I said ‘trivial’ in the sense that ‘of course’ love is the peculiar creative act by which God creates creatures. But what is a less obvious issue is how to construe the freedom and/or necessity of this creative act. To say ‘love’ explains God’s creative act (epistemological description) piggybacks on love as a productive principle (ontological description). Not to be picky, but the creative act couldn’t be an operation otherwise there would be no product which is the term of the act, it has to be a productive act where there is some real product outside the agent doing the (productive) act.

I’m uncertain about what you mean by saying love is the ‘mode of trinitarian relations’. I won’t bore you with all the medieval technique for this stuff; you may like to look at Gilles Emery’s ‘Trinity, Church and the Person’ or somesuch title. Chapter 4 is a decent exposition on the unique roles the divine persons play toward creatures; although I found bits in the previous chapter confusing and unhelpful as he seems to overlook the important work of Russell Friedman on the topic of the appropriation of philosophical psychology by Aquinas and co. Still, I think ch. 4 has some worthy points to make insofar as Emery identifies certain hazards when talking about ‘unique roles’ of the divine persons in acting toward/among creatures.

Regarding love as the reason, I’m not sure what you mean by this being trivial. God creating out of love is a far cry from God creating by emanation, etc… any other operative reason. Love certainly doesn’t seem trivial to me.

Further, Balthasar’s and Lubac’s Love is not only a reason for creating, but an operative principle. It undergirds the creation, and is the mode of trinitarian relations. Read Adrian Walker’s article on Love Alone for more on this. He takes 20 pages of almost entirely footnotes to explain this, so I won’t attempt to do so here in this thread.

Re: love, love can be understood as not only the action by which one “loves” something or someone. However, it can also be that which funds being. This is especially prominent in de Lubac and Balthasar, but they argue pretty tenaciously that this comes from Aquinas. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Rahner does view human beings as intrinsically oriented to God, but he views this capacity as already, in itself, ’supernatural’. Thus whilst it is the case that ‘pure nature’ has never existed, the concept is still retained as a formal distinction in order to preserve the gratuity of grace (one of the major concerns of Humani Generis). This is one principle difference between Rahner and de Lubac on the grace/nature question. As DWM remarks above de Lubac was inclined to view humanity’s desire for God as already given with his creation and so did not retain the notion of ‘pure nature’ even as a “remainder concept”. He therefore speaks of a ‘double-gift’ in the single act of creation.

I don’t, however, read into this distinction between the two the sort of grave consequences that someone like John Milbank does. Rahner’s human being (as he has always and everywhere existed) has God’s offer of himself as a constitutive aspect of his being. I don’t think there’s anything particularly ’secularizing’ about that.

Also, the comment about love seems to presuppose an account of human cognition in this life, which given what I’ve reported about about the cognition of the blessed, does not apply to them. Love loves more, when it desire more knowledge which it does not presently have. So, if God is fully present to the blessed in heaven, then the object known is fully present and thus love can be fully satisfied. In other words, in this life we can always learn more by the very definition of how cognition in this life happens, namely, by a series of concepts added and divided (discursive reasoning) together. But in heaven, we will not have a ‘formable’ structure of concepts, rather, given that God is pure act, our cognition of God will be ‘pure act’ and thus will not have the feature of ‘being formable’ after cognizing God by Godself (and not by some concept).

Again, Aquinas, Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus all agree on everything I’ve said above. There are various details to add on, but the crucial point that there is no (created) concepts by means of which we cognize God (as regards the beatific vision).

LJ: welcome and thanks for the comment. You know I’m interested in continuing to pick your brains on this topic. I think you’ll be interested in how charitable my paper came out for Rahner in the end. I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface, and also wish that I had another 2 weeks, rather than 13 hours!

A great discussion–as usual.

I tend to favor the Greek Orthodox view (and perhaps this isn’t inconsistent or incompatible with the way that St. Thomas or Augustine view the beatific vision—though it probably depends on what passage one emphasizes in their works and who’s doing the interpreting), viz., the idea that given the distance between Creator and creature—a distance which is not eradicated even when one is divinized—we can never arrive at a full comprehension of God (Thomas would no doubt agree with that claim). Thomas does of course say that our intellects at present cannot achieve beatific vision [the faculty is disproportionate to the “object”, viz., God] and that is in part why we require a supernatural elevation of our intellects for the beatific vision (this by the way is a distinguishing point between Thomas and Scotus). With regard to our restless Augustinian hearts—I can’t imagine that our hearts will be restless in the presence of God and in the absence of sin. If we think of God’s Infinite Love in a positive sense—as superabundance or excess, then I don’t think that we have to import our current restless that seeks a resting place into our experience of the BV as never ending but always increasing—our rest in God would then take on an analogical and not a univocal meaning.

Best wishes,
Cynthia