One rarely knows what is good for us and what is bad. Therefore if we knowingly put ourselves in the hands of Almighty, whatever happens must be deemed good. And I try literally to follow that precept.
Gandhi, "Letter to Francesca Standenath", April 1947
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In Search of Applied Theology


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My friend Jen is a brilliant student of the period of the early Christian church known as the patristic period. She experiences the reality of the patristic theologians and shares their sensibilities in a really amazing way. Since I am of a somewhat different inclination, I really enjoy discussing issues with Jen, because she regularly challenges me and introduces me to whole knew ways of approaching problems that I thought I had settled, and she always does so with the love of Christ. It’s great to disagree in love and still be in conversation and challenging each other.

Recently, she decided to set out to develop a habit of spiritual practice. Fittingly enough, she approached it from her orthodox-patristic vantage point. In a series of blog posts and comments (1, 2, 3), she laid out the work that she had been doing and I asked her some questions about it.

In the last post, she said this:

Robert has been asking repeatedly that I give a description of the effects of my proposed spiritual program in practical, “real-life” terms. He has asked that I give empirical evidence for my assertion that a spiritual life based on orthodox theology is “life-giving”. And he has pressed me to provide a a demonstrable hypothesis and some account of what the things I’m discussing would “look like.”

I should apologize because I have, in a way, been evading all these questions. And that’s because I can’t answer them. And that’s not because I’m not intelligent or just a neophyte or because I haven’t thought all this through with sufficient rigor. It’s because I believe that these are questions which should not be answered.

You can read the rest over on her post. It’s a good read, as are the two conversations leading up to it.

However, this brought up an issue: I’m being somewhat misrepresented in that picture. After that quote, she proceeds to lump me in with a group of people that I’m not in particular agreement with, and so I wanted to clear that up. But that’s a bit tangential to her original post, so I’m clearing it up here instead of there.

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Like this? Then check out these posts:

  1. My Quakerism and Christian Theology
  2. Dear Fellow Christians:
    This is what we sound like to everyone else.
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