A difficulty with the scholastic definition of love

Father Barron — soon to be His Grace Bishop Barron, praise God — has often quoted what he calls the scholastic definition of love:

Love is to will the good of the other as other.

This is a good definition. It corrects the characteristic faults of our own time, when we are apt to think of ‘love’ as approval, or kindness, or affectionate emotion, or even physical proximity — as in the idea that ‘unconditional love’ is incompatible with excluding a person from one’s life or from a social circle.

To will the good of the other means not simply to avoid hurting the other’s feelings, but to desire him to be good, and to truly flourish. It often happens that willing the good becomes incompatible with preserving the other’s feelings or serenity. If your sister is in love with a bad man, if your son is binge drinking, if your friend is wallowing in self-pity, your love for them may require you to injure their feelings in order to upset their complacency with a bad state of life. In a word, you must tell them that the life they are living is not good for them.

The scholastic definition is an especially apt corrective as applied to marriage. It tells us, rightly, that the promise to ‘love’ one’s spouse is not a promise of perpetual amorous feelings — obviously impossible to promise — but a promise precisely to will the good of your spouse and to carry it out. This is the demanding school of marriage, in which we constantly fail to live up to the responsibility we have accepted as our own selfishness asserts itself, but each day we pick ourselves up and try again. It is a great grace when we are emotionally ‘in love’ with our spouse, and are fortified by a mighty affection and attachment. But this is not the essence of marriage.

All this is to the good. There is a difficulty I want to raise. The scholastic definition lacks a dimension which seems to me essential to love in all the forms we encounter it. That is the desire to be with the other.

C.S. Lewis broke love down into four kinds: this is present in all of them. A man loves his dog, and wants to be with it; a father loves his son, and wants to be with him; a friend loves his friend, and wants to be with him; a husband loves his wife, and wants to be with her; God loves us, and wants to be with us.

True, in life this desire to be with the other is frequently in conflict with willing their good. But this is because we are corporeal. As physical bodies, being with one person or group of people necessarily excludes all kinds of things and activities — and most importantly, excludes many other people. And the usual case when we have to mortify our desire to be with a loved one, doesn’t it arise precisely because their good requires being with someone else? A different friend, a relative, a spouse, God.

In fact, our lives consist in making choices about whom to be with, and our loves are more intense and pervasive in willing the good of the other precisely in proportion as we live more intensely with them.

Above all with God. Here we see the consummation, where both these elements are fused completely. Our highest good, is to be with God. In God, to will the good of the other and to desire being with the other, are the same thing. Here the symbol of marriage is illuminating: in the best marital love, the good of the spouses is to live with each other. The suitor who desires his beloved, not only desires her good but desires her, to be his own, and to be with her always, loves her with a love like God’s own for us.

This is the fault in the scholastic definition. It is not enough to say that the desire to be with the other is subordinate to willing their good — yes it is true as a piece of practical advice, but it is not true in the grand picture — because in God the two are one.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.