One of the challenges of discussing this, especially in this venue and with the educational backgrounds typically present here, is that we pride ourselves on communicational clarity, with whatever doses of precision, logic, and empirical support we can muster. We like everything well-defined. In short, even while we try to recognize our modernist status and its shortcomings, children of modernism we remain.
And yet there is something about all this that is hard to define, but easy to recognize. Sort of like pornography I guess … the saying is that it may be hard to define, but “we know it when we see it.” I feel like Truth in a person or more to the point: as a person may be something like that. Think of people that you enjoy being around - either you would “grab a coffee with them” or you gravitate toward working with them, etc. I realize - there is danger of confusing this with popularity - and I probably am confusing the two even in trying to write this. There may be people who are “fun to be around” in a more superficial sort of sense; but I’ll try to distinguish between that and, say, somebody that you don’t mind spending extended time with. As in, their presence is edifying in challenging ways (or challenging in edifying ways), and in so being, leave you a better person than they found you. It’s tempting to take things like “they make me laugh” and just put that in the superficial category, but maybe that’s no small thing? It could be - especially if it isn’t part of anything deeper or broader. But it could also be that they help you plug in to deeper spiritual engagement with the transcendant. Is your cup more full to “face the world” after spending any time in their presence?
For Macdonald, I always feel like I’ve had something of a “spiritual bath” after reading his fiction. [the exact opposite of what I experience if exposed to any Game of Thrones type stuff]. For Macdonald, any character that is plugged into Christ, and functions as a lifeline to Christ to all those around them - those characters can do no wrong (pretty much quite literally in Macdonald’s novels). And many will find that unrealistic to an extreme - so far from being a mirror to our fallenness (see the Game of Thrones thread) - it is not only stained glass instead, it is a mirror that instead of showing us ourselves, is deliberately angled to reflect our vision to Christ instead. And Macdonald finds total rest in that - rest from doctrinal argumentation (though he wouldn’t claim to not adhere to any doctrine), rest from legalistically prescribed practices and works (though he is all about obedience to the Master), rest from all the imperfections of ourselves, our world, and even our religion while being in the presence of the perfect - how can we fuss about all that stuff when the bridegroom is with us? In short - even though I don’t remember Penner ever mentioning an author like Macdonald (I think I would have eagerly noticed), nonetheless I feel like Macdonald anticipates all Penner’s concerns and had them already addressed. I don’t remember Macdonald, in his own turn, ever mentioning Kierkegaard though I’m sure he would have been aware of his work.
But in any case, while Truth as a person may be hard to define, I think many of us “know them when we’re around them.” And perhaps our reaction to such people is very revealing about ourselves. Because it probably isn’t a given that we enjoy being around them. A prophet likely is quite the opposite of a barrel of fun. So while Jesus did draw many to him, he also repulsed so many (maybe for the very same reasons). Truth is not always a pleasant thing for me to be around - depending on my own spiritual state which is the much more fluidly changeable thing.