The Mysteries of Christianity
Why mystery?
At first glance, the word paradox, meaning a seeming contradiction,
appears to fit better. However, past
usage failed to distinguish between seeming and real contradiction. Immanuel Kant held that the form of knowledge
is independent of experience, but connected how people know with experience
through the senses. Consequently, Kant
thought reality was unknowable. This was
his paradox. Kant recognized our
inability to discover absolute truth, but failed to acknowledge that God
reveals truth to us. I haven’t adopted
Karl Barth’s dialectic theology, which denies general
revelation and separates faith from evidence and reason.
Nevertheless, complete knowledge resides
beyond our reach, but within God’s. In
the Bible, God revealed Himself to us.
Often, what He revealed challenges our understanding. We must let His recorded revelation in the
Bible supersede any logical conclusions drawn from it. A common principle for those familiar with
Biblical hermeneutics not only interprets Scripture within its local context,
but also within the context of Scripture as a whole. Still, how does the Christian deal with
passages that appear to contradict logically?
This is what I mean by mystery.
Mystery depicts when God’s revelation
challenges our intellectual capacity.
When this occurs, trust God rather than limit God’s revelation to what
we understand. This doesn’t mean we
shouldn’t try to understand such mysteries, but we should treat God’s
revelation as a scientist does experimental data. Logic and reasoning can interpret data, but
it’s dishonest to let logic and reasoning rather than actual experimental
results determine data. The recorded
revelation must supersede the theological model that systematizes it.
Often, our reasoning can’t explain God’s
truths. For example, take the two
statements, “nothing is impossible for God,” (Luke 1:37
) and “it’s impossible for God to lie.” (Hebrews
6:18)
On the surface, these statements look like a contradiction. However, careful thought confirms
consistency. “Nothing is impossible for
God” refers to God’s omnipotence. It
means nothing is beyond His physical capability. God’s ability to speak gives Him the physical
ability to tell a lie. God’s
self-determined character makes it impossible for Him to lie. While this explanation eliminates the
contraction, it’s simplistic as other explanations about God. Perhaps a reason God chose to reveal Himself
through the Hebrews rather than the Greeks or Romans is the Hebrews recorded
God’s revelation as it occurred in history while the Greeks and Romans were
preoccupied with philosophy and logical explanations.
Many basic Christian teachings about God defy
our understanding. Often trying to
explain these mysteries leads to oversimplification, even to the point of
heresy. The Trinity is a good
example. Any explanation other than I
can’t understand it borders on heresy.
If we emphasize one side of the three-in-one over the other, we approach
heresy. God gave us a good picture of
the Trinity at Jesus’ baptism. The
Father spoke from Heaven, the Son stood in the water, and the Holy Spirit in
the form of a dove descended from Heaven to the Son, all simultaneously and in
harmony. (Matthew
3:16-17)
It’s difficult to understand Christ’s
divinity and humanity. Regarding His
life here on earth, the temptation is to ask what percentage of Christ was God
and what percent man as if each were less than 100%. Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human (Hebrews
13:8).
That’s a stumbling block to many people.
How can the infinite God be contained in a finite man? This isn’t all that’s baffling. How did Christ as the all-powerful and
all-knowing God grow in strength and wisdom? (Luke 2:40)
On the other hand, how did the man, Jesus, testify of what he saw in
Heaven? (John
3:3-13)
Understanding how God inspired Scripture is
also difficult. Some conclude that any
active human involvement in the Bible’s authorship excludes inerrancy and
verbal inspiration. This splits the
inspiration of Scripture into two conflicting views. Either the human authors used their talents
to write the individual books of the Bible causing human error in the writing
while the concepts of what they wrote were inspired. Or, God dictated the Bible word for word to
the human authors overriding their individual styles to exclude human
error. This dichotomy denies God’s sovereign
ability to work out His perfect will using the talents of human beings with
imperfect abilities and motives. In
God’s sovereignty, He uses the talents of imperfect people to work out His
perfect will. God, through the Holy
Spirit’s gifts to imperfect human beings, wrote the perfect Scriptures.
While what we need to know for salvation is
simple (1
Corinthians 1:18-31), understanding salvation is
complex. Some of its simplest elements
are incomprehensible. For example, why
did Christ have to die for our sins?
It’s true that Christ laying down His life for us is the ultimate
example of love (John 15:13).
But, we cheapen Christ’s death if we end there and ignore Christ’s
atonement for our sins. To say it only
accommodates a primitive sacrificial system ignores God’s part in that system
along with its symbolic representation of Christ. But, understanding the how and why of
atonement defies our understanding. We
can only view what God did?
Failure to recognize our inability to fit all
the details about God together causes many Christians to have a distorted view
of John Calvin’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty.
Sometimes even those claiming to agree with Calvin have this
hyper-Calvinistic view. Calvin’s
emphasis on God’s sovereignty was the same as other reformers such as Martin Luther,
or even orthodox Catholicism. It was
basic to St. Augustine’s teachings.
Hyper-Calvinists don’t believe differently than Calvin on God’s
sovereignty. They exclude a part of what
Calvin believed, in order to make their doctrine more logically consistent
within the human capacity to understand.
God is no less that totally sovereign, no
less than all-knowing, all-powerful, and present everywhere. Just because we can’t understand how that
leaves room for us to be responsible for our choices and actions, doesn’t mean
it’s inconsistent with God’s character.
To think so, excludes part of God’s revelation in the Bible.
The five points in Calvinism that form the
acrostic, TULIP, describe salvation from God’s perspective. We need to balance this with the
responsibilities God expects from us.
The list below links to separate discussions for each point:
Total depravity (TBD)
Unconditional election (TBD)
Limited atonement (TBD)
Irresistible grace (TBD)
Perseverance of the saints (TBD)
©2004 Perry Vernon Webb. You may quote this page in part or the whole
as long as you
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