THE REGENT
7INTER s 6OL .O
Written on Tablets of Human Hearts
Bruce Hindmarsh “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.� (2 Corinthians 3: 2-3, NIV)
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n the spring of 1996, during a particularly difficult season in my life, I sat down at a desk in the senior common room of my college in Oxford and wrote a letter to Jim Houston. I well remember the letter I received in return. Jim lovingly redirected me to see my situation differently: God was offering me a different post-doctoral education than I had planned for myself. I’m sure that you have letters like this too—letters that spoke to you in a deeply personal way at a significant time in your life.
It is probably no accident that much of the New Testament is itself made up of letters, and that Paul naturally turns to the personal letter as a metaphor for the Corinthian church and their relationship to Christ and to the apostle. A personal letter doesn’t pretend to the objectivity of the essay (where the author disappears) or the subjectivity of the diary (where the reader disappears). It is a distinctively personal form of communication. And yet personal does not mean insubstantial. A letter really should say something. It is not like digital or instant communication: sup cu l8r k? (What’s up? See you later, okay?). It is hard to say whether the digital revolution has introduced a new renaissance in personal communication or has led to new levels of banality—or both. It is probably difficult for any of us to imagine an Oxford Book of E-mails. I am currently working on a research project on religious letters written by figures such as John Wesley and John Newton, who offered much of their spiritual direction to people through letters. These letters were personal, but they also had a message. In fact, during the eighteenth century the recipient generally paid the postage, so it really was important to have something to say in your letter. Or at least, if you didn’t, you had better hope that your correspondent loved you well. (In this regard, John Wesley once had to
encourage the young Samuel Furly at Cambridge not to be afraid to write to him, assuring Furly that he would always pay the postage, regardless.) Certainly, Jim Houston’s letter to me in 1996 was both personal and carried a weighty message—even, I dare say, a message that was crafted with, and demanded, careful intellectual reflection. He is himself a master of the art of letter-writing as a form of spiritual direction. I enjoyed reading through his two-volume Letters of Faith Through the Seasons: A Treasury of Great Christians’ Correspondence with a group of students last year. This anthology demonstrates both how deeply he has been influenced by the form and content of personal letters and how much theological freight has been carried in epistolary form over the years. The genre of the familiar letter is a perfect match to the personalist concerns that Jim Houston has brought to his teaching of theology over the years. Perhaps we ought to think of all theological education in these terms: as personal communication about serious matters, not unlike letter-writing. In fact, perhaps we ought to think of Regent College itself as a kind of personal letter written on the hearts of our students and alumni. Better yet—as the apostle adds to the Corinthians— Regent College is a letter from Christ himself, written not with pen and ink (or their digital equivalent) but with the Spirit of the Living God. “On human hearts‌from Christ‌by the Spirit of the living God.â€? The source of any substantial and personal communication about God is finally the Holy Trinity. And such very personal theology is in turn a blessing to the world, “known and read by everybody.â€? ~ Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh James Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology 1