Speaking of God (apologetically): yes and no

My non-Christian correspondent responded to my 10 points on the problem of evil, so here are some more thoughts arising:

I stand by what I said in point 1.

(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).

I didn’t mean it to be an endorsement of strong / thorough-going apophaticism.

A soft kind of apophatic theology / via negativa, which says what God is not (immortal, immutable, impassible, independent, uncreated, immense, incomprehensible, infallible, atemporal, aspacial, incorporeal etc.) is extremely helpful.

But we can also make true statements about God because he has clearly revealed himself in human words in the Bible. Our statements about God can be true and adequate but not exhaustive or entirely precise.

God’s revelation involves accommodation: he graciously condescends to describe himself to us in “creaturely” language that we creatures might understand something of the creator, rather as we might explain something to a 5 year old.

All language about God is analogical not univocal. God is a rock (he is strong, stable and reliable) but he is not a rock (he is not an inanimate lump of minerals). God is a lion, but not in the same way that Leo the Lion is a lion. God’s power is not exactly like human power (e.g. he is never tyrannical) and his power is one perspective on the simple God (considered from God's point of view his power is his love, wisdom, goodness, pity etc).

The fact that God is three persons (the Son reflects the Father but is not the Father) and has made us in his image gives a deep theological basis for analogical knowledge of God.

To predicate anything of God is less than straightforward. For example, to say “God is…” sounds like a statement about the present tense, whereas God is atemporal and eternal, so he has all his attributes in that mode, something that its not easy to capture in English.

Deuteronmoy 29:29 is a helpful verse: “The secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

Its worth noticing that the verse implies that God’s revelation is given that we might obey it and live in the light of it, rather than to answer all our questions, to satisfy our intellectual curiosity or for the sake of argument.

God is the creator (the potter) and we are the creatures (lumps of clay). Though he has graciously revealed himself to us, accommodated himself to our weakness and bears with us, he is not ultimately answerable to us. We need to remember our place and watch our words when it come to questioning God. God is and will be the just judge of all the earth. We are not!

The Christian approach is “faith seeking understanding”, not, “God, answer all my questions and then I’ll (condescend to) believe in you (if I reckon you’ve done a good enough job to convince me)”.

Nevertheless, the Christian should explain and defend the faith to non-Christians. The aim here is to show the coherence of the Christian faith and ways in which it can be seen to correspond to reality as we experience it, while showing the incoherence of other world views and their lack of ability to explain the world. If the non-Christian is to accept the reasonable revealed faith of the Christian, God must open his eyes and change his heart.