Dense Books:

Bring my books.

(Second Timothy 4:13)

I’ve been deeply bogged down with D.B. Hart, particularly his book The Beauty of the Infinite. I’m supposed to know it for a Directed Studies class I’m trying to teach. Here’s an example from a note I sent to a student:

Write what you know—“know” in a biblical sense as something you experience. For example, Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite took me to places I did not know. Much I still don’t know and will never know, and I’m not convinced Hart actually knows. But there was something in The Beauty of the Infinite that I didn’t know and now know. Something in me that wasn’t in me before. It’s Hart’s idea of “spaciousness”. That there is infinite space within the Godhead. So much space that God the Son can die on a Cross all the while, God remains God. Something of our spacious triune God can be seen in us—the image of God. Beauty requires distance and space. As our national hymn goes, “O beautiful for spacious skies.” Our infinitely spacious God creates a spacious universe.

The bogged down part comes from Hart’s relentless metaphysical density. Physics is like E = mc². Metaphysics is, to put it in Einstein’s words, “the mystery of why math works” to describe the physics of the universe. How, or why, did the Big Bang explode into mathematical coherence—what the Greeks called, the logos? Philosophers (metaphysicians) wonder about such things and try to make sense of such things.

Singing Hymns together is how we best do our metaphysics. Take, for instance, how Hart helped me better understand how God could die on the Cross for us (mentioned above) while at the same time still being God. Yet, even better, when the congregation gathers to sing…

Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, should die for me?

’Tis mystery all: the Immortal dies:
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more.

(And Can it Be, Charles Wesley, 1738)

Like the angels, sometimes we have to let our relentless inquiring rest, and simply sing our hymns of wonder and adoration.