Cause?

[Shike]

I would argue that it is only desire. Desire is in the will, and it is an act. To “act on it” is a separate act–distinct, yet dependent upon the act of loving. Again, I did clarify to say that love is desiring something appropriately according to its goodness. If then, someone did love something truly, it would not be possible not to act on it.

Fine… we chose to define things differently; no problems here.

God is not capable of loving us more than He loves Himself. He is only capable of loving us as much as the goodness in us merits, however, we know from revelation that God has free chosen to unite us to Himself and make us His adopted sons. He thus loves us more because He has given us a greater share of His goodness than our nature would require. The choice to glorify our nature is not one that could have been known from reason alone. However, even if God had not chosen to glorify us in this way, He still would have been Love Itself and this could have been known from reason alone.

Love itself as His essence is what you have not proven yet.

To claim that only sacrificial love is real love…

Oops, hold the phone. I never said that. The point was defining perfect love, not excluding other forms.

No, perfect love does not need to involve harming oneself or a willingness to exhault the beloved over the lover.

Perfect Love as God does not need to die on the cross, correct. But to show perfect love (what follows from the willing as you put it) does.

Correct. Knowledge of the Trinity cannot be attained through reason alone, and from reason we can only know that God’s nature is one. (This need not lead to a false impression or an implicit denial fo the Trinity, however).

My point is that reason wouldn’t lead you to God is love without the revelation of the Trinity… I’m not even sure with that it is sufficient to get there.

You don’t need to know about the Trinity in order to understand God’s nature as love.

Yes you do. Reason gets you to God is one (and doesn’t deny the Trinity as you pointed out)… His essence as Love doesn’t make sense when you don’t have the idea of the Trinity and therefore it would be ridiculous to conclude that He is love. Why does it not make sense? Because love is willing the good of the other not yourself. If all other persons are contingent… well, I think you see where I am going… to an imperfect God. Which is of course false.

We also know that God’s nature is perfectly simple, and hence His operations of intellect and will are not distinct from his nature. From that alone we know that God IS Truth itself, Omniscience itself, Goodness itself, and Love itself. Truth and Good are the objects of the intellect and will respectively and Omniscience and Love are the acts of the Intellect and Will respectively.

I don’t think you’re being very precise… you’re making too big of jumps. Just from His opperations of intellect and will not being distinct, it does not follow that He is Truth itself… you are missing details.

meh…

peace,
Michael

 

[noroifinesse]

Another thing which must be accomplished is the prove that God is one from which simple would follow. However, I cannot come up with an argument for God’s oneness at the moment, so I will have to look into how others have argued this. I am sure St. Thomas addresses it, I just haved learned that section well enough yet.Bolivar Belicosos Finos