Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God

by Brennan Manning

The magnificent theme of kabōd reaches its culmination in the Christian scriptures, as the kabōd rests on the person of Jesus and he shares in the luminous brilliance of his Father. He is the Light who has come into the world. To glorify Jesus is to confess his divinity as well as his humanity. In short, Jesus is God. The carpenter who walked the dusty roads of Galilee is “one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he’s without sin” (Heb 4:15); he is also, as the Nicene Creed stipulates, God from God, Light from Light, Kabōd from Kabōd, true God from true God, eternally begotten not made, one in being with the Father. He is more than a superior human being with an intellect keener than ours and a capacity for loving greater than ours. In his divinity Jesus is inexpressibly Other, absolutely incomparable. Jesus is the power and wisdom and holiness of God Almighty. “In him all things were created in heaven and earth” (Col. 1:6). He is creatively present 264 trillion miles from earth on the star Upsilon Andromedae. No thought can contain him; no word can express him. He transcends all human concepts, considerations, and expectations. He is the Beyond-in-our-midst, and though in our midst, still beyond anything we can intellectualize or imagine.