Solving The Mystery would be a problem

 

Dr Thomas G. Weinandy (OFM Cap)’s book, Does God Suffer? (T & T Clark / University of Notre Dame Press, 2000) (Spoiler: no) is brilliant.

The chapter on theological method (2: ‘Theology – Problems and Mysteries’, p27ff) is excellent and worth reading even if you have impassibility all sown up. He has useful things to say about theological posture, prayerful faith seeking understanding in community with the faithful and in continuity with Scripture and the Great Tradition.

There can be a kind of doctrinal development as the church uses reason to clarify and defend the deposit of truth, confronting new problems, clarifying her faith, seeking to understand and live the gospel more ardently as new times and places are discipled, and showing how the truths of revelation fit together.

Drawing on Gabriel Marcel’s The Mystery of Being (1950), Weinandy argues that God is never a problem to be solved but a transcendent mystery. We do not master revelation but are mastered by it. We cannot coldly dissect God to arrive at comprehensive and systematic analysis of him. Much can be said which is true and helpful, but our understanding of God will never be total or final. There is always more to be contemplated and articulated. The theologians’ goal, then, is not to solve the mystery (as if it is a problem that would go away – QED!) but rather to clarify the mystery – GLORY! At the “end” of the theological enterprise, we will be left with a deeper mystery – a sharper more profound insight into the inexhaustible God.

Perhaps God chuckled (impassibly) as he revealed himself to Moses as I AM WHO I AM (Exodus 3). Moses knew God better, but the Mystery was greater not less.

Weinandy says we should learn a primary lesson about the nature of revelation and theology: “The more God reveals who he is and the more we come to a true and authentic knowledge of who he is, the more mysterious he becomes. Theology, as faith seeking understanding, helps us come to a deeper and fuller understanding of the nature of God and his revelation, but this growth is in coming to know that mystery of God is not the comprehension of the mystery.” (p33)

Arius thought the problem of Son and Father could be solved. Athanasius clarified the Triune Mystery.