Let us speak of God - omni-present and omniscient - everywhere all of the time and all-knowing. The Bible tells us God's name - or rather, many of his names - because a single name cannot fully describe God. In fact, neither can many names tell us who God fully is. Just as your name is not you but rather a marker which points beyond itself to you, so the names of God are not destinations, but journey markers, calling us to keep seeking the One to whom they point.

C.S. Lewis grasped this concept in The Screwtape Letters when he has his senior devil advising the younger one on how to keep the Christian's prayer ineffectual. He says that when the Christian prays, a picture of God may form in his mind - a picture which is initially there to help focus those prayers. The devil's task is then to encourage the Christian to pray to the picture of God he has, rather than to God. The devil is in real trouble when the Christian addresses his prayers not to who he thinks God is, but to "whom You know Yourself to be." So we have this idea of God standing beyond our concept of God; the reality of God is always bigger than the tools we can use to describe that reality.

A picture of God - like an icon - is useful when it focusses attention away from itself and onto God. This concepts works not just with pictures of God, but also with ideas of God and especially with theology. Theology is speaking about God, but in that speaking does not grasp God; rather, it points away from itself to God.

Let us speak of salvation as the journey on which we stop struggling against God and surrender ourselves to Him, letting Him hold us. We do not possess God but we are possessed (held) by Him. We do not grasp God, but God grasps us. And in that grasping, we are confronted by a mystery: the imperishable grasping the perishable, the transcendent other/timeless Creator God holding the finite creation in His loving gaze. This is clear; this is also mysterious. So much so that one day, because we are grasped by the imperishable, we shall be raised imperishable.

Behold, I tell you a mystery!

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