"For surely anyone's love will grow feebler and cooler towards one whom, as he supposes, he will have to leave, whose truth and wisdom he will have to reject, and that after he has come to the full knowledge of them, according to his capacity, in the perfection of felicity. No one can love a human friend with loyalty if he knows that in the future he will be his enemy" (City of God, Book XII, Chapter 21).

The last couple of weeks, I've been discussing happiness as it relates to the good, and the good as it relates to love. This week, I would like to discuss love is it relates to God. So far, I've given a basic definition for happiness—namely that our lives are only truly happy if we spend them in pursuit of the Good, meaning that we pursue our greatest goods first and our other lesser goods only when these do not hinder our pursuit of the greater goods. Moreover, to love somebody means to desire that person's greatest happiness, which in turn means desiring that that person pursue and acquire or attain his highest goods. As for these goods, the highest goods of man are to know (or understand) and to love, but the greatest, perfect, and supreme Good is God. In other words, man should aspire to final union with God, even though this is achieved only after this life; but he should also attempt to love others, and to pursue not only knowledge about God, but also the so-called "secular" knowledge (e.g. Natural philosophy, science, etc).

Saint Anselm, in formulating his famous ontological argument, noted that God is defined as "that than which greater cannot be thought" ("GCNBT"). As I mentioned in the first part of this series,
In other words, this is what (or Who) God is, by definition (and regardless of whether or not St Anselm's proof itself holds), and it can be nicely combined with Divine Simplicity (the two seem to be naturally intertwined in the thought of St Augustine, for example), which is a tenet of Classical Theism and of the Catholic Faith. In other words, when a faithful Catholic refers to God, he is referring to GCNBT, whether or not St Anselm's argument works. In other words, whether He exists or not, God is the greatest Good of which we can conceive.

It therefore follows that the greatest happiness of which we can think is to be with God or in Him. In other words, eternal life in heaven is the total fulfillment of the greatest happiness which we can conceive. There cannot, even in principle, be either a greater happiness than this nor a greater sorrow than to lose this eternal life. If atheism is true, then we are already in Hell, because there cannot, even in principle, be a greater sadness and sorrow than to lose or fail to obtain eternal life with God.

There is a corollary to this which I did not draw out before. If we love someone, and therefore want them to be happy, it necessarily follows that we desire the greatest possible good for that person. But nothing can be greater than God, even in principle; that is, there can be no greater good than God. But this means that if we truly love somebody, we necessarily must desire God for that person. There is really no way around that statement. To love a person means to desire that person's greatest possible happiness—and in a negative sense to desire that the person not experience the greatest possible sorrow—which means desiring that the person will ultimately obtain eternal union with God in the next life, but also that the person will come to know and love God in this life.

The union must be eternal, because as St Augustine says, if the union is to be broken then the person's love of God both in this and the next life will be feebler. Also, because if the union is the be temporary, then the greatest possible sorrow will follow the brief happiness of the union, which would in turn lessen that happiness, meaning in turn that a greater happiness would be possible. The union must be with God, because there cannot even in principle be a greater good that GCNBT, which is God by definition.

All of this means that loving a person requires desiring that God exist even if He does not--"God is love" (1 John 4:8)--for the sake of that person's happiness. By this I mean that even if I do not believe that God exists, I must desire that I be wrong for the sake of my love of another person, because I desire the greatest possible good for that person. Even if I do not believe that heaven exists, loving another person means wishing that heaven would exist so that my beloved could go there, and hoping that I am wrong and that God really does exist for the sake of my beloved's greatest possible happiness—which is union with God.

In the case of a person "loving" himself (see Mark 12:31), it means that he must desire God for himself. It moreover means his upping the ante on Pascal's Wager by ordering his own life so as to attain life with God, even if he is not sure that God actually exists.This is true even if the person is a convinced atheist—not that he must believe that God exists, but that he must desire that God exist [1]. It means, moreover, not blaspheming or insulting God even if the person in question is a convinced atheist: because speaking ill of GCNBT means speaking worse of all other goods by comparison. If I love anyone—myself or others—then I absolutely must desire God for them.

One step more may be taken. It may be a little tenuous to say this, but the next best thing in comparison to God is someone or something like God. So in order to truly love, I must try to be "like God," to be perfect (Matthew 5:48), even if God Himself doesn't exist, and even though I know that I will fail.

I can think of a few possible objections to all of this, and I will address them now. The first objection is raised by the skeptic who protests—as he always does when Pascal's Wager is involved—that it is possible that the Christian God isn't the real God. He posits that some other god might exist, and therefore that it is best to not believe in God and to not even desire to believe. I reply that this objection is non sequitur. If another god exists who is not the greatest and perfect good, or who is not even good, then there is no reason to desire union with this god. God, on the other hand, is GCNBT, so there can be no greater happiness (even in principle) than union with Him. There can also be no greater sorrow, even in principle, than to fail to achieve this union. Whatever punishments the other god might inflict for our choosing the "wrong" god, they pale in comparison the the realization that we have lost the greatest possible happiness; indeed, these "other punishments" might in some way help to salve the wounds by distracting us from this realization, as a physical torment might in some sense alleviate a mental torment.

The second objection notes that if God does not exist, then we cannot achieve the greatest possible happiness. Thus, to live as if God does exist when we are sure that He does not is to delude ourselves, and thus to inflict disappointment and sorrow on ourselves and others needlessly. I answer that we cannot in this life actually know for sure that God does not exist. Even some of the most outspoken (and least tactful) of skeptics have as their motto "There is probably no God." That is to say, at worst we will go through life hoping for union with God and attempting to know and love Him, only to die and cease existing. If this is a disappointing and sorrowful end, it is in fact the least disappointing and sorrowful outcome which falls short of union with God.

The third objection is that truth is itself a good, and that if God does not exist then we would lose this good by desiring and even acting as if He did exist. I reply that we only lose the good which is truth if we actually believe that God exists and he does not. But we likewise loose the truth if we believe and act as if He does not exist when He does; that moreover we lose the truth if we refuse to believe either way. On the other hand, regardless of whether or not God exists, He is the highest good for which we can hope; it therefore follows that if He does not exist, then our desires for the good and for the true are necessarily in conflict, and so we can only choose which of these two greatest desires to pursue and emulate. On the other hand, if God does exist, then these two desires are reconciled (along with our heart's other desire, which is beauty).

But if God does not exist, then are we forced to choose between desiring the good for those we love and desiring truth for them? I answer that we are not, because merely desiring that something is true does not mean that it will be true. We could under these circumstances desire that God exist while believing that He does not. On the other hand, if our lives are ordered towards becoming perfect as God is perfect, and God does not exist, then it does not follow that we are living a lie; rather, it means that we are struggling to live in a manner which is impossible, and doing so without the benefit of grace. However, "impossible" does not mean "untrue."

In the absence of God, the conflict between the good and the true is rather a conflict in whether we ought to desire that what is true be true (as the metaphysical "status quosian" might) or whether we ought to desire that what is the Ultimate Good is true (as the metaphysical "non status quosian" might) [2]. But there is not necessarily a demand that we must desire that what is true must remain true. Any person who has ever worked to change the world in some way has worked against this so-called "status quosian" conception. By this definition, we are all (or most of us) "non status quosians." Thus, although we cannot change metaphysical reality or ontological categories of being/non-being and existence/non-existence, we can have the "non status-quosian" desire that God exists if He does not. On the other hand, we cannot reasonably have the opposite of that desire—that God not exist if He does exist—especially not if we truly love.

Therefore, to love—and hence to desire happiness for—someone is to desire that God exists. It is, moreover to desire eternal union with God in the next life for whomever we love, and it is to desire that the person know and love God in this life. It is indeed to desire union with God for that person now, even if that union is impossible, whether the impossibility arises (as it does) from our own limitation in this life, or whether the impossibility arises (as it does not) because God Himself does not exist. To love a person—including if that person is our self—is to desire to help them to come closer to God; in short, it is to help them as best we can to become a saint.

----Footnotes----
[1] Of course, a tenet of Classical Theism is that God Is His existence, which could also mean that God Is existence.

[2] I nearly refered to these as "realists" and "idealists," respectively, but it wouldn't be in the same sense that most philosophers seem to use these two terms. And "realist" vs "non-realist" doesn't quite work, either. Hence, the use of metaphysical "status quou."