[Carl S. Hughes] offers an important contribution to debates over religion and public life. His retrieval of Lutheran traditions offers a compelling rebuttal to those who identify God's will with their own understanding. By reclaiming Protestant theology from its loudest defenders, he suggests that the fractures that shape American politics are not inevitable. Where some use Christian thought as a weapon against other groups, Hughes shows that it can enrich the work of racial and economic justice.

Christian Century

“Clouds of the Cross is indispensable for anyone wanting to understand how Kierkegaard conceives of himself as a theologian and how he understands the task of Christian theology more generally. Hughes's insightful analysis is a helpful provocation toward more productive and generative engagement with the biblical text in the 21st Century than we often see in American Christianity today. Despite Kierkegaard's own shortcomings, Hughes challenges us to read Kierkegaard from the margins and demonstrates how natural this can be.”

Deidre Nicole Green, Graduate Theological Union

“How does one know sacred truth? Is it Luther's sola scriptura? Or the apophatic tradition of mysticism? Carl Hughes continues his knack for delving into complex theological questions with clarity, skill, and wisdom. He highlights God's echoes in Elijah's gentle whisper, Job's whirlwind, and the enigma of Golgotha as scriptural examples of God's revelation in a mystical absence. Using Kierkegaard's dialectic of holding opposites together, Hughes postulates a relational dialectic between the clear light of revelation in scripture and the mystical cloud of unknowing. While our hearts are formed by the guidance of scripture and prayer, Hughes points us to realize that divine wisdom continues to be absorbed even as they reach beyond revelation's assured truth to dwell into the 'clouds of unknowing.' For truth is known in as we are constantly lured beyond what we know and understand, to the glorious, if mysterious and a little scary, love of God. Hughes bids us follow him.”

Helene Russell, Christian Theological Seminary

“Clouds of the Cross in Luther and Kierkegaard: Revelation as Unknowing is a timely corrective to contemporary Christianity polarized between sides that each insist on being right. Christians must opt for love, as Hughes explains on the grounds of a Lutheran theological emphasis on Christ as gift “for you.” The Bible “tells me so!” Carl Hughes weaves biblical interpretation, mysticism, and constructive theology into a powerful theological case for the Beloved Community in which Christians who disagree with each other can work towards being reconciled to each other.”

Christine Helmer, Northwestern University

“Carl Hughes offers us an unpretentious, candid, and radically hopeful book about the writing of Christian theology. It shows us how to read for a living, teaching inside the impressive bindings now wrapped around authors like Luther or Kierkegaard. Clouds of the Cross catches these eminent theologians speaking differently for diverse occasions-catches them, that is, thinking as they make new language. Hughes reminds us that Christian theologians are not called to bicker about God or any other topic. They are meant to answer for mysteries.”

Mark D. Jordan, Harvard Divinity School

This book sets free a Lutheran poetics I've been waiting for. In Clouds of the Cross, Carl Hughes lovingly beckons us to unsettle dangerous alliances and legacies of revelation, power, and knowledge. With an eye to the negative theological tradition, Hughes' stagings of Luther and Kierkegaard direct us from false certainty to embody instead the poetry of Mount Sinai, Job's whirlwind, and Golgotha. Here, in the mystery of revelation, where we might rediscover cloudy unknowns of love. Thanks be for this Luther of the Cloud!

Jacob J. Erickson, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin