Light Unapproachable: Divine Incomprehensibility and the Task of Theology
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Leading international contributors on biblical texts, including the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls, intersect with the work of James H. Charlesworth and examine Charlesworth’s vast contribution to the field of biblical studies, honoring the work of one of the most significant biblical scholars of his generation.
Divided into five sections, this volume begins with a section on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament texts, with particular focus on the Gospel of John and Jesus studies. The contexts of these texts are considered, with a focus on the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds, and the varying intersections between texts and the worlds that created them. The contributors then focus on the most significant body of Charlesworth’s work, the apocrypha/pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the journey concludes with an assessment of the history of scholarship on the core areas addressed across the book.
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- Presents a rich analysis of the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility
- Reminds readers that theologians in all ages have wrestled with what we can and cannot say of God
- Shows the implications of divine incomprehensibility for the practice of theology itself
- Introducing the Doctrine of Divine Incomprehensibility
- Divine Incomprehensibility in the Biblical Data
- Divine Incomprehensibility in Theological Antiquity, Part One: The Anomoean Controversy and the Early Church
- Divine Incomprehensibility in Theological Antiquity, Part Two: From Pseudo-Dionysius to Modernity
- Implications from Ontology: The Creator-Creature Distinction
- Implications of Language and Knowledge: Accommodation, Analogy, and the Archetype
- Implications of Posture: The Necessity of Theological Humility
- Appendix: Working Theses on Incomprehensibility and Theological Method: Principles for Knowing and Naming the Incomprehensible God
Part 1: Introduction, Antiquity, and the Biblical Data
Part 2: Divine Incomprehensibility and the Task of Theology
This is a lovely book—rooted in and expressive of love for God, love for Jesus Christ, love for Scripture, and love for all who thirst to know the God who reveals himself in Christ and through the biblical Word. Kurtz has managed to unite faith, scholarship, profundity, and readability on a crucial topic. We need more books like this one!
—Matthew Levering, James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary
With its negative prefix, divine incomprehensibility appears to say that knowledge of God is impossible, thereby leading some people to become agnostic. Like appearances, however, prefixes too can be deceiving. By retrieving the classical formulation of the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility together with the all-important Creatorcreature distinction, Ronni Kurtz ably demonstrates why divine incomprehensibility need not lead to agnosticism. Unlike God, Light Unapproachable is far from being incomprehensible. It is a clearly written, cogently argued, and readily comprehensible account of how theology can apprehend what the accommodating God has chosen to reveal about himself.
—Kevin Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
If man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, as one catechism puts it, it would seem that knowledge of God should be possible. Yet, all the historic Christian traditions affirm the incomprehensibility of God. How is this possible? Ronni Kurtz has provided for us a masterful demonstration of how incomprehensibility must be accepted as a divine perfection and therefore as something extolling God’s glory. This volume shows the implications of this attribute for the practice of theology itself, showing that the knowledge of God does not imply conceptual mastery.
—Adonis Vidu, Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary