Description:
How can finite creatures know an infinite God? How does limited knowledge impact what we can say of God?
Retrieving and constructing important insight from Scripture and key patristic, medieval, early modern, and modern theologians, Ronni Kurtz presents a rich analysis of the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility. Our theological language, says Kurtz, cannot capture the full mystery of God. However, our inability to see God in his totality should not lead us to despair. Through God's gracious accommodation, we can learn to speak of God faithfully, truthfully, and prayerfully.
Kurtz's dialogue with varying traditions to unpack divine accommodation reminds us that theologians in all ages have wrestled with what we can and cannot say of God.
Brief description:
Ronni Kurtz (PhD, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is an assistant professor of theology at Cedarville University. He is also the author of No Shadow of Turning: Divine Immutability and the Economy of Redemption and the Fruitful Theology: How the Life of the Mind Leads to the Life of the Soul.
Review Quotes:
"It is nothing short of amazing that so few theologians today have written on God's incomprehensibility. Perhaps this is not surprising. After all, the title wave of modern theology has left us with a domesticated God, vanquishing the beauty of the infinite. In the wake of this wasteland, Ronni Kurtz is planting new seeds with deep roots in sacred Scripture and the Great Tradition. With a clarity that matches the accessibility of his research, Kurtz demonstrates that the incomprehensibility of God is foundational to the recovery of classical theism today. More still, God's incomprehensibility is like a rich garden in which each vine is connected to the next as God's incomprehensibility connects everything from divine simplicity to the analogy of being to our participation in the beatific vision. Truly, Kurtz has planted the seeds for a great harvest to come."
--Matthew Barrett, professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of None Greater and Simply Trinity