STAGE 3. Next, Richard tries to establish that God can only charitably love an equal. He introduces this idea by raising the following objection: if God must direct his charitable love at a distinct person, then why couldn’t he direct his charitable love at a created person? That would satisfy T5 from the last post, so that should be enough to perfect God’s charitable disposition, right?
Richard says no. Perfect charity, he says, would be ‘disordered’ if it were directed at someone who didn’t deserve perfect charity. Perfect charity must be directed at an equal. Of course, God’s charity cannot be disordered, so God can only direct his charity at an equal. Here’s the quote:
‘For charity would be disordered if He [God] loved supremely someone who should not be supremely loved. But in that supremely wise goodness it is impossible for charity to be disordered. Therefore, a divine person could not have supreme charity toward a person who was not worthy of supreme love’.
Richard goes on. Since perfect charity is the best possible feature (see T3 above), charity will only be perfect if there’s nothing better than it. Now, if a person loved only themselves, then they wouldn’t be exercising their charity perfectly (see T5 above). But that wouldn’t be the best possible charity, for there could still be a better charity, namely someone who loved another. Here’s the quote:
‘in order that charity be . . . supremely perfect, it is necessary that it be so great that . . . nothing better can exist. However, as long as anyone loves no one else as much as he loves himself, that private love which he has for himself shows clearly that he has not yet reached the supreme level of charity’.
A key notion here is that perfect charity has to be directed at someone worthy of it.
(T6) For any person x, if x has a charitable disposition P, x is not perfect if x directs P at some person y, and y does not deserve it.
In the divine case, the charitable lover is the Father, and the Father is an awesomely perfect divine person. So the recipient of the Father’s charitable love must be at least as perfect as the Father himself, and the only sort of thing that perfect is a divine person. As Richard puts it:
‘But a divine person certainly would not have anyone to love as worthily as Himself if He did not have a person of equal worth. However a person who is not God would not be equal in worth to a divine person’.
Thus, since God is perfectly good, and being perfectly good requires having perfect charity, and since perfect charity requires loving another person who deserves it, and since the only thing that can deserve it would be another divine person, it follows that there is another divine person in God to whom the first can direct his charitable love towards.
‘Therefore, so that fullness of charity might have a place in that true Divinity, it is necessary that a divine person not lack a relationship with an equally worthy person, who is, for this reason, divine’.
And Q.E.D. There are at least two persons in God. Or at least, that’s what the argument is supposed to conclude up to this point. In the next post, I’ll raise some objections to the argument thus far.
Joseph: Yep! Thanks for that *slight* emendation.
Scott: good and interesting thoughts. I think you mean to say: suppose that something is an agent *only* if it is incommunicable. It may not suffice to be an agent that something exist and be incommunicable.
Suppose one thing the divine essence lacks is being an agent, and suppose that something is an agent if it exists and it is incommunicable. Next, suppose the divine essence is communicable, and so it fails to be an agent. Next, suppose ‘supreme love’ is aimed at the best being who is an agent. Hence, love for a divine person is yet better than love for the divine essence. I guess we’d have to take ‘love for the best agent’ as a primitive intuition.
Of course, if you love a divine person you also love the divine essence; contrariwise, if you love the divine essence you may not also love a divine person.
I realize the denial that the divine essence as such is an agent is not obvious or self-evident. I’m just trying to suggest why when we worship God the intentional content of our worship (what the worship is directed at) is primarily the divine persons and secondarily the divine essence. I doubt orthodox lay persons say, “nah, I don’t need to love the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; if I love the divine essence that’s enough.”
Can one love the divine essence but that love not be directed at some divine person? If so, then I think in the relevant sense of ‘love’, in which one can love only a person, one can’t love the divine essence. And if so, and if one can (in the same sense) love the divine essence (though one need not thereby love some divine person), then I think it is better to love a divine person than the divine essence, because love of a person is (all else equal) better in kind than love of a non-person.
Finally, the Father’s loving the Son needn’t be better than the Father’s loving the divine essence. They may be equally good or incomparable. But for all that, it may still be essential to being a divine person that one have caritas and so love of another person and also supreme caritas and so love of another divine person.
Your comments make me think of Ockham’s criticism of Richard’s argument: since God (= the divine essence) is the absolute best thing (and hence the most desirable thing to love), then how could any act of love be better than one directed at the divine essence? Even with divine inter-personal love: how could, say, the Father’s act of loving the Son be better than the Father’s act of loving the divine essence?
It seems to me there at least two arguments here. One employs a principle like this:
(1) The better or more worthy a person is the more we should love her. So if there is a supremely good or worthy person, then we should supremely love that person.
The other uses a principle like this:
(2) If someone loves himself more than he loves anyone else, then he doesn’t have supreme caritas (which at least involves a kind of interpersonal love, i.e. love of another person) towards anyone. So if God loves himself more than he loves anyone else, then God doesn’t have supreme caritas towards anyone.
I wonder: do folk think that (a) we should love some people more than we love others and (b) we should love God above all others? And if we do agree that we should love God above all, is the reason special to us or is it equally true that God should (and so does) love himself above all others?
As I recall, Aquinas has a discussion about whether God loves some more than he loves others and replies yes and no. There are degrees of love as to the intensity of desire and as to the goodness of the effect God creates. As to the intensity of desire, because God is simple the intensity is the same for all, so in this sense he loves us all the same. But as to goodness of the effect, because God is creator and causes all goodness in us, he causes some to be better than others, so in this sense he loves some more than he loves others.
It seems sometimes Richard uses only the word ‘charity’, when he should use the phrase ‘supreme charity’, as in the first quotation you have. Though, I suppose in the context, ‘charity’ is to be read as ‘supreme charity’. I don’t think Richard wants to deny that God can have caritas for created persons, only that God doesn’t have supreme caritas towards them.
Moreover, Richard could say that, though God doesn’t have supreme caritas towards created persons, he does have caritas for persons who don’t deserve it.
Perhaps, though, it’s hard to see how there could be a person who doesn’t deserve any caritas at all. So suppose we identify caritas with benevolence and understand this to be acting (or being disposed to act) for the well-being of the person for her own sake. It’s hard for me to see how there could be a person who doesn’t deserve that, but maybe I’m just wrong about this. Maybe, our enemies don’t deserve that. And yet we are commanded to love our enemies. In that case, we are commanded at least to have such benevolence towards those who don’t deserve it from us.
So it seems to me that (T6) may not be right. And anyway Richard doesn’t need (T6). All he needs is this:
(T6*) For any perfect person x, if x has supreme charity towards some person y, then y is worthy of supreme charity.
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