The Absent Presence of the Deus Absconditus in the Work of George Saunders

Abstract

Paul Tillich, in a 1919 lecture on the “Theology of Culture,” argued that culture played a theological role in pointing towards the ineffable horizon of “Ultimate Concern.” Tillich wrote within the Lutheran tradition, informed by Luther’s conception of the Deus Absconditus. For Luther, the presence of God was only to be realized in the renunciation of the “Theology of Glory,” the human urge towards forming logical, rational, and totalizing patterns. The theology of the Deus Absconditus points the believer towards the endless horizon of unknowing. Many theologians have presented an etic account of this theology. The work of George Saunders presents an emic, phenomenological account of living in the presence of the Deus Absconditus. In three of Saunders’s stories—“Jon,” “Isabelle,” and “Brad Carrigan: American”—the terror of the Deus Absconditus is revealed. In these stories, Saunders’s protagonists are called to acknowledge the unknowability, the ineffability of the “Ultimate Concern” whilst the reader is called to do the same.