acts but in a single one, insofar as he tends to ordered objects in diverse ways: First, he wills the end, and herein his act is perfect and his intellect perfect and his will blessed. Second, he wills things that are immediately ordered to himself, namely by predestining the elect (who attain to him immediately), and this as by a sort of reflection, when he wills others to love the same object as himself (as was said earlier about charity, 3 d.28 nn.14-15). For, first, he loves himself in ordered way (and so not in disordered way by being jealous or envious). Second, he wants to have others as his joint lovers, and this is his willing others to have his own love in them - and this is to predestine them, if we supposw he wants them to have this sort of good finally and eternally. And, third, he wants the things that are necessary for attaining this end, namely the goods of grace. Fourth, because of these goods, he wants other goods that are more removed, namely this sensible world in which others may serve him, so that in this way what is said in Physics 2.2.194a34-35might be true, namely that “man is in some way the end of all things,” of all sensible things that is, for it is because of the world willed by God in the second moment, as it were, that all sensible things are willed in the fourth moment, as it were. Also, that which is closer to the ultimate end is accustomed to be called the end of those that are more remote [I d.41 n.41]. Man, then, will be the end of the sensible world, either because God wills the sensible world in view of predestined man, or because he more immediately wills man to love him than he wills the sensible world to exist.

22. And thus is it plain that the inequality of the things he wills (as far as concerns the willed things) is not a matter of the volition of him who wills but because his volition ranges over the objects in the way stated. But this inequality in the act is because of the goodness that is presupposed in all objects other than God, which goodness is as it were the reason that they are to be willed in this way or in that. But this reason is in the divine will alone. For it is because the divine will accepts certain things to such or such a degree that they are good in such or such a degree, and not conversely. Or if it be granted that there is in them, as things shown [to the will] by the intellect, some degree of essential goodness according to which they ought rationally to please the will in ordered way, then at any rate this is certain, that the fact they are well pleasing to God, as to their actual existence, is simply from the divine will without any determining reason on their part.

II. To the Principal Arguments of Both Parts

23. To the first argument [n.2] I say that a habit possesses something of perfection, and to this extent it is posited in God. But to the extent it requires imperfection (because it requires a power that is perfectible in act), it is not in God. For he is identically the same as his power, and the same as his act, since whatever is in him is of itself formally infinite.

24. To the second [n.3] I say that though inanimate things properly are not lovable out of charity (for charity is a friendship and no friendship is properly to be had with them), yet I can have for them out of charity some ‘willing’ of the sort that should be had for them out of charity. For I can out of charity want a tree to be and want a tree to serve me for such and such an act, insofar as such an act aids me to love God in himself. And in this way it can be admitted that God loves all things out of charity, not by a will of friendship but by the sort of will that should be had with respect to them.

25. The third argument [n.4] proves inequality as to the goods willed for those who are loved. For God does not will as great goods for the non-predestined as he wills for the predestined, and he does not will for those with whom he is said to be angry (at the time when he is said to be angry) as much good as he wills for those with whom he is not said to be angry. And this inequality of love, that is, the effect of love, must be admitted to hold not only as to degrees of nature but also within individuals of the same species. Nor is the reason for this the nature in this thing or that, but the divine will alone [cf. I d.41 n.53].

26. The argument to the opposite about ‘understanding’ [n.5] only proves equality of the act as it is the act of the one understanding, and not as it ranges over its objects.