...one is confronted with only this bare choice: either one embraces the mystery of created freedom and accepts that the union of free spiritual creatures with the God of love is a thing so wonderful that the power of creation to enslave itself to death must be permitted by God; or one judges that not even such rational freedom is worth the risk of a cosmic fall and the terrible injustice of the concequences that follow from it. But, then, since there can be no context in
which such a judgment can be meaningfully made, no perspective from which a finite Euclidean mind can weigh eschatological glory in the balance against earthly suffering, the rejection of God on these grounds cannot really be a rational decision, but only a moral pathos.
And yet Ivan's (Karamozov) argument still cannot be set aside, for a number of reasons: because it is in fact a genuinely moral pathos to which it gives expresion, which means that it is haunted by the declaration in Christ of God's perfect goodnes; and because it is precisely the finite Euclidean mind that is meant to be transfigured by God's love and awakened to God's mercy, and so the restlessness of unquiet heart must not be treated as mere foolish unfaithfulness;"
The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart
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