Whether We Should Love Charity Out of Charity?
Objection 1: It would seem that charity need not be loved out of
charity. For the things to be loved out of charity are contained in
the two precepts of charity (Matt. 22:37-39): and neither of them
includes charity, since charity is neither God nor our neighbor.
Therefore charity need not be loved out of charity.
Obj. 2: Further, charity is founded on the fellowship of happiness,
as stated above (Q. 23, A. 1). But charity cannot participate in
happiness. Therefore charity need not be loved out of charity.
Obj. 3: Further, charity is a kind of friendship, as stated above
(Q. 23, A. 1). But no man can have friendship for charity or for an
accident, since such things cannot return love for love, which is
essential to friendship, as stated in _Ethic._ viii. Therefore
charity need not be loved out of charity.
_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (De Trin. viii, 8): "He that loves
his neighbor, must, in consequence, love love itself." But we love
our neighbor out of charity. Therefore it follows that charity also
is loved out of charity.
_I answer that,_ Charity is love. Now love, by reason of the nature
of the power whose act it is, is capable of reflecting on itself; for
since the object of the will is the universal good, whatever has the
aspect of good, can be the object of an act of the will: and since to
will is itself a good, man can will himself to will. Even so the
intellect, whose object is the true, understands that it understands,
because this again is something true. Love, however, even by reason
of its own species, is capable of reflecting on itself, because it is
a spontaneous movement of the lover towards the beloved, wherefore
from the moment a man loves, he loves himself to love.
Yet charity is not love simply, but has the nature of friendship, as
stated above (Q. 23, A. 1). Now by friendship a thing is loved in two
ways: first, as the friend for whom we have friendship, and to whom
we wish good things: secondly, as the good which we wish to a friend.
It is in the latter and not in the former way that charity is loved
out of charity, because charity is the good which we desire for all
those whom we love out of charity. The same applies to happiness, and
to the other virtues.
Reply Obj. 1: God and our neighbor are those with whom we are
friends, but love of them includes the loving of charity, since we
love both God and our neighbor, in so far as we love ourselves and
our neighbor to love God, and this is to love charity.
Reply Obj. 2: Charity is itself the fellowship of the spiritual life,
whereby we arrive at happiness: hence it is loved as the good which
we desire for all whom we love out of charity.
Reply Obj. 3: This argument considers friendship as referred to those
with whom we are friends.
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