Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Mysterious people, places and things provoke the curious nature of humanity compelled to solve puzzles and unravel things that are hidden. Is God mysterious? Has the self-revealed God revealed all of Himself? Where is God on your mystery meter? A short answer is nowhere is sight.
First of all, God is not a thing or cosmic force. Contrary to Aristotle, Spinoza, and Tillich’s perspective that God is less than perfect by the idea of personhood, Emil Brunner would argue that God speaks, acts, is rational and sentient, all of which points to personhood. God is a person, a real person who interacts with people. However, belief in this personal God is laden with paradoxes, enigmas, and mysteries. The fuzzy borders of paradox can make you uncomfortable in the search for neatly tied up doctrine.
Limited language constructs do not have an appropriate pronoun for God and typically present God as “He,” but God, with deference to the male pronoun, is genderless. God acts fatherly, motherly, friendly, or not, in different contexts. In so doing, does God feel pain? Does this challenge to the impassibility of God challenge His holiness and perfection? Anselm and Thomas Aquinas hedged on this issue leaning toward the impassibility of God. Moltmann, Kitamori, and Luther would resoundingly say yes, God suffers. Their view points to Calvary as verifying that both Son and Father painfully suffered separation. We can weigh in on one side or another based on biblical persuasion, but honestly—a sense of mystery still looms over the issue. Who can know the depths of God?
God is an “omni” God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent), yet paradoxes exist here too. God is omnipotent but chooses self-limitation, a concept advanced by theologians Forsyth, Gore, and Bonhoeffer. William Ockham distinguishes between the absolute and ordained power of God leading to the notion of “divine self-limitation.” God is also omniscient. He knows how our lives will proceed, yet God gave us free will. It begs the question of whether all the events in our lives are destiny or not. How are free will and God’s sovereignty reconciled? Deeply paradoxical is the issue of theodicy—how is it that a good God allows evil in the lives of believers? God is omnipresent and omnibenevolent, which means that the all-good God is also present in places where evil abounds and “grace does much more abound.” The Creator made all things good, but Lucifer’s becoming thoroughly evil still mystifies thinkers. Theologians have quibbled over this for millennia.
Believing in a good God who is intimately involved with His creation requires believers to have tolerance for enigmas and mysteries. I contend that they are only paradoxical to humans having limited view of the visible and invisible worlds, not God. Paradox distilled as incomprehensible requires believers to have faith in a supernatural existence that often supersedes human rationality, and to persistently believe in the goodness and faithfulness of God.
Humanity comes in contact with the supernatural and finds that earthly logic is insufficient to comprehend what makes God who He is and not what we create Him to be. Experiences with the supernatural power of God in the lives of people (signs, wonders, miracles, manifestations of supernatural gifts) affirm the existence of qualities beyond intellectual reasoning. Even so, faith does not require one to relinquish the capacity to think, reason, or question. Intellect is the gatekeeper “accurately handling” truth (2 Timothy 2:15). Knowledge and faith are not enemies.
Faith, therefore, is the only currency that reconciles the natural and supernatural worlds. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).” Faith—that God-given, intangible, and mysterious substance—is the only currency that pleases God. “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).”
At the end of the day, it seems that paradoxes are best put in the faith category of Deuteronomy 29:29. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law (Deuteronomy 29:29).” Quite frankly, I find the mysteriousness of God appealing. It not only affirms His personhood, it tells us that there is always more to discover.
Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible version.
Copyright 2016 by Eva Benevento. All rights reserved.