job's friends are wrong in their assumption that it's a simple causal connection between our behavior and god's judgment ... or between infinite goodness and our reward ... such that no reward or punishment instead must mean bad behavior ... not a bad assumption on the surface however ... for if there is no clear connection what can it mean ... that god doesn't care ... he's not involved ... surely not that he's sadistic ... there's no sense in that at all ... but that he's transcendentally distant seems transparently true ... what's the distance between potency and act when there is no potential ... if a difficult potential makes a happy conclusion more remote how impossible must it be if you start with nothing ... that's why creation as opposed to the thing we call creative is a great mystery ... now make it twice as hard and say this same creator at an inconceivable distance is also inconceivably close ... between me and my conception ... between me and myself ... that I can't get from one to the other unless I go through him ... that I can't do anything unless I do it in him ... faced with these two puzzles of the infinitely far and near who am I to say it's clear
kreeft ycuot 94-96; compendium 70; mccabe god matters ch4
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