"This [the last post] also clarifies the root of the conception of creation: the model from which creation must be understood is not the craftsman but the creative mind, creative thinking.  At the same time it becomes evident that the idea of freedom is the characteristic mark of the Christian belief in God as opposed to any kind of monism.  At the beginning of all being it puts not just some kind of consciousness but a creative freedom which creates further freedoms.  To this  extent one could very well describe Christianity as a philosophy of freedom.  For Christianity, the explanation of reality as a whole is not an all-embracing consciousness or one single materiality;  on the contrary, at the summit stands a freedom that thinks and, thinking, creates freedom, thus making freedom the structural form of all being."


-- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity,
   Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1992, p. 110.