Doctrine of God: Lesson #1
I.Introduction
Q: What is apologetics?
A: Apologetics is the vindication of Christian theism against any form of non-theistic and non-Christian thought.
Q: Why study theology, I thought this was going to be a lesson on apologetics?
A: You cannot defend what you do not know. The enemy is very educated and is attacking Christianity in sometimes very subtle ways.
II. Incomprehensibility
The Doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God: We cannot comprehend God. (Job 26:14, 36:26, 37:5)
This does not mean that we cannot know anything about God.
God is without comparison. (Is 40:17-18,25; Is 46:5)
God is exalted infinitely above time, space and every creature. (Is 40:12, 41:4, 44:6, 48:12)
No name expresses God adequately. (Gn 32:29, Jg 13:18)
III.Getting Incomprehensibility Wrong
Religions, Theology & Philosophy express themselves regarding God’s Incomprehensibility.
By some our ability to know God is emphasized at the expense of his Incomprehensibility; This leads to Open Theism and Atheism.
Others take God as not only Incomprehensible but unknowable: Agnosticism.
IV.Attacking the foundation
Agnosticism is based on the following four arguments:
God has revealed himself in the condescension of Jesus Christ, he has thereby entered the sphere of human experience.
The unbeliever wants to have perfect knowledge without reference to anything else. They say they believe in facts, but, their own minds are their source for all truth. They interpret for themselves all facts. This is holding yourself to be God. So, all knowledge is relative and there are no objective truths.
But wait! Aren’t Christians in the same boat? No! God created all the facts of the universe. All facts are pre-interpreted by God. We merely reinterpret them. Since God is immutable, our knowledge is objective since our grounding assumption is in God. Theirs is relative since their grounding is in themselves. See Col 2:3
I.Introduction
Q: What is apologetics?
A: Apologetics is the vindication of Christian theism against any form of non-theistic and non-Christian thought.
Q: Why study theology, I thought this was going to be a lesson on apologetics?
A: You cannot defend what you do not know. The enemy is very educated and is attacking Christianity in sometimes very subtle ways.
II. Incomprehensibility
The Doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God: We cannot comprehend God. (Job 26:14, 36:26, 37:5)
This does not mean that we cannot know anything about God.
God is without comparison. (Is 40:17-18,25; Is 46:5)
God is exalted infinitely above time, space and every creature. (Is 40:12, 41:4, 44:6, 48:12)
No name expresses God adequately. (Gn 32:29, Jg 13:18)
III.Getting Incomprehensibility Wrong
Religions, Theology & Philosophy express themselves regarding God’s Incomprehensibility.
By some our ability to know God is emphasized at the expense of his Incomprehensibility; This leads to Open Theism and Atheism.
Others take God as not only Incomprehensible but unknowable: Agnosticism.
IV.Attacking the foundation
Agnosticism is based on the following four arguments:
- The nature of all human knowledge is relative: Man is the measure of all things.
- We can never say what a thing is in its essence, independent of our perception.
- The only objects of human knowledge are the facts of human experience, the phenomena. Ideas of God, world, soul are transcendent, and can never be objects of intellectual knowledge.
- God, being absolute, cannot be personal, neither knowable.
- Absolute: without relation. See God is without comparison.
- Knowledge of the absolute is impossible, because it is a contradiction in terms, for knowledge implies relation; absolute – absence of relation.
God has revealed himself in the condescension of Jesus Christ, he has thereby entered the sphere of human experience.
The unbeliever wants to have perfect knowledge without reference to anything else. They say they believe in facts, but, their own minds are their source for all truth. They interpret for themselves all facts. This is holding yourself to be God. So, all knowledge is relative and there are no objective truths.
But wait! Aren’t Christians in the same boat? No! God created all the facts of the universe. All facts are pre-interpreted by God. We merely reinterpret them. Since God is immutable, our knowledge is objective since our grounding assumption is in God. Theirs is relative since their grounding is in themselves. See Col 2:3