Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. (I Cor 13:12)
You can know God. That is the whole point of the Bible. Yet you will never really know God, for He is God.
I do not contradict myself, and I believe that life gives ample examples for why I don’t. Consider. Imagine a neurologist talking about her knowledge of the brain — neurons firing, the functions for different parts, how it will behave to certain medications, etc. Imagine then that same neurologist saying that we really do not understand the brain. It is a mystery. You know what she means each time. Or imagine a husband saying that he knows that his wife will order the catfish platter at a restaurant or that she will chew out that manager who would not let her return the dress. You can picture the husband saying, “I know Marianne.” Now imagine that same husband later saying, “Marianne is a mystery. I don’t understand her.” No sensible person accuses him of contradicting himself. You know what he means each time.
Neurologists can understand much about brains without understanding everything, and husbands can know much about their wives without knowing fully what makes them tick. We can know without knowing everything. We can know brains and wives because they provide us with data that we can comprehend. We find them to be mysteries because the data is complex, and not all of the data can be seen. That is how knowing God is.
God has chosen to reveal Himself through the Bible. Because He has done so, we have data on God. We can, thus, understand some things about God and even know Him personally as a wife does a husband. But God has also chosen not to reveal the full picture. The Bible is self-confessedly an incomplete revelation of God. For our purposes, it is more than adequate, but God is bigger than what you see in the pages of the Bible. When you think about it, this is common sense. God is infinite. How can you cram everything about Him into a book? Yet we do have the book, so we have something; and when we look at that something, we find it to be complex. The data we do have on God is not always neatly categorized, but this, too, should be no surprise. If brains and wives are complex, how much more ought their Creator be?
Therefore, we can know God but never fully, and only where He reveals. This means that we are right to try to make sense of God through prayer, through reading the Scriptures, or through a systematic approach to theology like The Summa or The Institutes. God invites us to put the pieces of Him together in some coherent fashion. We are wrong, however, if in our efforts to understand God, we figure Him out. Do your best to understand Him, but remember…you are often going to fail. You are dealing with God.
We are also wrong if we never get to know Him personally, for personal, relational knowledge of God is the reason why God gives the intellectual. He wants us, not just our heads. If God had to choose between a three-year-old girl with little understanding but a simple love for Jesus and a college professor with books on the New Testament but a cold heart, he would take the child a million times over. The intellectual is good and important, but it must serve the relationship. It is to be fuel for the engine of the heart. If it is not, it is merely a lump of coal.
