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‘Be Ye Therefore Perfect’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Austin Flannery O.P.
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Extract

We use the word ‘perfect’ in so many contexts that it is easy to lose sight of its etymological meaning (‘per’, thoroughly, ‘facere', to make). We need to look to its roots in order to understand St Thomas's use of the term. He speaks of ‘first perfection’ and ‘second perfection’ (I. 73. 1). ‘First perfection’ is God's gift to every man as he enters upon this life; he has a nature which is perfect, ‘thoroughly-made’, in that it lacks none of the finely-adapted faculties proper to a rational being. Activity is the very raison d'etre of these faculties and in bestowing them on a nature God imparts to it the ability to act, to operate. He who ‘created heaven and earth’ has been prodigal even of his power, since he willed to create a world which should mirror his omnipotence as well as his goodness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 3 , Issue 26 , August 1948 , pp. 53 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © 1948 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 This points to a more fundamental explanation, (of. II-II. 24. 7 ad 3.) We love only those things which we know and our love for them is proportioned to our knowledge. In this life we know God in a limited manner, by faith, and our love for him suffers the same limitations. Consequently it can increase ad infinitum within its narrow framework, without ever becoming equal to ‘caritas patriae’, the charity of heaven. The reason is that the ‘quantity’ of the charity of heaven is as different from the ‘quantity’ of the charity of the present life, as the quantity of a plane surface is different from that of a straight line. The Beatific Vision oversteps the boundaries set by faith, opening up new vistas, new reasons for loving God, and the charity proportioned to this new knowledge knows none of the limitations set to charity here below. St Thomas's example is enlightening. Just as a straight line produced ad infinitum will never equal a plane surface, so charity which is increased ad infinitum within the limits set by faith, will never equal the charity of heaven.

2 Lemmonyer, O.P., Somme Théologique, La Vie Humaine, Edition de la Revue des Jeunes, pp. 550 sqq.