Fr. Knisley, at Entangled States, has a nice mention of my previous post that garnered a couple of interesting negative comments from John. Here’s a selection:

. . . In The Wound of Knowledge [Williams] speaks of Scripture giving us a unity of ‘vision’ not ‘formulation.’ In his article on Balthasar and Rahner he appreciates the former precisely for avoiding ‘closure.’ And, anyone who knows Williams’ admiration for the interrogative mode of theology–and again is deeply immersed in this theology–will know that Long’s criticism here rings hollow.

. . . Long . . . has no time for Williams speaking of the “summons” of the Bible or the gospel precisely, one would think, because he (Long) has no idea of the Scripture being the vehicle by which God addresses, calls, summons, actively engages, the creature. Too bad. Williams doesn’t champion such a view to the exclusion of other means of address by God, but he does have a view which gives God’s activity, God’s address, some priority over human poetics. A good thing in my book.

I posted this essay a little too soon, so that both Fr. Knisley and John read a draft that still had some sharpness in it. As it stands now, most of that sharpness has been softened or removed. Stiil, I’m not inclined to back away from the primary argument I made. It isn’t true, as John supposes, that I have no idea of “the Scripture being the vehicle by which God addresses, calls, summons, actively engages, the creature.”