It takes a delicate touch to explain things by invoking the inexplicable. The author does a great job of using analogy and solid theology to help explain why God being a mystery is not only a sufficient explanation for significant theological issues but a necessary one.

Sometimes the book is a little dry and academic, but it is well worth plowing through slowly and thinking about each section. ( )

An adept, skillful exposition on the most demanding religious subject: pure theology.

The authors use two metaphors throughout in order to seek to make sense of the difficulty: the sun, which causes blindness if you look at it directly but yet its light illuminates and allows us to see everything else, which helps to show how whereas we cannot directly look upon God, through what God has revealed about Himself, we can make sense of everything else we can see; and the book Flatland and the concept of two-dimensional Flatlanders attempting to come to some understanding of a 3-dimensional object, showing the challenges we experience as finite, physical humans in understanding what is transcendent and spiritual.

The concept of mystery is well explored in the first section of the book, and the authors attempt to maintain the tightrope of recognizing that there is always more that we can never know about God, and how God, by His very nature, is well beyond any attempt we may make to comprehend Him, yet nevertheless He has revealed some things about Himself to us so that we might have some understanding (even if that understanding is the confession of how much we do not know!). "Mystery" is the idea of revelation, of God seeking to make Himself known in some way, and also the means by which we can come to grips with many of the aspects of God and His work and their internal tensions/seeming contradictions, that two things that to our eyes may seem contradictory might well be both true if seen in its fullness, as God sees it.

The authors then apply these ideas to the theology at hand: the Trinity, the Incarnation, salvation, prayer, and interaction with world religions. The authors' explanation of heresy regarding the Trinity as the result of men attempting to smooth out and make more "rational" what God revealed about Himself is excellent, and that the revelation of God as Triune, One in relational unity, so to speak, as well as the Incarnation, helps make the world in which we live more comprehensible (hence the sun metaphor).

The authors, as historic Protestants to some degree, leave a bit too much unfinished with their attempt to reconcile Augustinian/Calvinist insistence on God's sovereignty and Arminian insistence on human responsibility through the prism of "mystery," in which it remains possible that God remains sovereign while humans maintain a level of free will. The authors' deeper exploration of "free will" and the inherent contradictions that exist at its core is good, but no such exploration is made in terms of Calvinist notions of "sovereignty", its definition accepted prima facie instead. Likewise, the authors take total depravity as a given, having no room for human response to the Gospel, although their concept of mystery as well would explain how it could be that God has done all that is necessary for man to be saved and yet man must himself respond, accept, and pursue that salvation in Christ.

The authors do well at expressing how "theology is not just knowledge about God, but the knowledge that God himself is." Great quotes include, "knowing God is a matter not merely of analyzing data about him but of entering into him" and the response of Cyril of Jerusalem when asked why he attempted to learn more about God if God is beyond our understanding: "I am endeavoring now to glorify the Lord, not to describe him." They do well at showing how theology can never be about mastering God but instead being awed and humbled by Him, leading to glorification and praise, the essence of "worship" as usually construed.

The authors' explanation of God's impassibility is extremely valuable, especially for those of us who are a bit divorced from the Greek philosophical paradigm, and provide a robust defense of why it ought to still be considered one of God's virtues. The exploration of ascertaining correctives to our own perspectives through the critique and theology of other religions is interesting but a bit esoteric.

This review cannot do justice to the nuance and full explanatory power of the original. For those interested in theology, a must read.

**--book received as part of early review program ( )