Christ gave Himself fully on the cross for each one of us, what more public revelation do we need than that, that He loves us all the same?
It is Catholic teaching that we all receive sufficient grace from Christ’s death on the cross, but only some of us receive efficacious grace. Love, for God, is an act of the will. That some of us would be willed a more effective grace than others is an indication of degree.
He didn’t shed more blood for the “good” people.
Never said he did, but it is Catholic doctrine that “good” people receive more of his grace. Unless you are implying they are good by their own merit?
Besides, consider the parable of the laborers, they each got the same wages regardless of the time spent working. What else but an equal love explains why God would repay varying degrees of effort with the same reward?
The parable of the laborers reflects those who end up in Heaven. What about those who will ultimately end up in Hell? If I am to take your logic at face value here, is that not proof of an unequal love?
I’m no Aquinas, but I see no definitive evidence from the writings you have quoted to prove inequality of God’s love.
I don’t know what you mean by “definitive evidence”, but if you care to pick apart Aquinas’s logic, be my guest.
To me, equal love goes hand in hand with that basic attribute of God we describe as justice.
Depends on your definition of justice. Another definition (the one that seems to allow for Hell) defines justice as the rightful consequence for ones actions, not an equal distribution of love. And since are actions, those that involve supernatural good, are caused by God’s grace, and grace is an action of God’s love, than an unequal distribution of God’s graces comes from an unequal love.
As a parent, in my own limited human experience, I can fully understand why one child would receive more help/gifts/opportunity than another because their needs would vary with their personalities, inclinations and interests. Since God created each person different, it stands to reason that some people receive/seem to receive more from Him than others. The perceived differences may also stem from us making varying degrees of use of what we receive from God.
The perceived difference may also stem from taking the doctrine of predestination (which has nothing to do with your analogy of a human parent) from the discussion. It is predetermined, before our births, as to whether we will receive efficacious grace or not. Some believe that it is (loosely put) God’s response to how he knows we will respond to his grace and others believe it is based on something we have no concept of with our limited understanding (though with no bearing on our own merits). In either case, those who are predestined are given graces that efficaciously lead them to Heaven. Some are not (though they are given sufficient graces).
However, with only sufficient graces, none of us choose Heaven.
With that in mind, the distribution reflects an unequal distribution of love. Whether or not that is based on God’s foreknowledge of our acceptance of his will is beside my point.
Again, I keep coming back to the point that sameness/difference does not equal equality/lack of equality. Having a bigger house or a more generous heart than my neighbor does not make me “more equal” than him.
Depends on our definition of equality. I set the foundation for mine in my first post. If you are coming from a different premise, then we’re talking apples and oranges. For instance, if you are coming from the premise that we are all equally deserving of Hell and equally grateful to Christ for opening Heaven for us on the cross, then (as I mentioned in my original post), we are all equal.
To me the whole idea of some people being intrinsically “better” than others is dubious. I believe this whole idea of “betterness” (allow me to coin a word here) is what Jesus was deliberately taking a stand against when He repeatedly chose to associate with those considered the dregs of society. Otherwise we’d have to conclude that He loved the poor/sinners more
Depends on your definition of “better”. Again, I never said “betterness” meant one’s status in society, so to use that example is a straw man and is putting words in my mouth to make me look arrogant. This is certainly not the case because I am a) not wealthy, b) a sinner, and c) quite possibly a candidate for damnation should I fall from grace at some point in my life.
I defined being better as having obtained eternal glory in Heaven. Many poor and repentant sinners will do so. I have no argument there.
People certainly respond differently to God’s grace and so live better lives but whether that makes one intrinsically better than another is for God to judge since He is the only one who sees past outward appearances. Therefore, from a human standpoint, I find it hard to see how one person can be described as better than another.
Again, you are using a loose definition of grace that ignores the different types of grace that the Church defines different individuals as receiving. If you won’t include those in your discussion (or a response to the concept of this unequal distribution), then I can’t help it if we disagree.
From Aquinas’s exploration of whether God loves more the better things:
The penitent and the innocent are related as exceeding and exceeded. For whether innocent or penitent, those are the better and better loved who have most grace.
I think Jesus’ death on the cross was The Strategy. Kind of confused by what you mean here.