Quotes from Jason Byassee

God, on Christian lights, isn't just high, lofty, far away, distant, unsullied with us. God, in Christian thought, is Jewish. Human. Not just great and holy but little and lowly. ... God becomes our neighbour. ... If it takes a neighbour's desire to set ours alight, then the one living and true God will become that flesh-and-blood neighbour.

All is not lost. In fact, as ever with Augustine, God uses our sin to move us toward salvation. The theologian for whom the fall is a "happy fault," felix culpa, —since redemption will be sweeter after the fall than it would have been without it— argues that God can make use of our hard-headedness in teaching and being taught.

Rowan Williams analogizes between Mary and other believers. When any of us trusts, things get born. New life comes. Things that were not there before are now there, nearly miraculously. Mary trusts so much she gets pregnant.

Reading the Bible, for Christians, is a matter of expecting to be surprised by Jesus again.

The key to interpretation, as Augustine once told Deogratias, is your delight as an interpreter. Your delight is what your listeners will notice. It is what will return you to the text for more. It is what has a chance to draw in your hearers. It is the tether God has left in your soul with which to draw you to God's self, and others through you.