Von Balthasar again: Creation is God’s free decision. There need not be a world. “But if he decides to create a world, then of course this decision can only take the form of the analogy of being, which is grounded in God’s very ‘essence’ itself. Created being must be by definition created, dependent, relative, nondivine, but as something created it cannot be utterly dissimilar to its Creator. And if this creature is a spiritual and intellectual being, both its ontic as well as its noetic nature must bear some relation to its Creator. In its thinking, however blinded and rebellious that thinking might be, it must be touched by the Creator, for it has God’s cogito as the form of its cogito . Otherwise it would not even be a creature.”

Well, Amen to that. But how does that fit with his claim that nature is logically prior to revelation? If the creature cannot be utterly dissimilar to the Creator, isn’t the creature similar, and doesn’t the creature, simply by being, reveal the Creator?