There is no abstract conceptual apparatus by which we can know the Christian God. Knowledge of God is absolutely contingent on Godβs free Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This is the only way as Christians that we know God; as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has descended to us in the real garb of a flesh and blood human; as a Jew from Nazareth. And His reception in Maryβs womb was made fertile by the millennia of preparation for His first coming as the Holy Spirit hovered over the Hebrews.
None of the above requires augmentation by way of appeal to and appropriation of foreign and abstract metaphysics. The Christ child came in the wood of the manger; died on the wood of the cross; and rose again from the rock of the tomb. These are all concrete and particular materials that have no correspondence with the ethereal of the philosophers, per se.
This is astounding. It is news to shake and awaken us to the core, as nations, communities, families, friends and individuals.
Whoβd have thought?
How do we ever contain it?
It feels like we oversee and manage this news so it doesnβt leak outside of our church buildings. π
Some of the songs we sing are like well-disguised smoke screens, so the reality of Godβs enfleshment doesnβt burst upon us.
The Son walking into Jericho, feeding the 5000, or walking on the Lake, is the most beautiful insight into the certainty of knowing God as Father, and the Spirit, as ever present guide and revelator!
Keep writing these things.
Even a philosopher might stop his busy business for a moment, and then marvel for a lifetime.
Amen, Trevor! Well said. Yes, I’m uninterested in a pedestrian, vanilla, boring, cultural folk Gospel. I prefer the real thing π .