Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman are not the most obvious correspondents: a Croatian-American systematic theologian with deep roots in the evangelical tradition, and an American poet known for his unflinching accounts of faith under pressure. Glimmerings, the audiobook of their published letter exchange narrated by Bob Souer, runs five hours and twenty minutes and captures something rarer than a debate or a reconciliation. Two close friends and Yale Divinity School colleagues think aloud together about what belief actually costs and what it might, just possibly, offer.
Faith as Glimmering, Never Fully Secure
The structural decision to build this book as an exchange of personal letters was not merely a stylistic choice; it is the argument. Volf and Wiman disagree about significant things. Wiman, whose collected essays on faith and cancer and poetry have built a readership among people who distrust religious certainty, pushes at the places where Christian claims feel untenable. Volf, who has thought and written systematically about reconciliation, forgiveness, and the nature of divine love, holds positions with more institutional weight. What their correspondence demonstrates is that neither position is sufficient on its own, and that the friendship itself, the care evident in how they read and respond to each other, is itself a kind of argument for the persistence of love in uncertainty. One reader who consumed the entire book in a day and a half described the difficulty of objectivity as coming from the emotional impact of Wiman's voice; another described the exchange as the kind of conversation that almost any thoughtful friends might have, which is simultaneously a description of its accessibility and its depth. The title earns its weight: Volf and Wiman settle not on faith as certainty but on faith as glimmering, intermittent, never fully secure, but persistent enough to orient a life. Whether they are discussing Scripture's most problematic texts, Christianity's most preposterous claims, or their own experiences of God's presence and absence, neither writer oversimplifies the realities of human pain. That shared refusal to oversimplify is what gives the correspondence its distinctive intellectual and emotional honesty.
Souer Handles the Register Shifts Without Underlining
Bob Souer's narration is a quiet, appropriate fit for material this meditative. The letters move between registers, sometimes rigorously theological, sometimes nakedly personal, sometimes playful with humor that surfaces unexpectedly in the midst of serious inquiry. Souer handles those shifts without underlining them, which is exactly right; the humor in these letters is not a performance but a reflex between friends, and a narrator who played it for effect would have undermined the intimacy the text depends on. The five-hour runtime is well-suited to the format. These are not letters that reward speed-listening; they reward the kind of unhurried attention that lets a single line settle before moving to the next. The audiobook format is genuinely useful here for listeners who find themselves reading reflective text too quickly in print. The voice slows the pace naturally. Souer's clear delivery also helps when Volf and Wiman move into more technically demanding theological territory, the diction is precise enough to follow the argument, which matters when the argument is the point. Listeners who have engaged with Wiman's poetry on the page will find his letters, heard rather than read, carry a different weight: the conversational register of the epistolary form comes through more naturally in spoken delivery.
Scripture's Most Problematic Texts and Preposterous Claims
The book deals directly with what the authors call Scripture's most problematic texts and Christianity's most preposterous claims. Readers who find either theological challenge or theological nuance uncomfortable will struggle here. This is not a devotional book in any conventional sense; it is not designed to confirm faith or dismiss it, but to sit with it honestly. The conversations about God's absence are as present as the conversations about God's presence, and neither Volf nor Wiman offers resolution that costs nothing. For listeners coming from outside the Christian tradition, the book remains accessible, the spiritual questions at its center, how we live with uncertainty, what we do with pain, what it means to love in a world that offers no guarantees, are not exclusively theological. But the frame is Christian, and listeners for whom that frame is entirely alien will need to do more translation work than those who recognize it even partially. The book was co-authored in epistolary form, and the back-and-forth nature of the exchange means the argument is cumulative; dropping in at random letters will miss some of the weight of what has been built across the full correspondence.
Believing More, or Less, or Both at Once
This audiobook is ideally suited to listeners who hold complicated relationships with religious faith: people who find themselves believing more than they expected to, or less, or both at once, and who want company in that difficulty rather than resolution. It will appeal strongly to readers familiar with Wiman's poetry and essays, and to those who have engaged with Volf's earlier work on reconciliation and forgiveness. Academic theologians looking for strictly systematic argument will want to set appropriate expectations; the strength here is in the intimacy of the correspondence rather than the rigor of any single position. Listeners who want their spiritual reading to produce comfort without challenge should look elsewhere, but those willing to sit with honest uncertainty will find Glimmerings a genuinely unusual companion. It also works well as an introduction to Wiman's larger project for listeners who have not yet encountered his prose, since the letter format gives his voice a directness and warmth that his more formally structured essays occasionally modulate away from. Volf's contributions are equally essential, his willingness to be challenged and to challenge in return is what keeps the exchange from becoming a monologue, and what makes the friendship itself legible as something worth the reader's attention.
- Narrator: Bob Souer brings a steady, contemplative delivery to the epistolary exchange between Volf and Wiman, clear and unhurried, serving the meditative quality of the letters without imposing on them.
- Subjects: Faith and doubt as companions, the limits of theological certainty, divine presence in human pain
- Tone: Intimate, intellectually alive, consoling without being easy
- Bottom line: A rare audiobook that rewards listeners who want to sit with hard spiritual questions alongside two writers who refuse to resolve them too quickly.
Is this audiobook appropriate for listeners who are skeptical about or have left religion?
Yes, and possibly especially so. Wiman writes from a position of deep uncertainty about Christian claims, and the exchange is not designed to persuade. Readers who have walked away from religious traditions but remain curious about what serious, honest belief looks like will find Glimmerings unusually open-handed.
Is the audiobook format a good fit for Glimmerings, or is the print version preferable?
The audiobook has real advantages here. The letter format benefits from being heard rather than read, as the conversational quality of the prose comes through more naturally in spoken form. Bob Souer's pacing also slows the experience in ways that suit the reflective content, readers who tend to rush through prose on the page often find the audio format forces a more productive pace with this kind of material.
Does this audiobook resolve the spiritual questions it raises, or does it leave things open?
It leaves things open, deliberately. The title itself signals this: a glimmering is not a revelation. Volf and Wiman reach toward honesty and toward each other rather than toward certainty, and the book's ending honors that orientation. Listeners who need resolution may find this frustrating; listeners who find comfort in honest companionship with difficulty will find it sustaining.
