The Disinterested Love of God According to St. Thomas and Some of His Modern Interpreters

THE DISINTERESTED LOVE OF GOD ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS AND SOME OF HIS MODERN INTERPRETERS (Continued) IN considering the love of God in man, one must remember the specific nature of the moral order, as distinguished from the merely physical. There is a danger of resting the " physical theory " of love on an " implicit monism of nature and of the natural appetite." 120 There can be no question of a supposed identification of moral with metaphysical finality, or of an imagined failure by St. Thomas to distinguish sufficiently the moral from the physical realm, or of a total integration of the rational appetite with the universal determinism of nature.121 This is not to say, however, that the moral order will be cut off from the natural order; that the former is not based upon the latter. The human will rests on the basis of a natural appetite; but it is its own master, and determines its own actions. Yet this very power of self-determination , of liberty depends on the primary natural ordination to an ultimate end. This end is pursued in the manner appropriate to a spiritual being, by reason and the rational will~thus, in a truly moral activity. 120 Louis-B. Geiger, 0. P., Le Probleme de l'amour chez Saint Thomas d'Aquin, "Conference Albert-le-Grand, 195:2" (Montreal, 1952). Unfortunately, this important and excellent work was not in print at the time of the preparation of the first of my articles. As it is the most important book on this subject since that of Pere Rousselot, comments on it will be made below in the appropriate sections. 121 Jean Rohmer, La Finalite Momle chez les Theologiens de Saint Augustin a Dum Scot (Paris, 1939), p. 112; cf. pp. no If. 497 498 DOM GREGORY STEVENS I. THE HUMAN WILL A. The Will as a Faculty and as an Inclination Man loves God by his will. It is advisable, then, to consider the teaching of St. Thomas on the nature and activity of the will in order fully to understand the question of love. We shall consider first the will and its objects, and then the principal act of the will, which is love. By the word "will" (voluntas), St. Thomas means either the intrinsic principle, the power or faculty from which proceeds the appetitive act, or else that act itself, considered either: a) generically, to include all acts, or b) specifically, to designate that act which is directed to the end.122 Considering the will as a faculty, .we note that St. Thomas often compares the intellect and will in their respective relations to their objects.128 The intellect is, primarily, a faculty which assimilates to itself its object; in other words, the intellect is perfect when the object understood is present secundum esse intentionale, to the mind and assimilated to it. The will, on the other hand, goes out towards the external object, and tends to assimilate itself to it.124 The operation of the cognitive faculty is perfected in the mind itself, though it is the extramental object that is known.125 The intellect is thus a passive faculty to whose act the object is compared as to its principle and formal cause, while the will is an active faculty, to whose act the object is compared as to its term or end, and which thus spontaneously is proportioned to and tends towards its object.126 But since there are no purely active or passive facul190 Summa Theol., I-II, q. 8, a. 2; q. 12, a. 1, ad 4. 123 Cf. the list of texts in Roland-Gosselin, "Le Desir de Bonheur et l'Existence de Dieu," Rev. des Sc. Phil. et TMol., XIII (1924), 168, n. I. 19• " Hoc autem distat inter appetitum et intellectum, quia cognitum est secundum quod cognitum est, in cognoscente; appetitus autem est, secundum quod appetens inclinatur in ipsam rem appetitam "--Summa Theol., I, q. 16, a. 1; cf. I-II, q. 18, a. 5, ad 1. , 196 De Verit., q. 10, a. 9, ad 7; cf. q. 4, a, 2, ad 8; and V.-M. Kuiper, O.P., "Le •Realisme' de Hegel," in Rev...