I first discovered Tony Woodlief’s blog when he linked to a post I wrote about a year ago. He has a new essay, “OK, Virginia, There’s No Santa Claus. But There Is God” that was in the Wall Street Journal (!) on Thursday that is a good read, with quotes from G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and George McDonald. Here’s my favorite part of the essay:
Today’s Christian apologists, by contrast, seek to reason their way to God by means of archaeological finds, anthropological examinations and scientific argumentation. That’s all well and good, but it seems to miss a fundamental point illuminated by Chesterton, which is that, ultimately, belief in God is belief in mystery.
As a parent, I believe (with the older apologists) that it’s essential to preserve a small, inviolate space in the heart of a child, a space where he is free to believe impossibilities. The fantasy writer George MacDonald — author of “The Light Princess” and “The Golden Key” — whom Lewis esteemed as one of his greatest inspirations, suggested that it is only by gazing through magic-tinted eyes that one can see God: “With his divine alchemy,” MacDonald wrote, “he turns not only water into wine, but common things into radiant mysteries.” The obfuscating spirit of the “commonplace,” meanwhile, is “ever covering the deep and clouding the high.”
My favorite post that Tony has written recently is this one, Deconstructing the sola, a topic that I’ve been planning on bogging about soon, probably after the first of the year.
I’m bookmarking the WSJ article to read later. That excerpt is phenomenal – we try to respond to the world by being scientists, logical in all our explanations, and forget that it is all about faith in the unseen. Paul talks about the the mysteries of God, and we would do well remembering that He is the biggest enigma we will ever encounter.
Agreed. I’m finishing up Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead today, and just read this passage, which struck me as amusing:
Two or three of the ladies had pronounced views on points of doctrine, particularly sin and damnation, which they never learned from me. I blame the radio for sowing a good deal of confusion where theology is concerned. And television is worse. You can spend forty years teaching people to be awake to the mystery and then some fellow with no more theological sense than a jackrabbit gets himself a radio ministry and all your work is forgotten. I do wonder where it will end.