How Much Do We Know About God?
I do enjoy studying theology. However, I sometimes have my doubts when theologians confidently state what God is like. They make it sound so easy. Too easy.
They might say that it is relatively simple because we have the Bible and all we have to do is summarize the Bible. What the Bible says about God is what God is like.
And yet we know that the Bible uses human language to describe a being that is really beyond our full understanding. We all recognize that the Bible uses anthropomorphic language to describe God and that God does not really have eyes or arms or other human body parts.
But how far does this imagery go? How much can we say with great confidence about what God is like?
Any study of theology will demonstrate that it is much more than summarizing biblical statements about God. It often borrows philosophical categories to help build our picture of God, frequently from philosophies not related to Christianity. This is not wrong but we should acknowledge that it is going on.
There will be others that say that everything we need to know about God is found in what we see in Jesus. I am sympathetic with this but if the Bible is condescension to human ability to understand God, so is the incarnation of Jesus.
I would suggest that the incarnation is reason to believe that God is beyond our full human understanding. There is a reason why the Word was made flesh.
So what am I saying? I am not saying, as some argue, that we can know nothing about God. There are certain themes that are repeated regularly in the Bible as a whole and in the teachings of Jesus in particular.
But I would also say that we need to hold our convictions about the nature of God with some humility. We can speak of the Trinity but how precisely can we speak of the interrelationship of the persons within the Godhead? Do we really know if God exists inside or outside of time?
I think that theologians should reflect on and write about these topics. But I would also suggest that we be careful in excluding people because of a different interpretation.
Again, I am not saying that we take down all boundaries of what makes one a Christian. Historical Christianity is very important. But within that, we need to realize that we could actually be wrong on certain things.
If God is the Creator of all the universe, if God is Lord of all that exists, physical and spiritual, then we should be hesitant to claim that we have God all figured out.
My cat knows something about me but only a very limited amount. The difference between humans, even with the aid of the Bible, and God is far more than between a cat and a human. We should seek to understand God but we should be realistic in our abilities.
