Before the disputeAlexander of Hales · Albert · Fishacre · Kilwardby
Empty on this page. Albert the Great stands in this band on the other cruxes of this edition, but he does not take up this question in his commentary on the distinction. Alexander of Hales, who would otherwise be here, cannot be printed at all: his Glossa was first published in 1951 and is in copyright, with no earlier edition to fall back to. Fishacre and Kilwardby are unread. Nothing here is a claim that these masters were silent.
ThomistThomas · Tarentaise · Capreolus · Denys
thomist · c. 1254 · Paris
To the fifth the procedure is as follows. It seems that charity is not to be loved out of charity. For only four things are to be loved out of charity, as will be said in Book III, distinction 27, sole question, article 5: namely God, neighbour, one's soul, one's body. But charity is none of these. Therefore and so on.
Likewise, no thing names itself, since whiteness is not called white. But the beloved is named from love. Therefore love is not loved, nor is charity loved by charity.
Further, as sense stands to sensing, so the affection stands to loving. But the proper sense does not sense itself sensing. Therefore neither does the affection love its own love. But charity is in the affection. Therefore charity is not loved out of charity.
Further, everything that is loved is loved by some love. If therefore the act of charity is loved, it must be loved by some other act, and that one on the same reasoning will have to be loved. Therefore in this way it is led into infinity, which is not to be posited. Therefore it seems that charity is not to be loved out of charity.
On the contrary is what is held in the letter, from the words of Augustine: whoever loves his neighbour, the consequence is that he should especially love love itself. But the neighbour is to be loved out of charity. Therefore charity also.
Likewise, the neighbour is not to be loved out of charity except inasmuch as he bears the image of God. But charity represents God more expressly than the natural image which is in the soul. Therefore it seems that charity is the more to be loved out of charity.
I answer that something is lovable in two ways: either as the ground of love, or as its object — just as colour is seen as the object, and light as the ground by which colour is actually visible. And just as colour and light are seen by the same act, so also by the same act is loved both what is loved as object and what is loved as the ground of the object. It is to be known, therefore, that charity can be taken in three ways: either for uncreated charity, which is the Holy Spirit; or for habitual charity; or for the act of charity. Now any of these is a ground of loving, and can be the object of love; just as we love our neighbour inasmuch as God indwells in him, and he has the habit of charity, and exercises the act; and so these are loved as the ground of what is lovable. But if they are considered in themselves, then they are still loved as the object of love. Yet the habit or act of charity is not loved in this way by the love of friendship or of benevolence, which cannot belong to inanimate things, as the Philosopher says, but by a love of a certain complacency, according as we are said to love that which we approve, and which we will to be.
To the first, therefore, it must be said that charity is in a certain way a medium between God and neighbour: because it is a likeness of God, and is also the ground of loving the neighbour himself; and therefore it follows upon the love of both.
To the second it must be said that naming is properly according to the relation of an accident to a subject; but the beloved is not named from love in that way, but rather as an object; and therefore the argument does not go through.
To the third it must be said that in material powers it happens that the power is not reflected upon its own act, on account of this, that it is determined according to the make-up of the organ. For a particular sight cannot know anything except that whose likeness can be spiritually received in the pupil; and therefore sight cannot comprehend its own act. But if this were necessary in all cases — that the act of any power should not be known by its own power but by a higher one — then it would follow either that among the powers of the soul one would go on to infinity, or that some act of the soul would remain imperceptible. And therefore it must be said that immaterial powers are reflected upon their own objects; because the intellect understands itself to understand, and likewise the will wills itself to will and to love. The reason for this is that the act of an immaterial power is not excluded from the character of its object. For the object of the will is the good; and it is under this character that the will loves everything it loves; and therefore it can love its own act inasmuch as it is good; and likewise it is on the side of the intellect. And on account of this it is said in the Book of Causes, proposition 15, that whatever thing's action returns into the essence of the agent by a certain reflection, its essence must return to itself, that is, be subsisting in itself, not carried over onto another, that is, not depending on matter.
To the fourth it must be said that the act of love, according as it tends towards another, plainly differs in number from the act of love which is loved in another, whether it be loved as object or as the ground of loving. But since a man can also love his own soul out of charity, he can also love the act of his own charity out of charity. And then a distinction must be made. For either the love is carried onto the proper act of love as onto the ground of love only; and so it is plain that by the numerically same act the lover and his act are loved, and thus the same act is loved through the act which is itself. Or it is loved as the object of love, and so the act of love which is loved and that by which it is loved are different in number; as appears more plainly in the act of the intellect. For since acts are distinguished by their objects, different acts must be said to be terminated at different objects. Whence, just as there are different acts by which the intellect understands a horse and a man, so there are acts different in number by which it understands a horse and by which it understands that act under the character of an act. Nor is it unfitting that in the acts of the soul one should go on to infinity in potency, provided the acts are not infinite in act. Whence Avicenna too grants that it is not impossible that the relations following upon an act of the soul should be multiplied to infinity.
Thomas answers by distinguishing charity taken three ways — uncreated, habitual, and as an act — and by separating the ground of love from its object, on the analogy of light and colour seen in one act. His sed contra quotes Lombard's own sentence out of the letter, so the Master supplies the argument for the affirmative in the very article that will not follow him. His fourth reply takes the regress the question invites and grants an infinity in potency while denying one in act. ⚠ The article's expositio textus, a further segment in the same source, is a running gloss on Lombard's letter rather than part of this disputed question, and is not built here; it bears on cruxes 1 and 6.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
thomist · c. 1460 · Roermond
Secondly it is asked whether charity is to be loved out of charity.
It seems that it is not. First, because according to Augustine in the book On Christian Doctrine there are four things to be loved out of charity, namely God, one's own soul, one's neighbour, and one's own body — and none of these is charity. Second, if charity is loved, then it is loved by some love; and that love must in turn be loved by another love, and so it will go on to infinity. Third, faith is not believed, nor is hope hoped: therefore neither is charity loved.
On the contrary there is the authority of Augustine, who says in the Letter: "He who loves his neighbour, it follows that he should above all love love itself." And in the eighth book On the Trinity: "Let no one say," he says, "I do not know what to love. Let him love his brother, and let him love love itself."
To this Bonaventure replies […]
Albert, further, resolves it briefly, saying: Augustine, in saying that he who loves his neighbour must above all love love itself, argues according to the way an exemplar cause is received in the thing modelled on it. And so the sense is: the one loving God loves love in its exemplar, namely in the uncreated love, according as that exemplar shows itself in created love. For uncreated charity shows itself and shines out in created charity, and so is loved in it as in its own mirror.
Thomas, replying more fully: something, he says, is lovable in two ways — first as the account under which loving takes place, second as the object; just as colour is seen as the object, but light as that by reason of which colour is actually visible. Charity, finally, is taken in three ways: first for uncreated charity, second for the habit of charity, third for its act. And any one of these three is an account under which one loves, and can also be charity's object […]
⭐ The question this crux asks, put in 1460 by a man who had read everyone who had asked it before, and who answers it by reporting them. The three arguments against are the sharpest short statement of the difficulty anywhere on this page — Augustine lists four things to be loved and charity is not among them; a love of love needs a further love and so to infinity; faith is not believed and hope is not hoped. ⭐ The image is Albert's and it is the best thing on the page: uncreated charity shines out in created charity and is loved in it as in its own mirror, so that loving one's own love of God is not a second act beside loving God but the same act seeing itself. Thomas's answer, as Denys gives it, does the same work analytically — charity is what one loves BY as light is what one sees colour by, and it can also be what one loves. ⛔ Bonaventure's reply is elided at […] because Bonaventure argues this crux on this very page in his own words, and a text may be found through Denys and never cited through him. What is printed here is what DENYS wrote about Albert and Thomas, and it is a witness for neither of them.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
I d.17
Utrum caritas sit ex caritate diligendaIs charity itself to be loved by the charity we have?
Cap. 1 · That the Holy Spirit is the charity by which we love God and neighbor.
PL 192, col. 564
FranciscanBonaventure · R. Middleton · Scotus
Dissenting · nominalist · AugustinianDurandus · Auriol · Ockham · Gregory · Biel
Empty on this page, not in this edition. Ockham, Gregory of Rimini and Biel have been read from the early prints for the first question of this distinction and stand on that page; the slices that would answer this one have not been read yet. Auriol's first question on d.17 is edited but unpublished. The finding below is written without them.
ReceptionLuther (WA 9) · Estius (1616)
reception · 1509–1510 · Erfurt
'love': the uncreated love as well. — 'but God': it is the ground. — 'let him love his brother': formally. — 'let him love': formally. — 'that same love': the love that is effective. — It is impossible to love that same love itself, since the object and the act of love would be the same. — 'the love by which he loves': not formally, but finally or efficiently. — 'clearly better known': he is expounding himself.
Glossing Lombard's own sentence, lemma by lemma, and cutting against him on this question even while he defends him on the other. The reason he gives is not either bench's: not that the habit is a distinct thing to be loved, but that a reflexive act would collapse the object into the act. He then saves the letter by re-reading the Master's preposition — dilectionem qua diligit, the love by which he loves, is to be taken not formally but finally or efficiently. ⛔ Anchored on caput I of this edition; Luther's own number is c. 3, because he keys to Migne's paragraphs and not to Quaracchi's capitula (raw/luther/PROVENANCE.md). The run is cut where the OCR stops being reliable rather than elided in the middle, so the Latin stays continuous.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
Lombard does not ask this question. He states it as a consequence: whoever loves the love by which he loves his neighbour thereby loves God, since that love is God. It is a question only for someone who has already denied that the love is God — which is why it appears, as a question, in exactly the two commentators who denied it, and appears second in both their sequences, immediately after the denial.
Both then answer yes, and neither can do it simply. Bonaventure and Thomas each have to divide the term before they can affirm the Master's consequence: Thomas takes charity three ways, uncreated, habitual, and as an act, and separates the ground of loving from the object loved on the analogy of colour and light seen in a single act. What Lombard could say in one clause now costs a distinction. That is the price of the created habit, paid on the page.
The sharpest thing here is that Thomas's own case for the affirmative is Lombard's sentence. His sed contra is a quotation of the letter — quod habetur in littera — so the Master furnishes the argument for the side Thomas takes, inside the distinction whose main thesis Thomas rejects. Agreement and rejection are running through the same sentence.
Luther, who defends the Master on the main question, cuts against him here, and for a reason neither bench uses: a reflexive act would collapse the object into the act, so it is impossible to love that same love itself. Then he saves the letter by re-reading its preposition — the love by which he loves is to be taken not formally but finally or efficiently. He is willing to give up the consequence in order to keep the thesis, which is the reverse of what the benches do: they keep the consequence and give up the thesis.
⭐ Two centuries later Denys the Carthusian asks the same question and answers it by reporting the men on this page. His three arguments against are the sharpest short statement of the difficulty anywhere here — Augustine lists four things to be loved and charity is not among them; a love of love requires a further love and so to infinity; faith is not believed and hope is not hoped. And what he preserves from Albert is the best image the crux has. Uncreated charity shines out in created charity, and so is loved in it as in its own mirror: caritas increata resultat atque resplendet in caritate creata, sicque in illa tanquam in speculo suo diligitur. Loving one's own love of God is then not a second act standing beside loving God, but the same act catching sight of itself. That answers the infinite-regress argument without the distinctions Bonaventure and Thomas had to pay for, and it is the only answer on this page that a reader could hold in mind whole.
⚠ Written without the dissenting bench, which is unread, and with only one witness in the band before the dispute — Albert stands there on other cruxes of this edition but does not take up this question, and Alexander of Hales, who asked the questions of this distinction first, has no public-domain text at all. The reading most exposed is the claim that the question arises only from the denial, and Alexander is exactly the man who could confirm or break it. ⛔ Note also what this page's newest witness is: Denys reports Albert and Thomas here, and a report is never a witness for the man reported. Albert's mirror is quoted as Denys gives it, and Albert has no note of his own on this crux.