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The best we can ever get when we're talking about a transcendent, eternal, infinite being is language that describes him in ways in which he is like. But no metaphor, no analogy can ever contain or grasp him in its fullness.

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One of the ways we describe God is by talking about his incommunicable attributes, those attributes which he alone possesses. For example, we say that God is omniscient. He knows everything there is to know. He's omnipotent, he's all powerful. But our understanding of those things is limited by our humanness. Today, on this Friday edition of Renewing youg Mind, RC Sproul moves to a different section of the Westminster Confession of Faith to examine what we can know about God. But don't forget until midnight tonight you can request Truths We Confess, a significant single volume overview of the Westminster Confession. When you donate at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343, I'll be sure to remind you again at the end of the episode. Well, here's Dr. Sproul.

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God is infinite in his perfections, infinite in his being. Now, whatever else you and I are, we are finite. And John Calvin once had a very famous slogan that went like this in Latin, finitum non capox infinitum. The finite cannot contain or grasp the infinite. If I have a glass of water which has a finite volume to it, I cannot put in it an infinite amount of water, because a finite receptacle can't hold an infinite amount of anything. And as finite creatures, we can never grasp God fully in his infinitude. And even in heaven, where so much more about God will be revealed to us, and the way in which our struggling understanding now is affected by ongoing sin will be improved. And that mirror that we look at now darkly will be so much more bright when we step across the threshold into heaven. Even in heaven, even in our own glorification, we will remain creatures. We will still be finite. And even in heaven, we will not have a totally comprehensible knowledge of God. And that's why one of the most important elements that we'll see later is this doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God, which means that no creature can ever fully and exhaustively understand God now because of that distinction between the creature as finite and the Creator as infinite. When we meet this crisis of how do you bridge the gap? How can the finite understand anything about the infinite? And how can the finite say anything meaningful about the infinite? And one of the Great controversies of the 20th century in theology was. Was called the God Talk controversy. And at the heart of that was that popular movement called the Death of God theology. That made Time magazine and so on. And behind the scenes, what was going on There was this debate about the adequacy of human language, since it is finite to speak meaningfully about God. And so that crisis raised all kinds of philosophical questions. They weren't new. These were questions that the church has struggled with for centuries upon centuries upon centuries. And we look and examine the kind of language that we use to describe God. And one of the ways in which we use words and human language to define God or describe God is by what's called the way of negation, or what's called technically the via negationis or the via negativa. The Neoplatonic philosophers, particularly Plotinus, argued the point that as soon as you say anything positive about God, you've missed him. If you say, affirm anything direct about God, you're not talking about God, you're talking about something else, because God in his essence is unknowable. And all you can do is circle about God. But you can never land anywhere concretely without falsifying your understanding of God. And so Plotinus said, the only legitimate way to speak about God is by this way of negation, which is describing God by saying not what he is, but what he isn't. Now, concretely, we can talk like this. I can walk over here and say, you see this candle? What do you say? You see the candle? Well, folks, this candle is not God. Ah, well, okay. Well, now we know what God isn't. He's not this candle. And we look at this lectern. I say God's not the lectern. Look at me. Look in my eyes. You're not looking into the eyes of God, because I'm not God either. So I can go and I can begin to cross off the list all possible contenders for who God is. But Plotinus is saying, that's all you can ever do. Now, on the one hand, we don't share this massive skepticism with Plotinus to say that all you can ever do is speak about what God isn't. Yet at the same time, we recognize that there are times in which using the way of negation is valuable, because the way of negation points us to the difference between ourselves and God. And by pointing at that difference, it points to the grandeur of God, his majesty, the way in which he transcends what we are. Now, one of the most common Terms that we use of God by way of negation. Is that term infinite. Because what the term infinite means is what? Not finite. So all we're doing is saying. However we see anything that has bounds and limits to it. Don't attribute that to God. Because God goes beyond any limitation of space or time or whatever perfection. Where all of us are limited spatially, temporally. And with respect to our being. As far as perfection is concerned. So when we speak of God's being infinite. We're using the method of describing him that we call the way of negation. Other examples would be, we say he is immutable. What does that mean? That he is without mutation. All creatures that we know of are open to change. Every one of us has changed since we walked in this room tonight. If for no other way. In which we're a few moments older than we were before we came in. And with that aging process. Came changes in our molecular structure and so on. And that's true of every created entity. Every creature is mutable. God does not share that quality with created things. He never changes. He is immutable. But when we say he's immutable. We're using the language of negation. Now, other ways in which the church described speaking about God. Was speaking about God. In what was called the univocal sense. Or univocal sense. Meaning that whatever we say about God. Has the same meaning with respect to him as it means with respect to us. If I say that my arm is strong. And when I say that God is strong. The word strong means exactly the same thing. What's wrong with that? The problem is that God's strength transcends my strength. And his strength is of a higher level or order of strength than I enjoy. But it's not totally dissimilar to us. There is some similarity between the word strength when applied to us. And the word strength that is applied to God. And so we say, well, we understand strength at one level. At the human creaturely level. And if we put a little prefix on there. We get an idea about God. And the prefix we put there is omni. We talk about potency, which is power. And then we speak of God as being omnipotent. Humans, creatures have limited finite power. No creature has all power. Only God is omnipotent. Only God is omnipotent. And so this is the way of ascendancy. Or the way of eminence that we speak of. Whereby we project powers or ideas that we experience in this world. And project them to the ultimate degree. And Then affirm them about God. And the reason we can do this is because we believe, and this we'll get into more fully later, that our language about God, though it is not univocal, it's not a one to one correspondence, neither is it equivocal, where the terms change radically. But rather the language that we have of God, according to Augustine, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is the language of analogy. Now you learn analogies when you go to school and you know what an analogy is like when I say that such and such is like something else, it's not identical, but that they have points of similarity. Jesus would speak in parables and he would say the kingdom of God is like unto this. He didn't say the kingdom of God is this, he said it's like this. And for example, when the Bible speaks about God as owning the cattle on a thousand hills, it's speaking metaphorically, it's using an analogy. It's saying that you understand how powerful and rich the rancher is whose herds are not restricted to one barn and one acre of fenced in pasture. But if that man owned the cattle on a thousand hills, that would be some kind of rancher. He would be very powerful, like the hunts in Texas or something like that. But we're not to assume from that that therefore God is the great cattle rancher in the sky who every now and then comes down and has a shootout with the devil at the OK Corral. Remember Corrie 10 Bohm when she was imprisoned and struggling and their ministry was hurting and they ran out of money. And she prayed very simply, she said, God, you own a cattle on a thousand hills. How about selling a few head and giving us the money to help us in our ministry? And she prayed many metaphorically, using the analogies that were taught there in scripture. Now when we say that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, we are not to infer from that that God is a cowboy. Yet the metaphor is meaningful because it tells us something about his riches. It tells us something about about his greatness. Something that we can understand by way of analogy, by way in which certain points are similar between God and man. Now, Augustine gave this warning to theologians of his day. What you affirm of God univocally, or what you affirm of him in one sense, you have to deny him in the univocal sense. What you affirm of him analogically, you must deny in univocally. Because always remember that the best we can ever get when we're talking about a transcendent eternal, infinite Being is language that describes him in ways in which he is like. But no metaphor, no analogy can ever contain or grasp him in its fullness. Now, that's no reason to jump into a sea of skepticism or cynicism because in a very real sense, the only way you and I ever talk and make sense to each other is by some kind of analogy. Because every word that is in your language, in your vocabulary, has your own understanding of it, conditioned by the way in which you've heard it and the experience you've had with it from your particular perspective in your life. I don't know how old you were when you first heard the word cat. And I don't know what comes into your mind when you hear the word cat. We might try some experiments right now, here in this class. And if I said to you, bill, what do you think of when you think of a cat? What do you think of a nice pet? What color? Gray. Okay, domestic, Short hair, Just a house cat. So for him, when he hears the word cat, he associates it with his gray house pet. You know, short hair, domestic. So on somebody else's experience with cats may be connected with Siamese or some other kind of cat. Or I may say cat, and you're thinking big cat, you're thinking tall tiger, you're thinking an ocelot or something like that. So that your understanding of that word cat is, in your own mind, conditioned to some degree by your experience. How you learned a word, what's the framework in which that word appears in your vocabulary, in your understanding? This may seem ridiculous to talk about that, but even though my idea of cat is not exactly the same as your idea of cat, when you say to me, there's a cat running loose in the church, I don't stop and say to you, bill, is it a minx? Is it angora? Is it a tiger? You know, I'll just take whatever image I have of a cat and start looking for this little thing that's running around the church. Because our experience of cats, it's similar enough that even though they're not precisely exact, we still can communicate. We can still have meaningful discourse and discussion, even though we come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences and so on. All I'm saying is that no two people's vocabulary meets each other's in terms of their precise, complete understanding on a one to one basis. But in any case, it's important for us to understand that when we speak about God, we are speaking about God because God has spoken to us and revealed himself to us in our language. And he'll talk about himself as if he had a body. We'll hear of the right hand of the Lord. We'll hear about his eye that sees all things. And yet at the same time, after using all these images that communicate something to us about himself, then he'll pull down the blind and say, but remember, I am not a man. The Bible will use language that God changes his mind or even that God repents. But then we're warned again. Remember, I'm only speaking in human terms because those are the only terms you have. And I remember when Paul Tillich was trying to wrestle with this problem of our language and the limits of human language, trying to make an important distinction between signs and symbols and so on, and trying to get us to understand the limitations of our statements about God, he got himself confused. He was lecturing in Chicago, and he said it's improper to say that God is a being because we have these categories of being and non being. He said, gentlemen, God is not a being. He's the ground of being. And then he said, we can't attribute attributes drawn from our common human beingness and give them to God. God, he says, is neither personal nor impersonal, but is the ground, the grundfand personality, right? So he asks any questions, and the student says, well, Dr. Tillich, is the ground of personality personal or impersonal? And Tillich about had a stroke, but the student was nailing him to the tree because the student was saying, sir, the term impersonal incorporates everything outside the category of the term personal. There is no third alternative. So when you say God is neither personal nor impersonal, you're not saying anything. You might as well just stand up there and go, but that's how far this discussion has degenerated. But again, the Bible itself says the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but that which he has revealed belongs to us and to our seed forever. Luther made the critical distinction between what he called the Deus absconditus and the Deus revelatus, the absconding God. We use that word abscond in English for the guy who wrote runs off with the receipts from the bank. We say that the embezzler absconds with the funds. That is, he steals what he has and then he goes off into hiding, right? To abscond means to go into hiding. And when he speaks about God's being the Deus absconditis, he said that he's the hidden God, referring to that aspect of God's being where for whatever reason, God has, in and of Himself, he's not been pleased or chosen to unveil that he's not revealed all there is to know about Himself. To us at this point, there remains things that are hidden. At the same time, we also firmly believe in the Deus Revelatus that there is a revealed aspect. And it's because God has revealed Himself to us verbally, meaningfully, and because he's made us in his image, which we'll explore more later, we can speak about him and we can speak meaningfully now. What happened in the 19th century was the uniqueness of God, the way in which he is higher and greater than the created universe, was all but obscured by a theology that became more and more pantheistic, identifying God with the sum total of nature. God is all that is, and all that is is God, and so on. So the uniqueness of God was being blurred and obscured. That is his transcendence. The sense in which he's other than us was being lost. And so the theologians at the turn of the century reacted against that and said, we've got to recover the truth about God, that God can never, ever, ever be equated with or identified with, with the universe. We must always distinguish between the Creator and the creature. Then they came up with this wonderful idea that God is not only other from the creation, but he's wholly other. W H O L L y totaliter alliter gonz onderen Whatever language you want to use, he's completely different from creation. I once had a discussion with some theologians on this point who loved that thing, that God was holy other. And I said to this particular theologian in their company, I said, well, how do you know anything about God? And he didn't hesitate. He said, he reveals Himself. That's how we know. I said, that's not what I'm asking you. He said, what? I said, well, how does God reveal Himself? Well, he reveals Himself in the Bible and in history and preeminently in the person of Christ. I said, you still don't get my point. He said, what? I said, how? How does he reveal Himself in the Bible? How does he reveal Himself in Christ? How does he reveal Himself in history? They said, what do you mean? I said, well, if he's wholly, completely, totally other from what we are, if there is an utter dissimilarity between the creature and the Creator, no point of analogy between them, then how could you have any meaningful communication? How could God say or do anything that could communicate anything intelligible to us about himself. If he's totally different. He looked at me for a second. It was like the light bulb went on, and I said, well, maybe we ought not to say that he's wholly other. I should write next time before you start to say it, choke before you say it, because you've just cut the rug out from under biblical Christianity with that category. I understand what you're trying to do to the to save and preserve his greatness, his transcendence. But this is where you get on one side of the horse and fall off the other side of the horse, and to correct one heresy, you jump into another. So again, the Westminster divines believe that God has revealed Himself in terms that are understandable and intelligible, but using different ways. The way of analogy, the way of negation, the way of affirmation, the way of eminentation. We'll see all of these as we go along, but that these different ways in which God speaks He speaks to creatures whom he stamped with his own image, made in his own likeness. He doesn't make them gods, but he makes them capable of understanding something meaningful about the God who makes it.