It is fitting that this chapter on charity, or Christian love, immediately follows one on Jesus Christ. Love is the sum of the Christian story, and that story is centered on the person of Jesus Christ, who perfectly reveals to us the God who is love, and who lives out a life of self-giving love here among us. For Christians, love is first and foremost a person, Jesus. Yet that person invites us to live lives of self-giving love, and participate in the reconciliation, or restored relationship, between God and humanity. It is the virtue of charity that enables us to live out lives of self-giving love.

Charity is the crux of the Christian life. After his classic and beautiful description of love (“Love is patient, love is kind . . .”), St. Paul lists the three theological virtues and tells us that “faith, hope, love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). Love alone remains when, in the next life, we see God face to face. It is love that perfects all our actions and points them toward their ultimate destiny of union with God. And it is living a life of love that constitutes the very participation in the divine nature that is begun in this life and complete in the next (2 Pet. 1:4). Love is indeed the point of the Christian story in general, and the lives of Christians in particular.

This chapter cannot hope to do justice to a topic of this central importance. And it certainly fails to adequately depict the beautiful adventure that is a life of Christian love. In fact, for the particulars of living that love, the previous chapter’s discussion, of how activities like the works of mercy constitute living in imitation of Christ, offers more detail than this chapter. The more modest goals of this chapter are threefold. The first section defines charity. Though charity may be defined as love, that overused word is not adequate to explain what charity means. The first section explains the sort of love charity is, and how it is directed to both God and neighbor. The second section briefly explains what human capacities are exercised in charity. In particular, it delineates the roles of the will and the emotions. The third section examines the impact of charity on natural loves such as friendships, family relationships, and the like. This third section delineates the ways that love in a Christian sense is distinctive, but also the ways that charity is intimately related to human loves that are not essentially charity. We again run into the claim here that “grace perfects nature,” and are left prepared for the thorough examination of that theme in the following chapter on grace.

Defining love is one of the most elusive tasks for moral theology. Just think of all the different ways we use the word “love” in our language. We love types of food or sunsets. We love a certain actor or a band. We love our families, our friends, our spouses or those we date. Christians are even told they must love the enemy! What common definition could ever describe all these loves?

Part of the problem is the English language. We use one word to describe things for which other languages use several words. A fine example of looking at different types of love from this perspective is C. S. Lewis’s short book The Four Loves, where he sorts out different types of love using the Greek words storge (affection), eros (romantic love), philia (friendship), and agape (charity, or Christian love).C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (San Diego: Harcourt, 1991). Another text that explores the different types of love and their relation is Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus caritas est (“God is love”).

We even see this tendency to differentiate types of love in English. For instance, the name of this chapter includes the term “charity,” rather than “love.” When most people hear the term charity, they may think of giving help to those in need (what is traditionally called almsgiving). It is understandable that this usage has developed, since presumably if you love people in a Christian sense you will help those who are in need. But the English word “charity”is originally rooted in the Latin term caritas, which is the name for love in a distinctively Christian sense (the Greek agape).

OK, so charity means love in a Christian sense. But that is no definition. In fact, it may cause more problems than it solves, since it may seem that charity (which will be used in this chapter synonymously with Christian love) is altogether different from, even opposed to, other loves such as friendship and romantic love. Yet that’s not true. The relationship between charity and other loves is discussed below, but suffice it to say here that—unsurprisingly in this book—charity perfects, rather than destroys or leaves untouched, good natural loves like friendship, parental love, and romantic love.

So what is charity? The formal definition of charity is the theological virtue by which we love God for God’s own sake, above all else, and all others in God. Simply put, it is the greatest commandment referred to by Christ in each of the synoptic Gospels: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:25–28; see also Matt. 22:35–40; Mark 12:28–31). Charity is loving God first, and all else in God. This is certainly a helpful starting point. But what does love of God look like? What does it have to do with loving others? These are the questions for this first section. We begin by appealing to the work of Aquinas, who saw friendship as the best way to understand charity. Charity is friendship with God. To understand what he meant, it is worth pausing to describe friendship in general.

Friendship in Aristotle

To better understand charity, Aquinas no doubt appeals to friendship because it is so prevalent and important in our lives. As Aristotle claims in describing human happiness, who can truly be called happy without good friends?!See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), I.8. See also viii.1; ix.9. Yet friendship is still poorly understood and appreciated, both as to what it is and why it is so important to living a good life. Certainly moral theologians far too often ignore it.There are important exceptions to this general neglect. Two that stand out are Gilbert Meilaender’s Friendship: a Study in Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), and Paul Wadell’s Friendship and the Moral Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). But even in everyday life, despite how commonly we speak of and spend time with friends, true friendship is too rare, and we hear people say things like, “If you have one true friend over the course of your life you are fortunate.” It is hoped that this very brief treatment of friendship will not only enable us to better grasp the following analysis of charity, but also further illuminate for the reader the nature of friendship and its importance for our lives.

Aristotle’s writing on friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics is still one of the most extraordinary analyses of friendship ever written.See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, viii; ix. There Aristotle observes that there are three types of friendship. There is friendship based on utility, as when we are joined to someone else based upon a common cause. Friendships at work often start and remain of this type. There is real friendship here in that there is benevolence (good will) toward, beneficence (good acting) for, and a sense of unity with, the other person. But the friendship is based on the common task, and would likely dissipate without it.

The second type of friendship is based in pleasure. Again, there is benevolence, beneficence, and union with the other. But the basis of the friendship is some common pleasure, as when people get together to play or watch sports, or form a book club together. Whereas in the first type the friendship (of utility) is based on a common task, the second type of friendship (of pleasure) is based on a commonly enjoyed pleasure. Note that our different friendships can be of different types, and our friendship with one person can even have elements of different types. My wife has a workout partner with whom she enjoys walking. This is a friendship of pleasure, because they enjoy something in common. Yet there is a utility component there too, since both women help each other pursue the common task of exercising regularly. They keep each other on task, if you will.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these two types of friendship. Many relationships in our lives remain at these levels. They are still friendships, as long as there is benevolence toward, beneficence for, and a sense of union with the other. Yet Aristotle claims a third type of friendship, which is friendship in the fullest sense of the term. It is friendship based on goodness, or the virtue of the other. He does not primarily mean we should only be friends with virtuous people, although Aristotle clearly thinks such people are more attractive to us. This type of friendship, a friendship of goodness, is marked by one’s recognition of, and desire to contribute to, the friend’s goodness and virtue. In other words, in the third type of friendship each friend seeks the virtue and happiness of the other as, Aristotle famously says, “another self.”Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ix.9. The focus is more on the friend than on the common task or pleasure. These friendships can contain elements of utility or pleasure, though they are not basic to it. And friendships of the first two types can certainly develop into friendships of virtue; indeed, most friendships in the third sense begin out of shared utility or pleasure. But with a friendship of goodness, the friend is appreciated as a person in his or her self, rather than as a partner in something immediately sought (like a pleasure or common goal). In this highest sense of friendship, the other’s good is desired and sought as one desires one’s own good.

Therefore, in full friendship we see, appreciate, and seek to contribute to the goodness in our friend. We see and treat our friend as another self. Note this includes, but is more than, simple goodwill. We can have goodwill toward others without friendship. In full friendship, we not only see the good in, and seek the good for, the other. There is also an element of enjoyment in being at rest with our friends. We simply wish to be with our friends, and enjoy our union with them, as an end in itself (rather than as simply something useful or a path to some pleasure). We see the goodness of our friends, appreciate it, and want to be with them due to it.

Friendship with God in Thomas Aquinas

An astute commentator on Aristotle, Aquinas immediately saw in the pre-Christian Greek’s thought rich resources for understanding charity.See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, English Dominican trans. (New York: Benziger, 1948), II–II 23, esp. art. 1, 4, and 6. Of course, friendship with God is a deeply scriptural notion, emphasized in the Gospel according to John, but present also in the Old Testament (see Ws 7:14, 27). Even so, Aristotle’s description of the highest form of friendship, friendship of goodness, is a perfect way to understand charity as love of God and others in God. Charity is loving God above all else, not arbitrarily but because God is goodness, and the source of all that is good.As Catholics hear in the second eucharistic prayer: “Lord you are holy [i.e., good]. Indeed, you are the fountain of all that is holy [good].” Thus, it is fitting that we love God above all else. To recall the language of chapter 2, God alone is our be-all and end-all. There is no further good to seek above or beyond God. And thus charity is resting in, enjoying, God as supremely good, much as we would appreciate and enjoy a true friend.

It may seem odd to speak so casually of charity as friendship with God. After all, one of the basic claims of classical thinkers like Aristotle is that true friendship is something that exists between equals. We sense this with certain unequals in our lives. It is difficult to be friends with a boss. Parents and children can become friends when the children are adults, but even then children will generally report there is still no doubt their parents are different than their peer friends, and still very much their parents! Certainly our relationship with God is not one of equals—nothing could be further from the truth. How can Aquinas insist that charity is friendship with God?

Such friendship is possible only because God takes the initiative and makes it possible. That God is one who invites us to friendship is only known through the gift of faith. There is a sense that faith is prior to charity; we must first know God and what God is like in order to love God as he wishes. See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II 62, esp. 62,4. It is through faith that we understand God made us in the imago Dei, called to and fulfilled by living lives of self-giving love in friendship with God and others. It is by faith that we understand that, by living such lives we participate in God’s very own divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and are united in friendship with the God who is love (1 John 4:8). Knowing any of this is only possible in faith.

Knowing it most fully is possible only through Jesus Christ, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6–7). Jesus Christ is God become human, who reveals the Father (“whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” John 14:9).

Furthermore, friendship with God is not only something that must be known, but also lived (James 2:26). This, too, is possible only through Christ who (in ways described in the previous chapter and the next) reconciles humanity to God, to make this union in friendship not only a known possibility but also a lived reality. Therefore, charity is friendship with God made possible through Christ, through whom we know God most fully, and through whom we are reconciled to God so as to be able to be friends with God (“I have called you friends” John 15:15). Thus, living the life of charity is rightly called life in Christ (see Gal. 2:20), a phrase examined more closely in the following chapter on grace. But first a word is in order on what love of God has to do with love of others. After all, in this very chapter in John, where Jesus calls His disciples his friends, he repeatedly commands them to love one another. What does love of God have to do with love of others?

Charity as Friendship with Others

What the love of God which constitutes charity means should now be clearer. But recall that the definition of charity also includes the phrase, “and all else in God.” It is the task of the third section to explain how exactly charity transforms what is loved in God. The task for this part is more modest. Why does charity have anything to do with loving others? After all, if charity is a theological virtue it concerns God directly. It seems the cardinal virtue justice should suffice in governing our relationships with each other. If charity is essentially love of God above all else, what has this to do with love of others?

Consider two ways to understand the relationship between love of God and love of neighbor. The first views love of neighbor as an obligation deriving from obedience to God. It is as if one thinks, “If I love God above all else, and God tells me to love my neighbor, I’ll do it.” In this view, there is no intrinsic connection between love of God and neighbor. We love the neighbor only because God commands it; in fact, if God did not command it we would not bother! It even seems conceivable that God could command otherwise.

But this is an inadequate understanding of the relationship between love of God and love of neighbor. Love of neighbor is not some additional or arbitrary obligation imposed on those of us who love God. Rather, as the biblical author says:

If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20–21, cf. 1 John 3:14–17; 4:7–12)

Why are people who hate their neighbor but claim to love God liars? This passage reminds us that we can see our neighbor but cannot see God (to recall chapter 11, on faith), and so the one who fails to love the neighbor who is seen cannot love God. The passage seems to imply that loving our neighbor is more tangible to us than loving God, and so if we cannot love the neighbor we are certainly unable to love God. Though there is something true to that, the connection between the two loves assumed here is even closer once we remember John’s astounding claim that God is love.

The God who is loved above all else in charity is the triune God, a communion of persons in self-giving love who created all things out of love. All human persons are created to be in loving union with God in ultimate happiness. Despite sin and brokenness, true happiness through the self-giving love that is union with God can indeed be experienced in this life, even though it is complete only in the next. What such a life entails is made perfectly manifest and possible through Jesus Christ. Since God desires our happiness, God helps people to know and live out this life of charity. Therefore, being a friend of God in charity means appreciating who God is, and participating in God’s plans to the fullest extent possible. It means living out, in our relationships with others, the self-giving love that is God’s very own nature. Doing so is not an obligation derived from love of God. Nor are we simply using other people as ways to know the happiness of self-giving love offered by God. Rather, that love of others in charity is constitutive of life in union with the God who created all persons in the imago Dei for a common destiny of union with God and each other. Loving our fellow brothers and sisters in charity is participation in the life of God, and a taste of our ultimate destiny.

Consider an analogy from the family to help illuminate this intrinsic relation between love of God and love of neighbor. Any sibling knows that nothing makes a parent happier than when the siblings truly love one another. Good sons and daughters love their siblings. This can be done out of obligation (though it is then questionable as to whether it is indeed self-giving love). But it is best done not just because it pleases their parents, but because the sons and daughters trust that sibling love is the desire of their parents because it is truly good and life-giving for all involved. After all, what do parents want more than the genuine happiness of their children? Presumably, parents desire that their children love one another not simply for the parents’ own enjoyment, but because it is what is most fulfilling for the siblings themselves. Similarly, we love our neighbors not simply out of obedience to God, but because we trust that the God who is love and who desires our complete happiness calls us to love others as constitutive of the very happiness to which all are called.Note that while we ideally do not love our neighbors simply out of obedience to God’s command, if it is only fear of God’s commands that leads us to do so in times of weakness, better that than to not love our neighbor at all! This is why Christ says to the disciples, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you” (John 15:12). They are enjoined to heed his command and love one another not arbitrarily or out of sheer obedience, but rather “so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete” (John 15:11).

This integral relation between love of God and love of neighbor is best evidenced in the greatest-commandment passages from the synoptic Gospels. As countless homilists have noted, in these passages Christ is asked which is the greatest commandment. The question invites a single answer. But Jesus seems to give two answers: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Was Jesus pulling a fast one, giving two answers when one is sought? No, given what we know of God in faith, loving the God of love who created all out of love and who invites all people to union with him in love surely entails loving those brothers and sisters (i.e., all people) who are also called with us to be united to God in love. Though they are distinct enough to be mentioned separately, love of God and neighbor are so integrally related that they are fittingly given together as the greatest commandment.

In summary, the formal definition of charity should now be clearer. Charity is a theological virtue since it concerns God directly. It is best understood as friendship with God, where the goodness of God is not only seen but appreciated, cherished, and enjoyed. Reminiscent of, yet far transcending, how we are with an old friend, we cherish and just want to be with God. And since that friendship is not simply a one-on-one affair, but friendship with a God who invites all people to union with him, loving our fellow human beings is essential to the love of God that is charity. Of course, the full union with God and others for which we long is possible only in the next life. That is why hope is needed in this life. But the friendship with God that is charity can be tasted in this life, even while we hope for its full arrival in the next. And when it is complete in the next life, hope will pass away, and love will remain.

Love is such a multi-textured word, as noted above, that it is easy to be misled as to what exactly is being commanded with Christian love, or charity. For instance, many of us hear love and immediately think of the affection we have toward friends or family, or the powerful feelings we have when we fall in love.

Note that these are essentially emotional responses; the words “affection” and “feeling” recall to us chapter 4 on the passions. However, love is not, or should not be, simply an emotional response. If love were primarily a matter of how we felt about others, it would be unreliable and inconsistent, since our feelings are not always expressive of what we know and will. It is certainly better to wish someone well and do good to them even when we do not feel like it. That is why it is so important that love is centrally an act of will; we can love even when we do not feel like it. Indeed, even in those relationships where we generally do have fond feelings for the other (friendships, family members, etc.), there are plenty of times when we do not feel that love, and nonetheless act lovingly toward them. As Lewis says, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ [in the sense of affectionate feelings] your neighbor; act as if you did.”C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 131. For these reasons it would be impossible, even nonsensical, for Christ to command us to love one another if love were essentially a feeling. No, love is an act of the will. Whether it be a family member, friend, spouse, or whomever, we love others when we wish them well, when we want them to be truly happy, even when we do not feel like it.

Saying charity is primarily an act of the will can make it sound cold and heartless. However, although love is not primarily an emotion, the emotions can indeed become important components of love. Indeed, it is crucial that human love involves our emotions, since our emotions are God-given gifts that grant our actions facility, or pleasure and promptness. The fact that the emotions can be shaped into good habits, and why it is important they are, recalls to us all the claims made in chapter 4. Though it is better to treat our neighbor well even when we do not feel like it, it is even better both to will and do good to our neighbor, and to desire to do so emotionally. Reminiscent of chapter 4, Lewis describes how our emotions can be shaped, or habituated, to be more in line with our reason and will:

When you are behaving as if you loved someone [in the affectionate sense], you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.Ibid.

Our emotions are not fully under our control, for sure. And sometimes, try as we might, we still feel affectionate toward those who harm us, or we dislike those whom we will to love. Nevertheless, we can, to use Lewis’s words again, “encourage our affections.” In fact, he says we have a duty to do so, “not because this is itself the virtue of charity but because it is a help to it.”Ibid.

It should be noted that what Lewis is doing here is distinguishing love as primarily an emotion from love as primarily a matter of will (that hopefully also includes our emotions). Our emotions are rich and beautiful facets of our lives. But for all of the reasons discussed in chapter 4, it is fitting for human persons endowed with reason and will to have their emotions guided by those higher powers. Our reason and will help us respond emotionally to the way things really are. However, saying charity is in essence a willful love does not adequately distinguish it from other human loves such as friendship, familial love, and spousal love. Any of these loves are mainly acts of the will, unless they are mere passing fancies or infatuations. The same is certainly true of charity.

Thus, the virtue charity is based primarily in the will. Though this fact alone does not distinguish it from other mature natural loves, it is important to explain charity’s relationship to the will and emotions here for three reasons. First, through many of the songs, movies, television shows, and so on we encounter today, love is portrayed primarily as emotional sentimentality. Love is indeed emotional, as explained here. But it is more than that. When speaking of charity as love, it is important to emphasize its rootedness in the human will. Second, since charity is an exercise of the human will, it is a love (like other loves, such as friendship) that is truly our own. It may be unique in being directed toward God and others in God, and in its requirement of God’s grace to blossom in us. But as an expression of our wills, charity is indeed truly our own and not some state of being possessed from an outside force against our wills. Third and finally, though it is true that charity’s basis in the human capacity of will does not in itself distinguish charity from other natural human loves such as friendship, it is important that charity shares that commonality with other loves, since it means charity can transform and perfect, rather than obliterate or leave untouched, natural love, such as family relationships, friendships, and the like. Though charity is a unique and ultimate form of love, it is not alien to human persons or unrelated to other forms of love. This point is essential for the following section on charity’s relationship to other loves in life.

Having defined charity as love of God, above all else, and all else in God, the question remains: what does loving all else in God look like? What difference does it make to have charity? What does friendship with God have to do with the rest of our lives? The short answer is, “everything.” We have already seen that it drives us to love of neighbor. Explaining further facets of how charity permeates all else is the point of this section.

Particularly given the similarities between charity and other human ways of loving, what is distinctive about Christian love? A main concern of this section is examining what charity as a distinctive sort of love has to do with the many interpersonal loves in our lives. Is charity unrelated to these natural loves (such as family relations, romantic loves, etc.)? Does it eliminate and replace them? Reminiscent of this book’s first mention of grace perfecting nature in chapter 11 on faith, and pointing ahead to the full discussion of that topic in the next chapter, we find here that Christian love neither eliminates nor leaves untouched other loves in our lives. With regard to both how we love,and what is loved, charity perfects natural love even as it transcends it.

Why Charity Changes Everything: Charity as the Form of the Virtues

When defining Christian love, it is not enough to say, as the last section did, that it is an act of will. First of all, there are loves other than charity that are acts of the will. Second, as we recall from chapter 2 on intention, free will (of which love is surely an act) is not simply an act of the will but also of the intellect. In other words, we do not just will or intend; we will or intend something, understood as such by our intellect, our reason. So it is not enough to say love is an act of the will. Will to what? Answering this question reveals what is distinctive about Christian love, and what charity as love of God above all has to do with everything else.

In Mere Christianity, Lewis answers this question when, in speaking of charity, he says we will the happiness of another just as we wish for our own (love your neighbor as yourself). This goodwill is the basis of love as an act of will. Love is willing the good of another, which is the other’s happiness. Yet what is distinctive about Christian love? Simply put, it is what sort of happiness we wish for the other. Lewis adds that in charity we wish for another’s happiness, “just because it is another self, made (like us) by God.”Ibid. This is what makes Lewis’s discussion not just one of any love in general, but one of charity. By claiming that charity is wishing another’s happiness as someone made by God, Lewis makes it clear that charity seeks the good of the other in the broader perspective of Christian faith. As stated in Fides et Ratio from chapter 11, people seek the truthful answers to ultimate questions so that they can most fully pursue the true good in life—complete happiness. The person with the theological virtue charity wills the good of others in the context of the Christian story about the way things are.

As described above, but always worth repeating, the triune God who is a communion of persons in self-giving love created all things out of love. All persons are created to be in union with God in ultimate happiness. Despite sin and brokenness, true happiness through the self-giving love that is union with God can indeed be experienced in this life, even though it is complete only in the next. What such a life entails is made perfectly manifest and possible through Jesus Christ. Since God desires our happiness, he helps people to know and live out this life of charity. Thus, the “willing another’s happiness” that is done in charity is not some vague sense of goodwill, but rather is done with a rich and complete understanding of what is truly good, in an ultimate sense. The person who is given the gift of charity is able to love others most completely by loving all persons with the broadest perspective in mind.

This claim calls to mind one of the central claims of this book: acting rightly requires seeing rightly. Despite the famous Beatles’ song, it is not true that “all you need is love.” If love is seeking the good and happiness of another, doing so requires that we have a sense of what is the true good of the person we love, and how we can pursue it effectively. Having such a grasp gives a distinctive shape to how we love. This discussion recalls to us chapter 5, on prudence. Remember the example there of the woman who, with all the best intentions, tried to parent her children lovingly but ended up actually confusing and alienating them because she lacked the prudence to know when to be lenient and when to stand firm? Despite wishing the best for her children, she was unable to actually love them well in many ways, due to her lack of prudence. The knowledge that prudence gives regarding innerworldly activities (what children thrive on, what constitutes appropriate punishment, etc.) is needed to act well. In fact, in the next chapter on grace we explore further how charity and God’s grace transform cardinal virtues such as prudence. For now it suffices to reaffirm that seeing rightly is needed to act rightly.

The same is true with regard to how we see concerning big-picture questions. Recall the moral importance of faith from chapter 11. Seeing rightly on these questions shapes how we act in this world. Charity is simply love of God and others that is shaped by faith’s knowledge of the way things are given by faith. It is the love of God and of all things in the broadest, most accurate, perspective possible for us in this life, the perspective granted by faith, which completes our reason’s ability to grasp how things really are. To recall a phrase from chapter 1, loving God above all else and all else in God is actually a life lived most completely “in accordance with reason,” with reason understood to include faith’s completion of reason.

Reminiscent of how prudence shapes the exercise of the other cardinal virtues, this broader perspective is enormously important in shaping exactly how love is lived out. It makes a concrete difference in how we love others. Charity leads to particular sorts of actions that direct people ultimately toward their supernatural destiny. What sorts of acts does charity lead one to do? As an example, consider Jesus’s powerful farewell discourse in John just before his death. There Jesus speaks poignantly of love, friendship, and joy. To some it seems odd that in this context he keeps insisting the disciples follow his commandments:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (14:15)

Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. (14:21)

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love. (15:10; cf. 1 John 3:24)

Jesus is telling the disciples here what charity as love of God and all else in God looks like. The broader perspective grasped in faith and sought and enjoyed in charity makes a difference in how we act. That difference is specified in God’s commandments.

In this way we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:2–3)

As this last passage makes clear, a life of love is constituted by living out the commandments, not as ends in themselves that are burdensome, but rather so that “our joy may be complete” (John 15:11).

The person with charity sees the big picture truthfully (faith), and based upon that perspective loves and enjoys God above else, and all else in God (charity). In short, this person sees and loves all things in accordance with the way things really are. As Augustine puts it:

Living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things; to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what is to be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.Augustine, Teaching Christianity (New York: New City Press, 1996), 118.

Augustine is speaking here of what is classically called the order of love, or what we have described in this book as one’s triangle of goals or loves in life. Only by having an accurate grasp of the way things are can we properly prioritize our loves in life. But what Augustine says also applies to any one particular love: only by having an accurate grasp of the way things are can we love any one person or thing properly: not too much, not too little, and in just the right manner. Otherwise we can, perhaps with all the best intentions, act in ways that impede rather than foster another person’s, and our own, happiness.

In sum, having the virtue charity makes a concrete difference in how we live our lives, by inclining us to the sorts of actions that lead us and others to the ultimate destiny of union with God, which is true happiness. The commandments are a perfect example of such actions. This is why charity is traditionally called the form of the virtues. Charity gives shape to (or trans-forms) acts of all the virtues by directing them toward the ultimate goal of union with God. A person with charity loves all things in the proper perspective granted by faith. Granted that proper perspective, charity then orders all our loves in life accordingly, so that each person in our lives is loved, and indeed all our lives’ loves are prioritized, according to our charity, or friendship with the God of love who calls all people to union with him in love. Charity perfects acts of all the virtues by directing them, or whisking them along, toward a person’s ultimate happiness in God. In the manner described in chapter 2, being directed toward that ultimate goal shapes how all other goals are sought and accomplished. In short, our friendship with the God who is known in faith shapes all we do by ordering it all to the ultimate goal of complete happiness, constituted by union with the God of love.

How does charity perfect, and serve as the form of, the theological virtues?

In a certain sense, faith and hope are required in order to have charity. In order to love God in friendship, we must know who God is and understand him as the complete fulfillment for which we long. That said, charity perfects even these two theological virtues. For we seek union with God in hope as the fulfillment of all our desires. And in charity we seek unio with God who is appreciated and enjoyed in Himself rather than just as the fulfillment of our longings. And with charity we not only know true things about who God is, we also enjoy and seek to be fully united with God. Charity thus perfects faith and hope by completing their orientation toward God with a sense of enjoyment and friendship.

Charity also perfects the cardinal virtues. The cardinal virtues concern innerworldly practices that are accessible to unaided reason (i.e., reason without faith). Nonetheless, to be done virtuously, such activities must be understood truthfully. An accurate grasp of big-picture beliefs, such as that given in faith, does indeed impact (in the manner described in chapter 10) how we do inner-worldly activities. More detail as to how this is so is given in the next chapter, on grace. But for now suffice it to say that for one with charity whose ultimate aim is friendship with God, and who loves all else in relation to God, doing the innerworldly activities of the cardinal virtues will be different—indeed, perfected—based upon that ultimate goal of friendship with God.

Some Distinctive Acts of Charity

So far, this analysis of how charity changes how we love all else may seem rather formal. In other words, it may be alluring to say, “OK, I see how the person with charity does everything in her life for the sake of God. But what concrete difference does that actually make in what she does?” Some answers are given in the previous section. For instance, the person with charity follows the commandments. Furthermore, given the claims in chapter 2 about how our ultimate goal in life shapes all we do, we should not underestimate the difference it makes to love all else for the sake of God. Even though it may not appear distinctive to the external observer (can’t any person follow the commandments?), the love of the person with charity is indeed importantly different in meaning, even when the same acts are performed. Nonetheless, it may help illuminate the virtue charity to describe some acts that are indeed distinctive to it. Thus, the task of this section is to offer three examples of distinctive acts of charity.

The first example of how we live our lives differently with the theological virtue charity is through acts of worship. If charity is love of God above all else, and all else in God, then worshipping God together with others who recognize their call to union with God in friendship is one of the exemplary acts of charity. Indeed, the scriptures speak repeatedly of the heavenly hosts singing praises to God, in passages that depict in some way humanity’s destiny of union with God. The book of Revelation is full of references to the holy ones of God gathered in songs of praise (4:8–11; 5:11–14; 7:9–12). And the birth of the Messiah, the one who reveals, exemplifies, and is the path to humanity’s destiny of union with God, is announced by heavenly hosts singing, “Glory to God in the highest!” a clear prefiguring of what communal life in union with and praise of God is like (Luke 2:14). Joining together to worship God in union with each other, as we do at Mass, is a very foretaste of complete union with God, and thus a clear act of charity.

A second example concerns our love of others in God. Given that there are people who surely love others and know nothing about, or want nothing to do with, Christianity how does charity as loving others in God look different from love of others which is not charity? Charity is distinctive in its scope. Simply put, the person with the virtue of charity loves all persons, without exception. As Christ himself says, in the Sermon on the Mount, “if you love only those who love you, what recompense will you have?” (Matt. 5:46). This is perhaps best seen in the famous Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25–37). The riches this parable offers are inexhaustible. But the one point emphasized here is Jesus’s direct answer to a scholar’s question as to who is the “neighbor,” in the greatest commandment’s injunction to love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus tells the classic story of a man who fell victim to robbers, was beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. Two people, a priest and a Levite, each pass by the man without helping. The third passerby is a Samaritan, considered foreign and inferior by Jesus’s people, the Jews. The Samaritan not only stops to help the man, but also brings him on his own animal to an inn to care for him. He leaves the next day after paying the innkeeper to continue the man’s care. Interestingly enough, Jesus ends the parable by asking the scholar not who treated the victimized man as a neighbor, but rather who was neighbor to this man. We see here Jesus emphasizing the need for us to be active in loving our neighbor. But more central for our purpose is Jesus’s point that we are called to love all persons as neighbors. The Samaritan shares no familial, national, or religious bonds with the victim. In other words, all the natural connections that normally engender our relationships are not present. But still, the message is quite clear—we are to love even strangers, those different from us, as our neighbors.

This reminds us of what C. S. Lewis said in his discussion of the relationship between charity as an act of will and the emotions, or affections:

The difference between a Christian man and a worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections and the Christian has only ‘charity.’ The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on—including people he could not have imagined liking at the beginning.C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 131.

Besides his point about the emotions, Lewis clearly affirms here that the Christian is called to love everyone with charity. But why? For all the reasons explained earlier in the chapter on the intrinsic connection between love and God and love of neighbor, all other persons are created by the God of love, out of love, for a destiny of communion with him and all other persons in self-giving love. The basis of love of neighbor, which is both our common creation as imago Dei, and our common destiny of full union with God, applies to all persons. And thus it drives a love of all in this life. This is a love of concrete, embodied service, as perhaps best seen in Matthew 25, where Christ rewards with eternal life all those who have loved their neighbors with the corporal works of mercy. Indeed, all that was said in chapter 14 should be recalled here, namely, how life in Christ entails living out a self-giving love that reaches out to encounter people in their brokenness and loves them in embodied, often messy, ways such that new life comes from that engagement. But the point here is that charity as friendship with God and others in God extends to all others.

A third and final example of how charity makes a tangible difference in our lives is related to this last one. Christian love is distinctive in its emphasis on love of enemy and radical forgiveness. That charity includes love of enemy should be unsurprising, since it includes love of all. Indeed, love of enemy in particular is the focus of Christ’s quotation about not only loving those who love us:

I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. (Matt. 5:44–45)

Love of all, including enemies, is understood as a way to love like God the Father, who loves all persons good and evil. Yet especially given the discussion in chapter 13 of final judgment and separation from God, it is quite understandable to press further concerning love of enemy, and ask what exactly this entails. Does love of enemy mean everyone should be loved, no matter what they do? If so, does that mean someone with charity has no interest in what the neighbor does? Answering these questions leads us to the radical practice of Christian love known as forgiveness.

In another famous gospel passage, Peter asks Jesus how many times the neighbor who sins against Peter must be forgiven. Could it be as many as seven times? Jesus replies by saying, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matt. 18:22). Jesus is not simply giving the sinner a bit more latitude, but massively multiplying Peter’s initial estimate to indicate that that the sinner must always be forgiven. Clearly, forgiveness and love of enemy are central to charity. But does that mean the person with charity simply accepts whatever is done by the neighbor? Absolutely not. Indeed, this passage on forgiveness immediately follows a detailed explanation of how to correct a sinner in a manner that is expressive of, not contrary to, charity. Measures here extend from initial confrontation of the sinner with his sin to expulsion from the community (Matt. 18:15–17). How is it possible to simultaneously love and offer forgiveness to a sinner who acts as enemy, and confront and even punish that person?

Some people wrongly assume that Christian love, due to its insistence on love of all (including enemy) and constant forgiveness, is incompatible with standing up to someone who is harming themselves and others, and certainly incompatible with any punishment that is perceived by the recipient as harmful. But this is not at all true. The gospels are full of stories of Christ confronting people about their actions. Consider the fraternal correction here in Matthew 18, or the numerous occasions where Christ confronts the scribes and Pharisees for their false religiosity (see esp. Matt. 23:13–39), or the famous passage where he tells the woman caught in adultery to “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). In fact, there are also haunting parables told by Jesus of eternal punishment inflicted on those who ignore the needs of those around them (Matt. 25:31–46; Luke 16:19–31). A discussed in chapter 13, humanity’s supernatural destiny of union with God does not preclude the possibility of punishment and separation from God.

Of course, in all these cases it is God who judges and punishes people. But Christ makes it clear that humanity shares in the ability to make judgments about sin. In the very chapter we are considering from Matthew, Jesus tells his followers, “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 18:18). Though questions need to be addressed as to who can judge (parents? friends? judges? church leaders?), and what punishments are never compatible with charity, making judgments about sin and executing punishment are not incompatible with charity.Though we were not yet explicitly discussing charity in chapter 7, this is the context into which to examine the compatibility of Christianity and waging just war. Christian pacifists claim intentional killing of the guilty in warfare is never compatible with charity.

Assuming that all Christians agree that in some cases it is indeed charitable to confront friends, punish children, and even put people in jail, the real question is, how does any of this look different for the person with charity? The answer is that it must always be done for the sake of the happiness of the person judged and punished, even if that person does not recognize it at the time. Correcting wrongdoers is not a matter of harming that individual for the greater good of the community. Given the description in chapter 7 of the common good, the wrongdoer’s flourishing and that of the community are intimately intertwined, such that acting for the sake of society can only be truly done when it serves the best interests of the individual, and vice versa. Indeed, in some situations it would be a failure in charity to not confront, punish, or incarcerate someone who was harming themselves and others by their actions. As always, prudence is needed here to determine when such cases arise. And again, we are treading on the next chapter’s discussion of the infused cardinal virtues. The point here is that charity, as constituted by constant love of enemy and forgiveness, is indeed compatible with judgment and punishment; but the latter must always serve the former. When wrongdoers are confronted and punished out of hate or selfish motives, or even without concern for the sinner, judgment and punishment are without a doubt incompatible with charity. Christian love must extend to all persons, even the enemy who may be threatening. Of course, the most loving thing to do, both for the enemy and all those involved, may be a prudent maintenance of distance, or perhaps some sort of punishment. But the key is that it must be done for the sake of the genuine happiness of the person loved.

Thus charity as love of God above all else and love of all else in God does make very tangible differences in how we live. The three activities described in this part—worship, love of all persons, and love of enemy and constant forgiveness—are concrete examples of how charity makes a difference in how one lives in this life. Other acts could be added. For instance, along with fraternal correction described above, Aquinas lists almsgiving (from Matt. 6) as an exemplary act of charity. This points us to the following chapter on grace, and particularly how grace transforms the innerworldly activities of cardinal virtues.

Charity is the form of the virtues and the shape of the Christian life. Self-giving love is the sum of the Christian story and so, unsurprisingly, the virtue that inclines us to live lives of self-giving love is primary in the Christian life. Though it may be difficult to imagine how to love God when our experiential models of love are those toward the people around us, Aquinas uses the example of just such a natural love—friendship—to explain how love of God looks. It is an appreciation of, a seeking to further spread, and enjoyment of, the goodness of God. Charity is indeed primarily love of God, but it is inextricably intertwined with love of others.

Perhaps most important for a book on moral theology, charity makes a concrete difference in how we love people around us. It does not eliminate from our lives what might be called natural loves, the host of relationships (parental love, sibling love, friendship, romantic love, etc.) found in people of all times and places and rightly called “loves.” Yet it surely does impact our natural loves, transforming them to be lived within the broader context afforded by a truthful vision of the way thing are at the big-picture level. It enables us to seek a more complete happiness for those we love. At times this leads to distinctive acts, as when we are constantly willing to forgive, and when we love all other persons as fellow sons and daughters of God. It leads us to obey the commandments, which may surely (thankfully!) be obeyed by other people but which look different from within the context of the Christian story. So at times it may lead us to acts that do not look distinctively charitable from the outside (taking care of our children, tending to a sick spouse, helping a friend move), but which are actually directed toward an ultimate goal of union with God and others in God. And as we know from chapter 2, our ultimate goal shapes all we do in life.

Thus we say that charity transforms our natural loves. It perfects them, elevating them toward a goal of union with God. The Christian may live a “supernatural” life, but it is also a life where natural loves and activities are done well—indeed, more perfectly. This is why we say grace perfects nature, a claim explained more completely in the following chapter.

1. What is the term “charity” commonly taken to mean? What is its definition in this chapter?

2. What is friendship in general? What three types of friendship does Aristotle distinguish?

3. What about Aristotle’s discussion of friendship leads Aquinas to describe charity as friendship with God?

4. Describe two ways that love and God and neighbor can be understood as connected. Which do you find persuasive and why?

5. Why is it important that charity is an act of the will? What role is there for the emotions in Christian love?

6. What does it mean to say that charity is the form of the virtues? How does it shape all our loves in life?

7. Give three examples of distinctive ways charity is lived.

8. Give an example of some way charity transforms a love that is present in those without charity.

charity, friendships of utility/pleasure/goodness, form of the virtues, natural loves

1. In what ways is one’s relationship with God like and unlike our friendships with other people?

2. Aristotle distinguishes friendships of goodness from those of utility and pleasure. Given that, from a Christian perspective, charity as friendship of goodness is ideally pleasant and also constituted by a common cause of love of God and others in God, does charity include and transcend Aristotle’s two other forms of friendship or simply leave them behind? In other words, is there utility and pleasure in charity?

3. If charity’s scope extends to all persons, how useful is friendship for describing charity, since friendship seems to be something we share with certain people and not others?

4. What do the different ways of understanding the relationship between love of God and neighbor have to do with morality of obligation vs. morality of happiness?

5. If charity is a gift from God, can it really be an exercise of one’s own will? What does this have to do with freedom of indifference vs. freedom for excellence?

6. Can people who are not Christian have charity? If not, why not? If so, what does it look like?

7. If charity is love of all people, are particular relationships where we are closer to some people (family, friends, spouse, etc.) than others, compatible with charity? Can Christians virtuously have such relationships?

8. How might discussion of charity’s scope extending to all persons inform discussions of social justice and human rights? What unique resources can Christians bring to the table in such discussions?

9. If charity demands love of enemy and constant forgiveness, what sorts of punishment are necessarily opposed to charity and can never be done, even if they are claimed to be in the best interests of the person they are inflicted upon?

10. Is it possible for Christians to love the enemy in warfare, and still intentionally kill the enemy? What ramifications does your answer to this question have on the just war/pacifism debate from chapter 7?

11. Should victims (of abuse, oppression, crime, etc.) have charity for their victimizers? Why or why not? If so, what should such charity look like?

The most formative influences on the chapter (beyond the scriptures) are by far Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae II–II 23–26 and Augustine’s On Christian Teaching and On the Way of Life of the Catholic Church. C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and The Four Loves also offer excellent descriptions of love in general, and charity in particular. His The Great Divorce is an outstanding narrative depiction of what difference it makes to love all things in God (or not). Finally, Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est is excellent reading on charity, and particularly its relationship to justice and other human loves.