The Most Valuable People in Your Church

Who are the most valuable people in your church?

The senior pastor? The elders? The biggest givers? The talented worship leader? The worship band? The hip youth pastor? The youth? The coordinator for all your volunteers? The volunteers? The visitors?

How about the weak?

Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche communities (the worldwide network of communities for people with disabilities), picks up on Paul’s remarks in 1 Corinthians 12 and answers the question this way:

Jesus came to change a world in which those at the top have privilege, power, prestige and money while those at the bottom are seen as useless. Jesus came to create a body. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, compares the human body to the body of Christ, and he says that those parts of the body that are the weakest and the least presentable are indispensable to the body. In other words, people who are the weakest and least presentable are indispensable to the church. I have never seen this as the first line of a book on [the church]. Who really believes it? But this is the heart of faith, of what it means to be the church. Do we really believe that the weakest, the least presentable, those we hide away—that they are indispensable? If that was our vision of the church, it would change many things (Living Gently in a Violent World, 74).

Why?

We are terrified of our weakness. So we hide it, and are thus incapable of moving toward God and others as we actually are: weak and ultimately dependent creatures who flourish in relationship with God and others. We’d rather pretend we’re strong. We’d rather avoid facing our weakness.

But as we live among those whose weaknesses are more apparent, more public than our own—particularly those with disabilities but also the poor—then we are confronted not just with their reality but with our reality. 

We would rather avoid all that. We’d rather present ourselves as strong, capable, in control, thank you very much. Don’t get me—or Vanier—wrong, for we certainly are amazing beings, all of us, even those whose weaknesses are most apparent. As Gilbert Meilaender says, we are beautiful juxtapositions of freedom and finitude. It’s our finitude we fear, so we hide it. But when the finitude (weakness) of another confronts us, we are reminded of our own. We are reminded who we really are.

That’s why those whose weaknesses are most apparent are in fact the most valuable in the church. Those who are least presentable. Those we hide away. From Vanier’s standpoint, their weakness helps us face our own weakness and to move toward God and others as we really are.

It makes you think about your church, doesn’t it? Who are the ones hidden away? Who are the least presentable? Who are those whose weakness makes the rest of us uncomfortable? Who are those who confront us with ourselves?

 

Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram

I turn 44 this year, and, despite my best efforts, in many ways I’m still a mystery to myself.  A younger version of me imagined that I’d hit some milestone of adulthood and be settled about all that. False.

The longer I live, the farther into my marriage I reach, the deeper into myself I’m taken by my role as father, the more intently I pursue a truer relationship with God—through all of this I keep discovering that I don’t know myself as well as I’d like. Frustrating.

Cue the Enneagram. Over the last several years it’s been immensely helpful to me as a tool for naming the persistent motivations and default reactions that I experience but struggle to quantify, much less do anything redemptive about. (If you feel lost in the Enneagram conversation, read Allie Brown’s  brilliantly clear introduction here). For instance: why do I wake at 4am worrying about a book manuscript that isn’t due for years – why the tight stomach now of all times? Why do I buy 10 books about any new thing I’d like to engage – why is intellectual understanding my default for the unknown? Why do I always migrate to the perimeter of social gatherings – not at all unhappy, but content and comfortable along the edge? And why do I retreat to my “mind castle” when things go wonky in relationships? On and on I could go. My mysterious self.

Before my introduction to the Enneagram, I never had a useful personality tool for processing these questions, much less move toward wholeness in Christ. I found other personality tools entirely unsatisfying. They closed me down rather than opened me up; making me feel like a smaller, shrunk, oversimplified version of me. The Enneagram, however, helped me see how my deep motivations and default reactions come together within a particular kind of complex person. Me.

But where do I go from here? Even after reading several books about it (yes, my approach) and using it in relationships with close friends, my nagging question concerned life with Christ. How do I apply Enneagram wisdom for life with God? How could knowing my number (5 with a 4 wing) help me partner with the Holy Spirit as I seek to live into my true, Christ-like self? More specifically still, what spiritual practices are best suited for my unique wiring as a 5? How can I live toward integration as a whole, complex, often mysterious self with the help of Enneagram wisdom? Where do I go from here?

So I was thrilled to discover IVP’s most recent book on the Enneagram, Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram: A Handbook for Harmony and Transformation, coauthored by Adele and Dough Calhoun and Clare and Scott Loughrige.

The book is structured around an approach to the Enneagram called the “Harmony Enneagram.” In this model, the authors link Enneagram numbers together in a novel, triangular way  to show how a person draws upon their gut, head, and heart intelligences.

God in Himself: An Interview with Steven Duby

Steve Duby is a contributor to this blog and recently published his second book, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology (IVPAcademic, 2019). I was asked several months ago to endorse the book, and without a moment’s hesitation I agreed. But, alas, the manuscript languished in my inbox until the semester wrapped up and I could clear some time.

Having now read it, and happily written my endorsement, I struggle to express the impression the book made upon me. It is stunning. Here is what I wrote.

This rich and rewarding study demonstrates how the contemplation of God himself, theologia, is not some idle speculation—a distraction from the Christian life or descent into abstraction—but is in fact a spiritual exercise that fuels our communion with God and affirms the shocking nearness of God to us in Jesus Christ. God in Himself is a courageously scriptural work of theology, for Steve Duby dares to let Scripture lead where some have supposed that only metaphysics will take us: to gaze upon the resplendently complete life of the triune God.

God in Himself is at once beautiful and rigorous (in the best sense). Beautiful in the sense that Steve is a great writer. His prose carries you along as the argument unfolds through his intuitive structure and organization. It is rigorous in the sense that Steve fulfills the very difficult task of doing Christian theology in the classic tradition. By “classic tradition” I mean this: Steve is attentive to the life of faith, centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ, trained on Scripture, and he situates his theological work squarely within the Great Tradition of orthodox Christian reflection about the life of God. Beautiful and rigorous.

Let me say one last thing before I interview Steve. God in Himself is dedicated to a region of Christian theology we have far too little being written about today: God. Yes, I mean that. I don’t believe enough theology trains itself specifically on God.

The Enneagram for Relationships

Susanne Stabile’s The Path Between Us is a wonderfully readable application of Enneagram wisdom for relationships. Taking the reader gently by the hand, she leads from one Enneagram type to the next, showing how each particular way of being in the world shapes relationship.

The Enneagram teaches us that there are nine different ways of experiencing the world and nine different ways of answering these basic questions about life: Who am I? Why am I here? and Why do I do the things I do? How we build and maintain relationships varies significantly from one number to another. Looking through the lens of the Enneagram makes it possible to better understand ourselves and others, increase our acceptance and compassion, and navigate the paths between us.

This book will help in understanding how each of the nine Enneagram numbers sees the world, how they make sense of what they see, how they decide what to do, and how all of that affects how they relate to others (4).

This is Stabile’s second book on the Enneagram with InterVarsity Press. The Road Back to You, coauthored with Ian Morgan Cron, is more like a broad entryway into the Enneagram, while the The Path Between Us is tighter, more condensed, more focused on relationships. Her aim is less grasping the Enneagram as a whole and discovering your type, than it is applying Enneagram wisdom specifically to relationships.

Using myself (Kent) as an example, I’ll overview the chapter on my Enneagram type so you can see how the book operates. I’ve learned over the years that I identify most readily with Type 5 (what Stabile calls the Investigator). In day to day life, my 4 wing expresses itself in terms of creativity, a love for beauty, and the desire for authentic, deep relationships, though the loyalty dimension of my 6 wing is ever-present (if you know me, then you’re saying to yourself, “Ah, yes. That makes total sense!”).

The chapter devoted to Fives is aptly titled, “My fences have gates.”

The Enneagram, A Brief Introduction

Allie is a good friend and my (Kent’s) trusted go-to for Enneagram wisdom. She offers here a great introduction to the Enneagram. Later this week I’ll follow up with a brief review of Suzanne Stabile’s recent book, The Path Between Us: An Enneagram Journey to Healthy Relationships (IVP, 2018).

Guest Post: Allie Brown.

I try not to overstate things. Words matter, and I hope to keep my credibility when it comes to the words I choose, so when I say the following, please know that I mean every bit of it: the Enneagram changed my life. To be clearer, the Enneagram has changed and continues to change my life.

Thomas Merton wrote,

“There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find [God] I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find [God].”

For me, the Enneagram is the spiritual tool that has most shepherded my journey of self-awareness and acceptance. An ancient tool with somewhat mysterious origins, the Enneagram has been used by Christians for centuries as a spiritual practice of self-discovery. At its most basic, the Enneagram (meaning ‘nine points’) is a personality typing system. But for those of us seeking God and, in God, our true selves, it is a vision for how God’s character is manifest in nine archetypal ways.

I have always been drawn to personality tests and tools. I felt like a mystery to myself for most of  life. In search for my truest self, I was desperate for anything that would help express my inner world to everyone on the outside.

The Enneagram drew me in for the same reason, but thankfully a wise friend advised me to not treat it as just another personality test. Instead, she encouraged me to approach it as a spiritual practice; a way to seek God by seeking my true self.

The Grammar of Grace

About nine years ago I began editing an anthology on the Christian life, and I’m very pleased to say that it’s now in print, The Grammar of Grace: Readings from the Christian Tradition (Cascade). The back cover reads,

This anthology is a collection of readings on the Christian life. They were carefully selected from every era of history and from across the spectrum of Christian traditions. They include letters, sermons, treatises and disputations, poems, songs and hymns, confessions, biblical commentary, and even part of a novel. In each case, the subject is life with God, life in God, life for God—life infused and enlivened by God’s grace.

The editors introduce each selection, highlighting relevant aspects of the author’s biography, spirituality, and historical context. Introductions are also provided for the major eras of the church which present theological, historical, and cultural perspectives to help the reader best engage the selections.

For individuals and groups, classrooms and seminars, this collection will generate dialogue between past and present, and between traditions familiar and unfamiliar. It is not merely a book on the Christian life but for the Christian life, making yesterday’s witness to life with God a resource for the Church today.

If you order the book from the publisher you’ll receive a discount (here).

Besides the many, many people who supported and encouraged me as the book took shape, I worked with two associate editors of amazing talent and skill, not to mention spiritual sensitivity: Ashley Cocksworth (UK) and Anna Silvas (Australia). Ashley and I worked together on the Reformation and Modern sections, and Anna managed the Medieval sections. You’ll find them trustworthy guides.

I’ll post a few times more about this book in the following weeks. I’d like to say more about the book’s range, the verbal icons that accompany each selection, and share a few parts from the Introduction.

Let me say this for now: I feel that my connection to the community of faith has grown stronger by curating this book. It is hard to find just the right words. I mean that after all the years drawing together and introducing these 96 different figures from across the entire history of the Christian faith – after sitting with them for so long to “hear” their testimony of life with God – I have a deeper and more tangible sense of the great “cloud of witnesses” of which I’m a part (Heb 12:1). I am not alone, nor are you, in the pilgrimage of following Jesus.

We are not the first to speak of life with God. Life with God compels expression. It requires testimony. Some kind of expression, some kind of “pointing” at what it is to know the triune God of the gospel. Christian Wyman calls such expression the “poetry and prose” of knowing God’s grace. It is “sighing and stammering,” Karl Barth says. After spending nearly a decade sifting through hundreds of different examples of Christians who “pointed” at life with God, I found this: they are tied together by the grammar of grace.

More on that later.

What kind of theologian is a pastor?

For about a month this spring we (Kent and Zen) got together over lunch and wrestled with that question by discussing the book, The Pastor-Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision by Heistand and Wilson (Zondervan 2015). We come at the topic from slightly different angles, a college professor and a pastor respectively, but we both long for pastoral ministry that is theologically rich and pastorally wise. I (Kent) help train young theologians to envision their ministry along those lines, and Zen is trying to live it out in his congregation. So, what kind of theologian is a pastor?

Our conversations were rich and the book was rewarding, though it left us with some questions and a few critiques. We’re going to interact with the book in the form of a dialogue.

Zen: I remember reading Stanley Hauerwas’s essay “The How of Theology and Ministry” for the first time during my years at Duke. In that essay, Hauerwas gives a brief history of the fragmentation of theology from ministry. I was neck deep in academia and maintained a snooty disinterest in working in a parish. Hauerwas’s essay forced me to reconsider what I thought theology was and, more importantly, for whom it was practiced.

Now I’m a pastor. (God’s ways are higher than our ways!) Reading The Pastor Theologian gave me an opportunity to think about the fracture of theology from ministry again. This time, however, I read it with a deep interest in finding some way to help heal the fracture.

So what can I, as pastor for one hundred people in Huntington, Indiana, do to work toward healing?

If Kuyper went to the Movies

If Abraham Kuyper went to the movies he’d find prayers.

Josh Larson doesn’t say it quite that way in his delightful book, Movies are Prayers, but its the basic idea when he speaks of movies as instances of common grace.

“Common grace” is a category you will know well if you’ve encountered the Reformed tradition as its refracted through the Dutch Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). At Calvin College, where I completed my undergrad, the Kuyperian vision flourished and still does. “There is not a square inch,” Kuyper once said, “in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'” Building on that conviction, common grace is a way to name the possibility, as Larson puts it that “God’s grace and his revealing truth can be found in the most unexpected places.” Such places include movies, even the ones you wouldn’t immediately expect. Larson explains:

If Kuyper had deigned to to attend a movie theater, I like to think he would have found common grace—this notion that an agnostic artist, by God’s favor, can capture the glory of his creation—flowing from the screen. From the silent melodramas of Kuyper’s time to the colorful extravaganzas of today, endless creativity is on display in the collaborative work of hundreds of artists: cinematographers, editors, actors, directors, costumers, musicians, production designers, and more. And when the resulting movies genuinely yearn, mournfully lament, fitfully rage, honestly confess, or joyously celebrate, they serve as prayers (12).

This is a theological idea that you either love or hate.

Theology and the Experience of Disability (a review)

As a field of Christian thought, disability theology has never been more fertile and exciting. Disability theology, as John Swinton defines it in the Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, is the “attempt by disabled and non-disabled Christians to understand and interpret the Gospel of Jesus Christ, God, and humanity against the backdrop of the historical and contemporary experience of people with disabilities” (140). It’s worth noting that disability theology is different than a theology of disability. The latter attempts to apply the resources of Christian thought and practice to the experience of disability, whereas disability theology works from the experience of disability toward Christian thought and practice.

Even now, four new books sit next to me as I type (and the stack would be a least two feet high if I was keeping up with the literature). At the moment I’m reading the one on top of that stack, Jill Harshaw’s God Beyond Words (2016). It’s a theological exploration of divine revelation related to those with profound mental disabilities. I often interact with the parents of young adults with developmental disabilities. More than once I’ve been asked, “Can I hope that my child can perceive God? Can they be saved?” It is a phenomenally important pastoral question, and Harshaw addresses it with grace and impressive theological wisdom.

I mention Harshaw’s book and Swinton’s definition because both are helpful for understanding the significance of the book I’m reviewing here: Theology and the Experience of Disability: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Voices Down Under (many thanks to Routledge for the review copy). Disability theology is (as far as I can tell) nearly exclusively written by those without profound developmental disabilities. Harshaw, for instance, acknowledges that she writes as a theologian whose daughter has profound intellectual disabilities, but Dr. Harshaw herself does not (Amos Yong, Thomas Reynolds, and Frances Young are similar examples). Harshaw’s study is not unusual: scholarship is most often given from those who are many times in fellowship with people having disabilities, but much less often from those living with disabilities themselves and thus through their perspective.

In this volume, however, contributions are gathered from those with and without disabilities, and that makes it a wonderfully timely addition to the field. The collection originated as a conference in 2013, Theology, Disability, and the People of God, co-sponsored by Carey Baptist College and Laidlaw College in Auckland, New Zealand.

New Edition of the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology

When you’re asked to write an entry in a theological dictionary, you pause. Not least because your words will be read many times over by scores of people, in this case around the world. So I paused, then prayed, and then prayed many times more while composing the entry on “marriage” in the 3rd edition of the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology.

The editor of this edition, Daniel Treier, describes the intention of the EDT this way in the preface:

attempting to represent both the range of evangelical diversity accurately and the center of evangelical consensus winsomely, while maintaining evangelical engagement with wider scholarship accessible.

The third edition is expanded by 30% to “strengthen its focus on theology”, particularly on systematic theology. It also includes a more diversified group of contributors: “almost half of the new authors contribute female, ethnic minority, and/or Majority World perspectives.” Bibliographies were also updated to represent current research since the last edition. From my perspective, if you have one theological dictionary on your shelf, it should be this one.

Here are the opening moves from my entry on marriage:

The Bible presents marriage as an exclusive, enduring, intimate relationship of covenanted commitment between―Christians have consistently believed―one man and one woman. Within marriage children are conceived and raised, families are nurtured, and marriage partners enjoy intimate emotional, physical, and spiritual companionship. These are the gifts of marriage according to God’s creation-order.

However, related to the Kingdom of God, procreation, nurture of family and intimate companionship are not the ultimate and highest ends of marriage. These remain gifts of marriage―part and parcel of God’s good creation―but according to the New Testament, membership in the Kingdom of God changes their status and role.

Christian thinking about marriage has therefore consistently sought, though not always succeeded, to balance two fundamental scriptural claims: (1) marriage, and procreation within marriage, are vital parts of God’s creation-order and means of his ongoing governance; (2) for those united to Christ by faith the Kingdom of God re-orients human loyalties including marriage.

A theological account holds these claims together by seeking to understand marriage according to the entire sweep of Christian faith and within the practices of Christian discipleship. As a practice of Christian life, marriage is a matter of discipleship learned in the community of Christ’s body, the Church.

 

Christ is killed every day by the injuries we cannot bear

These are the opening words of Rowan Williams’ new book, Holy Living, and they are meant to unveil our regular, entirely reasonable (so it seems) un-involvement in the pains around us. We say, rightly, “Christ alone can carry our sufferings.” Yes indeed, surely this is right. Christ alone, according to his grace, can carry our sufferings. We are thus realists about our limited capacities. Indeed we’re theologically astute realists, as least as it concerns the sufficiency of grace. But though we grasp the sufficiency of Christ’s grace for us we fail to follow the trajectory of grace into the pain around us.

As realists we easily and painlessly stand at a distance from pain. However, Williams reminds, the pain of another person “does not stop being ours when it becomes his.” In fact, the nature of God’s peculiar way of redeeming me compels me to be a particular kind of un-realist: “The complete involvement of Jesus in human torment draws us after, draws us to imitation, stirs us to be Christ for our neighbor, to expose ourselves as he did” (9, 11).

There is more I want to say about this in a later post. There is perspective here on my vocation as a Christian professor in a Christian institution of higher education, though I’m still mulling over quite how I want to put it. For now I want to post a slightly longer section of this chapter around which my attention keeps coming back. You might ask yourself, “In whatever kind of community I find myself, how does this challenge me?”

Well, we are all realists to a greater or lesser degree, and there is therefore no avoiding the fact of our complicity in the death of Jesus. Like the apostles we evade and refuse and deny and escape when the cross becomes a serious possibility.

Ouch! And he doesn’t let up:

Terror of involvement, fear of failure—of hurting as well as being hurt—the dread of having of powerlessness nakedly spelled out for us: all of this is the common coin of most of our lives. For beneath the humility of the person who believes he or she knows their limitations is the fear of those who have never found or felt their limitations. Only when we have traveled to those stony places of the spirit where we are forced to confront our helplessness and our failure can we be said to know our limitations, and then the knowledge is too late to be useful. We do not know what we can or cannot bear until we have risked the impossible and intolerable in our own lives. Christ bears what is unbearable, but we must first find it and know it to be unbearable. And it does not stop being ours when it becomes his. Only thus can we translate our complicity in the death of Christ into a communion in the death of Christ, a baptism in the death of Christ: by not refusing, by not escaping, by forgetting our realism and our reasonableness, by letting the heart speak freely, by exposing ourselves, by making ourselves vulnerable (9).

The Story of Job and the Divine Image

Every so often in my theology courses I use an Orthodox catechism called The Living God. It is beautiful and rich and a very refreshing alternative to what often passes for theology (which is too often colorless, didactic, and utterly bland).

In class yesterday we read and discussed its treatment of the creation of humankind in the image of God. The catechism divides teaching on the divine image into two chapters. The first chapter makes the standard moves, addressing the creation and fall of God’s covenant partners. The second chapter, however, takes an altogether unexpected turn. It presents the book of Job as a way to Christologically imagine the restoration of the divine image through the Incarnation. The reading of Job offered in the catechism serves as a theological and exegetical bridge between the topics of Creation and Fall with  Restoration (which occupies the next chapter).

The move to Job is unexpected and brilliant and fascinating all at once! The reading of Job it offers doesn’t maintain that Messianic themes were in the mind of Job’s author or its audience. That is one sort of Christological reading. Here find another sort: “the Christian understanding of the story of Job, of the just servant unjustly persecuted, offers us a glimpse of the coming of the suffering and victorious Servant who will return humanity to its former beauty” (Vol. 1:15). It’s a lively instance of Christological reading, and it generates wonderful conversations with my students about biblical interpretation as well as theological themes related to the divine image, sin, and the Incarnation.

Here is an excerpt from the end of chapter 2, “From Despair to Hope: Job.”

The story of job serves to renew hope within us. Even though God’s image in man has been spoiled by the sin of Adam and Eve, by the sin of Cain, and by the sins of each one of us, Job allows us to hope for the coming of One—just and suffering, patient and triumphant—who will resist with courage and perseverance the assaults of the Evil One and will triumph over him, thereby restoring in mankind the divine presence which had been lost through sin and reestablishing in us the divine image in the fullness of its beauty. To do this, God sends among us the very Model according to which He had originally created us. Just as a faded print can be restored by reapplying the original stamp [the “faded print” analogy unmistakably echoes Athanasius’ On the Incarnation] so the Son of God, who reflects the glory of God the Father (Heb. 1:3), can enter human nature by clothing Himself with it as with a garment, and thereby can create a new Adam, a perfect Man, a radiant Image of God. This occurs by what theologians call the Incarnation (Vol. 1:19).

 

Pedagogical Fatigue & Empathy

By this time in the semester I’m always tired. It’s partly physical fatigue, and emotional (so many new relationships to establish). There is, however, another kind of weariness. It always sneaks up on me. I am fatigued from traveling up and down, what I’ve come to call, the teaching and learning ladder.

I don’t know what else to call it. Let me know if you have a better term. For the longest time I didn’t realize the ladder existed; but it was there, always, and in every class I was traveling up and down without knowing it. Now that I recognize it, and know that my students and I are on it together, I have an entirely new sense for the importance, centrality even, of this: pedagogical empathy. Let me explain.

I stumbled upon it in the weirdest place. In the Preface to C.S. Lewis’ little commentary on the Psalms, he describes the perplexing difficulty that students have with getting answers from teachers. Sure, teachers are constantly offering responses to student questions, but do our responses — Socratic, didactic, or otherwise — actually address the questions our students are asking?

C.S. Lewis describes it like this:

It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than a master can. When you took the problem to a master, as we all remember, he was very likely to explain what you understood already, to add a great deal of information which you didn’t want, and say nothing at all about the thing that was puzzling you. I have watched this from both sides of the net; for when, as a teacher myself, I have tried to answer questions brought to me by my pupils, I have sometimes, after a minute, seen that expression settle down on their faces which assured me that they were suffering exactly the same frustration which I had suffered from my own teachers. The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten. He sees the whole subject, by now, in such a different light that he cannot conceive what is really troubling the pupil; he sees a dozen other difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren’t (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms [Harcourt, Brace & World: New York, 1958], 1-2)

I know that struggle! Compared to my students, I stand on the ladder several rungs higher and thus hear their questions from my rung. Not their rung. Questions make perfect sense from their rung, because the student and her questions live and breathe the same air. And that’s the rub: I live and breath on a different rung and share the air with different questions and insights. From my rung, I can sometimes see their questions aren’t quite the right ones. I see, as Lewis puts it, “a dozen other difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren’t.”

Pedagogical empathy is meeting a student on her rung, and its hard. “I’m not used to the air,” I gasp. “The vista looks strange from here,” I complain. “These aren’t the right questions!” I gripe. Its hard, but I’m learning at least two benefits from all my trips down the ladder.

“We must not, when we do speak, say too much.”

I don’t have time at the moment to comment on this section from the first volume of Kate Songeregger’s dogmatics, The Doctrine of God. I simply put it here with some reading notes to mull over. In the section I’m excerpting from she wrestles with the long-standing tension between God’s knowability – he does not remain hidden – and his utter incomprehensibility – he is not a being to be comprehended in the way we know beings of our own sort.

What strikes me every time I read this volume is her boldness to attempt two things at the same time, neither of which come easily. She works to solidly situate her restatement of Christian teaching squarely within the stream of Christian thought, while simultaneously reconsidering the sources of Christian theology afresh. As in the following bit, you can’t miss her sense that the question is still fresh for us, for her: how shall we speak of God?

We cannot stress too strongly the radical novelty that is human knowledge of this incomparable Subject. Again and again we must be broken on this novelty, this transcendent Uniqueness. We may speak, if we care to, of the ancient puzzle of the One and the many – but the Lord God of Israel, the One God, outstrips and explodes even that ancient mystery, this One without Form or Likeness. “No one has ever seen God,” John tells us in the close of the great epilogue; but “the Only Begotten has made Him known” (John 1:18). Its all there, in that one verse, isn’t it? Everything we have said about God’s Uniqueness and Formlessness, His majestic Life as dynamic Light, His deep Hiddenness and Humility—is it not captured in a few simple words? And our knowledge “at a distance,” our success in knowing the Lord—as Mystery, our earthen vessels that hold such Light—is that not also set forth here, a gift of our Lord Christ?…God is known! A positive relation, a beachhead has been established, between Creator and creature, and in that Radiance, God has been made known. But such a knowledge! (390-91)

In short, when speaking about the knowledge of God we have ground to stand on, a “beachhead”: the Incarnation of the Son. But still, perhaps the knowledge we gain in the appearing of the Son should drive us to silence. Or perhaps compel our use of Platonizing concepts that hold God at reserve—out of respect for his divinity of course. Perhaps it’s all too great for us to really do anything with besides stunned silence! Indeed, she asks, “Why should we speak rather than hold our peace when in the presence of this great Mystery?”

I found her response poignant.