The Limits of Knowledge

Knowledge has limits. There are many things we do not know. It is a sign of wisdom and understanding to acknowledge our limits.

Not only are do we as individuals have limits but mankind has limits. We are not unlimited in our ability to understand. We cannot know the mind of God or many hidden things.

We see often through a glass darkly. We seek knowledge of God but often we must admit our knowledge is partial and incomplete.

We need the humility in life to acknowledge our limits. It is often why we do not know what to pray. We think we know what is right but often we are too limited to see the big picture.

We often ask why God did not respond as we wish, but we should ask why we doubt the wisdom of the eternal all powerful God.

Reason, Emotion, and Submission

To me it seems the two fastest ways to get to bad theology is through reason and emotion.

Reason. Reason tends to go wrong in that we really aren’t as reasonable as we think we are. Also reason believes that it is capable of understanding. Much of theology must be accepted by faith as when we think of the eternal, the infinite as finite creatures we are often left with mystery. Reason through its own pride often acts to try to crush the mystery when it should not be and creates other mystery where it should also not be.

Emotion. Emotion tends to corrupt theology even faster than reason. To say by emotion that God cannot do something on emotion gets into trouble fast. Emotion is suspect because it is our emotion. Starting with emotion is starting with man. Man is fallen and does not know the truth. To start with human emotion and thus work toward theological truth is self defeating.

Submission. Submission is the only good way to do theology. If you accept the bible as God’s word than all answers to faith must begin and end in it. To use reason apart from scripture is futile. We need to let the voice of scripture be our voice of reason. To use emotion to interpret theology before our emotional understanding is firmly tied into the very spirit of the scripture is equally self defeating.

To me this setup seems the only logical one. But I constantly meet people who their own reason or emotion is higher than the reason or emotion contained in the bible.

Personally I tend to err on the side of reason. I should take heed of Calvin’s response of what God was doing before creation. "He was creating hell for the curious."

Philosophy Class Discussion of the Problem of Evil

We spent a whole class period in Philosphy discussing the problem of evil.  How can we preserve God's forknowledge without ascribing evil to him.  The problem has always bothered me but after class I nailed it down in such a way that I feel it will never bother me again.

God is all knowing and forknows all history.  To toss these things aside would violate scripture's message.  Just because I do not see how the two can fit together does not affect my faith that the two are in harmony.  I will have faith that these two fit together even if they do not seem to.  I shall believe so that one day I shall understand.  If you look at good Christian theology by good Christain theologians you will find that much of it ends in mystery.  The trinity is the perfect example of this.   When the infinite meets the limited mystery naturally occurs.  It is a terrible mistake in theology to use reason to try to explain away mystery.

As Kierkegaard says we never get farther than faith.