Can We Know God? | A Response To The Post-Modern Church

Posted on 19. Mar, 2010 by K. Tanner Barfield in The Church

I. Introduction

Slowly but surely, in this day and age we are losing touch with the importance of true theology and true doctrine. Everyday the church moves closer and closer to a negative outlook on the Christian knowing God. Those who put an emphasis on the  importance of right doctrine and right theology are seen as divisive, big headed, academic, argumentative, etc. The church seems to be completely comfortable with saying humility and love is being tolerant of many different ideas and perspectives of scripture.

When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment he replied:

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” -Mark 12:30

The Post-Modern church replies:

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and check your  mind at the door”

II. What is Post-Modernism

When we talk about post-modernism we are talking about how our society has come to understand and explain truth. Society as a whole has gone through many stages of understanding truth. We went through an era where what we understood of truth relied on explaining things with the supernatural, the Egyptians had a god for just about everything just as did the Greeks, and the Romans and a number of other societies. In the turn of 19th century there was an emergence of something called The Enlightenment, where things were explained with science and philosophy. Scientist, sociologist, psychologist, etc. said that this movement would end religion because they now knew that there was an exact explanation for everything. Come to find out, to explain everything is to explain away explanation itself.

This brings us to the current movement, post-modernism, or there is no absolute truth, it’s all true. Shirley MacLaine is a guru in this new age movement and she explains post-modernism well when she says, “It’s true if you believe it and that goes for anything.”

III. God Disagrees With Post-Modernism

Because we have the Word, we know that God does not agree with the post-modern movement and that Scripture is absolute truth.

1. What We Do Not Know About God

“My thoughts are not your thoughts nor my ways your ways.” -Isaiah 55

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! -Romans 11:33

God has not revealed everything to us. We do not know God quantitatively and exhaustively. He tells us through Moses that if we did understand him in this way that it would KILL US! This is in regards to his externalities and his glory. We also do not understand him and see him the way that he sees himself. This is in regards to how he exists in three persons all at the same time in the trinity. This and among an infinite number of other things God is incomprehensible for sure.

2. What We Do Know About God

Romans 1 says that God has made himself clearly known. He has done this through the general revelation of creation and that he has also done this through the special revelation of his scripture. Because of this, we know that God is sovereign. We know that all things are created by him, through him and for him. Everything that is in the bible is God revealing truths about himself to us so this list is obviously not exhaustive for the sake of time and the fact that we can open the bible and answer this question.

IV. How the Post-Modern Church Has Perverted God’s Incomprehensibility

The post-modern church is not wrong in saying that there are things about God that we cannot be certain on, what they are wrong about is allowing that statement to persuade them to say there is no absolute truth about God.

1. Taking It To The Extreme

We all know that naturally in our flesh we are inclined to take things to the extreme. I truly believe that post-modernism in the church is simply that, an extremism of truth that there are things about God that are incomprehensible and a direct response to the extremism of knowing God. On one side you have a church that says there is no absolute truth. They say that because learning, studying, and knowing doctrine can create pride that it’s an act of humility to not involve themselves with these things.

2. A Shroud Called Humility

This abandonment of theology and doctrine and masking it with humility is defined by John MacArthur as “The Hermeneutics of Humility”. And this “humility” sounds like this:

“Well, I am much too humble to say that my interpretation of scripture is right, and I am way to humble to say that your interpretation of the scripture is wrong.”

Do you see how damaging this can be to a church? With this perspective, no one holds another accountable. Iron does not sharpen iron. Whatever the preacher says is truth to him so “let’s not call him out” even if it does not agree with scripture, because “we don’t want to be prideful”. It makes me sick to my stomach to even admit that this is actually happening in our churches right now as I type this.

The truth of this perspective is that these churches are covering up their unrighteousness; laziness and pride, with a word associated with righteousness; humility. They are lazy because instead of battling their prideful, divisive flesh with unceasing  prayer that God might reveal himself to them in humility, they abandon a pursuit to know him altogether, it’s a cop out. It’s hard to know God and pursue humility at the same time, but that does not give us an excuse to abandon knowing the doctrines.

V. How God Intends For Us To Handle His Revelation

The truth is there is a right interpretation of scripture and a wrong interpretation of scripture

1. God Intends For Us to Take Ownership Of What He Has Revealed

I believe that Deuteronomy 29:29 defines how we are to understand the incomprehensibility and the comprehensibility of God all at once.

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, But the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” -Deuteronomy 29:29

This beautiful piece of scripture tells us that there are secrets of God, there is a mystery, and they belong to Him. It also tells us though, that what he has revealed to us is given to us, that it is ours, we have ownership of his revelation. Isn’t that amazing? Praise God for the knowledge of Him that he has entrusted to us, that he says we have ownership of!

2. God Intends For Us to Proclaim Him Unapologetically

In Romans, Paul provides preaches truths about God without regard to the worldly consequence. Paul understands that God is absolutely knowable, but that what we know is minute compared to all that there is to know about Him. He glorifies God for the revelation that He provides and marvels at what is not revealed. Paul spends an immense amount of time in Romans 1-10 proclaiming some hard to swallow truths about our God. These things are still, to this day, hard to swallow. He challenges the world view with verses like:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” -Romans 1:16

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:23

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. -Romans 5:6

“For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” -Romans 6:14

“For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion but on God, who has mercy.” -Romans 9:15-16

WOW! That’s truth being preached unapologetically.

3. God Intends For Us to Have a Reverence for What We Do Not Understand

Paul does not just close the book here though, he does not say “OK that is all there is to know about God, thank you for your attention”. No, we reach Romans 11 and Paul says this:

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” -Romans 11:33-35

Paul reaches the end of himself and simply worships God for the truth of his incomprehensibility. Do you see that this is how we should be. We don’t close the book because he is incomprehensible but we also do not close the book because we think we know it all.

4. God Intends Us to Know Him with Humility

If humility is problem, saying there is no absolute truth is not the answer. We get into the Word and we learn about our God. We understand what Christ has done for us. If pride rears its ugly head in all of this, we fall prostrate in front of the throne of grace and plead with God in prayer that He would humble us. We do this because we know that every bit of knowledge that we do have has been granted to us graciously by God. Our knowledge is limited because it is subject to God’s control. He is sovereign over all things and we are not. We have nothing to be prideful in or to boast about. Do not abandon doctrine, instead battle your prideful flesh with prayer. So, we are not talking about the kind of knowledge that puffs up, or is divisive, or hardheaded, but a knowledge that is loving.

“If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or [whether] I speak of myself.” -John 7:17

VI. Conclusion

So God is knowable. Scripture tells us a vast amount of things about him. There’s no slight agnosticism in the Bible. He did not create us and go hide out somewhere waiting for us to discover Him. He has given us creation. He has given us the Bible. So we need not apologize for daring to say things about, if God has revealed it, then we can say it and say it with certainty and assurance. Whatever he hasn’t revealed we do not know, and what we do know he has graciously revealed to us.

Tags: calvary chapel, doctrine, scripture twisting, Theology, watered-down preaching, word of God