The Gaping Door

Without equivocation, there can neither be affinity between error and love nor between love and evil. In order to love, one must possess clear knowledge of what in reality is good. Evil is absence of good, and privation or diminution of good, and as such, it is lacking fullness of being. It is impossible to love evil - to love the hinderer or destroyer of good; it is against nature to love that which is causing disorder and havoc. It is unnatural, after mature consideration to choose evil - to choose that which is deemed to cause disservice for oneself. Choosing good over evil becomes nonetheless not as essential as choosing the highest good. And, the highest good inherently cannot have real opposite; only the degraded can have that which is opposed. True good is unsuppressed, undestroyed and inviolable. Only the degraded good can be violated for evil has no power to violate true good since true good transcends and obliterates evil. Evil is all that separates us from true good, i.e., from the ultimate truth and love. The highest good since it remains unadulterated, immutable and permanent possesses not only integrality but also completeness or fullness of being. What concerns one ultimately determines one's being or non-being (e.g., Tillich). Evil cannot possess full being for only that in which there cannot be any privation of good has true and full being. To choose evil is to choose error or untruth; it means to choose the opposite of love. To choose evil in other words is to choose privation, which also means to choose non-being; "true" and "good" being rightfully regarded as the transcendental properties of being. To put it still differently, "the ground of being is God" (Tillich). To choose degraded good (e.g., human good) is equivalent with choosing that which is lacking fullness of being. One's relationship with being is necessarily and firmly grounded in truth; on the knowledge of what constitutes the highest good. There exists unchanging relationship of human intellect to being (i.e., knowledge searches after truth) as well as permanent relationship of the will (where the proper act of the will is love) to being (i.e., love searches after good). Between knowledge and love therefore there is always an axiomatic unity in that love without knowledge cannot establish what in actuality is good, and knowledge without the proper act of the will (i.e., love) cannot act. To put it another way, there is dynamic indissolubility between love and truth; they represent powerful inner integrity, which is evident in a sagacious, and rightly ordered life.

Act, as defined by Dietrich von Hildebrand is "a conscious meaningful relationship with an object," must therefore be always joined with the coexistent deliberateness of the object's natural, proper and final end. And, a purposeful and substantive relationship to an object is unattainable without the existence of the ultimate truth (and love), which illuminates human intellect and guides it to its final end. Act and obligation are eternal since they are invariably coextensive with eternal destiny. Ultimately, as Maria Fontana Magee in her article "Knowledge and Love" pointedly reaffirms, "knowledge and love, sophia and phronesis, share the same Source and the same Destiny. Knowledge in its quest for truth will at last reach God as ultimate Truth. Love in its pursuit of good will finally arrive at God as infinite Good. God is the pure actualization of truth and good - that is, Being Himself" - concluding that "there must be a God; otherwise, there would be no ultimate end and life would be utterly meaningless." Prospectively, it is better to die than to live without a perfect being, i.e., without the existing splendor of absolute truth for if the Omnipotent Being could be a mere figment of human imagination, then a human person is a fiction as well. If the Omnipotent Love does not exist, then the human race as a whole is doomed to love a fiction. Secular knowledge, secular love and secular moral code, all are height of absurdity.