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(2) By "God," therefore, is to be understood the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so the One implied by "the greatest and first commandment," which reads, according to the formulation of Jesus' teaching in Mt 22:37 f., "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." God is to be understood, in other words, as the all-worshipful One, the one reality worthy of unreserved trust and unqualified loyalty, and hence the all-surpassing, unsurpassable reality, "than which" -- in Anselm's words -- "none greater can be conceived."

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I add only that, if faith is what I have interpreted as "obedient faith," it is, in its essence, submission to God. But if Niebuhr is right in assuming that there are "things that should be changed" as well as "things that cannot be changed," then, clearly, to obey, and thus to submit, cannot be singular, but has to be dual. To act courageously and loyally to change the things that should be changed is no less to obey, and so to submit, than to act serenely and trustingly to accept the things that cannot.

All Saints Day, 2008; rev. 9 September 2009