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I seldom quote from modern theologians...because I often find their language too theoretical to be of much use. The language of theologians of the early church, however, is remarkably vivid, energized by metaphors so grounded in earthy reality as to still be effective after more than a thousand years.
A man after my own heart, Ephrem "avoids - indeed abhors - definitions, which he regards as boundaries that impose limit; his own method, by contrast, is to proceed by way of paradox and symbol." ...He leads his readers into strange places. One of his hymns on faith includes a passage on God's efforts "to clothe Himself in our language, so that He might clothe us in His way of life." ...A monk "is found the same, day and night, the same in bed as in prayer, quite the same alone as surrounded by men," with absolutely nothing to hide. ...[Ephrem was] a sage who had sensed the interconnectedness of all things and was gifted with the language to articulate it.
Kathleen NorrisPoet, author© Kathleen Norris |
The metaphoric poverty of the contemporary churches sends me back to an
earlier time in Christian history, when Ephrem, the great theologian of the
early Syrian church, wrote theology as poetry.