Friday, October 15, 2010

God is incomprehensible and knowable

In many ways, our God is a mysterious God. In Chapter 10 of my Systematic Theology book, Wayne Grudem answers how God can be both entirely incomprehensible, never fully known, and yet still people can truly know God as God.

"If we are to know God at all, it is necessary that he reveals himself to us... Because God is infinite and we are finite or limited, we can never fully understand God. In this sense God is said to be incomprehensible:

'Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable' (Psalm 145:3)

It is not only true that we can never fully understand God; it is also true that we can never fully understand any single thing about God... exhaustively.

Even though we cannot know God exhaustively, we can know true things about God... from scripture. Even more significantly, it is God himself whom we know, not simply facts about him or actions he does:

'but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord.' (Jeremiah 9:24)

'And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent' (John 17:3)

The fact that we do know God is further demonstrated by the realization that the richness of the Christian life includes a personal relationship with God." (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 149-152)

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