Unquestioningness

Love casts the same glamor over everything, it is true, glorifying and deifying all it touches; but the freshness, the newness, the very childish unquestioningness, are charms that cease with maturity. We learn to weigh our affections cautiously and prudently, balancing the matters of loss and gain, without being aware of it. We call it the prudence of age, and smile furtively at the children about us, speaking in an apologetic fashion of the thoughtlessness of youth.

Similar tensions arise between other attempts to show the reasonableness of Abraham's conduct and claims about the exemplary character of his unquestioning obedience to God's commands. The more his act was obviously reasonable, the less was the virtue of his unquestioningness. The more he believed in the eventual restoration of Isaac, the less magnificent was his offering of Isaac!