Part 1: God's love for all things, and whether He loves them equally (Q.20, a.2–3)

Orientation #

He opens: “we’re up to question twenty, article two, whether God loves all things.” He refers back to a time “long ago when we had the dialectic about the good” and to “one time in the past” when the class went through the treatise on love in the Prima Secundae. The previous class read q. 20 a. 1 on whether love belongs to God; the next continues with a. 4 and begins the question on divine justice and mercy.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, the objections (“It seems that God does not love all things”) #

He reads the four objections, glossing each.

• Obj. 1 (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4): love puts the lover outside himself, transfers him into the beloved; unsuitable for God. He notes this is ecstasy, one of the effects of love treated in the treatise on love.
• Obj. 2: God’s love is eternal; other things are not from eternity except in God; so God loves them only as in himself, where they are nothing other than him. He flags this as sounding like “some modern philosopher”: all you know is “these motion pictures in your head.”
• Obj. 3: twofold love, amor concupiscentiae (love of wanting) and amor amicitiae (love of friendship, better “love of wishing well”). God cannot love irrational creatures by wanting (he has no need) nor by friendship (Aristotle: friendship cannot be had toward irrational things).
• Obj. 4 (Psalm 5): “You hate all those who do iniquity”; nothing is at once hated and loved.
• Sed contra (Wisdom 11): “You love all the things which are, and you hate none of those which you have made.”

2. Digression on the two loves (“love has in a way two objects”) #

The point: love has two objects, the one to whom you wish good and the good you wish him.

• Thomas begins the treatise on love by quoting the Philosopher: to love somebody is to want good things for that person.
• Love of wanting is for the good you wish (for yourself or another); love of wishing well is for the one to whom you want the good to come.
• Candy or a book: only the love of wanting. Yourself: only the love of wishing well. Another person: the ambiguity — is he merely the good you want for yourself (love of wanting), or do you wish him well (love of friendship)?
• “Love your neighbor as yourself” does not mean as much as yourself but by the same kind of love, wishing well.
• Wine, “Thomas’s favorite example”: I don’t want the wine to spoil, but I wish well not to the wine but to me; consuming it is for my good, “if I do it in moderation.”

3. Body of Article 2: God loves all things (“God loves all things existing”) #

1. All things, insofar as they are, are good: the being of each thing is a good, and likewise each perfection of it. His supporting reasons: the good is what all want, and everything tries to preserve its existence; or, from God as “I am who am” and goodness itself, other things are good insofar as they are like God. Aside on the bad: the bad is a kind of non-being, the lack of what one is able to have and should have; Augustine “kind of exaggerates” in saying sin is nothing and the sinner becomes nothing.
2. God’s will is the cause of all things (shown above); so whatever has being or good has it insofar as it is willed by God.
3. To each existing thing God wills some good, at least existence.
4. To love is nothing other than to wish good to someone (Aristotle: amare est velle bonum alicui) — the double object again. Conclusion: God loves all the things which are.

4. The “very important distinction”: our love vs. God’s (“our will is not the cause of the goodness”) #

Our will is not the cause of the goodness of things but is moved by it as by an object; the good we wish someone presupposes their goodness (true or supposed), which provokes the love; God’s love pours in and creates the goodness in things.

• He recalls the Prima Secundae treatise on love: three questions — nature and kinds of love, causes of love (good, likeness, knowledge as causes), effects of love. There the good is a cause of love, but that is the love of the creature; in God it is the reverse.
• The old “dialectic about the good”: Socrates asks a boy what is good; the boy gives examples (candy, pizza, baseball, vacation); Socrates objects that these are examples, not a definition, as with Meno, Euthyphro, Theaetetus; a definition of man vs. pointing to men, of circle vs. pointing to circular things. The way from examples to definition: compare them, keep what is common, drop the differences — the boy would arrive at “these are the things I want,” Aristotle’s first definition at the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics: the good is what all want.
• Then the Socratic question of before and after, cause and effect, from the Euthyphro: is it pious because the gods approve it, or approved because pious? Augustine (he thinks in De Vera Religione) on “the beautiful is that which pleases when seen”: it pleases my eyes because it is beautiful — a definition by effect, where we naturally start because the effect is more known.
• Applied: is it good because I want it, or wanted because good? If the former, “we’d be like God.” Am I good because God loves me, or loved because good? If God loved me because I am good I would be the cause of God’s love, and since God is love, the cause of God — presumptuous; equally presumptuous to say my willing makes something good.
• St. Bernard of Clairvaux: the reason for loving God is God. But I am not the reason for God loving me; his love is the reason I am and any good is in me.
• Shakespeare: reason is “a large discourse, looking before and after”; the counting sense of before and after is cause before effect. “Never ever forget that”: in us, I love because it is good; in God’s love of creatures, it is good because he loves.

5. Reply to Obj. 1: ecstasy (“outside himself, translated or carried over”) #

The lover comes to be outside himself insofar as he wills good to the beloved and acts by providence for him as for himself — not in a spatial or “too material” sense.

• Loving the neighbor as yourself: you wish him good as if he were yourself, so you seem to have gone out into him.
• Greek proverb Aristotle quotes: ho philos estin allos autos, a friend is another self; Shakespeare’s “second self.”
• Dionysius’s own words: one ought to dare to say that the cause of all, through the abundance of his loving goodness, comes to be outside himself, providing for all things. Aside on “sweet” as a metaphor for God (commentary on the Psalms, “how sweet is the Lord”): three notes of the sweet — pleasant, restful, refreshing; the beautiful shares all three (pleases when seen; “how restful it is here”; “a sight for sore eyes”), so Shakespeare can say “your sweet form”; likewise “sweetheart”: we rest in the hearts of those who love us and are restless under those who hate us.

6. Reply to Obj. 2: things known in their own natures (“known eternally by God in their own natures”) #

Though creatures from eternity were only in God, by that very fact they are known and loved eternally in their own natures, as we, through likenesses in us, know things existing in themselves: I know my image of you, but through it I know you out there.

• Student aside: a modern author [name unclear in recording] says we know only images in our head and justifies it from St. Thomas; he “put him with the moderns,” especially Berkeley.

7. Reply to Obj. 3: friendship only toward rational creatures (“friendship is not able to be had”) #

Friendship requires (a) love in return (redamatio), (b) community in the doings of life, (c) that good or bad fortune and happiness can befall the other — to such, properly, there is benevolentia. Irrational creatures cannot love God back or share the blessed life; so God loves them not by friendship but “as it were” by the love of wanting: insofar as he orders them to rational creatures and to himself — not because he needs them (as I need food or wine), but on account of their goodness and our usefulness, and perhaps the perfection of the universe.

• St. Francis de Sales’ treatise on love treats benevolentia as an integral part of love.

8. Reply to Obj. 4: sinners loved and hated (“loved and by something to be had in hate”) #

One and the same thing can be loved in one respect and hated in another: God loves sinners as natures (which are and are from him), hates them as sinners (falling short from being, which is from them, not from God). Asked whether “hate” is said of God properly or metaphorically, the class answers metaphorically — something else more, like what moves him to punish.

9. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“Whether God equally loves all things”) #

He announces the need of a distinction, quipping “friend in need is a friend indeed.”

• Obj. 1 (Wisdom 6): “equally is there care for him about all things”; providence proceeds from love; so he loves all equally. He signals a part of truth here, to be sorted by the distinction.
• Obj. 2: God’s love is his essence (John: God is love); the essence does not receive more and less (“is he more God today?”); so neither his love.
• Obj. 3: knowledge and will extend to created things as love does, yet God is not said to know or will some things more; “kind of interesting.”
• Sed contra (Augustine, Homilies on John): God loves all he has made, rational creatures more, members of his only-begotten more still (the mystical body), and much more the Son himself. He adds St. Alphonsus: God loves Mary more than all the rest of us together.

10. Body of Article 3: two ways of loving more (“it is possible that one is loved more or less”) #

Since to love is to will good to someone, “more” can be taken two ways:

• A. On the side of the act of will, more or less intense: here God does not love some more, because he loves all by one simple act of will that is always the same.
• B. On the side of the good willed: we love more the one to whom we will a greater good, even without more intense willing; here God must love some more, for since his love causes goodness, one thing would not be better than another unless he willed it a greater good.
• Does God love Thomas Aquinas more than us? He wills him a greater mind, so yes in sense B; but not more intensely.
• Student: God loves us before or after? — His love is eternal, one and the same act; but he can will many goods, and a greater good to you than to me. Student: “because of your worth”? — “No,” because it is his love that makes you good.
• Grading example: I may will a lesser good to my children than to someone else but more intensely; as a professor I give a B, with more intensity of love, to a student I like, and an A to the deserving one — a question of justice; I couldn’t put my grandchildren in charge of Iraq.

11. Replies of Article 3 (“not because He dispenses equal goods to all”) #

• Ad 1: God has equal care of all not by dispensing equal goods but by administering all from an equal wisdom and goodness.
• Ad 2 (“very important” for the body’s distinction): the argument holds of intensity, which is the divine essence; but the good God wills the creature is not the divine essence, so it can be more or less. God does not love the greatest saint more intensely than the least, but wills him a greater good — ultimately greater enjoyment.
• Student contrast: our love follows the act (a mother loves the son who does good, prefers the brother who is better); God’s does not.
• Parent example: you will the neighbor’s child not to be hit by a car just as your own, but you will it more intensely for your own and are more saddened; in God no such difference, because his love is his substance.
• Aside: one reason there is no envy in heaven — God loves you as intensely as the apostles, though he willed them a greater good.
• Ad 3: “to understand” and “to will” name only acts, without including the object from whose diversity one could say “more”; “to love” brings in the object, the good willed to someone, which can be greater or lesser. He notes the “interesting difference”: willing is more abstract, naming just the act; love explicitly brings in the object.

His words #

• ecstasy: being outside yourself; one of the effects of love in the treatise on love.
• amor concupiscentiae: “the love of wanting.”
• amor amicitiae: love of friendship, “better maybe… the love of wishing well.”
• the good is what all want: Aristotle’s first definition of the good; “the original definition.”
• the bad: a kind of non-being, the lack of what one is able to have and should have.
• amare est velle bonum alicui: to love is to will good to someone.
• before and after: cause before effect; the Socratic question of which is cause and which effect.
• ho philos estin allos autos: a friend is another self.
• sweet: pleasant, restful, refreshing; metaphor for the beautiful and for God.
• redamatio: love in return.
• benevolentia: wishing well.
• intent / remiss: more or less intense love, on the side of the act.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 20, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–4)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 20, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–3)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 (as quoted in the article)
• Wisdom 11 and Wisdom 6; Psalm 5 (as quoted)
• Augustine, Homilies on John (sed contra of a. 3)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, treatise on love, Prima Secundae (three questions: nature/kinds, causes, effects)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, opening (the good is what all want); Aristotle on friendship toward irrational things
• Plato, Euthyphro (also Meno, Theaetetus)
• Augustine, De Vera Religione (the beautiful; “I think”)
• Bernard of Clairvaux: the reason for loving God is God
• Shakespeare: “looking before and after”; “second self”; “your sweet form”
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Psalms (on “how sweet is the Lord”)
• Francis de Sales, treatise on love (benevolentia)
• St. Alphonsus (God loves Mary more than all the rest)
• 1 John, “God is love” (attribution hesitated over: “Who is it? Saint John”)
• Berkeley and a modern author [unclear in recording]

His questions #

• Is it good because we want it, or do we want it because it is good? We want it because it is good; the reverse would make us like God.
• Am I good because God loves me, or does God love me because I am good? Good because he loves me; otherwise I’d be the cause of God’s love, and so of God.
• Is “hate” said of God properly or metaphorically? Metaphorically.
• Does God love Thomas Aquinas more than us? Yes, in that he wills him a greater good (a greater mind), not more intensely.
• Does God love us before or after? Eternally, by one and the same act.
• Do I love more the student I gave the A than the one I gave the B? No — I gave the B with more intensity of love, but a better grade to the other.
• Why do we say God loves some more, but not that he knows or wills some more? Because “love” includes the object, the good willed, which can be greater or lesser.