After surveying the relationship between the True and the Holy, the Good and the Holy, and the Beautiful and the Holy using 6 historical figures – Kierkegaard, Paul, Dostoevsky, Luther, Nietzche, and Bach – Pelikan concludes:
Yet, that Holy which men have vainly tried to grasp with their systems of thought, their categories of ethics, and their depictions of beauty; that Holy which has eluded every human attempt to take it captive and to tame it; that Holy which is not the answer to every riddle but itself the enigma in every riddle–that Holy has been made flesh and has dwelt among us in Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the channel of the goodness of God. He is more beautiful than the children of men. Through Him God has redeemed all things to himself, this rock of offense and stone of stumbling, human conceptions of truth and goodness and beauty have all been shattered. Yet, this stone, which the builders of human systems rejected, has become instead the cornerstone for the dwelling-place of the Most High and Most Holy, from whom there proceeds all that is True and Good and Beautiful. Those who have despaired of the effort to domesticate the Holy, those whom He has led to know True and Good and Beautiful in Him-those are the ‘fools for Christ” (172-73; emphasis mine)
