Sermon Tone Analysis

1. Is God knowable?

Yes, Scripture teaches this: “that we may know the One who is true” (1 John 5:20), although it also reminds us of the limited character of our knowledge (Matt 11:25).

2. In what sense do Reformed theologians maintain that God cannot be known?

a) Insofar as we can have only an incomplete understanding of an infinite being.

b) Insofar as we cannot give a definition of God but only a description.

3. On what ground do others deny God’s knowability?

On the ground that God is All-Being.

They have a pantheistic view of God.

Now, knowing presumes that the object known is not all there is, since it always remains distinct from the subject doing the knowing.

Making God the object of knowledge, one reasons, is equivalent to saying that He is not all there is, that He is limited.

4. What response is to be made against this view?

a) The objection that this view presents stems entirely from a philosophical view of God, as if He were All-Being.

This view is wrong.

V 1, p 2 God is certainly infinite, but God is not the All.

There are things that exist, whose existence is not identical with God.

b) It is certainly true that we cannot make a visible representation of God because He is a purely spiritual being.

But we also cannot do that of our own soul.

Yet we believe that we know it.

c) It is also true that we do not have an in-depth and comprehensive knowledge of God.

All our knowledge, even with regard to created things, is in part.

This is even truer of God.

We only know Him insofar as He reveals Himself, that is, has turned His being outwardly for us.

God alone possesses ideal knowledge of Himself and of the whole world, since He pervades everything with His omniscience.

d) That we are able to know God truly rests on the fact that God has made us in His own image, thus an impression of Himself, albeit from the greatest distance.

Because we ourselves are spirit, possess a mind, will, etc., we know what it means when in His Word God ascribes these things to Himself.

I. Dissonant Dramas: Paradigms for Knowing God and the World

Knowledge in the intellectual sense is often defined as “justified true belief.”

(John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God)

Jonathan Dancy outlines the traditional account of knowledge:

P

A believes that P

A’s belief that P is justified (Jonathan Dancy, Contemporary Epistemology)

What are the sources of knowledge?

Experience - empirical knowledge

All knowledge comes through experience, or sensory data, is known as empiricism.

The Mind - rational knowledge

The human mind is capable of direct apprehension of certain empirical truths - rationalism.

Revelation - Christian knowledge

All knowledge is a result of natural or special revelation.

God is the source of all knowledge.

Types of Knowledge

A Priori - to know something a priori is to know it apart from the facts of experience.

I know 2+2 is 4 immediately and my knowledge of this truth cannot be overturned.

A Posteriori - to know something on the basis of experience.

I know lemons are sour.

Dissonant Dramas: Paradigms for Knowing God and the World

For reasons explored later in the chapter, the object shifted in the modern era (with notable exceptions) from God and his works to humanity and its morality, spirituality, and experience.

Science came to refer narrowly to the empirical sciences, and religion could only be a legitimate discipline only to the extent that it was studied as a natural phenomenon of culture.

As a consequence, theology has become largely a subdiscipline of psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, or history of religions, even in universities with a Christian past.

As we will see, theologians themselves pioneered this turn to the self in the hope of making Christianity more relevant and acceptable in our world.

Note that the

The object of knowledge shifted from God and his works to humanity and its morality, spirituality, and experience.

The opening claim of this systematic theology is that the triune God is the object of theology and that this God is knowable because he has revealed himself to us.

A. Dissonant Dramas: The Nature of Reality (Metaphysics)

What is the nature of reality?

This entails what we call ontology.

The Christian view of reality is recorded in .

Pantheism and Panentheism: Overcoming Estrangement

Pantheism - all is God.

Panentheism - God is in all and God extends beyond space and time.

If one begins with a story of the cosmos in which the divine is somehow buried within us, a sacred spark or soul trapped in a body, space, and time, then the ultimate source of reality is not outside of us but inside.

God does not enter into the times and spaces that he has created; rather, all of reality emanates from this divine principle of unity like rays from the sun.

The point here is that we are trapped in a finite condition from which we are desperate to escape.

We wish to be the captain of our own ship, the master of our soul.

Atheism and Deism

To be sure, there has been a revival of deism and atheism in our culture, but these are largely modern (Enlightenment) heresies.

In our postmodern environment, radical mysticism seems more pervasive.

Turning inward for divine inspiration, many today say that they are “spiritual but not religious.”

Some writers today p 41 are announcing a shift in western culture from the Age of Belief to the Age of the Spirit.

A revival of pantheistic and panentheistic worldviews (much like the ancient heresy of Gnosticism) is evident in academic as well as more popular circles.

Perhaps the most conspicuous trait of contemporary atheists - besides their atheism - is that they’re especially fervent about two things: since and morality.

Mitch Stokes, How to be an Atheist: Why Many Skeptics Aren’t Skeptical Enough.

The real challenge for these twin cousins is grounding what appears to be a blind and optimistic faith in the two fields of science and morality.

Given their respective views of the world, how is a knowledge of science and objective morality possible?

What is the dominant view of origins today?

Evolutionary theory.

Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.

(Alvin Plantinga, Where The Conflict Really Lies, quoting George Gaylord Simpson)

Immauel Kant as three important questions: 1) Is there such a person as God? 2) Do we human beings have significant freedom? 3) Can human beings expect life after death?

Naturalism says there is no God, that human freedom is dicey at best, and there is no immortality.

Naturalism tells us what reality is ultimately like, where we fit into the universe, and how we are related to other creatures, and hot it happens that we came to be.

WORLDVIEW PARADIGMS

Pantheism

All is divine.

Panentheism

All is within divinity; the divine and worldly principles are mutually dependent.

Deism

God created the world but does not intervene miraculously within it.

Atheism

God does not exist.

In sharp contrast, the biblical narrative tells the story of the triune God who created all of reality (visible and invisible) out of nothing for his own glory, the creation of humankind in his image and covenant, the transgression of that covenant, and the surprising announcement of his gracious promise to send a Savior.

The “scarlet thread” of the promised Redeemer runs through every book of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation: Jesus Christ is the unifying center of God’s saving revelation

In both paradigms, nothing strange or unfamiliar is allowed to disrupt the sovereignty of the self, which is often identified as autonomy.

As different as these paradigms are in many ways, they are co-conspirators in the suppression of the knowledge of God and his relationship with creatures.

Above all else we must maintain the significance between the Creator-creature distinction

It is, therefore, the Protestant rather than the Romanist who may be expected to challenge the wisdom of the world.

It is the genius of Protestantism to make the God of the Scriptures the final reference point of all predication.

In Protestantism man is really taken to be the creature of God.

Man is not thought of as participant with God in some principle of being that is above and exemplified in both.

Protestantism does, in contrast with Romanism, make the Creator-creature distinction basic in its thought.