In this thesis, I demonstrate that wholeheartedness is a constitutive intellectual virtue. Wholeheartedness consists of a definite and unified volitional structure in which one’s desires are integrated around union with God and which contributes to one’s personal intellectual worth by positively orienting her toward acquaintance with God. Since wholeheartedness consists of a hierarchy of the will that prioritizes a desire for union with God, wholeheartedness aims towards the epistemic good of acquaintance. By desiring that one have a will that wills union with God, she cooperates with God toward wholeheartedness. As one becomes aware of her volitional structure changing, she also becomes aware of God’s presence. This sanctification produces a pattern of interactions with God overtime that constitute an acquaintance with God, where acquaintance is an aptitude of recognition, belief formation, and understanding carried via memory and other faculties that is consequent on and subsequent to an earlier immediate cognitive contact or awareness of an object of knowledge. It is in and through one becoming wholehearted that she comes to know God
