But that longing, awakened and energized by the prevenient Spirit, is not
so much a desire for the Word as “ a desire for the desire of the Word .” 46
Impelled by the Spirit, we seek the Son not as terminus of our love but as
the way to the Father and the Father’s “excess of love,” which is directed
to the Son and the Spirit, and with them to “all things.” As we are “incor-
porated into this relation to the Father, [and] share the ‘defl ection’ of the
Son’s desire towards the Father’s excess of love,” we are “taken into the
movement of the Spirit.” 47
Taking Williams’ direction, we can see that because the triune life in
which we are enfolded by faith is a life of always-opening desire and ever-
deepening fulfi llment, our readings of scripture must come to share in that
dynamic. That is, our readings, if they are faithful, never aim to be ends in
themselves and do not work toward closure. Instead, inasmuch as they are
led by the Spirit, our readings are always “defl ected” by the truth revealed
through the scriptures toward newer, fuller understandings of the Word,
awakening in us ever-deeper affection for God in our neighbor and our
neighbor in God.
These “defl ections” can take any number of shapes. They can, for
example, come in the form of interpretive diffi culties or by way of intertex-
tual and extratextual allusion. Origen describes the former as “stumbling-
blocks” and “impossibilities,” and he offers a few examples: unattractive
style, inaccurate expression and poor diction, the interweaving of the fan-
ciful and the historical, obscure references, and morally offensive narra-
tives. But those who are fi lled with the Spirit are not deterred by these
offenses, Origen insists. Instead, they are inspired to seek God more deter-
minedly; troubled, their passions for God are intensifi ed. Because they are
sure that every scripture—indeed, each “jot and tittle”—“does its work,” 48
faithful readers continue to search diligently, working past the “letter” or
“body” to the “spirit” of the texts. 49
It is easy for the import of this claim to get lost in the rhetoric. So,
before moving on, we should take a couple of examples. Commenting on
Wallace Steven’s “Anecdote of the Jar,” and the “tactical” diffi culties he
fi nds there, Steiner observes that it is the last two lines—“It did not give of
bird or bush/Like nothing else in Tennessee”—that especially “obstruct
and unsettle.” In those lines, Steiner says, the poem offers “defl ection
within defl ection.” First, we encounter the ungrammatical phrasing “give
of.” Second, the syntax of the penultimate line seems to require the fi nal
line to read “Like anything else” instead of the “ nothing ” that is given.
What sense do these lines make? What are we to make of them? Steiner
110 C.E.W. GREEN