Lament That Generates Covenant And Other Essays

This collection of essays pertains to matters that urgently concern our faith. My work consists in recognition that our various systems of meaning, power, and control are decisively penultimate, even though we conduct ourselves as though they are ultimate. Thus, our articulation of theology and faith are momentary and require endless rearticulation. Our various expressions of nation, race, class, and gender are momentary arrangements that give us assurance, but that are sure to be, yet again, unsustainable claims. The idiom in which biblical faith is given us is inescapably poetic, an exercise in imagination, elusive imagery, and playful phrasing. The long history of the church consists in the seductive practice of trying to “catch” such poetic utterance in settled prose that we parse with logic and precision. Such efforts are always less than adequate, as the poetry of testimony always surges beyond our best prose. Thus, as a case in point, the church has engaged much energy in parsing the creeds.