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.

Wojtyła is clear that, in the man-woman relationship, other realities can color the picture, e.g., attraction on the basis of pure sexual appeal and emotional compatibility. He does not deny these elements can or do enter into that relationship. What he does deny is confusing them with what is essential to love, i.e., a shared common good (and not just a shared feeling or compatibility), a wanting of the objective good for the beloved.

When God invites human beings into relationship with Him, what can they share? God is infinite; man is not. God is perfect; man is not. God is all wise; man is not. What we can share is goodness, albeit within our created, limited capacity. But that is still real goodness.

That goodness is not a feeling, not a wish. It is real: the life of God in us was once clearly spoken of as "sanctifying grace." It is the shared Life of God that cannot be shared when one is attached to what is anti-God and anti-divine-life, i.e., mortal sin.

Salvation is not about a proposition. It is also a proposal for a relationship, in and with Love, based on the shared objective good of grace. God, as a true lover, proposes. But the beloved always remains free to turn down the proposal. Life, leading to the ultimate choice of Heaven or Hell, is the story of that love proposal.

So, God could not have made the criterion for our judgment anything else but good or evil because, otherwise, there is no point in the shared Good between us and Him.

Genesis already registered this when God speaks of sin as leading to death, not because God has established some arbitrary connection between the two, but because, in turning from God as the Source of Our Life and Being, the only reality left is death and non-being.

Judaism and Christianity both made an enormous contribution to the history of religion in connecting God's relationship with man to moral responsibility. Consider the account of Noah and the Flood. Many cultures, particularly...