Whether Charity Is the Most Excellent of the Virtues?
Objection 1: It would seem that charity is not the most excellent of
the virtues. Because the higher power has the higher virtue even as
it has a higher operation. Now the intellect is higher than the will,
since it directs the will. Therefore, faith, which is in the
intellect, is more excellent than charity which is in the will.
Obj. 2: Further, the thing by which another works seems the less
excellent of the two, even as a servant, by whom his master works, is
beneath his master. Now "faith . . . worketh by charity," according
to Gal. 5:6. Therefore faith is more excellent than charity.
Obj. 3: Further, that which is by way of addition to another seems to
be the more perfect of the two. Now hope seems to be something
additional to charity: for the object of charity is good, whereas the
object of hope is an arduous good. Therefore hope is more excellent
than charity.
_On the contrary,_ It is written (1 Cor. 13:13): "The greater of
these is charity."
_I answer that,_ Since good, in human acts, depends on their being
regulated by the due rule, it must needs be that human virtue, which
is a principle of good acts, consists in attaining the rule of human
acts. Now the rule of human acts is twofold, as stated above (A. 3),
namely, human reason and God: yet God is the first rule, whereby,
even human reason must be regulated. Consequently the theological
virtues, which consist in attaining this first rule, since their
object is God, are more excellent than the moral, or the intellectual
virtues, which consist in attaining human reason: and it follows that
among the theological virtues themselves, the first place belongs to
that which attains God most.
Now that which is of itself always ranks before that which is by
another. But faith and hope attain God indeed in so far as we derive
from Him the knowledge of truth or the acquisition of good, whereas
charity attains God Himself that it may rest in Him, but not that
something may accrue to us from Him. Hence charity is more excellent
than faith or hope, and, consequently, than all the other virtues,
just as prudence, which by itself attains reason, is more excellent
than the other moral virtues, which attain reason in so far as it
appoints the mean in human operations or passions.
Reply Obj. 1: The operation of the intellect is completed by the
thing understood being in the intellectual subject, so that the
excellence of the intellectual operation is assessed according to the
measure of the intellect. On the other hand, the operation of the
will and of every appetitive power is completed in the tendency of
the appetite towards a thing as its term, wherefore the excellence of
the appetitive operation is gauged according to the thing which is
the object of the operation. Now those things which are beneath the
soul are more excellent in the soul than they are in themselves,
because a thing is contained according to the mode of the container
(De Causis xii). On the other hand, things that are above the soul,
are more excellent in themselves than they are in the soul.
Consequently it is better to know than to love the things that are
beneath us; for which reason the Philosopher gave the preference to
the intellectual virtues over the moral virtues (Ethic. x, 7, 8):
whereas the love of the things that are above us, especially of God,
ranks before the knowledge of such things. Therefore charity is more
excellent than faith.
Reply Obj. 2: Faith works by love, not instrumentally, as a master by
his servant, but as by its proper form: hence the argument does not
prove.
Reply Obj. 3: The same good is the object of charity and of hope: but
charity implies union with that good, whereas hope implies distance
therefrom. Hence charity does not regard that good as being arduous,
as hope does, since what is already united has not the character of
arduous: and this shows that charity is more perfect than hope.
_______________________