Deus Caritas Est

Background and Occasion

Benedict XVI signed his first encyclical on Christmas Day 2005, eight months after his election, and published it in January 2006. Its title comes from 1 John 4:16, “God is love”. The Pope explains that he chose the theme because, in a world where the name of God is sometimes linked with vengeance or hatred, it was important to show that the God of Christian faith is love, and that this love must shape the Church’s life.

The encyclical is in two parts, which the Pope describes as speculative and practical. The first part, according to reports at the time, was written by Benedict himself; the second adapts a text on the Church’s charitable work begun under John Paul II.

Central Teaching

Part I: The unity of love in creation and salvation history

The first part starts from the word “love”, which is used in many senses, and asks whether they have anything in common. The ancient Greeks distinguished eros, the love that desires and seeks, from agape, the love that gives and is grounded in faith. Some modern critics, notably Nietzsche, accused Christianity of poisoning eros. Benedict answers that Christianity does not reject eros but purifies and heals it: eros, left to itself, degrades into mere sex; but it is not destroyed by agape, and becomes fully itself when it moves toward care for the other and self-gift.

The two forms of love are not opposed but find their unity in the love of God. The Old Testament reveals a God who loves his people with the passion of eros, as the prophets Hosea and Ezekiel show in the images of betrothal and adultery, and with a love that forgives, which is agape. In the Song of Songs, love between man and woman becomes an image of the covenant. This love is revealed fully in Jesus Christ, who is love incarnate, and above all in the Cross, where God turns against himself to raise man up and save him. The Eucharist draws us into this act of self-gift.

From this follows the unity of love of God and love of neighbour. Love of neighbour is possible because God first loved us; and love of God is false if it is closed to the neighbour (1 John 4:20). Benedict teaches that love of neighbour is not a command imposed from outside but a consequence of faith: I come to love even the person I do not like, from the perspective of Jesus Christ.

Part II: The practice of love by the Church

The second part turns to the Church as a community of love. From the beginning, the Church’s charity was organised: the apostles appointed the seven to serve tables (Acts 6:1–6), and the Fathers and saints continued this service. The Church’s nature, Benedict says, is expressed in a threefold responsibility: proclaiming the word of God, celebrating the sacraments, and exercising the ministry of charity. These are inseparable; charity is not an optional activity that could be left to others.

He then addresses the relation between justice and charity. Against the Marxist claim that charity merely props up an unjust system, he affirms that a just society is the proper task of politics, not of the Church. The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible; but neither can she remain on the sidelines. Her contribution is to purify reason and form consciences through her social teaching. And even in the most just society, there will always be suffering that needs love: the claim that justice would make charity superfluous misunderstands man.

The encyclical describes the distinctive profile of the Church’s charitable activity. Its workers need professional competence, but above all a formation of the heart, so that they meet people with love. Christian charity is not a means of proselytism: it is given freely, though the Christian knows that God is often the best testimony to love. Those who serve must draw strength from prayer, as the example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta shows. The encyclical ends with the saints and with Mary.

Theological Significance

Deus Caritas Est is a theological reflection on the very centre of Christian faith, and it gave Benedict’s pontificate its keynote. It was followed by Spe Salvi (2007) on hope and the encyclical on faith that Francis completed as Lumen Fidei (2013), so that the three theological virtues received a papal treatment in turn.

Its account of eros and agape is significant for the theology of love in the tradition of Augustine and Aquinas. It rejects both a merely ethical view of Christianity and the sharp opposition between desire and charity that some twentieth-century Protestant theology had proposed. Its teaching on justice and charity is a key text for Catholic social doctrine and for the identity of Catholic charitable organisations, and it was given legal form in Benedict’s motu proprio Intima Ecclesiae Natura (2012).

For readers of this site, the encyclical belongs with the treatment of charity as the greatest of the theological virtues, and with the tract on God’s attributes, where love is studied as the act by which God wills good to his creatures.