{"id":18575,"date":"2016-12-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=306"},"modified":"2016-12-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T00:00:00","slug":"my-bright-abyss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/12\/my-bright-abyss\/","title":{"rendered":"My Bright Abyss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

O<\/span>ne paragraph illustrates both the reasons I admire Christian Wiman\u2019s 2013 searingly honest My Bright Abyss<\/em><\/a>, and the reasons I find the book frustrating to the point of irritation. A poet and erstwhile editor of Poetry<\/em>, Wiman came to Christianity as an adult in the midst of an excruciating and incurable cancer of the blood. His suffering has naturally left a profound mark on the shape of his faith:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a Christian not because of the resurrection (I wrestle with this), and not because I think Christianity contains more truth that other religions (I think God reveals himself, or herself, in many forms, some not religious), and not simply because it was the religion in which I was raised (this has been a high barrier). I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me<\/em>? (I know, I know: he was quoting the Psalms, and who quotes a poem when being tortured? The words aren\u2019t the point. The point is that he felt human destitution to its absolute degree; the point is that God is with us not beyond us, in suffering.) I am a Christian because I understand that moment of Christ\u2019s passion to have meaning in my own life, and what it means is that the absolutely solitary and singular nature of extreme human pain is an illusion. I\u2019m not suggesting that ministering angels are going to come down and comfort you as you die. I\u2019m suggesting that Christ\u2019s suffering shatters the iron walls around individual human suffering, that Christ\u2019s compassion makes extreme human compassion \u2013 to the point of death, even \u2013 possible. Human love can reach right into death, then, but not if it is merely<\/em> human love. (155)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is an awesome insight, awesome in the original sense of awe-inspiring: No matter how deep the abyss, or how dark, Jesus has been there first, shattering, as Wiman says, the \u201ciron walls around individual human suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the same paragraph, though, Wiman waffles on the resurrection and the uniqueness of Christianity, and weakens his main point by questioning the actuality of the cry of dereliction itself. He acknowledges the role of theology, but tends to view it as a stage toward what he calls \u201cbelief\u201d: \u201cPerhaps the relation of theology to belief is roughly the same as that between the mastery of craft and the making of original art: one must at the same time utterly possess and utterly forget one\u2019s knowledge in order to go beyond it\u201d (72). That is well put, but at times it appears that he neglects the \u201cutterly possess\u201d part of that equation. And one wonders what it means to forget<\/em>, in the midst of pain, that \u201cGod is with us not beyond us, in suffering\u201d? Surely, faith means that, at moments in the midst of pain, we are arrested by the memory<\/em> of theological convictions.<\/p>\n

Wiman has little use for the \u201cuselessly<\/em> absurd\u201d (91) bits of Christianity, which seems to include much of what ordinary Christians do. \u201cAll love abhors habit\u201d (50). Really<\/em>? Not surprisingly, Wiman doesn\u2019t have much use for institution and church, speaking of the original \u201cchurchless\u201d Christianity, though, rather incoherently, he insists that Christianity is all about human love and relationships. He states, ambiguously, that God \u201cdoes not simply enjoin us to participate fully in life, and specifically in the relationships within our lives\u201d but He is a God \u201cwho inheres wholly<\/em> within those relationships\u201d (83).<\/p>\n

Wiman recognizes that dogma is one of the means for forging and reforming his understanding \u201cwithin the life of God\u201d (117), but the book recounts his ambivalence toward dogma, which he makes impervious to critique by appeals to mysticism. \u201cThere is no clean intellectual coherence, no abstract ultimate meaning to be found, and if this is not recognized, then the compulsion to find such certainty becomes its own punishment. This realization is not the end of theology, but the beginning of it: trust no theory, no religious history or creed, in which the author\u2019s personal faith is not actively at risk\u201d (75), There is much to be said in favor of this, especially the last claim that faith is a self-involving risk. There\u2019s a lot of room between \u201cclean intellectual coherence\u201d and \u201ccertainty.\u201d \u201cThe purpose of theology . . . is to make the silences clearer and starker to us, to make the unmeaning \u2013 by which I mean those aspects of the divine that will not be reduced to human meanings \u2013 more irreducible and more terrible, and thus ultimately more wonderful\u201d (130). There is confusion here (what \u201caspects\u201d of God are<\/em> reducible to human meanings?) and the mysticism leaves one wondering if what room is left for a God who is Word.<\/p>\n

Wiman sets apophaticism alongside an insistence on God\u2019s nearness to the world, which verges at times toward an identity between God and the world. It is not an entirely coherent position, but he has pre-inoculated himself to doctrinal correction. The best response is simply to point out his own inability to escape dogma: \u201cGod is with us not beyond us, in suffering\u201d is, after all, a piece of dogma and a bold one at that (unless it\u2019s sentiment, which it certainly is not for Wiman.)<\/p>\n

Few books have left me feeling so (uncomfortably) professional in my theology. Nearly every page of this lovely book elicits both an enthusiastic \u201cYes\u201d and an equally decided \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One paragraph illustrates both the reasons I admire Christian Wiman\u2019s 2013 searingly honest My Bright Abyss, and the reasons I find the book frustrating to the point of irritation. A poet and erstwhile editor of Poetry, Wiman came to Christianity as an adult in the midst of an excruciating and incurable cancer of the blood. 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