Self-styled
rationalists attack the Christian faith on putatively grounds. This takes
various forms. They attack the logic of the Trinity. They attack the logic of
the Incarnation. They attack the morality of predestination, penal
substitution, original sin, justification by faith, male headship, special
redemption, everlasting punishment, the execution of the Canaanites, &c.
Their
objections boil down to the position that “If I were God, this is what I’d do
instead,” or, “If there were a God, this is what he’d really be like.”
I’d like to make one small, but significant observation.
Rationalists are viewing God through the wrong end of the telescope. What’s
remarkable is not that we understand so little about God, but that we
understand so much. We understand God far better than we have any antecedent
reason to expect.
God isn’t human. God isn’t a creature. God is inconceivably
great. A different kind of being. Given the categorical difference between God
and man, it’s remarkable that we are able to understand as divine revelation as well as we do.
Science fiction movies about intelligent aliens are always a
letdown because the alien mind invariably bears an unmistakable resemblance to
the mind of a Hollywood screenwriter. Intelligent aliens, however advanced, can
never be smarter than the screenwriter. Worse, they can never be fundamentally
unlike you and me. They can never surpass human imagination. Even gifted
science fiction writers can’t make alien characters truly alien, for, in the nature
of the case, that would be alien to human experience. We have no alternate
frame of reference.
Given the fact that God is so unlike you and me, it’s
astonishing that we can understand God at all. Astounding that so much of God’s
revelation in word and deed falls within the outer limits of human
understanding.
Dogs probably understand humans better than any other
subhuman species. But consider how much of what we think and do must be utterly
incomprehensible to a dog. Imagine “theology” written from a dog’s perspective.
It would be interesting to compare a canine understanding of
the world with a human understanding of the world. They would be so different.
Almost incommensurable. Indeed, they are so different that we, as humans, are
incapable of ever assuming a dog’s point of view. Not only are dogs far less
intelligent than humans, but they experience the world in a radically different
way than we do. If sight is the dominant human sense, scent is the dominant
canine sense. We have an essentially visual model of the world, whereas a dog
has an essentially olfactory model of the world. Two very different ways of
representing reality.
Now, someone might object: “You’re just retreating into the
trite old ‘mystery’ canard. Playing the last-ditch ‘mystery’ card. God is so
far above us, so utterly different, that he’s bound to be unintelligible to us
lowly humans.”
But, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Rather, I’m saying it’s
quite surprising that in spite of how different God is from us, in spite of how
much greater God is than you and me, that we are still able to make as much
sense of divine revelation as we do. Far from demanding that divine revelation
should be even more comprehensible, we ought to be startled, humbled, and
grateful that we know so much.
I am greatly enjoying your writing and your thinking, steve. Thanks for posting this.
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