Scripture provides us with several examples of when God, frustrated by his own creation, so to say steps back and starts over. The disobedience in Eden is one, the scattering after Babel another, and of course the great Flood. The truth captured by these profound stories is that there is something impossible about community and peace between God, in his unthinkable singularity and remoteness, and anything that is not God.

The solution, or at least the last – or perhaps, the only – attempt at solution, the only possibility for God to escape loneliness, was for God himself to change, we may even say, to die. Reconciliation was not accomplished through humans becoming God, but through God becoming human.

The faith that accomplishes reconciliation is not our faith, it’s God’s faith.