the intellectual
virtues, which consist in attaining human reason: and it follows that
among the theological virtues themselves, the first place belongs to
that which attains God most.

Now that which is of itself always ranks before that which is by
another. But faith and hope attain God indeed in so far as we derive
from Him the knowledge of truth or the acquisition of good, whereas
charity attains God Himself that it may rest in Him, but not that
something may accrue to us from Him. Hence charity is more excellent
than faith or hope, and, consequently, than all the other virtues,
just as prudence, which by itself attains reason, is more excellent
than the other moral virtues, which attain reason in so far as it
appoints the mean in human operations or passions.

Reply Obj. 1: The operation of the intellect is completed by the
thing understood being in the intellectual subject, so that the
excellence of the intellectual operation is assessed according to the
measure of the intellect. On the other hand, the operation of the
will and of every appetitive power is completed in the tendency of
the appetite towards a thing as its term, wherefore the excellence of
the appetitive operation is gauged according to the thing which is
the object of the operation. Now those things which are beneath the
soul are more excellent in the soul than they are in themselves,
because a thing is contained according to the mode of the container
(De Causis xii). On the other hand, things that are above the soul,
are more excellent in themselves than they are in the soul.
Consequently it is better to know than to love the things that are
beneath us; for which reason the Philosopher gave the preference to
the intellectual virtues over the moral virtues (Ethic. x, 7, 8):
whereas the love of the things that are above us, especially of God,
ranks before the knowledge of such things. Therefore charity is more
excellent than faith.

Reply Obj. 2: Faith works by love, not instrumentally, as a master by
his servant, but as by its proper form: hence the argument does not
prove.

Reply Obj. 3: The same good is the object of charity and of hope: but
charity implies union with that good, whereas hope implies distance
therefrom. Hence charity does not regard that good as being arduous,
as hope does, since what is already united has not the character of
arduous: and this shows that charity is more perfect than hope.
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SEVENTH A