DLS MoM VI

From Dorothy L, Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, “VI. The Energy Incarnate in Self-Expression”

[Besides God's revealing himself in creation] Christian doctrine further affirms that the Mind of the Maker was also incarnate personally and uniquely. Examining our analogy for something to which this may correspond, we may say that God wrote His own autobiography. . . .

The first thing we have to notice about this is that the body is created exactly like all the rest of the author’s creations and suffers exactly the same limitations. . . . It is “altogether God,” in that it is sole arbiter of the form the story is to take, and yet “altogether man,” in that, having created the form, it is bound to display itself in conformity with the nature of that form.

A second point to notice is this: that the autobiography is at one and the same time a single element in the series of the writer's created works and an interpretation of the whole series. . . .

Thirdly: though the autobiography “is” the author in a sense in which his other works are not, it can never be the whole of the author. . . . “I do the will of My Father.” This does not mean that the revelation is not perfect; it is, as the phrase goes, “perfect of its kind” but the kind itself is capable only of so much and no more.

[Fourth, like all autobiography, whether sincere or not] it is an infallible self-betrayal. . . .