Love (dilectio) of God is a very important idea for Abelard in his first mainly ethical work, the Collationes, but it appears almost exclusively in an eschatological context. The Christian surprises the Philosopher by concluding (132: 2347 – 133: 2461) that the greatest evil for men is not the punishment of Hell but the ever-increasing hate they will feel there for God, and their greatest good the highest love for God. The discussion of good earthly behaviour, however, is conducted in terms of the pagan virtues: the concept of charity appears, but only in connection with the Philosopher's argument, shown to be mistaken, that no one can have one virtue without having them all. A little earlier, in the Theologia Christiana, Abelard had used the notion of charity rather as one which he adopted without giving much thought of his own to its definition, or giving it an important place in his analysis. He mentions charity particularly in the context of the Trinity. But he also makes passing references to it in connection with human action which show that he seemed to take it for granted that charity, in the sense of love for God, is necessary for salvation, and that, in general, charity – man's or God's – is love for someone else, in which his desired ends and not one's own are sought.

Yet, a little before Abelard wrote his Theologia Christiana, one of his contemporaries – very probably Walter of Mortagne - had subjected the idea of charity to careful scrutiny in his brief De caritate and radicalized Augustine's definition of it. The main contention of De caritate is that charity consists in entirely selfless love of God and, for his sake, of our neighbour.