For many who identify themselves as Christian, these eight words cover the entire waterfront of theology:

To get our bearings, let us begin at the beginning, in the first chapter of Genesis. And let us ask the first question of theology: Who Is God? That is, what is His Nature? We can never, of course, really know. Yet, He has revealed Himself to us to an extent that He has deemed right. And by this fact He has called us to our duty, which is to know Him within these set bounds.

The first verb in the Holy Scriptures is to create. Our God is, above all, a creative God. He alone is Being: Ego Sum Qui Sum, the infinitive of the verb to be referring only to itself through a relative pronoun which is Him — unfathomable depths of pure, Creative Energy. He alone Is Being while His myriad creatures have being, a gift from His Creative hand.

His marvelous nature is to create. Being a lover of beauty, He has surrounded us with His unsurpassed masterworks. No artist, artisan, or craftsman might approach His ingenious art, His textures and fragrances and forms and sweet sounds. No artist might even begin to create an animate, living art such as His.

He reveals Himself in these countless creations. And among these, literary art has been singled out for particular importance. He does not simply create light but brings it about through Holy Words: not

Yet, God did not create the world with a series of physical acts according to the Prologue of St. John, but rather He wrote a cosmic poem .... from a Divine Word:

Manifestly, God is focused upon our creative acts. He has given the Earth to humankind (Ps 115:16), and the fate of the world hangs upon what we say and do. It is for this reason alone that He must abide human evil — even the enormities of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, with whole cultures and peoples exterminated, with weaponized viruses loosed into the world in an unprecedented pandemic, and watching the slow destruction of His beloved creation, the Earth. For He will not abridge His gift to us of sovereign freedom. It is this gift, which enables us to become like Him. Anything less renders His marvelous, living creation no more than a puppet show or a miasma of robots and automatons.

In this, we gain a precious glimpse into the nature of His gift of salvation. He made us good and wishes us to fulfill that goodness, but He cannot force us to be good without rendering His creation lifeless. He, therefore, teaches us and leads us and points us in the right direction .... just as we have been pointed in the wrong direction by less salutary influences. Chief among His influencers is His Son, the Λογος , simultaneously a creative man and the Creative God.

Mysteriously and from the beginning, God desires us to be co-authors as Adam was. Literature, among His creative arts, is to play a primary role here — to inspire, to teach, and to exercise our moral faculties. Why else do we read books? Why else do we watch edifying movies (and avoid the alternatives) if not for these reasons?

Literature is, by its nature, "an ecchoing song" (Andrew Marvell) with one literary work resonating down through the caverns and labyrinths of the works that follow. Deeps calls unto deep at the churning, generative center of creativity (Ps 42:7). Indeed, the power of literature arises from the cumulative effect of all literature with words and sentences from masterpieces echoing down through later masterpieces.

How, then, is God to touch the hearts living in a first-century, Hellenized world if not through its culture? Indeed, language itself is thickly embedded with cultural artifacts. And the Son of God drew on the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible whenever He cited Scripture (Werner Jaeger).

When we say Hellenized, we certainly mean Palestine with its classical Graeco-Roman temples, statues, and agoras. Its soaring temple to the Roman Emperor at Caesarea Maritima, one of the great harbors of the ancient world, could be seen from far out at sea, announcing that the gateway to Asia belonged to Caesar. Classical monuments to kings and pagan gods were scattered throughout Judea — at the headwaters of the Jordan, at the Ten Cities of the Decapolis, and throughout the crossroads of the ancient world, where major trade routes to Europe, Asia, and Africa intersected.

In Jerusalem, where the dominant language was Greek, children of the wealthy were trained in gymnasiums and steeped in Paideia — the classical education of philosophy, mathematics, literature, and rhetoric, name a few of the subject. How else could affluent citizens of Jerusalem be expected to function in Roman society? Even Judean tax collectors were members of the Equestrian class, just below the Senatorial class.

This echoing song is heard by the well-educated Saul of Tarsus, who encounters the Risen Christ on the Damascus Road:

God brings His own fire to the aid of humanity:

The burning point of our freedom of choice is described using the metaphor of a target. We are saved or we are destroyed by either hitting the mark or missing it. The Greek philosophers and tragedians, such as Aeschylus, had a word for this:

To return to the example of literature, this is not a resting back on a pillow, so God can read us a bedtime story. This is co-authorship. Jesus came into the world to show us the way, to cooperate with Him. And what is the way? Chiefly, He says, it is love and especially a life offered to others:

Without question, His death and resurrection show us the way through high mountains to Heaven; we might say, hazardous mountains. But it is not His death that is the Divine fire He brings to humanity. His death cannot, and will not, bring the filthy, evil man to Heaven, for our God is Holy. His Divine fire and gift to humanity is His creative life. This is the target. This is the bulls-eye. And He implores us do get hold of ourselves lest we miss the mark. This is God's grace and His gift and His kindly leading. We must not fail to receive it!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.