Out of Egypt:

Thomas Aquinas, relative good, and the love of God

Thomas Aquinas may have been the greatest Christian moral philosopher.

Why do I say that? Here are just two passages (which I found while writing about the public school issue, but which were not the one I was looking for):

Now the good of man is of two kinds, absolute and relative. The good of man which is absolute is his final end, according to Ps. 73:28, "It is good for me to draw near unto God," together with all that is ordained to lead him to it...The good of man which is relative, and not absolute, is what is good for him at the present time, or what is good for him in certain circumstances. (Nature and Grace, Q. 114, Art. 10

We who are Calvinists are strong on absolute good - "What is the chief end of man?" But I appreciate the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms, because it enables us to pursue relative goods with a clear conscience, knowing that in so doing we are fulfilling the commandment to love our neighbors.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must say that the parenthesis in my quote above is hiding Thomas' statement that absolute good is merited, since it is through "virtuous works" that "we are brought to eternal life." But a great moral philosopher is not necessarily a great theologian. If Thomas had a stronger doctrine of predestination, he would have been able to see that God's saving action does not have ultimate reference to virtuous works, though it would be unjust (and thus impossible) for God to grant eternal life to those whom He did not make righteous. God is the One who "calls the things that are not as those they were," in the words of the Apostle Paul, and thus creates virtue in us without reference to any prior disposition of virtue on our part.

That being said, Thomas approached the true doctrines of grace at points, such as in his discussion of divine love.

As the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii. 4), to love is to wish good to someone. Hence the movement of love has a twofold tendency: towards the good which a man wishes to someone - to himself or to another - and towards that [one] to [whom] he wishes some good. Accordingly, man has love of concupisicence [desire] towards the good that he wishes to another, and love of friendship, towards him to whom he wishes good.
Now the members of this division are related as primary and secondary: since that which is loved with the love of friendship is loved simply and for itself; whereas that which is loved with the concupiscence, is loved, not simply and for itself, but for something else. For just as that which has existence, is a being simply, while that which exists in another is a relative being; so, because good is convertible with being, the good, which itself has goodness, is good simply; but that which is another's good, is a relative good. Consequently the love with which a thing is loved, that it may have some good, is love simply; while the love, with which a thing is loved, that it may be another's good [or the good of the one who loves - ead] , is relative love... (Ethics I-II, 26, 4)

Now I believe the translation does us a disservice here because both concupiscence and desire are such loaded terms that is hard to think of a Christian moral philosopher called this kind of love a "relative good." But I believe that which Thomas is alluding to here is really the distinction between eros and agape which Anders Nygren describes in his book by that title. Eros, as the Greeks spoke of it, was not evil - in fact, it was the highest good to which humans could attain. The Neo-Platonic philosopher made it the very pathway to God. It was only with the coming of the Christian revelation - that "while we still sinners, Christ loved us" - that philosophers could put eros in its rightful place as a servant to agape.

For God, as I would say in light of Thomas' distinction here, is the perfect Friend, who loves us not for the good that we are in ourselves (in our fallen state) but for the good that we will become by His grace, that "we might be to the praise of His glory."

Martin Luther is particularly good on this point in his Treatise on Christian Liberty:

The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the Soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage - indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage - it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The Soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them, and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

Thus we see that righteousness for Luther is not merely something external, which God by a "legal fiction" (in the sneering phrase used by some Catholics) deigns to see in believers (and thus tolerates their unrighteousness), but something which is living and active within the soul of the believer, by virtue of the believer's union with Christ. The courtroom analogy of the substitutionary atonement is necessary to show that salvation is unmerited (that God does not first constitute the soul as virtuous, and then love it, but, rather, the reverse). Yet the courtroom analogy is not a sufficient account of salvation (or even of the substitutionary atonement) in itself. We need more preaching of the bridegroom analogy - not just with reference to the Church as a whole, but with reference to individual believers. Only then will we come close to plumbing the depths of God's love, and do justice to God's character as the perfect Friend, who loves simply because He wishes us good, not because there is any good which we could possibly bestow upon Him. It is only in the person of Christ, being both perfect God and perfect man, that God has love of desire, since Christ endured the Cross for the sake of the "joy set before Him, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."

And thus, in the wisdom of the divine economy, God is the ultimate example of both forms of love which Thomas describes. Insofar as He is divine, God's love is perfectly self-giving, since it is secondarily directed toward our glorification, and yet perfectly just, since it is primarily directed toward the highest good, which is His glory. Insofar as Christ is human, God's love is the perfect love of desire, since it is secondarily directed toward the highest of relative goods, the enjoyment of perfect communion with the saints ("that He might be the firstborn among many brethren"), and primarily directed toward the highest of absolute goods, the enjoyment of perfect communion with God ("that in all things He might have the pre-eminence", yet in the end "the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all").

Now to "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see...be honor and everlasting power. Amen." (1 Tim. 6:15-16)