Arial
Active member
There is much to know of God that He reveals to us. There is also much of Him that He does not reveal concerning how some things can be. He will reveal the existence of many of these things, in His word, but we simply must accept them through faith, because He tells us of their existence and truth.
A few of those things would be the Trinity, His sovereignty over all of creation, and how that plays into our responsibility, that He is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. There are other whys and hows we as humans ask, that can be believed through faith in His truthfulness and trustworthiness, but cannot be explained in human terms, or grasped with our finite minds. Such things as how can a virgin conceive? How can Jesus be both deity and human? How can a man walk out of the grave, fully physically restored and wholey functioning and also bound in grave clothes after the body has been dead for days as with Lazarus? How can Jesus be raised from the dead and ascend into heaven? How can someone speak everything into existence out of nothing? And on and on.
God tells us all these things happened and that He is the power and plan and purpose behind it all. If we are Christian, we accept their truthfulness and reality through faith. Only faith can apprehend it, but not comprehend it in its fullness.
The problem we face and must recognize, and what leads to much false doctrine, as well as our inability to articulate some of our beliefs or defend them against heresy, is because we are creature and He is Creator. We are finite, attempting in our finiteness to explain the infinite. We are inside time and God is outside of it, which we also cannot grasp in its fullness. God is unique. The Trinity is unique. Jesus having a human nature and a divine nature---fully human, fully God---is unique. The Holy Spirit being God yet distinct, just as are the Father and the Son, is unique. The relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is unique. Unique meaning one of a kind, nothing else in all the world, either inside or outside of time, like it. Therefore we have nothing to compare it with. All that we are unable to fully grasp or adequately and fully explain about God, that He does make clear, is because it is unique. The virgin birth. The resurrection . Eternity. All of it. We approach these things---and all things really---through what we have. Comparison to what we do know or can comprehend or explain, and language. It will always fall short. Even our language is held within the bounds of time. Past, present, and future. Which puts misleading limits on His being.
We must be on our guard to be able to recognize when we ourselves are doing this, when we begin to base who God is on what we determine He is (or will do or not do),through our own limits rather than faith in His word. And we must study to learn more and more of what He reveals about Himself, rather than leaning on our own finite understanding, so that we can recognize what is true and what is not true when we hear it. And learn to articulate and defend our faith. The Holy Spirit will do this in us.
A few of those things would be the Trinity, His sovereignty over all of creation, and how that plays into our responsibility, that He is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. There are other whys and hows we as humans ask, that can be believed through faith in His truthfulness and trustworthiness, but cannot be explained in human terms, or grasped with our finite minds. Such things as how can a virgin conceive? How can Jesus be both deity and human? How can a man walk out of the grave, fully physically restored and wholey functioning and also bound in grave clothes after the body has been dead for days as with Lazarus? How can Jesus be raised from the dead and ascend into heaven? How can someone speak everything into existence out of nothing? And on and on.
God tells us all these things happened and that He is the power and plan and purpose behind it all. If we are Christian, we accept their truthfulness and reality through faith. Only faith can apprehend it, but not comprehend it in its fullness.
The problem we face and must recognize, and what leads to much false doctrine, as well as our inability to articulate some of our beliefs or defend them against heresy, is because we are creature and He is Creator. We are finite, attempting in our finiteness to explain the infinite. We are inside time and God is outside of it, which we also cannot grasp in its fullness. God is unique. The Trinity is unique. Jesus having a human nature and a divine nature---fully human, fully God---is unique. The Holy Spirit being God yet distinct, just as are the Father and the Son, is unique. The relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is unique. Unique meaning one of a kind, nothing else in all the world, either inside or outside of time, like it. Therefore we have nothing to compare it with. All that we are unable to fully grasp or adequately and fully explain about God, that He does make clear, is because it is unique. The virgin birth. The resurrection . Eternity. All of it. We approach these things---and all things really---through what we have. Comparison to what we do know or can comprehend or explain, and language. It will always fall short. Even our language is held within the bounds of time. Past, present, and future. Which puts misleading limits on His being.
We must be on our guard to be able to recognize when we ourselves are doing this, when we begin to base who God is on what we determine He is (or will do or not do),through our own limits rather than faith in His word. And we must study to learn more and more of what He reveals about Himself, rather than leaning on our own finite understanding, so that we can recognize what is true and what is not true when we hear it. And learn to articulate and defend our faith. The Holy Spirit will do this in us.
