God



This book is offered as a sequel to the author’s previous

The Enclosed Garden, and as another series of Biblical

meditations, with special emphasis on the hidden core

of the Bible, the Name of God.

The author claims no special Scriptural expertise, but

he approaches the Bible as a human being, as a priest,

and as a specialist in the drama of William Shakespeare

and the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Moreover, over the past fifty years he has been teaching

the Bible to Japanese students of all ages from eighteen

to eighty, and it is out of this teaching that he offers

these reflections on the inner meaning of the Bible, as

bestriding the contrast between East and West.

What can we know of God?

By the light of Reason we can only know that God is,

but we cannot know what God is.

The mere fact of God’s existence is a light to our lives,

but for the fuller manifestation of God’s essence,

His presence and His power,

we have to rely on Biblical revelation.

Nor is it enough to know the words of the Bible,

as the scribes and Pharisees knew them.

We have to pass beyond the mere words, which kill,

to the Spirit who alone gives life to the words,

as Jesus knew the Scriptures in the light of the Spirit.

It is by following this Way that we come to know God

whose name is I AM, as revealed by God to Moses,

the FATHER, as Jesus shows to his brothers and sisters,

in the Holy Spirit of LOVE