D:1) Can the human person authentically love God without God's direct empowerment?

T: Define direct empowerment. But just guessing, I’d say no. No created thing can dispose of itself apart from God’s sustaining presence. If that’s what you mean, then no, we can’t love God without God enabling us to do so.

D: 2) Can the human person authentically love other humans without God's direct empowerment?

T: No, for the same reason.

D: 3) Can the human person authentically love themselves without God's direct empowerment? If so, how?

T: No, for the same reason.

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D: If we answer "no" to all three, would this lean towards saying that humanity is NOT the source of its own love...?

T: We’re the source of that free determination without which God’s enabling grace produces nothing. Think necessary and sufficient causes. God’s grace is a necessary cause. Our choice is a necessary cause. Neither alone is sufficient to produce anything. Together however, both constitute the sufficient cause of our loving God and others. So we’re not a sufficient cause or the sole source of our own love, but we are a final arbiter in determine that part which God wills us to play. He sustains and empowers our playing it, yes. And in a general sense he’s the source of it all as creation. Of course. I just would never agree to your language (“we’re not the source of our own love”) because it mistakenly thinks of explanations in terms of a single source (one ‘cause’). Why cannot God be the ultimate source of all created being (of course God is), and we be a created source of free determination? That makes us “a” source, not ultimate in the divine sense, but real enough to earn us a seat at the table.

D: What I would say is that human spirits cannot generate ANY of their own love, they can only receive God's love and, totally empowered by God, reciprocate that gift of love to certain degrees (or refrain from reciprocating.)

T: Define “totally.” If we’re free to reciprocate (or refrain), then we’re sources of that free exercise of will. God sustains it, but that doesn’t make us any less a source of free determination.

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D: I could just ask you the question, Tom: Do you believe that created persons can generate their own "works of love" without God's direct empowerment in said persons?

T: We can’t even sin without God’s sustaining grace empowering our natural faculties in OUR free disposal of the same. Think about THAT.

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D: Perhaps, our own generation of human love is truly a stewardship from God (whose very being IS Love.) We don't own anything that we "have" in this world...and we never have.  We've been trapped in the illusion of total autonomy...mad long. We THINK that it's in our own power that we love others, even the little conditional love that we do...but it's never been that way. It all belongs to God.

Tom: It all belongs to God in “a” very important sense—creation. But it belongs to us in another/different but very important sense—stewardship, like you said. If we’re stewards, we may not ‘own’, but we are ‘responsible’. And you only get that sort of responsibility if we’re ‘sources’ of that for which we are held responsible, over which God made us stewards.

I totally get your wanting to bury the sort of “total autonomy” and individualistic self-reliance of the modern era. I’m right there smashing it with you. Just watch out for the collateral damage as the wrecking ball comes crashing through the structure.

Rachmaninov’s 3^rd Concerto in Dm is blasting on the speakers right now! Wow! Gotta go.

T