Creation is separate from Him, although he understands, wills, and loves every detail of it, and gave us minds so that we might come to understand and appreciate all that He has wrought. The beliefs flowing from this worship service also altered the world's conception of politics and economics, not by a direct path but dialectically, through bloody, ironic, and often paradoxical turns. The dignity of every human being-rooted by this cult in God's proposed friendship with every living man and womancame eventually to be best represented politically in democratic regimes that recognize the rule of law, limited government, separated powers, and fundamental individual rights. Irony has seldom been absent. For instance, the same secular governments that boasted of their edicts of toleration actually meant state control and regulation of religion.
Contradictions is perhaps too Hegelian a term for the dance of tendencies within cultures.
For human nature is weak. The virtues that grandfathers exemplified in the face of great perils their sons could scarcely imitate, and their grandsons find antiquated and boring. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. High virtue is difficult to maintain, and heroism is not quotidian.