The City of God, and the local accidents of the Earthly city are of little account in comparison. Fulfillment of human capacities requires the possession of a high degree of sophisticated intelligence, and such serenity depends on rightness of the will and affections. These two features, a radical view of the transforming power of grace and a voluntaristic accent, may be regarded as the kernel of the eternal goal. When I turn to God and by belief accept what God reveals, the miraculous atonement by the Cross of Christ instantly places me into a right relationship with God. And as the result of the supernatural miracle of God’s grace, I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my iniquity, or because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done. Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the only explanation for His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy for us. We are acceptable to God not because we have obeyed, nor because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and for no one reason. Through identification with His death I can be freed from sin and have His very righteousness imparted as a gift for me.

Correspondingly, true wisdom and virtue are obtainable only in the light of the faith and by the provenience of divine grace; much of human nature, grossly corrupted since the Fall, is in need of a correspondingly complete divine remaking. During these centuries of insecurity and uprootedness, there is little intellectual endeavor and we must take on the gigantic task of rethinking and reconstruction with a focus on logic, theology, and classical inheritance, which has slumbered insecurely within the libraries of threatened American monasteries. It is important to assimilate by adopting a framework within which divine grace is seen as completing and fulfilling human nature, rather than dramatically abrogating it in the manner of certain politicians, who cover their ignorance with a curious and inexplicable web of perplexed words, which leaves the individual lacking in total intelligibility and even makes problematic the possibility of an omniscient being’s (God’s) radical understanding of the individual object. Many Earthly states have merely become coercive institutions which would not had existed had man not fallen, and they serve simply to issues punishments and remedies for the corruption of human nature.

Correspondingly, divine grace is playing a dramatically elevating part in the reformation and reordination of the will. And the fact stands that revolution will generate worse evils than the tyranny which it is designed to displace. Therefore, laws should be tailored to fit the type of population for which they are intended; to attempt to legislate a people into full virtue is futile. The rules governing the attribution of the rightness or wrongness to human actions were contingent in relation to the absolute power of God; the consequent contingency of connection between deed and merit has caused to take seriously the fully human realm of reasons, purposes, hopes, and so forth, thus avoiding the split between the thinker as a human being and the thinker as a philosopher. However, there are limits to human understanding. Many modern humans have become notorious for their logic-chopping and paradoxes and for question-and-answer forms of argument. The frivolous use of uncouth, affected, and unintelligible terms have made these people unfit or incapable to be brought into well-bred company and polite conversation. As humans, we have to have understand that it is important to be sensitive and the indispensability of a knowledge of the beautiful within one’s whole outlook on the World awakens the soul.

Patriotism, (emotional attachment to a nation which an individual recognizes as their homeland) and loyalty are the best traditions one can have. My great grandfather used to tell me that as a boy he had been thrilled by the sight of the victorious German troops marching home through the Brandenburg Gate after the Franco-Prussian War. Later he admired the skill with which Bismarck established the long-desired unification of his country and saw with pride Germany’s industrial and commercial expansion into a great power. Some people wonder can reason of a state justify the employment of might against right? May a state properly do things that are ethically forbidden to the ordinary citizen? Does it enjoy a code of morals above and beyond that of the private individual? Well, since power is the essence of its existence, the state is justified in using such means as are necessary to maintain and even extend its power, but this power is limited by the state’s obligation to protect the rights of citizens and to promote their cultural and material welfare. It is, however, impossible to draw a precise line between state egoism and ideal morality. The supreme self-indulgence is to surrender the will to a spiritual director.

One primary underlying thought of great importance is that of individuality—the unique individual character of every event, person, social group, nation-state, or idea is subjected to evolution. The capacity of every individuality for development either by growth or decay is the only sure and safe guide to morality and conduct which is the focus on the individual’s own conscience. Under tyranny many people suffer spiritual agony and physical hardship. God’s moral purity leads me to believe that the problems of grim soulless mortals and human responsibility has been aggravated by political, social, and economics. The cause of sin lies in humans themselves; the hardening of their hearts is due to their own perversity. Humans have a real measure of responsibility for their spiritual condition. Human’s free will, therefore, can cooperate with God’s grace, and does so. The human will, of course, is never the primary cause of human regenerations—the Spirit of God and the preaching of the Word always maintain the initiative—but human will is specifically granted a place, unless there is consent in the human’s part there can be no effective regeneration. Religion is like love. It flourishes best in silence, and is to be felt, not spoke of.