A quote from von Balthasar

"Faith is a movement of the entire person away from himself, through the gift of grace; thereby he lays hold of the mercy of God given to him in Christ - in the form of the forgiveness of sins, justification and sanctification. In this movement away from himself man has done all that he, through grace, can do; he has done all that God requires of him. Since his intention is to leave himself, without reservation, and hand himself over entirely, this movement implicitly contains all the 'works' he will eventually do. They are not some second entity besides faith; if they are performed in a Christian spirit, they are only forms in which faith expresses itself.

"As an act of the whole person, faith travels in a direction away from itself and toward God. That is why reflection on itself and any attempt to make itself secure are foreign to it. The gospel may promise a 'reward in Heaven' to a faith that is rightly lived out, but faith itself is very far from calculating any 'merit' that may bring about such a reward.

"The word 'merit' insofar as it concerns some value conferring a right to something is theologically an unhappy term that would be better dropped...We need have no qualms about dropping the word, for there is a biblical word ready to replace it: fruitfulness..."

-from In the Fullness of Faith

This seems to me to be Bonhoeffer-ish, especially when he talks about faith being unreflective. And "toward God?" Well, that sounds just like Nachfolge.

Huzzah.

As you may have guessed, prayer but no sermon tonight.