It’s natural, says Kierkegaard, to imagine that the first generation surrounding Jesus enjoyed an advantage, a privileged access to transcendence—the fortunate ones “timely born,” as it were, who received the bread and wine from Jesus’s own hand. But the manifestation of God is not available in the way a billboard announcement is. The Creator of the cosmos comes at us slant. He shows up in a way that also hides. God’s self-communication, as Kierkegaard would put it, is always indirect, which means it takes more than ears and eyes to see and hear. God can come to the creation he made and yet
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