Posts Tagged ‘Knowing God’

When Appeals to Mystery Mask Intellectual Laziness

Unknown-4Appeals to mystery by so-called emergent Christians was rampant when postmodernism was all the rage. The knowability of God was swallowed up by the mystery of God. “We can’t know anything definitive about God, He (or She, or It) is wrapped in a shroud of mystery,” we were told. God is “beyond the veil” of human knowledge. As a result, we were to embrace the mysterious as we worshipped a God of our own experience and, all to often, our own image.

How ought we think about God? (part 2)

In my previous post, I mentioned four sure-fire ways to get it wrong; four ways to think about God that are ultimately incomplete as we try to align our concept of God as close as humanly possible to the reality of God. Still each of the approaches mentioned do hint at a more robust approach to modeling God, an approach that is best encapsulated in Anselm’s motto: faith seeking understanding.

Knowledge of God & Knowledge of Self

Can we really know ourselves if we don’t know God? Can we really know God if we don’t know ourselves? John Calvin doesn’t think so. Or how about: can we be happy without God? Can we flourish in light of our nature apart from loving God? Again, Calvin doesn’t think so. I think Calvin is right.