You know of Edward Feser! God, I hate that guy (pun intended). If I didn't respect books so much, I would have torn many pages out of The Last Superstition. His expression of Scholasticism is absurdly simplistic. But you lay out what Feser would say very well. I don't find him an accurate expositor of Aquinas at all; he's ridiculously uncomfortable with ambiguity and so makes his arguments by fudging definitions and appealing to intuition. He's the opposite of a decent scholastic.
I would venture to say that the majority of medieval scholars don't do what Feser does with definitions. But Feser is afraid of secularism in a way I don't think medieval intellectuals were. Does that jive with your understanding of this stuff? I think the argument you made would be made today but would not have been accepted in the 13th C. on the grounds that although God is the source of the natural goals for different species, it does not follow that he personally loves particulars (Avicenna didn't even think God could know particulars).
I'm sorry we're talking about Scholasticism on LW...
I am not sorry, they were smart guys, although AFAIK misusing it (justifying what they believed anyway), nevertheless if I would see the Summa Theologiae as a fantasy novel and ignore for a second that it is meant to be true, then it would be the most largest, most consistent, most logical fantasy universe ever created, really Tolkien having nothing it. Strictly as tour de force, as a showing off of sheer brilliance, it is respectable. Aquinas was a rare genius.
Unfortunately he was sitting deep in a world, culture, and organization and role, where the only possible outcome was justifying the Bible.
Does anyone know of an apparently defensible response to the following question?
How does a theist distinguish by any imaginable experience between an omnipotent and loving Being, and an omnipotent Being that just wants you to believe it is loving?
Or, if you prefer:
Out of all potential omnipotent beings that want you to believe that they are loving, what observation can distinguish those which actually are loving?
Also, are any of you aware of another who has posed this question?
EDIT: I'm confused at the apparent disapproval of many. Is it because the question refers to religion?