Mystery in Theology

There can sometimes be a hasty appeal to mystery in Christian theology. “Oh, it’s a mystery!” can be an excuse for intellectual laziness.

 

Or the appeal to mystery can be misplaced. It can be used as a cover for faulty logic. A real contradiction in theology would be a problem. We cannot say that X and not X in the same sense. This would not be a mystery but a nonsense.

 

But mystery is inevitable if we are to speak of the true and living God. Theological mystery is a feature not a bug. A God who could be comprehended by my intellect would not be a God worth worshipping.

 

Duby puts it nicely when he says that the twin realities of divine transcendence and divine communication mean that our talk of God must and can navigate between triumphalism and agnosticism[1].

 

God is not a concept to be analysed but a personal being to be known. We aim not merely to know about God but, by his grace, to know him. We must not only speak of God but to God. All God-talk should become prayer and praise. Theology is for doxology and praxis. We speak of God and to God and walk with him. Paul prays for the “knowledge… spiritual understanding and wisdom” of the Colossians “in order that [they] may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way” (1:9-10).

 

Drawing on the work of Gabriel Marcel and Jacques Maritain, Thomas Weinandy argues that God is not a problem to be solved (as in the sciences) “coldly dissected and systematically analyzed so as to produce complete and comprehensive knowledge.”[2] Rather, the mystery is to be discerned and clarified. As for Moses who has the divine name revealed to him at the Burning Bush, “knowing God more fully, God has become an even greater mystery.”[3] Similarly, Pope John Paul II said: “In short, the knowledge proper to faith does not destroy the mystery; it only reveals it more, showing how necessary it is for people’s lives.”[4]

 

Which is not to say that all is merely mysterious ignorance.

 

The apophatic tradition in theology (the way of negation, saying what God is not) is important. God is not created, nor bodily, nor mutable, nor limited by time or space. To say these things is to advance our knowledge. God is not lacking any perfection proper to him. But, ah, we have introduced a positive notion: perfections. In fact, Thomas claims that: “the idea of negation is always based on an affirmation: as evinced by the fact that every negative proposition is proved by an affirmative: wherefore unless the human mind knew something positively about God, it would be unable to deny anything about him.”[5]

 

Negations can define the mystery. They clarify the mystery making it more precise. And they deepen it. The mystery of God could not be more profound.

 

But God’s clear and sufficient revelation gives us true (though not exhaustive) knowledge of him. All that the Bible affirms of God is true, but such knowledge is accommodated to us and must be interpreted.

 

Calvin famously wrote that when the Word of God ascribes “mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet”, “God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children[.] Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his proper height.”[6]

 

We must believe the Bible but we must do more than merely repeat it. We must explain and integrate and apply it. We want to show what it means and implies. The Westminster Confession of Faith is right that: “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (WCF 1.6, emphasis added).

 

On the basis of special revelation we can confidently affirm that God is good and holy and love and wise and powerful and so on. He is Father, Son and Spirit. He is one.

 

Craig Carter encourages the contemplation of “revelation in order to gain knowledge of the nature of God. One is studying God, not to master or control God by knowing his essence, but rather in a humble and contemplative way by being present to him and reverently focusing our attention on him. Understood in this way, theology is very close to worship.”[7]

 

And yet we must always remember we are on holy ground when we speak of God. His goodness and love are not just human goodness and love writ large. God is not just the most powerful being we can imagine.

 

Arguably all language is analogical (rather than univocal). The word is not the thing. And my marks on a page or screen or soundwaves and the chemical reactions in our brains and our concepts of those things are not a straightforward one to one identity. There is always similarity and difference.

 

As James Robson has said: “In reality there is always in the use of a word a component of “like” and a component of “unlike.” “Univocal” and “equivocal” are labels describing ends of an axis, rather than inhabited locations. Usage of words is always analogical, since no two understandings, no two situations are identical. There is, within analogical usage, a spectrum from more nearly univocal to more nearly equivocal.”[8]

 

In a sense all creaturely knowledge is limited and mysterious because to know something fully would be to know it in relation to all things, which would be to be omniscient.

 

Yet it is particularly important to remember that all talk of God is analogical[9]. Language is creaturely and does not exhaust the Creator. God is not a creature or even a being in the universe like other creatures. He is the unique uncreated creator. He is Spirit, without body or parts (he is simple, not compounded). All God’s attributes are of his essence. He exists necessarily and from himself. He is timelessly eternal and unchangeable. Clearly to predicate anything of God is different from attributing the same thing to a creature, who can only ever have goodness or power or whatever attribute in a limited and creaturely way.

 

“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in the closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:18)

 

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[1] God in Himself, p233

[2] Does God Suffer? p31

[3] p32f

[4] Fides et Ratio, quoted in Does God Suffer? p36

[5] https://isidore.co/aquinas/QDdePotentia7.htm#7:5. See further the discussion in Duby, God In Himself, p51f

[6] Institutes 1.13.1

[7] Contemplating God with the Great Tradition p233

[8] J.E. Robson, 'Forgotten Dimensions of Holiness' Horizons in Biblical Theology 33 (2011) 121-146 pp128-9

[9] A classic treatment of this is to be found in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, q. 13, arts. 1-12 esp. art. 10. For further discussion and bibliography on theology and analogy see Duby, God in Himself, chapter 5.