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e_c
Guest
There aren’t virtues for God. That would imply that there is a rule to which He is bound outside Himself.
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thinkandmull
Guest
Do you understand how God can love necessarily and at the same time freely or do you accept it as a mystery humans can’t know about the inner workings of a high being?
E
e_c
Guest
God is perfectly rational.
We are free inasmuch as we are rational.
Freedom is the ability to choose the good.
Love is choosing the good.
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thinkandmull
Guest
Love is choosing the good, which means there are options
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e_c
Guest
So the best love chooses the best good.
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Qoeleth
Guest
Yes, God necessarily loves Himself, but He is not compelled to do so, as if by a greater force.
Virtue (virtus) literally means “strength”. In common usage, it has come to mean something ‘morally commendable’. But God is not ‘virtuous’ in the same way that a good person is virtuous- since He is categorically different, and not subject to moral law (being pure goodness, and the true end, or objective, or moral law).
God does not have, or need, ‘moral merit’, for loving Himself (or anything else), since He is the law maker, the judge, and Himself the reward.
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Qoeleth
Guest
How do you reconcile the Incarnation and Passion of Our Lord with being ‘perfectly rational’? It would have been ‘perfectly rational’ to let the world go to hell- but God, overcome with love which burst His heart asunder, shed his blood to save so many humans- who deserved nothing but eternal damnation.
True love begins where reason ends. And God seems closer to love than to reason…
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thinkandmull
Guest
So you are saying you actually comprehend how a being can love necessarily and freely at the same time, or are you waiting to getting to heaven to find out?
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Qoeleth
Guest
Well- think of the love a mother has for her child.
She loves ‘necessarily’, but also freely.
Even romantic love- you are not ‘forced’ to love a particular woman, but also freely, but when if it happens, it something you do ‘necessarily’.
I suggest all love is ‘free’ (i.e. it cannot be forced under duress) but is also ‘necessary’ (i.e. you cannot simply choose it, (“Today, I think I’ll fall in love with …”).
Does this make sense?
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thinkandmull
Guest
Those are inferior types of love in comparison to virtues. God must have the greatest love, yet He works the least. 
E
e_c
Guest
Here’s an absurdity - If it is “more rational” to abstain from such things, and you and I would have so abstained, we would have been more rational than God.
Rationality follows immediately from immateriality in life. The more sensitive a life’s nature, the less rational it is.
So there is an equivocation going on here… You are talking about rationality as a measurement of the goodness of practical reason, not as an aspect of a substance.
While it’s poetic to talk about God being “beyond reason,” it is not helpful other than to excite devotion… When it becomes part of one’s thought system or religion, like in Islam, it does not end well.
God’s intention for creation is reasonable precisely because He has planned it. He is the rule and measure…
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