“Love (amor) may be perfect or imperfect. Perfect love is that by which some one is loved for himself, as a man loves a friend. Imperfect love is that by which some one loves a thing, not for itself, but in order that that good may come to him, as a man loves the thing he desires. The first love pertains to caritas which cleaves to God (inhaeret Deo) for Himself (secundum seipsum).”[610]
Caritas is one of the theological virtues, and as such Thomas treats it. To it corresponds the “gift” of sapientia, likewise a virtue bestowed by God, but more particularly regarded as the “gift” of the Holy Spirit. Caritas is set not in the appetitus sensitivus, but in the will. Yet as it exceeds our natural faculties, “it is not in us by nature, nor acquired through our natural powers; but through the infusion of the Holy Spirit, who is the amor Patris et Filii.” He infuses caritas according to His will; and it will increase as we draw near to God; nor is there any bound to its augmentation. May caritas be perfect in this life? In one sense it never can be perfect, because no creature ever can love God according to His infinite lovableness.
“But on the part of him who wills to love (ex parte diligentis), caritas is perfect when he loves as much as he is able. Which may be taken in three ways. In one way, as the whole heart of man is always borne toward God; and this is the perfection of the love of home (caritas patriae), unattainable here, where because of this life’s infirmities it is impossible always actually to think upon God, and be drawn toward Him by voluntary love (dilectione). In another way, as a man may strive to keep himself free for God and things divine, laying other matters aside, save as life’s need requires: and that is the perfection of caritas, possible in this life, yet not for all who have caritas. And the third way, when any one habitually sets his heart on God, so that he thinks and wills nothing that is contrary to the divine love: this perfection is common to all who have caritas.”[611]
The caritas with which we love God, extends to our neighbours, and even to our enemies, for God’s sake; also to ourselves, including our bodies; it embraces sinners, but not their sinfulness. It embraces the angels. There is order and grade in caritas, according to its relationship to God, the source of beatitude and voluntary love (dilectionis). God is to be loved ex caritate above all; for He is loved as the cause of beatitude, while our neighbour is loved as a participant with us in the beatitude from God. We should love God more than ourselves; because beatitude is in God as in the common and fontal source of all things that participate in beatitude.
“But, after God, man should love himself, in so far as he is spirit (secundum naturam spiritualem), more than any one else. This is plain from the very reason of loving. God is loved as the principle of good, on which the dilectio caritatis is based. Man loves himself ex caritate for the reason that he is a participator in that good. He loves his neighbour because of his association (societas) in that good.... Participation in the divine good is a stronger reason for loving, than association in this participation. Therefore, man ex caritate should love himself more than his neighbour; and the mark (signum) of this is, that man should not commit any sin barring his participation in this beatitude, in order to free his neighbour from sin.... But one should love his neighbour’s salvation more than his own body.”[612]
We may love some of our neighbours more than others; for those bound to us by natural ties and proximity can be loved more and in more actual ways. The order and grades of love will endure when our natures are perfected in glory.
Love (caritas) is the supreme theological virtue. It comes to us in this life through grace; it can be perfected only when grace is consummated in glory. Likewise the highest knowledge possible in this life comes through grace, to be perfected in glory. All is from God, and that which, of all the rest, seems most freely given is the divine influence disposing the intelligence and will toward good, and illuminating these best God-given faculties. This, as par excellence, through the exceeding bounty of its free bestowal, is called gratia (grace). It is a certain habitual disposition of the soul; it is not the same as virtus, but a divinely implanted disposition, in which the virtues must be rooted; it is the imparted similitude of the divine nature, and perfects the nature of the soul, so far as that has part in likeness to the divine: it is the medial state between nature and that further consummation of the grace-illumined nature, which is glory; and so it is the beginning, the inchoatio, of our glorified beatitude. Clearly, grace is no part of our inborn nature, and does not belong to our natural faculties. It is a divinely bestowed increment, directing our natural faculties toward God and uplifting them to higher capacities of knowing and loving.
To follow Thomas’s exposition of grace a little more closely:[613] man, through his natural powers, may know truth, but not the highest; and without grace, our fallen nature cannot will all the good belonging to it (connaturale), nor love God above all else, nor merit eternal life. “Grace is something supernatural in man coming from God.” It
“is not the same as virtue; and its subject (i.e. its possessor, that in which it is set) cannot be a faculty (potentia) of the soul; for the soul’s faculties, as perfected, are conceived to be virtues. Grace, which is prior to virtue, is set, not in the faculties, but in the essence of the soul. Thus, as through his faculty of knowing (potentiam intellectivam), man shares the divine knowledge by the virtue of faith, and through the faculty of will shares the divine love by the virtue of caritas, so by means of a certain similitude he shares in the divine nature through some regeneration or recreation” (Pars I. ii., Qu. cx. Art. 4).
Grace may be conceived either as “divine aid, moving us to willing and doing right, or as a formative and abiding (habituale) gift, divinely placed in us” (Qu. cxi. Art. 2). “The gift of grace exceeds the power of any created nature; and is nothing else than a sharing (participatio) of the divine nature” (Qu. cxii. Art. 1).