Knowledge of God

We are limited creatures. We're finite. So how can we know anything about an infinite God? God, fortunately, does not speak to us in His language. He speaks to us in ours. And because He speaks to us in the only language we can understand, we are able to grasp Him.

We can't know everything about God, but we can certainly know everything we need to know about Him, and we can speak about Him in ways that are meaningful and true. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind and a message from Dr. R.C. 's Sproul Series, Foundations.

In this series, R.C. carefully examines the vital aspects of Christianity, like the authority of Scripture, salvation, and in today's message, the knowledge of God. When Ligonier Ministries began many, many years ago, we were visited by a man whose job was to be a consultant to various business and Christian ministries, and he was helping us to define our purpose. And he said to me, he said, R.C., what is the single most important thing that this ministry is designed to do? And I said, that's easy.

He said, what? I said, to help people find out who God is. And I was quick to add to it, not that God is, because as we've already seen in our study of general revelation, God has plainly manifested His existence to every creature on this planet, and everybody, whether they acknowledge it or not, knows that God exists. But we need to come to a deeper understanding of who He is. What is His character?

What is His nature? Because there's nothing in theology that defines everything else as comprehensively as our understanding of God. In fact, I will go so far as to say, as we understand the character of God, so we will understand every other doctrine in our thinking.

They're that closely related. Now, in the history of academic systematic theology, it's customary that the first thing that you study or treat in theology proper or about the doctrine of God is the doctrine of what is called the incomprehensibility of God. Now, that almost seems at the outset that you begin your study of God with a disclaimer, saying, well, we're going to start studying something we don't know anything about. And not only do we not know anything about it, but we can't know anything about it, because when we use the term incomprehensible in our customary forms of speech, what we mean is unintelligible, ununderstandable. You just can't comprehend it.

It's inconceivable. And so why even go any further in the study of theology if at the very beginning you say that the doctrine of God is such that God Himself is incomprehensible? Well, here's one of those cases where a theological term is used in a more narrow and distinct and precise way than it is commonly used in everyday speech. What incomprehensible means with respect to God is not that we can't know anything about Him, but that our knowledge of God will always be limited, that we can have an apprehensive knowledge of God, a meaningful knowledge of God, but we can never, even in heaven, have a knowledge of God that totally exhaustively comprehends all that He is.

In this sense, we're talking about being comprehensive in terms of being total or complete in our understanding. And so at the beginning, we say that God is incomprehensible in the sense that none of us has or ever will have an exhaustive grasp of God. Now, one of the reasons for that was articulated by John Calvin in a famous Latin phrase that he gave to the church and was used in two different arenas of theology, and it is the phrase, finitum non capax in finitum. Now, even this Latin phrase, to confuse the waters a little bit more, can be interpreted in two distinct ways. It says, the finite cannot something the infinite. And the reason that it can be translated in two different ways is that this word, capax, can be translated in two different ways. And those two different ways are this. One, the finite cannot contain the infinite.

That's simple, isn't it? If I had a glass that was an eight-ounce glass, that glass could not possibly contain a million gallons of water or an infinite amount of water because it only has a finite volume to it. And so the finite cannot contain the infinite.

But another meaning of the word capax is the word grasp, and that is, again, to grasp in its completeness. So again, my mind is finite, and my finite mind does not have the ability or the capacity to grasp all that God is. He is ways are not our ways. You know, who can ascend into the heavens and bring God down and so on. His thoughts are not our thoughts. He surpasses our ability to comprehend Him in His fullness.

Now, if that is the case and that the finite cannot grasp the infinite, how can we, as human beings who are finite, learn anything about God or have any significant or meaningful knowledge of who God is? Again, I can refer to Calvin who says that part of the graciousness and the mercy of God is that God condescends, and He, as it were, lisps for our benefit by addressing us on our terms and in our own language forms. Just like a parent may coo when they talk to an infant.

We call it baby talk. But something is communicated that is meaningful and intelligible. And so the first thing we understand about our knowledge of God and about the language that the Bible uses about God is that that language is what is called anthropomorphic language.

Now, don't let this big, long word scare you, because it includes within it words that you're very familiar with. You've heard of the term anthropology, which is the science or the study of human beings. And anthropology is called anthropology because it comes from the word anthropos, which is the Greek word for man or mankind or human. And morphology is the study of forms and of shapes. In fact, each of us has a distinctive physical form.

There are mesomorphs and endomorphs and stuff like that, and we understand that there is a subdivision of science that is called morphology. So anthropomorphic simply means in human form. Now, we see this very simply when God speaks to us in Scripture, and He says that the heavens are His throne and the earth is His footstool. And we visualize or imagine in our minds this massive deity who is seated in heaven and stretching out His feet on the earth, which is used as His footstool or as His ottoman. But none of us, I hope, really thinks that that's how God is. God is often described with the use of physical descriptions.

There are mentions of His eyes, of His head, of His strong right arm, of His feet, and of His mouth, and so on. And yet at the same time, the Scriptures come and tell us that God is not a man, that He is a spirit, and He's not physical. And yet the Bible speaks of God in physical terms. And not only does it use human physical language to describe God, it'll even use physical emotional language. It'll say, God repented of doing something.

And then later on, the Scripture will remind us that God is not a man, that He actually repents, but that they will describe God in human terms in certain instances and narratives in the Bible because it's the only way we can speak about God. We say He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Do we interpret that to mean that God is the great cattle rancher in the sky who comes down and has a shootout every now and then at the O.K. Corral with the devil?

No. What that image communicates to us is that God is powerful, He's wealthy, He's self-sufficient, just like a rancher would be on earth who owned the cattle on a thousand hills. So we use anthropomorphic language, the Bible uses anthropomorphic language or human language to speak about God.

And we have to be very careful, as the Bible is, when the Bible will on the one hand affirm what it says about God using these forms, and then later on in the more abstract didactic way warn us that God is not a man. Now sometimes we think that when we go into abstract technical theological language, we escape anthropomorphic language. Instead of saying that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, I might say that God is omnipotent. And I say, now I have a fancy word here, an abstract term meaning omni, all potent, powerful, and I think maybe because now I have a more sophisticated abstract technical word, I've now gone above and beyond the realm of the human.

No. Still, the only way I can understand the word omni or all is by my reference point as a human being to understand what all means when I look at the people in this room and say, all the people here in this room, or my understanding of power, because I don't have the mind of God. I don't conceive of power in the same way God conceives of power. He has an infinite understanding of power.

I have a finite understanding of power. And God fortunately does not speak to us in His language, He speaks to us in ours. And because He speaks to us in the only language we can understand, we are able to grasp Him. In other words, all biblical language is anthropomorphic, and all language about God is anthropomorphic, because the only language we have at our disposal is anthropomorphic language, because we are anthropoi. We are human beings. Now, because of these limits imposed by the difference, the gulf between the infinite God and finite human beings, the church has had to be careful in defining different ways in which we describe God.

And I will mention a few of those now. One of the most common ways in theology that we speak about God or describe God is by what is called the via negazionis. And the via, if you've ever been to Europe or to Italy, you see what the word via means. As I said, we're talking about ways of speaking. The via de la rosa in Jerusalem is the way of grief or the way of suffering.

The via is a road or a way. And the word negazionis simply means negation. So the way of negation is one of the main ways we speak about God.

Now, what's that? Well, all that is is that we describe God sometimes by saying what He isn't. And so far we've said that God is infinite.

Now, what does that word mean? It's not finite. And we understand what finitude is, that it's limited, it's bound, and so on.

And when we talk about God, we say God's not like us in that respect. We're all finite, but God isn't finite. He's not finite.

He's infinite. And one of the other characteristics that we find of all creatures in this world is that they all change from time to time. We grow older if nothing else, and we are therefore mutable, aren't we?

Because we undergo changes, or we undergo alterations, mutations. When we speak of God, we say what? He's immutable.

That means He's not mutable. So do you see at this point what we are saying about God is what He isn't. Now, there are some people, skeptics, who say that's all you can say about God is what He isn't. But biblical theology teaches that in addition to speaking about God by way of negation, there are two other ways that we speak of God.

One is what's called the via eminentia, or the way of eminence, and that is where we take known human concepts or references and take them to the nth degree, like we do with the words I've mentioned already, omnipotence, omniscience. If you have some understanding of what science is or what knowledge is, and you know that there's a limit to your knowledge and that you have some knowledge, so you are some-niscient, you are not omniscient, we take the word knowledge or science, in this case science, and we elevate it to the ultimate degree and apply it to God. That is that He has an eminent knowledge. He is omni-knowledgeable.

He is omnipresent. You are locally present. You are locally present.

I'm locally present. But God is all present and all-powerful and so on. And so there you build up this stepped-up view where you project out to the nth degree concepts that you can relate to and you do understand that as part of your common reference point and refer them to God. And the third one is what's called the via affirmitas.

I won't bother to write it down. It simply means the way of affirmation, where we make specific statements about the character of God, namely that God is one, that God is holy, that God is sovereign, and so on, where we are positively attributing certain characteristics to God and affirming that they are true of Him. Now, another thing that we have to see by way of speaking about God with respect to His incomprehensibility are three other distinctive forms of human speech, three kinds of language that the church has delineated historically. The first kind is called univocal or sometimes pronounced univocal. The second is equivocal, and the third is analogical.

Now, here's the difference among these terms. Univocal language or univocal language means or refers to the use of a descriptive term that when it's applied to two different beings means exactly the same thing. There is a unity of what is being said. For example, if my understanding of the love of God, and I took the term love as I understand it as a human being, and I said that God has love in exactly the same way that I have love, I would be speaking univocally.

That is, the meaning of love would mean the same if it applies to you or if it applies to God. Let me use an easier term, the word good. If I say that God is good, do I mean by that exactly the same as what I mean when I refer to a human being as that's a good person, or do I mean something more when I talk about God's goodness? To illustrate it, perhaps in a more crass way, I have some dogs at home, and if somebody says, are they good dogs? And if somebody says, are they good dogs? I say, yes, they're good dogs.

What do I mean by that? I don't mean the same thing when I say that my dog is good that I mean when I say my neighbor is good. When I say that my dog is good, I mean by that he comes when I call him. He's housebroken, and he doesn't bite the mailman on the leg. But if you said to me, well, what about so-and-so over here?

And I say, well, this fellow over here is a good man. I don't mean by that that he's housebroken, that he comes when I call him, and he doesn't bite the mailman on the leg. The term good takes on a new connotation when I refer to a human being than when I refer to a dog. So there the meaning of the term changes when it is applied to two different beings.

Now, univocal would allow for no such changes. And the point that we make here is Augustine said that anything that is affirmed of God in any way must be denied in its univocal sense because God is never exactly the same as we are. Equivocal is when the meaning of a term changes radically when used for two different beings. My illustration of that is if you go to a dramatic reading at the civic arena, maybe Orson Welles was in town or Charles Laughton or Richard Burton or some great dramatist, and you went to see them read a portion of poetry or something, and you came home and you were disappointed and somebody said to you, well, how did that go? And you said, well, it was a bald narrative. What would you mean by it's a bald narrative? You certainly wouldn't mean that the narrative didn't have any hair on its head. You would mean that something is lacking. There wasn't any pizazz.

There wasn't any passion. And just like something is lacking on the head of a bald person, namely hair, so there was something lacking in the dramatic reading. And so that's a big stretch. It's a metaphorical use of bald here, isn't it? And you're moving very far away from meaning the same thing when you're applying it to two different matters. Now somewhere in between, univocal and equivocal, is what we call analogical. And an analogy is called an analogy because it is a kind of representation that is based on proportion where the meaning changes in direct proportion to the difference of the things being described. That's what I was getting at with the good dog, the good man, the good God, so that there is a step up in the meanings that when we say that God is good, we mean that His goodness is like or similar to our goodness, not identical but enough alike that we can talk meaningfully with each other. And so the fundamental principle here is even though we don't know God exhaustively and comprehensively, we do have a meaningful way of speaking about God because God has addressed us in our terms, and He has made us in His image so that there's an analogy between ourselves and Him, and that gives us an avenue of communication between God and us.

In 60 Messages, R.C. shows us how the truths of Scripture relate to each other in perfect harmony. We'd like to send you the full series on eight DVDs. Just contact us today with a donation of any amount, and you can do that at renewingyourmind.org. The chief principle that guides Ligetiir Ministries is the sanctity of truth. There is no truth more precious than God's revelation of Himself in His Word, and that's why we think this series by Dr. Sproul is so important. Again, it's called Foundations, an Overview of Systematic Theology, and for your gift of any amount, we will send it your way. Our web address again is renewingyourmind.org. And by the way, since our office is closed today for the Fourth of July holiday, this is an online offer only.

You know, learning the foundation of the Christian faith is an exciting journey, and as you learn, you may want to share that experience with others. Ligetiir Connect is an online learning community that allows you to join with friends or family members and study together. It gives you the opportunity to access more than 70 interactive courses from Dr. Sproul, along with Sinclair Ferguson, Stephen Lawson, and many others. More than 15,000 people are enrolled right now in Ligetiir Connect. It's $9 a month, and we invite you to check it out.

You can do that at connect.ligetiir.org. We learned today that we can understand God only when He reveals Himself to us. But when we read Scripture, there are some things that are more challenging to understand than others. We want to look at this question of Trinity because it is one of the most difficult, mysterious, puzzling, and controversial doctrines of the entire Christian faith. We hope you'll join us tomorrow as R.C. examines how there is one God who exists in three persons. That's Tuesday, here on Renewing Your Mind.