The Power of Obedience

The content of our obedience–the thing we are commanded to do–will always be something intrinsically good, something we ought to do even if (by an impossible supposition) God had not commanded it. But in addition to the content, the mere obeying is also intrinsically good, for, in obeying, a rational creature consciously enacts its creaturely role, reverses the act by which we fell, treads Adam’s dance backward, and returns.

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The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillian Publishing Co., Inc., 1962), 100-1.