Mystery

Today on Renewing Your Mind… As we reach our limit of understanding. But that doesn't mean that what we're reading is unintelligible.

Not at all. God's ways are past finding out, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. But He is not a God of confusion.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, we continue Dr. R.C. Sproul's series on apologetics. Our goal is to find the balance between holy awe and holy certainty. We've been examining in our course on apologetics some ideas or concepts that are so closely related to each other that they can be and frequently are confused with one another. And we started off with the three major categories of contradiction, and secondly of paradox, and third of mystery. But then in the course of our examination of these three ideas, I introduced a fourth category, which is the term antinomy, which has added to the confusion because some folks, particularly from Great Britain, use the term antinomy as a synonym for paradox, where classically and historically the term antinomy in philosophy has been used as a synonym for contradiction. Now, to muddy the waters even further, if you were to go to recent editions of English dictionaries, you probably will see in those dictionaries, if you would look up the word contradiction after it is defined, then they'll give you the synonyms for contradiction, and they will include frequently antinomy and paradox. And here I am laboring so hard to show the difference among these categories, and yet if you pick up a dictionary, you will see the very thing I'm trying to overcome, confusion of these terms, where the lexicographers are telling us now that these terms are virtually synonymous.

Now, how do we explain that? Well, as we've seen in many cases, language is fluid, and it undergoes certain changes over time. And when a lexicographer sets about the task of defining words and preparing a lexicon or a dictionary, that lexicographer pays attention to at least three major considerations. The first thing he looks at is the etymology of the word.

That is, as we were looking earlier, I said that this comes from the Latin, and I broke it down to the original contra against dicchio to speak, so that's its etymology or its etymological derivation, the original language out of which the word emerged. Then you look at the historical usage. If you look at the twenty-some volume set of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, you see frequent references to how words like this were used historically in the English language. And there may be citations, for example, from Shakespeare showing how Shakespeare in his age used a particular term, and then bringing it down through the centuries and showing how the word maybe undergoes subtle shifts in nuance and meaning. But the final criterion by which lexicographers define words is by contemporary usage.

They keep their ear to the ground and see how modern people are using the term, so that if enough people use a word incorrectly and they do it often enough that formerly incorrect use of the term will suddenly become the correct meaning of the term as judged by that criterion of contemporary usage. So I'm not at all surprised to see modern dictionaries calling paradox a synonym for contradiction even though historically there is that important distinction between them. And at this point, since we're talking philosophically and talking theologically, I'm using these terms in their historical sense, not the way in which they are muddled together in our contemporary culture.

Now, if confusion exists among these three terms, as we've already seen, the confusion becomes acute when we add this category into the mix, the category of mystery. Now, I would say as a Christian theologian and as an apologist that the Christian faith has no contradictions. Now, we've seen this wave of interest in 20th century theological thought that not only embraces contradictions as part of the truth but are even exalted to the level of being the hallmark of truth.

And living in an age where people have been massively influenced by the philosophy of relativism, this becomes even more acute. As I said earlier, I noticed that my students that come into the seminary today out of their graduate classes from college and university have, in many cases, uncritically accepted relativism as a perspective on reality and have no problems embracing both poles of a contradiction, which I say is fatal to Christianity and indeed is slanderous to the Holy Ghost and to God. To have God speaking in contradictions is, frankly, to have God speaking with a forked tongue and therefore is untrustworthy because what He says means what it says and does not mean what it says at the same time and in the same relationship. And people, as I said earlier, try to avoid this problem by postulating a higher view of logic that God has in His mind that allows Him to violate the law of contradiction, where if I violate the law of contradiction, I can be demonstrated to be a liar, but it's okay for God because He's a higher sort of being and He has a logic that transcends ours and that what may be illogical to us or contradictory to us can be resolved in the mind of God.

Now again, that view is epidemic within the church today, and I've said also that if that is taken to its logical conclusion is absolutely fatal to the Christian faith because that would mean, practically speaking, that you could not trust a single word that God ever said because lurking behind His revealed Word would always stand this higher and transcendental logic of His that makes it possible that in the final analysis for Him to mean the exact antithesis of what He has spoken to us in His Word and that ultimately by divine logic Christ could be the Antichrist and the Antichrist could be Christ, and you would have no way of noticing the difference. But again, when we talk about mysteries, we're now introducing a category about which I think it is safe to say the Scripture has and includes many. There are many mysteries in the sacred Scripture.

I don't think there are any contradictions, but mysteries, yes, paradoxes, yes, and especially mysteries. When we say that God is one in essence and three in person, I don't think there's anyone among us who can penetrate the depths of that concept of the Trinity or the opposite distinction that we have with respect to the incarnation of Jesus where we say in the case of Jesus there's one person with two natures, a human nature and a divine nature. And historically what the church has done in defining the nature of Christ is to say that He's vera homo and vera deus, He's truly man and truly God, and that these two natures are distinct but perfectly united with each other in such a way as that they are not confused or mixed, separated or divided.

Those are the four negatives used at the Council of Chalcedon 451. But all that Chalcedon does there is kind of put a fence around our understanding of the incarnation and say, we don't know how these two natures coexist in one person in the mystery of the incarnation. We haven't penetrated how the union of the two natures exists actually.

But what we're saying is that we ought not to think of that union in these ways, in such a way as to see them confused or mixed or separated or divided. And so in many ways what Chalcedon is saying here is what the incarnation is not rather than telling us exactly what it is. And it leaves the exact nature of the union of the two natures in Jesus as a mystery for future consideration. So I do not pretend to understand with my finite mind the Trinity, nor do I understand the person of Christ, nor do I understand the act of divine creation. I read the story of creation in the Bible where it says that God speaks the world into being through the power of His voice by simply saying, let there be light, and the lights come on.

I can't comprehend that fully. I can't comprehend the infinitude of God. I know that He is infinite, but I don't have the ability as a finite creature to have a comprehensive knowledge of God.

In fact, the very first page of systematic theology is that page given to the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God and to the formula finitum non copox infinitum, the finite cannot contain or grasp the infinite. And so there are many things about God we do not understand. A perfect knowledge of Him is too high for us.

It is above us. It is beyond us. Somebody asked me just last week, well, you see, the Bible says that now we know in part, but after we die and go to heaven, we will know in full even as we are fully understood. Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we'll see Him face to face. And you see, doesn't that mean that when we get to heaven we will then achieve a comprehensive knowledge of God?

I said, no, that's not what it means. What that means is that there will be a quantum leap in our understanding of the things of God when we see Him on the other side. But when we get to heaven, we'll still be creatures, we'll still be finite, and we will not have even in heaven a capacity to grasp fully the infinitude of God.

We'll know far more than we know now, but there will still be elements of mystery about Him in heaven. Now, the mysterious nature of something does not vitiate its reality. If that's were the case, modern science would collapse by its own weight. There are still prizes being held out there for somebody who can unwrap completely what gravity is. And there are still ongoing disputes about the actual nature of motion and of time and of concepts that we use every single day.

And yet there are elements about these ideas that remain hidden from our understanding mysterious to us. Now, if I can use something of a crass analogy, I don't even understand the rudiments of electricity. But I do understand that there is such a thing, and I understand that if the light goes off in my house, the first thing I'm going to do is check the switch, and I'm going to turn the switch. And if I turn the switch on, the light still doesn't come on. The next thing I'm going to do is check the light bulb, and if the light bulb isn't broken, then I'm going to check the fuse box out in the garage.

And if that doesn't work, I'm going to call the electrician because I've exhausted my understanding of how these things work by the first three steps that I have taken. There are many things in this world, particularly in the world of science, that I don't understand. They remain mysterious to me. Now, there are also many things that are mysteries to me that are not mysteries to other persons, people who have learned and have gained a certain expertise in various arenas where I haven't. And so their level of mystery with respect to their discipline differs significantly from mine. I don't understand medicine the way a physician understands medicine.

I don't understand biology the way a microbiologist understands it. And so, again, there are people who find all kinds of mysteries about Christianity that theologians have unraveled, and that there are answers to questions people have who have not studied these things in any depth, and so I hope that I'm not just a bundle of mysteries walking around spreading more mystery where there was none previously. However, I've never yet met a person who understands all there is to know about biology or all there is to know about physics or all there is to know about astronomy or all there is to know about theology. We believe that there is much yet to be learned about the things of God that we do not presently understand, that there is a progressive unfolding for our understanding from God Himself. The word mystery comes from the Greek word musterion, and it is in some ways a favorite word for the Apostle Paul.

Paul is fond of speaking of mysteries, and for him a mystery is not a detective story. The way he uses mystery is to describe something that once was hidden and concealed, but now is made manifest and revealed. For example, it was not clear in the Old Testament that when the Redeemer would come, he would create a church out of his body, including not just Jewish people, but all of the diverse nations and ethnic groups from the Gentile community. And so Paul talks about that which once was hidden, that which once was a mystery is now revealed in the New Testament through the work of Christ. And there are many such things that were hidden to the Old Testament saints, which are then made manifest in the teaching of the New Testament. Now that does not mean that the New Testament therefore reveals all mysteries. There is still more to be revealed, as I said, when we get to heaven.

Now, the question is this. How does the term mystery relate to the term contradiction or the term paradox? I think the most important point we have here is that the contradiction and the mystery, both of these concepts have something crucial in common. And what they have in common is unintelligibility. Well, even that's not a good way to describe it, but at least a present lack of understanding. If I say to you, this piece of chalk is not a piece of chalk, that is, I use a contradictory statement about this chalk.

What have you learned about this chalk? Nothing, because my statement is contradictory, and because it's contradictory, it is unintelligible. If I remind you earlier on in the course, I talked about how logic was set forth and defined by Aristotle in the ancient world. And some people like to think that Aristotle invented logic, and I reminded you that he no more invented logic than Columbus invented America.

All that Aristotle did was set forth the rules, the laws that were already functioning that govern and measure the relationship among propositions or among statements. And even though Aristotle studied several different sciences, he argued that logic itself was not a science, but was, if you recall, the organon, or the instrument for all science. He said you have to have logic in order to understand anything, in order to understand biology, in order to understand chemistry, in order to understand astronomy. And in fact, historically, logic is one half of the scientific method.

The other half is inductive, where you gather data bits and you experiment and so on in the laboratory, but the moment you try to make sense out of your data, you step into the realm of deduction, which now involves you in the process of logical thought. And what Aristotle was saying is that logic, and particularly the law of contradiction, is a necessary prerequisite for meaningful discourse, that is, for intelligible communication. If I say this chalk is not chalk, I might as well stand here and go, because I'm making a nonsense statement. And so you see, when I say this piece of chalk is not a piece of chalk, you don't understand anything coherent from that. So you could say, oh, I don't understand what Dr. Sproul meant this morning. He was speaking in Mysteries.

See the point of contact? A mystery is something I don't understand. Contradiction is something I don't understand. So they must be the same thing.

Now, they have these points in common. You don't understand a contradiction. You know why? Because a contradiction is inherently unintelligible. Even Einstein can't understand a contradiction. Let me say it even stronger, even God can't understand a contradiction. Because contradictions are, by their very nature, un-understandable.

They're unintelligible. Now, a mystery, on the other hand, refers to something that now I don't understand, but may be something I can understand if given more information, so that we may discover certain things in science, that then we say, eureka, or voila, I have found it. That which I didn't understand before, bingo, now we can see because we have new information. And that's what propels science forward all the time, gaining new information that shrinks the margin of mystery. Because what is the task of science?

What does science mean? The word means knowledge, and mystery points to the lack of knowledge or the absence of it. So the more knowledge we have, the smaller the margin of mystery becomes. So, sometimes the more knowledge we have, the more mysteries we become aware of that were previously we were not aware of.

And so, in that sense, new knowledge may open up the margin in the opposite direction. But let's not confuse these things because mystery is a legitimate element of knowledge and of the pursuit of truth that should provoke a response of humility within us as we stand before things we don't know and don't understand. We cannot leap from that to using mystery as a license to embrace contradictions. And that's what happens. People say, oh, this is a contradiction.

That's okay. I don't understand it, but give me some more knowledge, give me some more information, and we'll be able to unravel it. I say, no, if it's a real contradiction, not only will you not be able to unravel it today, you won't be able to unravel it tomorrow or the day after at any time. If you have eternity to examine it and you get all the knowledge in the world, you're not going to unravel a bona fide contradiction. And that's why it's critical for us to understand the difference because Christianity admits to mystery but does not admit to contradiction.

And that is an important distinction. If we are to effectively talk to skeptics about the truth of Scripture, we must be able to see the difference between mystery and contradiction. All week here on Renewing Your Mind, we've been pleased to feature Dr. R.C. Sproul's series Defending Your Faith. It's our great privilege, indeed our duty, to defend the faith. The apostle Peter said as much when he exhorted us to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within us. We'd like to send you this series.

There are 32 messages. And when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we'll be glad to send it your way. If you'd like to make your request online, our web address is renewingyourmind.org, or you can simply call us at 800-435-4343. You may find that studying a topic like this with a friend or family member can help motivate and inspire you. Let me encourage you to check out Ligonier Connect. That's our online discipleship community. You'll find interactive courses from Dr. Sproul, along with Sinclair Ferguson, Stephen Lawson, and others. And Defending Your Faith, the series we're featuring this week, is one of the courses that we offer.

You can find out more by going to connect.ligonier.org. Well, God has used men to passionately defend the historic Christian faith throughout history, and we're going to meet one of those men next week, a man who fought the tides of 20th century liberalism in the Church. I hope you'll join us beginning Monday for Dr. Robert Godfrey's series, A Survey of Church History. Godfrey.