| Intelligence of the heart
By contrast to perennial but subtle assertions of just-desserts, grace can only be encountered as a gift. This recognition is intrinsic to Christian proclamation in which the weakness of God displayed in Christ crucified is the source of redemption, righteousness and wisdom, offering a seemingly impossible means of God’s disclosure as otherwise unknown. Apocalypse or disclosure in Christian testimony occurs by such paradox for ears to hear with intelligent hearts of faith. v “Theism” is thinking about God by reference to our existence, usually within some form of moral, religious or philosophical frame of reference. We might presume to think about God by reference to our ideals and experiences, yet invariably, such analogies will also be inscribed with our perspectives of righteousness, mingled as these are with personal anxieties and partisan posturing. Perceptions of God that are formed by reference to human life tend to equate deed with reward by contrast to the seeming folly of self-relinquishment, loss and death within a context of greater grace and life engaged by faith. Conjecture obscures the extraordinary possibilities of this paradox as in our mortal anxiety we seek to secure divine endorsement for our personal and tribal estimations of righteousness, invariably within presumed just-desserts. Theism has not yet engaged the crisis of God being hidden in the paradox of weakness and a cross, which is only disclosed by God’s initiative. Any reckoning of God within our estimation leaves us as unsure about God as we continue to be uncertain about ourselves, which is evident in the perennial and often conflicting quests to understand human existence. Theism gives an uncertain word about God. By contrast, the promise or word of God is sure as a reality that is always before us in the future as promise coming to fruition through trusting this word in every today of hearing. The word of God as the promise of God calls to future possibilities that are disclosed to faith in the creativity of God who calls to be things that are not. Beginning with Abraham and sustained throughout Scripture, God calls and awaits a response in every today, in anticipation of each new today of God’s disclosure in grace and truth focused in Jesus Christ. If God justifies the ungodly, faith is the only form of thinking that is finally relevant to God. Any other thought about God, other than the intelligence of faith, is already an attempt to forge a theistic view from our own, invariably ungodly, self-justifying projections of what God is presumably like. Christian faith abandons any other meaning we can forge concerning God’s disclosure to human life. Disclosure occurs as a gift otherwise than the preening of any particular virtue or ideal by which God is presumably known and our values are justified. Yet within faith, the potential wealth of human thought and passion are given a surprisingly new orientation in their integral expression. v If God alone justifies our existence, it is only by recognition of this within faith’s unique intelligence that we can think appropriately in relation to the disclosure of God’s reality for human life. Faith as intelligence is expressed in receiving grace amid our perennial compromise of life, with humility and gratitude as our appropriate attitude before God. We do so without assertions of any virtue and certainly not according to select ideals derived from tribal or partisan posturing in quest of some form of divine imprimatur and therefore religious leverage among others. Christian faith recognises that by grace, we receive the capacity in volition and desire to live according to a new reality. Faith knows that God is love and that life is given as an extravagant gift. Genuine human possibility is contingent on recognising the source of life and focus of redemptive creativity before the inexorable reality of death. Faith is intelligence of a heart that knows God with integrity and intimacy that could only be disclosed as a gift. Intelligence of the heart is not absence of thought; it is not absence of passion either. Intelligence of the heart is thought and passion that is wholly committed to what is engaged as sure in the strange apocalypse or disclosure of God in Christ. Faith is that attitude by which I am given to God in passionate commitment that is necessarily acted forward with intelligence, as each new challenge to response invokes a decision. Decision implies intelligence as an imperative is recognised, weighed and engaged. Volition invokes passion as the possibilities within a particular decision are lived or acted forward in conscientious commitment to the responsibilities of that decision. Intelligence of the heart is manifested in decisions that induct righteousness—invoking faith in trusting the word or promises of God who is righteous. By such faith we make tangible decisions as faith working through love, which is the integral expression of righteousness in biblical testimony. Faith is intelligence of the heart by which any decision and its ensuing commitments occur on the basis that God is trusted as the source, meaning and goal of particular activities we undertake in response to the word or reality of God. We receive this word as a gift by apocalypse of God in grace that nurtures a new intelligence to act according to the will or righteousness of God given by the word of promise. This is how faith “thinks” as it responds with passion; this is intelligence of the heart. v Because the Word became flesh, language is invoked in the apocalypse of God who communicates by overture and encounter. What then is the most appropriate language to use in conveying this reality among the numerous words that people use about familiar aspects of daily life and serious reflections as to its meaning? Scripture provides a language for intelligent hearts of faith. Scripture gives an enormous range of rich textures—as call and response, trust and intimacy, decision and responsibility, accountability and promise—for Christian language about God. Scripture does not confine us to a ghetto of “Christian jargon,” which is a very selective use of biblical language excised from its wealth of testimony pertaining to integral life before God. The Word, having become our flesh, is also constantly given to translation; as incarnate, the word is translated into specific times and places. This is why Christians have always translated Scripture into diverse dialects, even as the pervasive tone of Scripture’s testimony to the gospel remains the defining truth and impetus of a message that can be heard as the word of God in any mother tongue. The word of God continues to speak in whatever language it is translated, because the Word became flesh among all dialects as applicable to any context of human life. Christian proclamation concerns speaking and not non-speaking, vocative encounter and not silence, particular speech in grace and truth concerning Jesus Christ and not just any speech about God. Christian testimony concerns the apocalypse or revelation of what is otherwise hidden—the paradoxical disclosure of God as redemptive love through death and life and not some theistic projection in which our anxious and compromised lives are reflected. Apocalypse for intelligence of the heart is the principle of biblical testimony that is expressed in Christian proclamation. |
