A. N. Wilson, a British intellectual and well-known author, was a notable atheist who gave up atheism and returned to the faith. During an interview he was asked, "What's the worst thing about being faithless?" Wilson answered: "The worst thing about being faithless? When I thought I was an atheist I would listen to the music of Bach and realize that his perception of life was deeper, wiser, more rounded than my own. Ditto when I read the lives of great men and women who were religious" (Why I Believe Again: A Former Atheist Tells His Story). Wilson, the atheist, understood that there was some depth missing in his mind and life. There is a proto-atheist in every heart, which rejects the depth of understanding inherent in the Christian faith, with its teaching about the incarnation, two natures in Christ, substitutionary atonement, suffering, death, and resurrection. We want to doubt that such depth matters. We would prefer the habits of the mind and heart that sees in only one dimension on the flat panel screen of theological simplicity. Challenging patterns of thought are only for the egg heads, trained in the fine distinctions that are too deep for the rest of us. "Just give me the simple faith," we say. And there is a place for such simplicity in children. But even children believe that Jesus is the God-Man and that He is one undivided person.

While you might excuse simplicity in children, they often perceive depth where adults have blocked it out. Some years ago I had a four-year-old child approach me after a church service in which the Lord's Supper had been celebrated. He took me to chancel steps, pointed to the cup on the altar and asked, "Pastor, is that God's blood?" This child had understood what Jesus had said when He instituted the Supper and gave it to us and He knew who Jesus was, therefore this had to be God's blood. Just so. He was not hindered by false ideas about what God might or might not be capable of. His presupposition was that God could do exactly what God said He could do. Go figure! If we only had that same depth of insight!

I am constantly challenged by Scripture to see what cannot be seen, to know what cannot be known, and to hear what has never been heard before. There is a demanding depth to the speech of God. Why should that surprise us? Why shouldn't we be challenged by God's self-revelation? Why shouldn't what we hear from God sound unlike anything we have ever heard before. Even the great saints often had that response to God's self-revelation. Even Mary was compelled to say, "How can this be?" (Lk 1:34), to the announcement of the incarnation of her Lord in her womb. How can this Jesus who takes on our flesh do so without damage to the perfection of His divine nature? Yet, this is the Bible's claim. This is why the church uses hymn and poetry, song and chant to disclose the deep things of God in her worship services. The church is proclaiming what has been wrapped in the mantle of human flesh. We struggle to wrap it in the mantle of words. I find myself struggling to plumb those depths when I read and listen with the church to her great preachers, like Leo the Great. Let's plumb those depths together.