For millenia now Christians have been struggling with all their brain capacities to apprehend, let alone comprehend, the mystery of Jesus as both human and divine. In my reading of Thomas F. Torrance’s Incarnation, I have been struck by how wrong headed this approach is. This unsatiable desire to comprehend and make sense of this mystery with all of my post-enlightment power, I try to get at this mystery and break it down so that I can understand it, but it defies it every time. And Torrance just punched me in the face with this when speaking of the mystery of the human and the divine in one:
“Both the sinner who is forgiven by Christ and the man or woman who has come to see the face of God in the face of Christ, know that they can never master or dominate the mystery of Christ in their hearts, but can only acknowledge it gladly with wonder and thankfulness, and seek to understand the mystery of Christ out of itself, that is, seek to let it declare itself to them, seek to let themselves be told by the mystery what it is.”
When stated as such, it reminds me that I am reading “revelation”. I forget so often in my reading of Scripture that this is a document FROM God. And my attempts at taming and grasping the text are finite and in direct opposition to the fact of its being as revelation. My heart is longing to be satisfied alone with the questions of “what is this?” and “how is this possibe?”, but all the while the revelation is only answering the questions, “why is this?” and “from where did this come?” May I not believe blindly, but my I take the Word at its word, and seek to wonder anew at the magnificence of the mystery, rather than balk at it in frustration and discontent.
