Is God a mystery? I think my answer is “No”, “No” and “Yes”.
No, God is not a mystery in the sense of being a mysterious force, an overpowering Other whom we encounter primarily in the realm of feeling through mystical techniques and experience. We do not merge with the mystery of God by exiting our consciousness or by being absorbed like a drop into his ocean. We can get to know him as a person because that is how he graciously relates to us—person to person, through speaking to us and listening to us.
And no, God is not a mystery in the sense that he is really unknowable and unfathomable—an impenetrable cloud, a puzzle wrapped in an enigma, a being of whom we can only speak about only in the most tentative fashion, perhaps just by declaring what he is not. God can be known truly by his creatures, because he has created us with the capacity to know him, and he revealed himself to us finally and chiefly in his Son. The God we meet in the gospel is the real God, not a mask or a temporary facade. And so we can speak truly and clearly about God in the language that he has given us.
But yes, God is a mystery, because although we know him truly through his revelation, we do not know him exhaustively. As the heavens are above the earth, so his ways and thoughts are above ours (Isa 55:9). We do now see him, but as in a mirror darkly; we do now know him, but only in part (1 Cor 13:12).
Graham Cole got me thinking along these lines with the opening chapter of his new book on the Holy Spirit: He Who Gives Life: The doctrine of the Holy Spirit. He starts by talking about the ‘elusiveness of the Spirit’ who is like the wind—invisible, unpredictable and dynamic. We can think and talk about the Spirit and his work because God has told us certain things (in the Spirit-inspired Scriptures), but we should do so with humility, not expecting to be able answer every question. Cole writes:
God is God and we are not. The primeval temptation—“you will be like God”—may remain in us in subtle ways, however. We can write of the Spirit of God as though we were in glory beholding God’s face rather than living as we do outside of Eden in the groaning creation and as those “on whom the end of the ages has come”. To forget that we are to live in the light of the cross in a particular eschatological frame of reference is to risk indulging in what Luther called a theology of glory as opposed to a theology of the cross. We can forget all too readily who we are, where we are, and when we are.
I found this to be a valuable reminder—not only with respect to the Spirit (about whom I’ve been doing some reading and thinking recently), but about theology more generally. A good theologian knows when to speak clearly and boldly, when to speak tentatively and humbly, and when to speak not at all.
This is a lesson I keep struggling to learn. I detect a certain rationalist streak that keeps bubbling to the surface, leading me to think I will be able to solve any theological conundrum if I just think long and hard enough, and study the Scriptures carefully enough. It also leads me to be too confident sometimes about speculative theological conclusions I’ve come to on fairly light, biblical evidence.
Anyone else feel this way about themselves, or others?
“Anyone else feel this way about themselves, or others?”
I think my answer would be yes, yes & yes!
Paradoxically, I think that even those who go the mystical route (‘we can’t really know God’) are just as dogmatic. In this case, the dogmatism is in dismissing the possibility of knowing God.
Hey Tony, this is a brilliant post. I have been thinking about this in lieu of the atonement recently – we know of it truly, we know of it effectively, but we don’t know it exhaustively. The hymn writer said ‘Tis mystery all!’
I suspect that our rationalistic streak can be made worse because of the importance of defending the truth that God can be known. I know that I get so determined to emphasise the truth that some of the subtleties get lost.
I found this article called ‘Father, Glorify Your Name!’ by Patrick Reardon very helpful and stimulating on this matter:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-06-022-f
He discusses the issue of God’s unknowability as it bears on the different ways people regard the name ‘Father’ in the church, and in doing so shows how people misuse the doctrine of unknowability.
If I may reflect on our theological heritage for a moment I’d like to wonder if Broughton Knox insistence that theological language is ‘univocal’ (Selected Works Vol 1, p359) has left us with a difficulty in handling what we do and don’t know about God.
I found understanding the debate between Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark on the “incomprehensibility of God” a clarifying moment in my own thinking. Clark’s position seems similar to Knox’s (though Knox wrote so little on these matters that it is hard to tell). Van Til argued that human and divine knowledge coincide in that the point of reference for both is always God, but do not coincide in that human knowledge is always revealed and dependant while God’s is independent and comprehensive. So while both know that “2+2=4” God knows the “infinite number of relationships and implications [of this] that man can never exhaustively know”. In reply to Clark, Van Til claimed that he could never “state clearly” the difference between these two forms of knowledge, since to do so would require him to know exhaustively ( Van Til An Introduction to Systematic Theology P&R;, 1978 p 172). I’m sure Van Til has a better approach.
See R.L. Reymond A New systematic theology of the Christian faith (Nelson, 1998) pp 96-102 for a summary of the deabte, though he takes Clark’s position.
Hi John
Thanks bringing some good Reformed heavies into the discussion, but I think I am still in need of my own clarifying moment. Is it just me or should one of the ‘Van Tils’ in your comment be a ‘Clark’?
TP
No I think the names are right. Maybe I need to fill out some information. Van Til stated that because God is the incomprehensible reference point we can not know exhaustively though we know truly by revelation. Clark found this obscure and asked him to explain the distinction ‘clearly’. Van Til replied that to be able to explain ‘clearly’ how our knowledge differs from God would require us to know in the way God knows. In other words, our knowledge differs from God in ways which we can not know!
Donald Rumsfeld was mocked for telling the media about “unknown unknowns” in military planning (see http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/ ). Remembering that we don’t even know what we don’t know is important in theology. I’d have though it was pretty important in military planning too!
Thanks John. I see the point now. We can know truly, while acknowledging that we don’t know comprehensively. And we can’t clearly articulate in exactly what manner God’s knowledge surpasses ours, because in order to do so we’d have to know more than we do!