This essay explores the category of “mystery” in the theology of Rowan Williams. There is, or should be, an ongoing strangeness to Christian speech in that it never ceases questioning, probing, and unsettling. Williams finds the logic for this in the resurrection narratives. The resurrection is for Williams an event that upends, overturns, and re-forms the cosmos; it establishes a form of Christian community and a distinctive cadence for Christian language. The essay investigates this cadence as it appears in Williams' writing on theological method, his work on the resurrection of Christ, and his engagement with the fiction of Dostoevsky and Marylinne Robinson.
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