In Glimmerings, poet Christian Wiman (Zero at the Bone; My Bright Abyss) and theologian Miroslav Volf explore some of the questions central to Christianity through an exchange of e-mails stretching from February 2023 through June 2024. The two men, colleagues at Yale Divinity School and professed Christians, come at their faith from strikingly different perspectives, and they don't hesitate to disagree. But always they extend an assurance of goodwill, an understanding that their opinions may differ, but their friendship--and their shared striving toward truth and beauty--will not suffer from it. "Disagreeing with you feels like disagreeing with myself, free of any envy and malice," Volf explains.
The questions are expansive: What is faith? What does it mean to love God? The two make no claims of definitive answers; instead, they push and challenge each other, probing uncertainties with deep intellect and profound humility. "Implicit in the most powerful and convincing theology," Wiman writes, "one hears a whisper, I don't know." This acknowledgment of the ultimately unknowable nature of God is bolstered by an impressive array of allusions to thinkers as familiar as Simone Weil and Martin Luther, and to dozens of lesser-known but still impressive writers. Both poet and theologian treat language and ideas with the utmost care, and every letter is shot through with gorgeous sentences and insightful commentary. To read their correspondence is to audit a class with two brilliant professors, learning from and with them as they discuss the ineffable. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian