“He that fills heaven and earth cannot be contained in anything; he fills the understandings of men, the understandings of angels, but is comprehended by neither; it is a rashness to think to find out any bounds of God; there is no measuring of an infinite Being. God sits above the cherubim (Ezekiel 10:1), above the fulness, above the brightness, not only of a human, but a created understanding. Nothing is more present than God, yet nothing more hid; he is light, and yet obscurity;" his perfections are visible, yet unsearchable; we know there is an infinite God, but it surpasseth the compass of our minds. What is the reason we comprehend not many, nay, most things in the world? partly from the, excellency of the object, and partly from the imperfection of our understandings. We cannot know him (Job 36:26); he fills the understanding as he fills heaven and earth; yet is above the understanding as he is above heaven and earth. He is known by faith, enjoyed by love, but comprehended by no mind. Charnock, Stephen. The Existence and Attributes of God . Kindle Edition.
“An Introduction to Systematic Theology” by John Frame’s: list of the discontinuities and continuities between our thoughts and God's.
Discontinuities - The ways in which divine and human thought differs.
Continuities
“An Introduction to Systematic Theology” by John Frame’s: list of the discontinuities and continuities between our thoughts and God's.
Discontinuities - The ways in which divine and human thought differs.
- God's thoughts are uncreated and eternal; man's are created and temporal.
- God's thoughts determine what comes to pass, an expression of his Lordship. Man's thoughts do not determine what comes to pass.
- God's thoughts are self-attesting— simply true because he thinks them. Our thoughts are not self-attesting. They are not necessarily true.
- God's thoughts always bring glory and honor to himself. Man's thoughts are blessed only by virtue of God's covenantal presence with us.
- God's thoughts are the originals. Man's thoughts are at best only copies. God knows everything exhaustively without any revelation. Man only knows by virtue of revelation.
- God has not chosen to reveal all truth to us. We do not know all facts about God or about creation.
- God knows without the use of organs of perception, or of reason. Man must use both. God reveals truth to man by means of accommodation. Man does not know as God knows.
- God's thoughts constitute a perfect wisdom. Man's thoughts are not perfectly organized. At times he is unable to relate some revealed truths to others coherently, and thus sees some things as "apparently contradictory."
- Even what God has revealed is beyond our comprehension (cf. Psalm 139:6; Psalm 145:3; Psalm 147:5; Isaiah 55:9). The more we know, the more our sense of wonder.
Continuities
- Divine and human thought are bound to the same standard of truth— the divine norm.
- Divine and human thought may be about the same things or objects, and may affirm the same truths, while maintaining the discontinuities.
- Both God and man may have true beliefs.
- Just as God is omniscient, so man's knowledge has certain universal aspects. All things are potentially knowable by man, though man cannot know as God knows. Man can never know anything exhaustively.
- God knows all things by knowing himself and his decrees. Man knows by receiving impressions from outside, which must enter our minds; if man is to know, he must know what is within his mind.
- As God's knowledge is self-attesting, so human knowledge must involve norms that he adopts. The norms originate in God, and thus proclaim his authority. Man must choose the ones that are truly authoritative.
- God's thoughts are ultimate creators. Human thought is also creative, in a secondary sense.
- All our knowledge of God is from and through God, grounded in his revelation, that is, in objective reason.
- In order to convey the knowledge of him to his creatures, God accommodates himself to their powers of comprehension.
- Our knowledge of God is always only analogical in character and, therefore, only a finite image, a faint likeness and creaturely impression of the perfect knowledge that God has of himself.
- Finally, our knowledge of God is nevertheless true, pure, and trustworthy because it is founded in God’s own self-consciousness, it archetype, and his self-revelation in the cosmos.
