Copyright © 2026 by John DelHousaye
All rights reserved. No part of this course may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. 

Published in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. 

For permissions, contact: jdelhousaye@gmail.com.

Unless noted, translations are my own. 

Some illustrations in this volume were created using Microsoft Copilot, an AI-powered assistant by Microsoft, and ChatGPT. I appreciate the innovative tools that made visual storytelling more accessible.

Preface

For God’s beloved, there’s a difference between conceptual and relational knowledge. A concept is generally understood as an abstract idea or mental representation that helps us categorize and interpret the world. They potentially reveal truths about God, arousing our affections. However, by themselves, they risk objectifying God who, according to Scripture, also wants to know us through encounter. Relational knowledge focuses on connections among entities, emphasizing how they interact within systems or structures. 

Sadly, Christians divide over the difference. Some traditions emphasize right thinking about our relationship with God. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1646–1647) is a beautiful example: 

Question: What is the chief end of man?

Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

For the sake of basic learning (catechesis), God becomes something like Aristotle’s final cause—the end (telos) for which we exist. Others are more heart-felt: 

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, there’s just something about that name. 

The language is vague, as if the name of Jesus slips out from under our concepts to meet us as a mysterious presence. 

In the U.S., this tension goes back at least to the first Great Awakening (c. 1730–1755), which foregrounded religious experience and personal conversion, in response to what many saw as a lack of fervor and formalism in established churches. The movement was marked by passionate preaching, large public gatherings, and a focus on the direct experience of God. However, some Anglican leaders opposed the revival for its emotionalism and anti-clericalism. 

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), perhaps America’s first great theologian, sought the narrow path between the extremes. His sermons and writings bridged rigorous theology with experiential faith, setting a precedent for later American evangelicalism. 

In sum, conceptual knowledge offers the building blocks for reasoning, whereas relational knowledge integrates these blocks into dynamic networks, enabling complex processes like problem-solving, analogical reasoning, and planning. Integrated, they create a richer, more flexible cognitive framework that supports creativity, adaptability, and deeper learning across domains. 

The two quotes above ultimately complement one another, if we use the analogy of a temple (or cathedral). Concepts are like stones that are then related to one another, offering space for encounter. Concepts make God approachable, understandable, the rightful object of our affection. We come to God in worship—prayer, study, service—who, in turn, meets us in Jesus’s name with a love that surpasses understanding.

For these classes, I have emphasized two periods of church history. The first—as the illustrations presuppose—is medieval Christendom because, there, we find “a sustained commitment not only to an exegesis of [biblical] words but also to an exegesis of the things (res) to which they referred.” They also studied God’s other Book—Creation (liber naturae), giving rise to the Western university. Theologians like Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) offered God’s Beloved a cathedral of words. The second is the U.S. colonial period, from the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) to the early 18th century, a continuation yet also critique of the former. Most European settlers, like the Puritans and Quakers, were not just critical of the Roman Catholic Church but also mainline Protestant traditions like the Church of England, who, in their view, had not reformed enough. 

Like any significant pivot in the history of civilization, the causes of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Revival are complex. The “new world,” I suggest, offers a microcosm of Christendom. Without the infrastructure and old power, the colonies were a place for Christian ideas to be worked out afresh. While several heretical movements began in the colonial period, Edwards and most Protestant thought leaders are not abandoning the concepts of ancient Christianity, like the Nicene Creed, but rather are seeking to do justice to their relational aspect, beginning with God’s unmerited grace. 

Without idealizing these periods, having their own blind spots and depravity, we may cull wisdom. As Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–2025) notes, our modern liberal society fragmented, in part, by trying to build moral reasoning without acknowledging its traditional foundations. 

Research suggests that while a majority of people in the U.S. believe in God or a higher power, a smaller percentage view faith as their top life priority, a departure from these earlier periods. God, rather than being the ground of order and meaning, is a tangential concept. Even among the religious, it can be surprising how few conversations center on God. Personal fulfillment, self-improvement, health, security, wealth, friends, family, freedom, opportunity—all good things—hold our attention. Yet, for those who pause to reflect, even the pursuit of these invites deeper meaning and connection beyond themselves. 

As a guide to and from God, I’ve written this curriculum, framing our meditation with the acronym ARDoR: A = Awareness; R = Response; D = Distraction; and R = Resistance.

From the Latin ardere, the word means “to burn” or “be set on fire.” Scripture presents God this way, particularly when re-establishing friendship with humanity. The angel of Yahweh appeared to Moses in flames of fire from within a bush” (Exodus 3:2); “Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because Yahweh descended on it in fire” (19:18). The Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost like “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:3). The eastern Fathers describe the Triune God as a “Great Round Dance in which Love flames forth from one Person to the Other in a flow that never ceases.” God is like a still, dark sea of three kissing fires. 

Paul invites us “to burn” (zeō) with the Spirit (Romans 12:11). Aquinas draws an analogy from creation: the heat of a fire causes wood, with the potential to be hot, to become hot, effecting a change in the wood (Aquinas Summa Theologiae 3). Likewise, God is “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24; see Hebrews 12:29). To use another analogy: we are refined, like dross removed from gold, as divine image-bearers. The following is a story about two desert fathers in the fourth century:

Abba Joseph said to Abba Lot, “You cannot be a monk unless you become like a consuming fire.” Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him: “Abba, as far as I can say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him: “If you will, you can become all flame.” 

The first Christians recognized Yahweh, the fiery, encountering God of Ancient Israel, in Christ, the Messiah or “anointed” by the Spirit. Jesus shared his relational knowledge of God, so that they might be led by the Spirit, in the Son, before a loving Father. Encountered by the resurrected Christ, they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us?” (Luke 24:32)

From the old world, Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109) invites, “Christian soul, taste the goodness of your Redeemer, be on fire with love for your Savior.” Anselm has in view Christ’s voluntary death satisfying God’s justice by paying the debt of sin humanity owed, thereby restoring honor to God and reconciling humanity to divine righteousness. John Wesley (1703–1791), who came to the colonies during the Awakening, writes in his journal on May 24, 1738: 

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Jesus is also the Word (logos) behind the order of all creation. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) teaches: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes.” Holy Spirit, we wait expectantly, holding our questions and faith in Christ, yearning to become all flame. Amen.