By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas

by Michael S. Sherwin

WINNER OF THE 2006 CHARLES CARDINAL JOURNET PRIZE awarded by The Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University What is the relationship between charity and knowledge in the theology of Thomas Aquinas? Did Aquinas in his mature thought portray charity's act as antecedent to and independent of practical reasoning? Did he view charity's motion as rendering us morally good before God, apart from whether or not we do what is right in our actions? A dominant stream in contemporary Catholic ethics holds for precisely such a concept of charity, and many recent commentators on Aquinas maintain that this is his position as well. According to Michael S. Sherwin however, the contrary is in fact the case. By Knowledge and By Love represents a major contribution to Thomistic moral theology and philosophy by providing a thoughtful examination of Aquinas' psychology of action and his theology of charity. Through a comprehensive analysis of the relation between intellect and will, knowledge and love, and charity and the infused intellectual virtues, Sherwin concludes that, far from divorcing the will from reason, Aquinas in his later works integrates reason and will more closely together. Saint Augustine says, "No one can love what he does not know." According to Sherwin, Aquinas holds that God's grace respects and elevates this dynamic in the gift of charity, which depends on faith's knowledge, and on the knowledge provided by the other infused cognitive virtues and gifts. Charity is a virtue, and like any virtue its acts require some knowledge of their object. Sherwin argues that not only is this a faithful reading of Aquinas, it also has profound implications for any conception of moral development. The role of a mentoring community, the characteristics of friendship with God, and the specific actions required by love all play a part in Sherwin's analysis. ABOUT THE Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., is Associate Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. PRAISE FOR THE "The book is a carefully composed and detailed explication of a key aspect of St. Thomas's moral thought―the precise relation between intellect and will in human action. But it is more than that. Fr. Sherwin besides giving us an accurate and comprehensive account of St. Thomas's thought on this important subject, and doing so with admirable clarity and control, accompanies that account with commentary which is richly interlaced with revealing and cogent analysis. . . By Knowledge and By Love is a sound and substantive book. Besides being in its own right an impressive and valuable contribution to Thomistic scholarship, by devoting attention to an important and timely aspect of St. Thomas's moral theology, it performs the very important service of correcting serious misinterpretations of the Angelic Doctor's thought."―Dennis Q. McInerny, Homiletic and Pastoral Review "[An] informed, lucid and readable book."―Gabriele De Anna, The Medieval Review "By Knowledge and by Love is as readable as it is learned. Serenely and evenhandedly, Michael Sherwin leads us to see how, for St. Thomas, charity is both a matter and a mover of choice; how, being free, it must be intelligible; how, enlivening the heart, it must also steer counsel and rectify conduct. There should be no more talk of a Thomas who detaches will from reason."―Stephen L. Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross

Genres: Spirituality

296 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2005

About the author

Michael S. Sherwin, O.P. is Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Director of the Saint Thomas Aquinas Institute for Theology and Culture, and Director of the Pinckaers Archives.

Fr. Sherwin has written extensively on the psychology of love, virtue ethics, and moral development. His work places Thomas Aquinas’ thought in dialogue with contemporary questions. Sherwin is especially known for his interest in the analogies between moral development and the arts, underlining the affinities between Christian virtue, music, dance and sport.

Reviews

[Michael Kenan Baldwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, clear, & fair-minded study in Aquinas' moral theology and theory of human action. It assumes a decent handle of Thomas' thought already. I thought his stuff on human action (intellect & will) was clearer and more pertinent than the later content on faith, love & knowledge.

In a sentence, his thesis is:
Aquinas moved from, in his early works (Sentences Commentary & De Veritate), treating the will (& thus love) as the formal cause of human acts, to the greater precision in his later works (the Summa & De Malo) of intellect (& thus its knowledge) being the formal cause & the will (+ its love) being the efficient cause of human acts. This results not in an infinite regress, because the first motion of both will & intellect is caused by its nature & Maker (God).

Aquinas' key insight in De Malo, for example, is that the intellect's knowledge moves the will by specification, and the will's love moves the intellect by exercise. As such, love is always cognitive, and knowledge is always (can we say?) moved by our appetites & loves.

[Harman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Br. Sherwin provides a clear, if not easy, entry-point into the virtue ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas. Working towards a clear exposition between the relationship between knowledge and love - intellect and charity - within the human soul elevated by grace, Sherwin peels back layer upon layer, looking first at the relation between the intellect and will, then the knowledge and love, then prudence and the three other cardinal virtues, and lastly arriving at the relationship between faith and charity.

His occasion for writing is to correct the thinking of the theorists of moral motivation, who posit that St. Thomas, at his most mature, was a voluntarist. Br. Sherwin illustrates how this leads to absurdity and a divorce of the life we live from our true relationship with God. Thus he illustrates throughout that Thomas' view of the relationship between the will and intellect (and thus charity and knowledge) does indeed develop in his writings, but remains always an intellectual realist. He concludes with an excellent explanation of the very real effects this has on the relation of the Church to the world and to God.