When God is most intimate his sovereignty is most firmly established and his justice most fearful.

The Christian should not fear God’s intimacy for that justice and wrath is consumed in Christ. But the paradox of the relationship is this: in a sinful world true love is ethically described as hate. For God loved the world in such a way: he caused his son to become a part of the world so that he could kill him. This is God’s intimacy.

Evil: The experience of creation’s insignificance before God.

Creation has always been insignificant before God, but if it is abiding in his power then it will not experience its insignificance. Whereas sin rejects the God and experiences its own nothingness.

Life, the life of God, spiritual life, is defined by what gives all that it is.

Love is life with a purpose: it is life that gives for the sustenance of created design.

The Way is flesh; John 10:9

The Truth is flesh; I John 2

The Word of life is flesh; John 1

The way of truth through the word of life became flesh and remains flesh–resurrected flesh–to communicate that life to man . Life within the incarnate Christ, therefore, is continually communicated through physical means, the high points of which are the Sacraments.

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In response to Frenchy’s question

If the Bible is our authority on all matters concerning our relationship with God, and if the fear of God is truly the beginning of all knowledge, then the only true philosophy is theology, and theology should only be used to strengthen our relationship with God, and by extension, with other people. Read More

Martin Luther says in his commentary on Genesis that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not an evil tree in itself. In fact it was a good tree, for certainly knowledge is good; how else then can God be called good? The evil was clearly in defying the prohibition concerning the tree. Read More

Free will can be seen as the possible. As the finite meets the possible there is an anxiety which will either resolve itself in faith, that enthralling, comforting anxiety (or ‘anxiousness’) which is slavery to Christ, or it leads to sin, which is grasping the finite in attempt to stabilize the dizziness of anxiety–and this is slavery to sin.

So there is still free will; both the possibility to sin and the possibility of faith; both of which are their respective slaveries. The key is in the focal point of stability within the anxiety that determines the nature of the slavery.

We are revealed only what serves the relationship. When relationship is established and being nourished all truth beyond remains mystery.

In the sacrifice Abraham did lose Isaac. And that is the freedom. He did also get him back, though not in the physical way, for that would be a return to holding on, but he did receive back the true promise and essence of the gift of Isaac which he could never receive if he were to hold on to him bodily. What he gives up remains given up, i.e. henceforth he recognized Isaac as not belonging to him at all, but the true Isaac whom he holds on to by the strength of God’s promise in the face of the absurd is now given to him.