ficino wrote:

I see over on Feser's blog that Son of Ya'Kov says that Feser, "channeling his inner Brian Davies," does not believe that God is a moral agent. No classical theist does, says Son of Ya'Kov.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/03/carrier-carries-on.html#comment-form

 
Agreed if by moral agent one means something univocally the same as "human beings are moral agents"; I disagree if it's stated simpliciter, because as I argued, God can be said to be a moral agent by analogy insofar as He is a free, personal being, and moral goodness is goodness in the actions of free, rational beings.

joewaked wrote:

In Christian theology, specifically Catholicism, we believe that "knowledge" and "love" are the two greatest operations of spirit, e.g., Sheed's Theology and Sanity.   St. Augustine in The Trinity expresses this mystery as God is pure Spirit, and therefore, has an eternal operation of knowing all Truth and willing all Good.

Do we derive these spiritual operations of Knowledge and Love from philosophical reasoning or from Divine Revelation?

Having in mind that the operation of knowledge is associated with wisdom, let's quote some verses of the Wisdom of Solomon book [1] referring to wisdom as "she" and compare them to some NT verses referring to the Son as "He":

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For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; (Wis 7:25a, RSV [2])

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his being ("hypostaseōs"), (Heb 1:3a)

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For she is a reflection of eternal light and a spotless mirror of the activity of God and an image of his goodness. (Wis 7:26)

He is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15a)

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She reaches with might from one end of the world to the other and orders all things well. (Wis 8:1)

and He upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Heb 1:3b)

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She glorifies her noble birth by having a shared life with God, (Wis 8:3a)

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. (Jn 1:1)

"Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was." (Jn 17:5)

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and the Sovereign Lord of all loves her, (Wis 8:3b)

"so that they may see my glory which You have given Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world." (Jn 17:24b)

"so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." (Jn 17:26b)

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In the last verse, the love with which the Father loves the Son is on a par with the Son Himself with regard to inhabitation in the souls of the faithful, which makes clear that said love is the Holy Spirit.

References

[1] Unless otherwise indicated, quotations of the Wisdom of Solomon book are taken from A New English Translation of the Septuagint, ©2007 by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Inc. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/29-wissal-nets.pdf

[2] The Revised Standard Version of the Bible is copyright © National Council of Churches of Christ in America.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=3905445
 

Last edited by Johannes (3/14/2018 10:23 pm)

joewaked wrote:

What I am asking is how is it that we conclude that the two great operations of Spirit are loving and knowing?

We can infer it from the verses quoted in my previous post plus the following:

"As the Father knows Me, I also know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep." (Jn 10:15)

"For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He does." (Jn 5:20a)

"But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has commanded Me, thus I do." (Jn 14:31)

Last edited by Johannes (3/14/2018 10:57 pm)

joewaked wrote:

I got you now.  Your response to my original question above is we know this "from Divine Revelation."

No, my response to your question

joewaked wrote:

Do we derive these spiritual operations of Knowledge and Love from philosophical reasoning or from Divine Revelation?

is "from both". My intent was only to show that the notion can be inferred from Divine Revelation for the case of the divine Persons. That possibility places no obstacle to the possibility of deriving the notion by means of philosophical reasoning for the cases of both Absolute and created spirits.

In other words, my intent was to show that philosophical reasoning was not the only means to derive the notion.

I have seen treatments of the subject of knowing and loving as the main operations of a spiritual being only in expositions of the doctrine of the Trinity, starting with St. Augustine and culminating in the formulation by St. Thomas Aquinas in ST I, q.27, a.3, resp., expounded in recent times by Garrigou-Lagrange and Gilles Emery (PDF warning).

Researching for this answer, I found an interesting presentation of the subject based on the experience of human beings by the late British priest Edward Holloway, of the Faith movement (*). You can read a summary thereof under the heading "Analogy Through the Human Being" here:

http://www.faith.org.uk/article/september-october-2008-the-holy-trinity-in-the-catechism-and-holloway

(*) Names which will ring strong dissonances in the ears of deniers of biological evolution.

Last edited by Johannes (3/15/2018 3:26 pm)