‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
27th teaching
3.4.2013
The ‘Negative’ Doctrines:
“God’s Partial Incomprehensibility”
To illustrate tonight’s topic, let’s get two Scriptural
examples: one from the Old and one from the New Testament.
First, turn to Job
11. A little background, Job the patient sufferer is having a theological
debate with his friends. We know from the beginning of his story that Satan had
challenged Job’s integrity before God and therefore all this calamity and
destruction had come to test Job. But Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Zophar and
Bildad, are accusing Job of evil and saying that all these things he’s
suffering are just punishment for his wickedness. We know their accusation to
be false, because Job was already called by Scripture blameless and upright.
Job’s friend Zophar is talking in Job 11:7-9, and among his untrue statements of Job’s character, he
says this:
“Can you search out
the deep things of God? Can you find out the limits of the Almighty? They are
higher than heaven—what can you do? Deeper than Sheol—what can you know? Their
measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.”
Lest we’re reminded that Job is not the best book to pull
doctrine from, turn to our New Testament example of tonight’s doctrine. Turn to Romans 11:33-36.
In some translations, such as
the NASB, use the word unfathomable
to say that His ways are without fathom. Now unfathomable is a nautical term. A
fathom is a unit for measuring the depth of water. So to say unfathomable is to
say that the depth of something cannot be measured. It is immeasurable and
unknowable.
The commentator Albert Barnes says “The word ‘depth’ is
applied in the Scriptures to anything vast and incomprehensible. As the abyss
or the ocean is unfathomable, so the word comes to denote what words cannot
express, or what we cannot comprehend.”
To say that God’s ways are immeasurable and unfathomable is
to say, as Barnes said, that God is incomprehensible.
The title of tonight’s study is: “God’s Partial Incomprehensibility”.
Now we have, hopefully, treated each of the doctrines and
attributes of God so far with great care. Tonight’s doctrine, God’s
Incomprehensibility, is one which we must treat with utmost care. We must know
exactly what the Bible says about God being incomprehensible and what the Bible
says about knowing God. There are tremendous implications in simply saying God
cannot be comprehended and we must have a clear idea of what we should say and
believe about this doctrine.
For example, when I decided last week that we would be
studying this subject, I posted a quote by John Milton, author of Paradise
Lost. I liked the sound of the quote. Let me share it with you. Milton said:
“When we speak of knowing God, it must be understood with reference to man’s
limited powers of comprehension. God, as He really is, is far beyond man’s
imagination, let alone understanding. God has revealed only so much of Himself
as our minds can conceive and the weakness of our nature can bear.”
A friend of mine replied to the quote with I John 4:7, which says “Beloved, let us love one another, for love
is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Now I can’t presume just why this particular verse was
quoted in response to a quote about the incomprehensibility of God, but let’s
begin with the statement that God can be known but that God is also
incomprehensible. I am not an agnostic. I know God. But I also believe that He
is incomprehensible.
With that statement cleared away, let’s begin our study.
Again we need to be careful with this subject, so as not to present it wrongly
or to express ourselves wrongly. We do not want to offend other Christians and
we do not want to mislead the lost. We need careful clarity. So we’re going to
touch on 4 points:
1.
The doctrine of
Incomprehensibility
2.
The extent of
Incomprehensibility
3.
A Mystery vs. a Paradox
4.
The danger of Agnosticism
1.
The Doctrine of
Incomprehensibility
If I say, as many men do, that women are incomprehensible,
what am I saying? I am making the statement that women cannot be comprehended,
they cannot be understood.
This is what incomprehension means: something which cannot
be understood. Interestingly, the word comprehensible comes from a 16th
Latin word which literally means “able to be contained”. So to say
incomprehensible is to literally say that something cannot be contained.
Now we already know this to be true of God. There’s a
well-used Christian phrase you have undoubtedly heard before: “If God were
small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped”.
Actually, people say that all the time without even thinking about what that
means. Does it mean that we can’t know God? Does it mean that God is totally
incomprehensible to us?
Actually, a bit of trivia, did you know the person who came
up with that well-used Christian phrase was a woman named Evelyn Underhill who
wrote the book Practical Mysticism.
She apparently was a Christian mystic. As a side-note, be careful about what
whose words you repeat.
But taking this all back to what the Bible says. We don’t
need to worry about what a mystic said or what popular phrases say. What does
the Bible say?
Job 11:7, “Can you find out the limits of the Almighty?”
Speaking of limits, if God is infinite and unlimited, then
certainly He cannot be contained by our limited minds. The well-used phrase
rings true! The fact that God is infinity implies that God cannot be
understood, since the finite cannot mentally contain the infinite. God’s
infinity implies His incomprehensibility.
I can think of three limitations, then. Three limitations
which show that God cannot be comprehended:
a. We are limited by our mental
capacity
b. We are limited by our own
sinfulness
c. We are limited by a finite
revelation
A.
Mental Capacity
Let’s look at II Corinthians 12:1-5.
Paul the apostle illustrates this story of a man given a
glimpse of Paradise, heaven, where he saw and heard things that could not be
expressed. Why? Surely because words are not enough! Human language, the
product of human minds, is not enough to express the realm of God in Paradise.
The vision was ineffable! It could not be expressed. There was a limitation on
the part of the man, as in the case of the psalmist who wrote about God’s
knowledge “Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me… I cannot attain it” (Psalm
139:6).
Just like last week with the related doctrines
Immateriality and Incorporeality, God’s Incomprehensibility has a
kindred-doctrine too. If you study theology, you may come across the doctrine
of God’s Ineffability. Ineffable means something that cannot be expressed. The
man caught up to Paradise is a perfect example: he heard things that were
inexpressible or ineffable.
So Incomprehensible means God cannot be understood.
Ineffable means God cannot be expressed. Very similar meanings.
This is really why we are studying attributes of God. As
I’ve said before, there is no one attribute which describes God in totality.
There is no one attribute which fully encompasses ALL of God. God cannot be
perfectly and exhaustively described. We must study attributes and qualities
because we cannot grasp the whole.
And this is also why the Bible often describes God with
analogies, saying God is like
something we’re familiar with (a rock, a shield, a tower, etc.). Since there
are things about God which we cannot understand, the best and safest way to
speak of God is by analogy.
So remember: incomprehensible = cannot be understood.
Ineffable = cannot be expressed.
B.
Sinfulness
We are limited by our own finite minds, and we are also
limited in knowing God because of our own sinfulness.
I was talking with someone last year and they asked me the
question “Why does it seem like Christians aren’t excited and passionate? If
they have the truth shouldn’t they feel as strongly about it as a Muslim feels
about the Quran or as Jehovah’s Witnesses feel about witnessing?”
In response I said “Maybe the lack of passion that
Christians have in some way proves that Christianity is the truth”. Think about
it. The sinful human nature can easily accept something immoral or false, but
introduce truth and our nature’s because we are wicked almost automatically
reject it. It’s only because of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that
we have any interest in the things of God at all.
John 3:19-21, “And this is the condemnation, that the light
has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does
not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the
truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have
been done in God.”
You turn on a light in a dark room and you irritate its
occupants. Christianity is a light in a dark world, and is therefore all the
more difficult to be passionate about in our sinful natures. Our natures reject
the truth of God and instead embrace things which gratify our desires and our flesh.
I don’t want to hear about loving my neighbor or giving to the needy. I want to
hear about loving myself and giving to myself! I am saved but I still have a
very real moral problem and a very real nature of flesh. If you’ve been a
Christian for any length of time, you can agree with me on that.
We not only have a mental problem in understanding God but
we have a moral problem in understanding God. Mankind has a natural aversion to
the light of truth.
C.
Limited Revelation
Our knowledge of God is not only limited by our mental
capacity and our moral tendency, but also by a limited revelation. The Bible is
God’s special revelation and Nature is God’s general revelation.
Everything that we know about God comes from His
self-revelation. I mentioned before: God is beyond your reach. You cannot
travel to Him. You cannot inspect Him. He is above and beyond us. Therefore,
everything that we know about God has to come from what He has said about
Himself. There is no room for speculation. You cannot know anything about God
unless He Himself has said it.
But there are only so many words in the Bible and there are
only so many objects in nature. Now it’s given that the Bible is a tremendous
resource for knowing God and the Holy Bible is wholly unlike any other book in
that it constantly brings new insight and new knowledge every time it is
studied. But it does not tells us everything about God.
Deuteronomy 29:29
is a verse which has long fascinated me. It says “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which
are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the
words of this law.”
Secret things? What secret things? God has secrets? Well,
what are they?
Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”
God conceals? God conceals what? What are the secrets? What
did the seven thunders utter in Revelation 10? How does the Trinity
actually work? When will the day of Christ’s return be? What else did Jesus say
besides what is written down in the four gospels? All these things belong to
God. They are mysteries and secrets and they are his alone.
There are simply things which God has not chosen to reveal
to His people. And we dare not speculate on things or be dogmatic about things
which God has chosen to keep hidden.
*So in summary we are limited in our understanding of God,
He is incomprehensible to us because we have limited brains, limited morals and
limited revelations. God’s infinity implies His incomprehensibility. And a
kindred-doctrine to incomprehensibility is ineffability, which says that God is
incapable of being expressed.
2. The Extent of
Incomprehensibility
Apparently, the philosophers of Ancient Greece
believed that “man must know either all or nothing”. A subject is either then
completely understood or not understood at all.
This philosophy cannot be applied to the Christian doctrine
of God’s incomprehensibility. The extent of incomprehensibility is not total.
The doctrine does not claim that we know nothing about God.
That would be a self-defeating statement. You cannot know that you know nothing
about God. That would mean you know something about Him after all. You cannot
say there is no way to express anything of God, because you’re expressing
something about God right there.
Therefore, Incomprehensibility and Ineffability cannot be
total. God’s being and nature and characteristics and ways are all infinite and
transcendent above our human brains. God cannot be totally comprehended but He
can still be comprehended just a little bit.
How much? Well, how much do you know about God? To put it
in perspective, let’s consider that you know maybe 100 things about God, for
sure. Let’s say that each person in here knows about the same: 100 more things
about God each. How much have we got?
Now armed with our limited knowledge of God, how much of
God do we know? 0%. Any finite number next to infinity is still zero. That’s
how far beyond us God is. But we cannot forget, you still do know something of
God.
Isaiah 55:8-9, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor
are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Now does this mean that God’s thoughts are totally
incomprehensible to us. If God’s thoughts are so different from ours, can we
understand them at all? Does God think love is different than what we think
love to be? Is love to God something entirely different than what we know love
to be? Are God’s thoughts so totally alien and incomprehensible that they’re
entirely unknowable?
C.S. Lewis in his book The
Problem of Pain addresses this in his chapter on divine goodness. He’s
talking about God’s goodness being different than ours, but we can easily see
the parallel if we’re talking about God’s thoughts being different than ours.
Lewis writes: “Any consideration of the goodness of God at
once threatens us with the following dilemma.
“On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgment must
differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to
us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may
not be evil.
“On the other hand, if God’s moral judgment differs from
ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him
good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly
other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an
utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or
obeying Him. if He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only
through fear – and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend…
“Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly
different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle
from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to
draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make
from the very beginning.”
I think that quote is helpful because it bears in on our
discussion of the extent of God’s incomprehensibility. This doctrine does not
claim that God is totally
incomprehensible. This doctrine does not claim that God’s love is totally
incapable of being understood or His thoughts totally differing from ours. If
this were the case, then how could the Bible say that God demonstrated His love
toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us? How could
the Bible say that God showed His love if His love we incomprehensibly
different from our concept of love?
We are a moment, You are forever: Lord of the ages, God
before time. We are a vapor, You are eternal… There’s a vast distance between
finite man and infinite Deity, but the vapor still knows that the Deity is
eternal. God is incomprehensible but not totally
incomprehensible. God cannot be contained in our brains, but He has given us
knowledge about Himself.
John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they may know
You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
II Peter 3:18,
“…grow in the grace and knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
I John 2:3, “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we
keep His commandments.”
God can be known. God is not totally incomprehensible. But it is the mysteries of God which make
Him all the more worthy and glorious in the eyes His people. As the psalmist
sang: “Great is the LORD, and greatly to
be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable.”
How great is God? Too great to search out, to comprehend,
to measure. And that makes Him all the more worthy to be worshiped.
3. A Mystery vs. a Paradox
Considering what we’ve just learned, consider that the
Bible uses the word mystery
concerning the things of God. But the Bible does not use the word paradox.
A paradox implies a problem of contradictions. A paradox is
something that is logically impossible. For example: if I tell you “Everything
I say is a lie” I’ve made a paradoxical statement about myself. If everything I
say is a lie, how can that be true? The statement itself would be a lie.
When the Bible talks about One God and Three Persons or
Christ being both God and man, it does not refer to these truths as paradoxes.
They are not paradoxes. They are not contradictions. God has one essence and
three persons. It would be a contradiction to say that God is only one person
and also three persons at the same time.
While we may not fully understand these things, they are
not paradoxes.
The Bible does however use the word mystery. In the King James translation, the word mystery occurs 22 times. The kingdom of
God is called a mystery, the present blindness of Israel is called a mystery, so
is the rapture and even the cross of Christ.
Paul calls even the gospel a mystery in Romans 16:25-26.
In our minds we think of a mystery as a problem which needs
to be solved. Not so in the time of the biblical writers. When Paul used the
word mystery, it was the Greek word musterion.
It basically meant a secret, something once hidden but now revealed. In the New
Testament, there were things which were hidden but were then revealed. The
gospel, in this example, was a mystery before God revealed His plan for
salvation. Sure, it was prophesied in the Old Testament, but they didn’t
understand it. A mystery was something which could only be known through a
revealing, through revelation.
So there are secret things belonging to the LORD. There are
mysteries in Christianity, but not contradictions. There are incomprehensible
things about God, but we must only wait for them to be revealed to us: most
likely in heaven when we see Him.
Quickly, our final point.
4. The danger of Agnosticism
Agnosticism is a growing trend in our world today.
The British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote an essay in
1953 entitled What is an Agnostic? In
the essay, he stated: “An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in
matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other
religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the
present time.”
Agnosticism, then, is the belief that says God is unknown
and unknowable. It’s concerning that more and more people are beginning to buy
in to this idea. Even some Christians have turned away their hearts because
they have begun to believe that God is totally incomprehensible, since He is so
far above us after all.
You can see that we’ve just seen that God cannot be totally
incomprehensible, that in fact He is not totally incomprehensible. God has
unknowable characteristics certainly, but He is not completely incapable of
being understood.
It seems to me that atheism was a major player in the
battleground of previous generations, but our generation faces the growing
challenge of an indifferent agnosticism.
An atheist will say with certainty that there is no God and
will try to prove it. But an agnostic will say you can’t really know if there
is a God or what it’s like. An agnostic may simply say that he is unconvinced
whether God can be known at all. And that’s a totally different challenge to
orthodox Christianity. The burden does not lie so much anymore on proving God
exists as it does on proving whether you can know any God, whether He exists or
not.
But like we talked about earlier: it is self-defeating to
say you cannot know anything about God. How do you know that? If no one can
know anything about God, how can you make the statement that you know God
cannot be known.
We are armed with the greatest arsenal in the universe:
this Book of books. It is our solemn duty to defend the faith and to guide the
lost to the Light.
Maybe you’ve met an agnostic. Maybe you know one. You are
armed with the truth. You have the great privilege of presenting a God to them
such as is knowable and yet beyond us, a God who is not totally incomprehensible, but One who is big enough to be
unfathomable and thereby to deserve, no, demand their worship.
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