"In the Epistle to the Philippians 2:12, the disciples are asked to work towards their salvation in fear and trembling. They will have to work for their salvation knowing all along that it is God who decides: the Other has no reason to give to us and nothing to settle in our favor, no reason to share his reasons with us. We fear and tremble because we are already in the hands of God, although free to work, but in the hands and under the gaze of God, whom we don't see and whose will we cannot know, no more than the decisions he will hand down, nor his reasons for wanting this or that, our life or death, our salvation or perdition. We fear and tremble before the inaccessible secret of a God who decides for us although we remain responsible, that is, free to decide, to work, to assume our life and our death."
(Jacques Derrida, "The Gift of Death," p. 56)
Sounds like Derrida might have been a Reformed theologian... :-) And, aside from a disagreement with him over the impossibility of knowing God's will, I think Derrida's pretty well hit the nail on the head.
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