'By knowledge and by love': Charity's relationship to knowledge in the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and its implications for charity's status as a virtue

What is the relationship between charity and knowledge in the theology of Thomas Aquinas? This question guides the analysis of Aquinas' works undertaken in this dissertation. Recent developments in Catholic moral theology provide the catalyst for this study. A number of Catholic moralists attempt to renew moral theology by positing a morally significant motion in the will that is independent of practical reasoning. They further affirm that charity elevates this motion and that this motion is what makes us morally good before God, apart from whether or not we do what is right in our actions. Some moralists also affirm that Aquinas in his later works developed a similar conception of charity.;When, however, one analyzes Aquinas' psychology of action and his theology of charity, one discovers a different perspective. Far from divorcing the will from reason, Aquinas in his later works integrates reason and will more closely together. It is the agent who acts through the dynamic interaction between intellect and will. Intellect and will work together at every stage of action. Moreover, the natural love proper to the will also depends on the intellect's knowledge, for as Augustine states, "no one can love what he does not know.";In Aquinas' view, charity, as the elevation of the will's natural love, has a similar relationship with the intellect's graced knowledge. Although charity's relationship to knowledge is unique in that charity's love transcends the limits of faith's knowledge, charity nonetheless depends on faith's knowledge, and on the knowledge provided by the other infused cognitive virtues and gifts. Aquinas' portrayal of this dependence points to charity's character as a virtue. Like any other virtue, to engage in charity's acts, one must know what these acts look like and know the object toward which they are directed. One must know something of God and what it means to love him. This has implications for one's conception moral development in charity. After noting how St. Thomas' theology of charity avoids the limitations into which a view that divorces charity from knowledge falls, we conclude our study by considering some of these implications.