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Thank you so very much for your outstanding essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

It appears I have once again come in late to a very interesting discussion. Sigh...

I need someone to explain to me the logic of the allegation, that "standards of morality exist independently of God's will," such that God's will is subject to a standard that is not of His own making and thus beyond Himself. This line of thinking invokes the idea of an infinite regression, when the entire point is that God is the uncaused cause. Thus He can be the only cause of His own will and moral perfection; and as their cause, the only legitimate explicator of His moral law. His commands are eternally valid precisely because they are His commands; He is the standard, the measure.

So very true! God is Creator ex nihilo.

He is the uncaused cause of "all that there is" which includes spiritual and physical, space and time and physical causation itself.

In the absence of time, events cannot occur.

In the absence of space, things cannot exist.

ex nihilo --- There is nothing of which anything can be made but His will - either His creative will or His permissive will.

A thing is true because He says it. Indeed, only God can speak objective truth - everyone else is a creature and suffers from the "observer problem."

Only God is Good --- only He can be "good" because only He is Creator ex nihilo.

His Name is I AM.

When He says "thou shalt not murder" it is not a suggestion. It is law in the most absolute sense of the word.

There is nothing of which anything can be made but [by] His will - either His creative will or His permissive will.

Amen to that, dearest sister in Christ: For your witness here is the report of Truth unvarnished: God's creative will constitutes the nature of all things; His permissive will leaves scope for human freedom.

I like to think that He wills to do so because He intended man to be his faithful steward, even his "co-creator," in the management and development of the Creation He made in the Beginning -- ex nihilo, just as you say.

I know that God loves His creation; but that of all He made, He loves man utmost. (I have this finding via direct experience of God's Word. Should be nothing so very unusual about that, even in our day....)

May God forgive me, but I am beginning to wonder whether man, as he seems to understand himself in the so-called post-modern world -- I would call it the post-human world -- is deserving of God's love.

Then I am reminded of the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the blessed joy attending his reunion with his Father. And once again realize that all things, here on earth and in heaven, work to God's good purpose -- He who constantly maintains the highest standard of good for each and all of His creatures, though perhaps in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine....

Thank you ever so much for your beautiful essay/post, dearest Alamo-Girl!