One early morning not long ago I woke with a strange physical sense of myself as the product of eons, rather than my usual tired twenty-first-century self. In the period between dream and waking I had the sense of being the son of a son of a son.... And you can go on way back, to a period where our ancestors slept in dens around fires in winter breathing bone dust—even to a p (...)
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An Unimaginable Intimacy
THE MYSTERY OF WHAT GOD HAS DONE FOR US
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Very nice, John. It seems to me you have been reading Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God, for your essay closely echoes her theological insights. So be on guard. You may get a letter with a reproach you were not expecting.
I understand this essay as a meditation on incarnation, and for a Christian there is no scandal in saying that the incarnate Jesus suffered. Suffering is an aspect of incarnation, and occurs in time, just as every particle/wave in the universe is inherently in time. The perfect and unknowable God who is over, above, and outside of time does not suffer, and yet in Jesus is mystically one with an incarnation that does suffer. This incarnation *is* a scandal to our Jewish and Islamic brothers; for us it is an inexhaustible mystery which fuels the intimacy with which we love God and with which we know God loves us.
And sisters! Forgive my imperfect language.