Why should there be an order of charity, when none of the other virtues, including faith, seem to have an ordering of what is prior to what is posterior among their objects?

St. Thomas replies that, as we have already seen, God is the principal object of charity, because he alone causes beatitude, the sharing of which is the basis for the friendship of charity. Hence, all the other objects of charity must be subordinated to God and in some way related to him qua objects of charity.

In reply to the objection, St. Thomas says that there is indeed an order in faith, but adds that such order is more appropriate in the case of charity becaue "charity tends to the ultimate end qua ultimate end," which makes it special. In addition, appetites are ordered to the things themselves (rather than to the things qua known), but it is precisely among things themselves that an ordering is found. So it is more appropriate for there to be an order of charity than an order of faith, even though there is in fact an order of faith as well. 
  
 

The answer to this question is in some way obvious, but the objections are interesting. 1 John tells us that we cannot love God, whom we do not see, without loving our neighbor, whom we do see, and this seems to imply that what is seen is more lovable than what is not seen. Again, we have more in common with our neighbor than with God, and so it seems that our friendship with our neighbor should accordingly be greater. Finally, if it is God's existing in our neighbor that we love in our neighbor, then since God doesn't exist any more in himself than he does in our neighbor, it's hard to see why we should love him more than our neighbor.

The sed contra, needless (almost) to say, quotes Jesus to the effect that we cannot be his disciples if we love father or mother or wife or children or brothers or sisters more than him. So, it seems, it is possible to love our neighbor in a disordered way that leads us away from God.

Here St. Thomas fills in a bit more the picture of charity as friendship. Every friendship is based on a shared good, and so it is a friendship principally with the one in whom that good is principally found. For instance, political friendship is principally a friendship with the political leaders on whom the common good of the community principally depends, and so the leaders are the ones to whom the faith and obedience of the citizens is principally given. So first we identify the shared good which founds the friendship, and then we identify the person or persons who have that good principally or on whom that good is mainly dependent, and it is that person (or those persons) to whom we bear that sort of friendship in the first place. After that, to carry on the example, we bear friendship to our fellow citizens as fellow participants in the common good which depends principally on the leaders. (Try to extend this analogy to more democratic political arrangements, as well as to familial relations.)

"Now the friendship of charity is based on the sharing of beatitude, which consists essentially in God as its first principle, from whom it devolves to all those who are capable of beatitude. And so it is principally God who is to be loved out of charity, and we love our neighbors as participants with us in this shared good that depends mainly on God." In other words, in charity our first allegiance is to God, and we pledge our allegiance to others insofar as they share in the good upon which charity is based.

In reply to the first objection, St. Thomas points out that there are two sorts of causes of the act of love (dilectio). One is the thing which is the ratio diligendi, i.e., the formal reason or good, which is the final cause of the love. The second is the path according to which the love of that good is acquired. This is vision in a broad sense. It follows that it is not necessary that what is more seen is more lovable; rather, what is more seen is the first thing that leads us to love the good in question, and so if we do not begin by loving our neighbor, we cannot love God. Still God is more lovable because of his greater goodness, i.e., greater goodness to us. (This last clarification seems important. Witness Dave Gallagher: "If there were per impossibile another God who was not the creator [and redeemer] of me, I would not honor him as I do my God," since he would not be my benefactor, at least not in the same way.)

In reply to second objection, St. Thomas claims simply that our similarity to God is prior to and the cause of our similarity to our neighbor.

In reply to the third objection, St. Thomas concedes that God is equally in anything that he is in, but asserts plausibly that God has more goodness in himself than our neighbor has in virtue of his participating in God's goodness. 
  
 

Here we get to a central question about how to understand self-love and the possibility of loving someone not only as we love ourselves but more than we love ourselves.

The objections help us to get to the nub of the problem. First, Aristotle's dictum that friends are other selves implies that we are friends with ourselves first and that the degree of our love for ourselves is the measure of the degree to which we can love others. The objection concludes that we love ourselves more than anyone else, but perhaps it shows only that we can't love anyone more than ourselves. In either case, it seems potent in the present context.

The second objection is this: Each thing is loved to the extent that it is one's own good, and it follows that the reason for which something is loved (i.e., one's own good or oneself) is loved more than that which is loved for that reason (God).

The third objection is that one loves enjoying God to the extent that one loves Him. But one loves enjoying God to the extent that one loves himself, since the enjoyment of God is the highest good one can will for himself.

The sed contra quotes Augustine: "If you should love yourself, not for your own sake, but for the sake of Him in Whom lies the most correct end of your love, let no one take offense if you love him, too, for God's sake."

St. Thomas's strategy here is to point out that even in the natural order we are capable of loving God more than ourselves. We receive from God both the good of nature (whereby we are related to God as creature to creator) and the good of grace (whereby we are related to God as child to Father and as friend to friend in that sense). Our natural love for God is founded upon our having being of the type defined by our nature or natural kind, by which we naturally love (or should love) God more than ourselves, since we are naturally inclined to love the common good of the whole more than our own private good. St. Thomas uses as an example civic virtues, by which citizens sometimes sustain suffering and loss with regard to their private or personal good for the sake of the common good. I think the way to read this is as follows: In our post-lapsarian state we obviously have very strong selfish inclinations, but we also have as part of our nature an inclination to love the common good, and in our heart of hearts--especially if we've been well brought up--we know that a meaningful life involves self-transcendence, as difficult as that might be. (This is an interesting bit of philosophical anthropology, which (to my mind) rings more true than others which either overestimate our 'natural' selfishness (Callicles, Hobbes) or underestimate it (Hume). Question: What of Plato and Aristotle?)

At any rate, the same holds in spades for the supernatural order. (Think of Christ's sacrifice.) Charity is grounded in the gifts of grace, through which we share even now in beatitude. But God is the common good of all, and so is more worthy of my love than I am as an individual over against the whole.

As for Aristotle's point, the friends he is talking about only participate in the good that grounds the friendship, whereas God is the totality of goodness.

Reply to second objection [you have a bad translation]: "The part does indeed love the good of the whole insofar as that good is fitting for itself; however, it does this not in such a way as to relate the good of the whole to itself, but rather in such a way as to relate itself to the good of the whole." The point seems to be this: I see it as fitting for myself that I should prefer the good of the whole to any personal advantage of mine that might conflict with it. In other words, I will as something good for myself that I should will the common good--in the case of charity, the highest common good--and thereby find meaning in my life by relating myself to the whole that transcends me. Maybe the language of self-definition would be appropriate here: I define myself, my life-project, and my goal in terms of the whole rather than define the whole in terms of my own private advantage. (Michael Jordan is an interesting example here.) At any rate, the reply to the next objection fills in this picture.

Reply to the third objection: "The fact that someone wills to enjoy God has to do with that love by which God is loved with a love of concupiscence. But we love God with the love of friendship more than with the love of concupiscence, because God's goodness is greater in himself than in the share we can have of it in enjoying Him. And so a human being, absolutely speaking, loves God out of charity more than he loves himself." This is really interesting. In other words, we love God as our friend with more intensity than the intensity with which we desire the enjoyment of God for ourselves. The saints sometimes express this in almost paradoxical ways. For example, St. Josemaria Escriva in one place makes the startling point that we must be detached, in our love for God, even from our own quest for beatitude: "So much do I love your will, my God, that I wouldn't accept heaven itself against your will--if such an absurdity could be" (The Way, #765). Think about that one! 
  
 

Here we have to make two distinctions: 
 

• The first one, invoked by St. Thomas in the body of the question, is between loving ourselves with respect to our spiritual natures and loving ourselves with respect to our bodily natures. In this question we are concerned with the former. (This is important, because we might well love our neighbors more than our own bodies, but we cannot love our neighbors enough to "sacrifice" our souls for their good--even their true good--by sinning.)

 
• The second distinction, hinted at in the reply to the first objection and more developed later, is between two diverse measures of the quantity of our love, viz., the goodness of the loved one and the intensity of our love:

 
• On the part of the object: I love person P more to the extent that I will a greater good to P. The general rule is that, all other things being equal, I should will a greater good to those persons who are better, either absolutely or in some respect.

 
• On the part of the subject: I love person P more to the extent that my love for P is more intense, i.e., to the extent that I will more intensely the good that I will to P. The general rule is that, all other things being equal, I should love more intensely those who are more closely united to me, i.e., those who are such that (roughly) the shared goods that ground my friendship with them are more important. (This raises the questions of how charity, which extends to all neighbors, can integrate those natural friendships we find ourselves in or which we choose to be involved in.)

In these articles in which we talk about the order of charity, we are normally talking about intensity of love. But it is important to notice that there is an order of charity within each species of friendship (e.g., we love our siblings more intensely than our first cousins) and, in addition, when we bear different species of friendship to the same person, we may have to distinguish the domains over which the friendship ranges. For instance, suppose per impossibile that one of my children took a course from me. In regard to family matters, I would love them more than the other students in the class, but not as students and in the various relationships they would enter into with me as such (e.g., gradee to grader, fulfillers of what I assign them to do, etc.).

Now back to the question at hand. I love my neighbor because he or she is an (actual or potential) associate with me in sharing eternal beatitude. But I love myself directly as a participator in that good, and that love is greater. "A sign of this is that one ought not to commit a sin .... in order to free his neighbor from sin." So there are limits to what I should be willing to sacrifice for the beatitude of others, but there are no limits on what I should be willing to sacrifice for my own eternal beatitude. Since my sin is contrary to my beatitude, I should not commit it--even though we can imagine cases in which my sin might actually promote the beatitude or holiness of my neighbor. [I'm trying to persuade you, a notorious cheater, to go to confession, which you haven't done for fifteen years. You promise me that you will go if I help you cheat this one last time. I help you. You go to confession and experience true repentance, deciding on the spot to devote your entire life to God, beginning with a special apostolate to all your cheating friends. You go on to do great things for God, etc. Question: Did I do a good thing? Answer: NO.]  
  
 

Our friendship in charity with others is founded on beatitude, and they can actually participate in beatitude. Our bodies, by contrast, share in happiness only by "redundancy," i.e., the happiness of our soul spills over into our body. But participation is more powerful reason for loving than is redundancy. So I ought to love my neighbor more than my own body. 

The reply to the third objection notes that I do not normally have "imminent care" for every neighbor's welfare, and it is only in cases where I am obligated to care for their welfare that I should imperil my own body for them. Still, to do this spontaneously is a sign of perfection in love. Here St. Thomas makes a distinction between what charity obliges me to do, and what goes beyond what it obliges me to do. This raises the interesting question of whether the category of the supererogatory properly applies here. I'll let it go at that for now. 
  
 

Here we need the second distinction I laid out above. St. Thomas first disowns the view that out of charity we must love everyone equally with respect to affect (presumably, with equally intense benevolence) but not with respect to effect (presumably, with equal beneficence). This is stupid (irrationalibiter dicitur), he says. Supernatural affection, like natural affection, varies with things to be done externally, and those things vary because of our different relationships with different people.

So even with respect to affect, we should love one neighbor more than another. The two principles involved are the objective (goodness) and subjective (intensity). I should will beatitude for everyone (though the next article will allow for grades even here). Again, I should will good more intensely for those who are closer to me.

Alternatively, some I will have beneficence (good deeds) for and others not, since I cannot benefit everyone. (The doctrine of the communion of saints raises some interesting questions here.)

Corollary: To love my neighbor as myself does not entail loving every neighbor equally. But I must love each neighbor (a) with genuine friendship, (b) in a way that respects the priority of spiritual goods over bodily goods and external goods, (c) in a way that is holy, i.e., ordered to God, and (d) in a way that is appropriately efficacious and dynamic. In another place, St. Thomas identifies love of neighbor of this sort as satisfying the precept of love and as being necessary for salvation. (Perfection involves greater intensity of love, greater extension of love, and greater works of love than are required by precept--see De Perfectione Spiritualis Vitae, chap. 14.)  
  
 

Here we see that we should, out of charity, love more those who are closer to God in the sense that we will them a degree of beatitude proportionate to their goodness (i.e., degree of charity). 

However, it does not follow that we should love them more intensely than those who are closer to us. Indeed, St. Thomas points out that it's alright--and not incompatible with divine justice--to will a greater degree of beatitude for someone who is closely united with us than for someone who might be objectively better than that person. "Some neighbors are closer to us with respect to natural origin, from which there is no escape, since through natural origin we are what we are. On the other hand, the goodness of virtue--according to which people are close to God--can come and go, increase and decrease, as was said above. And so I can out of charity will that someone who is joined to me should be better than another and so be able to attain a greater degree of beatitude." 

St. Thomas also points out that we love those closer to us more in the sense that we love them in more ways. To those who are not joined to us by some special relationship we bear just the friendship of charity, whereas to others we bear other types of friendship as well. Then he adds: "Since the good on which any other type of genuine (honesta) friendship is based is ordered to the good on which charity is based, it follows that charity commands the act of each of the other friendships."  
  
 

St. Thomas first summarizes art. 7 by repeating that out of charity we do (and should) love those who are conjoined to us more intensely and in more ways than those who are not so conjoined. For, as he puts it, "The intensity of love arises from the conjoining of loved to lover, and so the love of different people is to be measured by the different modes of such union (conjunctio)--so that, namely, each person is loved more in those things that pertain to that particular type of union in accord with which he is loved." The next few articles explore common modes of union and how they are ordered with respect to one another.

This article begins to explore familial friendships, which are based upon the union of natural origin. The general principle to be followed is this: In those things which pertain to the sort of relationship in question, we ought to love more intensely those who are conjoined to us in the relevant way. So, for instance, in matters of family, we love our relatives, especially our close ones, more intensely, but in matters of profession, we love those who are associated with us in that profession more intensely.

One problem is to order these different types of friendships: "It is clear that the union of natural origin is prior and unchanging, since it has to do with pertains to our very substance, whereas other types of union are supervenient and can be dissolved. And so the friendship of relatives is more stable, even though other friendships can be stronger in those matters that pertain to them."

The replies to the objections make it clear that familial relations take priority especially in providing the necessities of life for family members, whereas other types of friendship, especially friendship based on spiritual union, may take priority in matters that pertain to them.  
  
 

The next three articles ask about the order of love within familial relations and, in general, about the love one should have for one's benefactors and for those to whom one is a benefactor. Note the general principle that benefactors (including parents) are to be loved more in the sense that they are closer to God by virtue of being our benefactors and that a greater good (honor) is willed for them, while those to whom one is a benefactor and for whom one has more responsibility (care) are to be loved more intensely. (This principle is, however, subject to degrees (see art. 12, ad 3), depending on just how great the benefits we receive are. For instance, one should love God and one's parents as benefactors more intensely than one loves just anyone to whom one does a kindness.)

A note on art. 10, where St. Thomas argues that one should love his father more than his mother. First of all, he qualifies his answer at the very beginning in this way: "In making such comparisons as this, we must take the answer in the strict sense, so that the present question is whether the father as father, ought to be loved more than the mother as mother. The reason is that virtue and vice may make such a difference in such like matters, that friendship may be diminished or destroyed, as the Philosopher remarks (Ethic. viii, 7)." Second, his answer is based on a mistaken biological belief about human origins, one in which the father (via his seed) is the sole active principle in generation and the mother is a merely passive principle. Given the same sort of argument and our knowledge that the mother (through the ovum) is just as active a principle, he would now conclude that mother and father, as such, should be loved with equal intensity.

In art. 11, St. Thomas argues in analogous fashion that while one owes greater honor to one's parents, spouses are to be loved more intensely.  
  
 

The order of charity persists in heaven in several respects. First and foremost, we will of course love God more than anyone else, ourselves included, in both of the relevant senses.

As for others, the distinction made above still applies. We will will degrees of happiness for each person according to his or her merits, and so in that sense we will love some more than ourselves and others less than ourselves. As for intensity, we will continue to love ourselves more than others. After this it gets a bit tricky (what follows is a loose translation): "Now as for the order of our neighbors with respect to one another, each of us will, absolutely speaking, love more intensely those who are better, in accord with the love of charity. For the whole beatified life consists in the ordering of our minds to God. Hence, the whole order of our love with respect to the blessed will be regulated by their relation to God--so that, namely, we will love more and consider closer to ourselves those who are closer to God. For there will no longer be the sort of providing (for others) that there is in the present life, where each, because of necessity, has to provide more for those who are close to him than for others. This is why, in the present live, out of charity we love those who are more closely conjoined to us and to whom we have a greater obligation to exhibit the effects of charity. Still, in heaven we will be able to love those who have been conjoined to us for more reasons, since the souls of the blessed will still remember the upright causes of their love. Yet that reason for love which arises from closeness to God will be incomparably preferred to all these other reasons."