There are things that only God knows. Yes, that popular adage—who knows why so-and-so had to pass away so early in life, or why they had to go in the manner that they did: only God knows. Only God knows why she’s still with that man. Only God knows what’s up in the attic; we haven’t climbed up there since we started having kids. For Heaven’s sake, the boy has lost his mind, and only God knows why. Oh, why you do the things you do, only God knows…
A wonderful thing this idiom does is acknowledge that there’s knowledge amiss. The speaker knows that there’s an explanation, but doesn’t worry themselves with seeking it out because what they do know is that a higher power holds the key to understanding. “Only God knows” says there are things that are knowable and things that are not.
Just as we are unable to know God completely—to know what God knows completely—the reader is likewise unable to know the author. In both cases, the ineffable Other is experienced only through their “works.” Through the affect of their influence in/on the world. This, or something close to it, is what Writing the Miracle: Authorial Voice as Divine Craft centers on, the point it hovers around and ventures to land on. What we call “authorial voice” can be found in what only the author knows.
Writing this post, Hemingway’s iceberg theory comes to mind. However, his theory is of a minimalist concern—it’s more about how much you can leave out of the writing and still have the reading result in the intended effect. Writing the Miracle is concerned with where the author’s divine knowing inserts itself in the narrative discourse. It's concerned with the author, as god of the (story) world, and their secret knowledge—and the ways that the secret imbues what's known and shown to the reader.
The “works” of the author are not limited to what they allow the reader to see and know of the story. The miracle of the authorial voice is that it knows why. The miracle's in how that why makes its ways onto the page.