I have proposed the question, "How do we know God?" As I stated in earlier posts, this is a foundational question. For a review of everything I have said regarding the nature of this question please refer to previous posts. We have actually not even answered this question yet. Instead I have been trying to show you that: 1) it is a legitimate question, and 2) it is an answerable question. Yesterday, we ended the post with a discussion regarding two important attributes of God: 1) His transcendence, and 2) His immanence. Understanding these two attributes- and garnering a correct balance between the two-is essential in order to answer the proposed question honestly and intelligently. The Bible speaks both about God's transcendence and His immanence. As we have mentioned before, there is an element of mystery when we look at theses two attributes with our finite eyes. Nevertheless, they are both in Scripture, they are both true about God, and they do not contradict or cancel each other out.
Now it is important to understand the Biblical tension between God’s transcendence and His immanence. Throughout the history of the church Christians have tended to swing back and forth between these two concepts like a pendulum. Greek philosophy played a part in this pendulum swinging. As a result, the pendulum swung toward an overemphasis of the transcendence of God in the early church. The Greeks viewed their gods as completely incomprehensible. And this affected in some way the manner in which the early church fathers understood the God of the Bible. They took their cue from the Greek philosophers of the day and allowed philosophical arguments and analysis to ultimately hold sway over the Biblical text.
There have been other times and points in church history when the pendulum has swung the other way to an overemphasis of the immanence of God. Consistently emphasising God's immanence- to the neglect of ever speaking of His transcendence-will result in a view of God that sees Him not much different than us. Probably a good example of an overemphasis of this in our day would be Open Theism. For the most part, however, we find today that the pendulum has almost perched itself completely on the side of emphasizing God’s transcendence (probably in reaction to modernism). Today many are skeptical that we can know anything for sure about God even from God’s most clear revelation of Himself- the Scriptures (this is the postmodern tendency). This is cloaked with a sort of “humble” facade that says, “It is arrogant to try and speak on anything about God with real assurance and confidence”. This, I think, is a reaction. We must balance the transcendence and immanence of God.
The point to grasp- especially for our current context-is that the idea of God’s transcendence should never distract us from fully trusting in God’s ability to reveal Himself to us (especially in Scripture)! Now this is different than saying that He fully and completely reveals Himself. My point is simply that He is competent in what He has revealed to us. And He has indeed revealed much to us. The names and attributes that God gives to us in Scripture to identify Himself truly reveal to us who He is. One Christian theologian says the following: “We should not adopt a mental picture or model of God in which his real identity or essence is hidden in darkness, while His revealed nature is a kind of periphery around that darkness. In that picture, the darkness conceals what God really and truly is; His revealed nature is something less than His real being…Such Biblical terms as holiness, goodness, and eternity express God’s essence. They tell us what He really is, for Scripture is true. They define Him, because through them God has defined Himself”.
I think that was well said. In other words, God has truly revealed Himself to us. He has not just revealed facts or ideas about Himself. Rather, He has truly revealed Himself to us. To put it simply, Scripture never assumes that our finiteness excludes us from being able to understand who God is through the language that He uses. In fact, it assumes just the opposite. It assumes that God is competent enough to communicate effectively to us who He is. And His Spirit (if we are in Christ) is competent enough to aid our understanding. To say that we cannot understand Him exhaustively (which is what I have affirmed throughout these posts) is simply not the same thing as saying that we cannot know anything about Him with any real degree of assurance.
Furthermore, I think you will find that those who desire to emphasize God’s transcendence in this way are really not humble. They are arrogant and independent. They use their assertion, “We can’t know anything about God for sure” as a cloak of humility. But at their heart is a desire to autonomously make God whoever they want to make Him out to be. Rather than being humble, they create a god that Scripture does not represent, and they do this with unmitigated pride.
....Andy
No comments:
Post a Comment