Read What Words Cannot Express

"God of all grace, whose thoughts toward us are ever thoughts of peace and not of evil, give us hearts to believe that we are accepted in the Beloved; and give us minds to admire that perfection of moral wisdom which found a way to preserve the integrity of heaven and yet receive us there. We are astonished and marvel that one so holy and dread should invite us into Thy banqueting house and cause love to be the banner over us. We cannot express the gratitude we feel, but look Thou on our hearts and read it there. Amen." - A.W. Tozer

This prayer comes from a little book I've been reading entitled, "The Knowledge of the Holy." Sometimes Tozer's modern Calvinism throws me a bit (e.g. what exactly he means by us being accepted "in" the Beloved - that little preposition bears huge interpretive options and theological consequences). However, Tozer usually escapes many of the pitfalls of modernity by immersing himself in the writings of the Saints. In this small book (124 pgs.) he quotes and interprets through "The Cloud of Unknowing," Miguel de Molinos, Julian of Norwich, The Athanasian Creed, St. Anselm, Novation, and Nicholas of Cusa. We are all, to a great extent, products of our environments, and it's refreshing to see someone, especially someone who had recieved no formal education, intentionally choose to expand their formative context to include the faithful who worked from a completely different set of (often more truthful) assumptions. One would be hard pressed to assemble a group of influences any less modern than the above. (Especially Nicholas of Cusa: Attaining a knowledge of God through the divine human mind that was unattainable through the senses? Calling the knowledge gained through the senses "learned ignorance?" Come on now! Enlightenment be damned!)

Regardless of these little bits here and there that cause me to raise a post-modern eyebrow, Tozer's work indeed "breathes a spirit of devotion." Hold Warren or Olsteen's work up next to Tozer's and they look like a corpse next to an Olympic athlete.

Maybe that was a little to harsh...No. It's about right. Just look at the last two lines from the above prayer, unpack them, then let them rip apart your modern assumptions that reduce faith and worship to linguistic systems and propositions. Oh, and while you're at it, let it draw you into deeper communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I believe one of the signs of a truly faithful Christian thinker and writer is that their own work in one line or paragraph will criticize itself in another section. If this is true, though Tozer is definitely no Augustine or Anselm, he is indeed in line with the writers at whose feet he intentionally sat.