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tonyrey
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“Whatever the reason it is presumptuous** to try to attempt **a full explanation” indicates the magnitude of the task. How can we define the Indefinable?
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Ftboy07
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So are you acaccusing God who is above all humans of malice aforethought?!
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Richca
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This has nothing to do with Thomism but with the dogmatic teaching of the Church. Vatican I decreed that God created the universe of creatures by an absolutely free plan and with absolute freedom of council and by His will free from all necessity. This teaching is not in the realm of theological opinion but it has been defined, settled definitively as a truth of the catholic faith. I don’t believe cardinal Ratzinger would hold to an heretical doctrine so whatever he meant in the prayer card you mention cannot have a meaning that God created necessarily. Vatican I declared that God is supremely happy in himself and from himself.
Secondly, an opinion that God created necessarily or that creatures are necessary to God is not going to hold up to philosophical scrutiny or even from simple reasoning from the truth that the world had a beginning in time and is not eternal. As to the first, God is infinitely perfect in every perfection as Vatican I declared. God possesses the fullness of being and existence, goodness, happiness, truth in an infinite degree. If creation or creatures were necessary to God, then this obviously implies that something outside God is necessary to complete Him, to make Him happy which simply means that God is not supremely happy in himself or from himself as Vatican I declared or that God in himself does not possess the fullness of being, existence, beatitude or is infinite in every perfection.
As to the second as we hold that the universe of creatures is not eternal as God is but it had a beginning in time, then it follows that God existed from all eternity before He created the world. So, before God created things distinct and apart from Himself, He alone existed from all eternity by Himself, supremely happy in himself and from himself. What is interesting of note here as the CCC says, God is one but not solitary. We, of course, confess the trinity and communion of persons in the one God from all eternity.
What moved God to create was his own goodness and love as the CCC says and it quotes St Thomas: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.” And the CCC quotes St Bonaventura as well that God created all things “not to increase his glory [or happiness], but to show it forth and to communicate it.”
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Richca
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Just from a quick google search of eros, the wikipedia says that it comes from ancient greek language and it has the meaning of intimate love or romantic love. We cannot deny that God has intimate love for us (or even infinite love for us as God’s love and goodness are infinite) and the prophets of the Old Testament portray God’s love for Israel as that of a groom for his bride or after the manner of married love which is the most intimate kind of human love experienced here on earth. The Church itself is considered the bride of Christ and our souls are considered to be the bride of Christ in the teachings of not a few canonized mystic saints such as St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. The “spiritual marriage” is according to St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross the highest “mystical” state obtainable in this life.
The spirituality of Mother Teresa of Calcutta is also very interesting. I have a book titled “Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire” by Rev. Joseph Langford who with Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers. I recommend this book to all. Anyhow, Mother Teresa was struck by the words of Jesus on the cross “I thirst.” Her whole spirituality and that of the religious orders of men and women she founded is based on her contemplation of these two words.
Fr. Langford writes “The symbol thirst is neither complicated or hard to understand: As the burning desert yearns for water, so God yearns for our love. As a thirsty man longs for water, so God longs for each of us. As a thirsty man seeks after water, so God seeks after us. As a thirsty man thinks only of water, so God thinks constantly of us…For Mother Teresa, the mystery of God’s thirst, revealed in Jesus, is the center of all, and the key to all. God’s yearning to “love and be loved” is the supreme force that inspires and directs all his works, from Creation to Calvary, to the present day.”
Mother Teresa writes “Jesus is God therefore His love, His thirst is infinite…[We are called to] quench this infinite thirst of a God made Man…The sisters ceaselessly quench the thirsting God by their love and of the love of the souls they bring to Him.”
“What is the reason of our existence? We are here to satiate the thirst of Jesus, to proclaim the love of Christ----the thirst of Jesus----for souls by the holiness of our lives…”
“Right today and everyday He [Jesus] is thirsting for our love. He is longing for me in my soul.”
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oldcelt
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In the fashion described by a great many…which I do not believe…yes.
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Aloysium
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Thanks! Very powerful contemplations on the nature of Love and the relationship with our Creator.
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thinkandmull
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Thomas Aquinas taught that God loves a rock with the same intensity as He loves a baby. Cardinal Ratzinger doesn’t agree with that opinion. I didn’t say he thought we were necessary absolutely. However, to be desired with eros implies that we are something to God, instead of Aquinas’s position which says God has no relation to us as we do to Him. If God IS His knowledge, then knowledge of us would change His nature, since we are contingent. But if we are nothing to God, even Jesus’s humanity being nothing, than there is no change in God’s unity and simplicity. That is Aquinas’s side. Ratzinger doesn’t look at God the same way. Aquinas would say, however, that God’s love radiates to us, although the choice to create and even become Incarnate was so inconsequential to God’s being that it was as if it were nothing.
You mentioned the Catechism of the Council of Trent as saying that God acts whenever we act. Do you have the citation?
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thinkandmull
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And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak of others of our friendship with Him" Benedict XVI
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davidv
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What do you mean by “necessary”?
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thinkandmull
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I don’t think Cardinal Ratzinger means “not contingent”, but that God has eros, a love of need, for this chosen contingent creation, now that it has been created. This is contrary to the Aquinas idea of God’s simplicity
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Aloysium
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God is Love, as the Trinity.
As such He is complete, whole, having no parts, inseparable Oneness.
I don’t understand what you mean.
Caring for the other is accompanied by the desire that the caring be reciprocal.
God is simple: Being, Beauty, Goodness, Truth and Life eternal are One in Him who created and maintains us in His love.
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thinkandmull
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As I’ve explained, if God is His own knowledge, then He can’t have knowledge of the contingent because that would alter His nature by change in knowledge of what exists. So we are as if nothing to Him. Saying God has eros for us is not Thomistic. 
Cardinal Ratzinger has said that he doesn’t enjoy reading Aquinas
Cardinal Ratzinger has said that he doesn’t enjoy reading Aquinas
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oldcelt
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As I’ve explained, if God is His own knowledge, then He can’t have knowledge of the contingent because that would alter His nature by change in knowledge of what exists. So we are as if nothing to Him. Saying God has eros for us is not Thomistic.
**Cardinal Ratzinger has said that he doesn’t enjoy reading Aquinas/**QUOTE]
Perhaps, there is a reason for that
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thinkandmull
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I remember Ratzinger saying he didn’t like to read Aquinas because Aquinas would try to reason the mystery out of God
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Richca
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Richca
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If Pope Ratzinger did say this it obviously has to be understood in context as well as Ratzinger is expressing his own personal likes and dislikes. Everyone is different and has their own personal likes and dislikes as well as given different gifts by the Holy Spirit for the building up of the Mystical Body of Christ. Not all the members of the body are the same. Some people are attracted to Franciscan spirituality, others to Domincan, still others to Carmelite or Jesuit spirituality.
As to try and reason the mystery out of God, Aquinas knows full well that God is infinite and incomprehensible to any created intellect. Only God comprehends Himself. Aquinas says that as to the beatific vision of God which we hope to experience in heaven someday, we will never grow tired of this for all eternity because it will always fill us with wonder. For God is infinite, boundless, measureless.
We can also consider that God gifted Aquinas to be a theologian and the work of a theologian is to expound the Catholic faith and Sacred Doctrine to the best of one’s ability. We call a good artisan someone who is good at their art. A good theologian is one who is good at being a theologian. It is indisputable that St Thomas Aquinas was a remarkable theologian through the gifts the Holy Spirit gave him (which he used well) such as a remarkable degree of the gifts of wisdom and knowledge. St Thomas provided the Church of Christ with an outstanding benefit in expounding the catholic faith and sacred doctrine as the Church itself has expressed many times over.
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thinkandmull
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Something is indisputable that pertains to faith. If someone happens to disagree with Aquinas on many things, that person would not think he was a fantastic theologian-philosopher.
As you quoted: “In one way on the part of the act of the will itself, which is more or less intense. In this way God does not love some things more than others, because He loves all things by an act of the will that is one, simple, and always the same.”
So God’s intellect so to speak wishes more good to you than to a car, but has the same intensity of feeling towards both. That is a very weird concept of God. Most people don’t think of God that way
As you quoted: “In one way on the part of the act of the will itself, which is more or less intense. In this way God does not love some things more than others, because He loves all things by an act of the will that is one, simple, and always the same.”
So God’s intellect so to speak wishes more good to you than to a car, but has the same intensity of feeling towards both. That is a very weird concept of God. Most people don’t think of God that way
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Richca
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thinkandmull
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(1) For some Catholics Rosmini or Hegel are a better source of thought on ontology than Aquinas. To each his own.
- God doesn’t change in His essence. But people are free to believe that God is a highly emotional (but not irrational) being, caring like a Father, and feeling hurt when we are hurt. Peter Kreeft had an article once I read on suffering that such as much. Strange to hear that from a Thomist
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tonyrey
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Do you really believe you are infallible?:ehh:
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