As the liturgical year comes to an end, the Church’s readings become decidedly eschatological, focusing on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. A recent Sunday reading from Daniel tells us, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.” (12:2)
Why does God judge on the basis of good and evil?
In a world overdosed on the dictatorship of relativism and allergic to objective moral standards, perhaps some think even God needs to explain, “Who am I to judge?” Presuming, however, that we recognize a fundamental distinction between God and man, why does God judge by criteria of good and evil?
Is it arbitrary, a capricious choice that God could have made in some way? Is it a “power thing” that God imposed, impinging on our “autonomy?” At the very least, couldn’t God have made “loving” a more explicit criterion, e.g., like the Beatitudes discussed in the General Judgment?
No.
It does all come back to Love. “Love,” first of all, is not some thing. It is Someone: “God Is Love.” (I John 4:8) And because Love is inherently a social virtue, it already points to the Trinity-in-Unity: three Persons, One God.
Love is not, therefore, primarily a feeling or an emotion. It is not a reaction. It is a reality shared by persons in relationship. The relationship of the Triune Persons is shared Good: Each loves in the other what is perfect in Himself – Life, Fidelity, Truth. The relationship of the Trinity is their Shared Goodness.
Man, made in God’s image and likeness, is made to share relationship: Genesis 1 makes that clear when it says, “male and female He created them,” while Genesis 2 affirms that “it is not good for man to be alone.” They are called to share relationships on the model of their image and likeness, i.e., shared goodness. St. Thomas Aquinas and Karol Wojtyła (in Love and Responsibility) speak of this as the true essence of love: amor benevolentiae, the wanting for another of the true good.
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