“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans–and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused–and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.”
― Sigrid Undset
(close-up of a portion of a hand carved wooden German Christmas Pyramid)
The Birth Of Theology
No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle in Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders, that God became human. . .Theologia sacra arises from those on bended knees who do homage to the mystery of the divine child in the stall. Israel had no theology. It did not know God in the flesh. Without the holy night there is no theology. “God revealed in the flesh,” the God-human Jesus Christ, is the holy mystery which theology is appointed to guard. What a mistake to think that it is the task of theology to unravel God’s mystery, to bring it down to the flat, ordinary human wisdom of experience and reason! It is the task of theology solely to preserve God’s wonder as wonder, to understand, to defend, to glorify God’s mystery as mystery. . . Surely Christmas Eve (and Christmas Day) can kindle in us again something like a love of sacred theology, so that, seized and compelled by the wonder of the cradle of the Sone of God, we are moved to consider again, reverently, the mysteries of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Taken from A Testament to Freedom 448
A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(parenthesis mine)
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