Following up on my post regarding spiritual pilgrimages, and how the emerging church views “journey.” It seems to many emergents that journey is more important than the destination. There is a desire to know truth, but it seems like finding it definitively is something that is discouraged. In Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) Kevin DeYoung wrote:
The emergent agnosticism about truly knowing and understanding anything about God seems to be pious humility. It seems to honor God’s immensity, but it actually undercuts His sovereign power. Postmoderns harbor such distrust for language and disbelieve God’s ability to communicate truth to human minds that they effectively engage in what (D.A.) Carson calls “the gagging of God.” For example, (Dave) Tomlinson writes (in The Post-Evangelical), “To say Scripture is the word of God is to employ a metaphor. God cannot be thought of as literally speaking words, since they are an entirely human phenomenon that could never prove adequate as a medium for the speech of an infinite God.” In a similar vein, (Rob) Bell writes (from Velvet Elvis), “Our words aren’t absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about him.”
Such statements fly in the face of redemptive history and nearly every page of Scripture. The God of the Bible is nothing if He is not a God who speaks to His people. To be sure, none of us ever infinitely understand God in a nice, neat package of affirmation and denials, but we can know Him truly, both personally and propositionally. God can speak. He can use human language to communicate truth about Himself that is accurate and knowable, without ceasing to be God because we’ve somehow got Him all figured out.
God has revealed what He wants us to know about Himself. Even with all that is revealed in Scripture their is still mystery. I don’t fully understand the hypostatic union of Christ, but I believe that Jesus came to earth fully God and fully man, (John 1;14; Philippians 2:7-9). I don’t have complete understand of God being triune, but He has revealed Himself as such, (Matthew 3:13-17). There is tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility which will always perplex us, (John 6).
This isn’t to even mention that God knows everything there was to know, is to know, and that will be known. He knows what will never be. Huh? He is God. There will be mystery, but He has revealed Himself as omniscient that gives me comfort and peace. Also He is eternal, He existed before there was anything. Before matter, before nothingness… there was God! The Bible reveals Him as such, but to dwell on it long enough will keep you up at night. I can go on and on.
Even though we have the four Gospels there is much we don’t know about Jesus’ life and ministry on earth. The apostle John wrote at the end of his gospel:
Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written, (John 21:25, ESV).
But events were written… stories were told… He had some of His teaching recorded. We know about Jesus what God wants us to know about Jesus. He wants us to know Him and His plan of salvation and His purpose for His bride on earth. The apostle Paul wrote concerning God’s word…
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work, (2 Timothy 3:16-17, ESV).
We do have a God we can know who desires to know us as well!