For the past several weeks I’ve been involved in a discussion about the DaVinci Code. This has been intruiging but what’s been even better for me is the intellectual discussions that it tends to bring out.
Here’s what I mean. Often someone will say "Because the Bible says this and the Bible also says that, it is confusing." Generally, they are pointing out some sort of contradiction. Such as, "How can God exist in three forms and not be polytheistic?" (Many gods as opposed to a Judaic Christian view of monotheism) On the surface, and by deductive reasoning… it seems like a contradiction because it IS a contradiction. Another example. "How is it that Jesus was both fully God and fully man?" This seems like a contradiction because it IS a contradiction. In Bible school we were always taught that these weren’t contradictions… they were difficulties. As if acknowledging something as "weird in our eyes" somehow lessoned the truths of Scripture?
See, this is my frustration point. Thinking rationally we know that 2+2=4. No one would argue that this isn’t true. So, the same type of thinking is applied to something like the doctrine of the trinity. 1+1+1=3 gods, right? Wrong! 1+1+1= 1 God. But that makes no sense, right? Wrong. It makes perfect sense if you see that God exists outside of the realms of rationalism. Eh? The Westminster Shorter Cathecism says, God is Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, goodness, justice, and truth.
Inside rationalism is a basic "rule" that contradictions, or apparent contradictions, are bad. A contradiction proves that something is broken. If gravity is a constant and something doesn’t over gravity… there must be some sort of aberration causing gravity to not work at a constant. While that may be perfectly acceptable within Science, this isn’t fair to attribute to all areas of the Bible.
Why? First off… the Bible pre-dates the existence of rationalism as a school of thought. Even Paul said, in a very rationalistic way… At least 15 times the Apostle Paul talked about "the mystery" of our relationship with Christ. Why? Because it makes no logical sense! Think of Acts 2… people saw the Resurrection as such a mystery that they thought Peter must be drunk.
The fatal flaw in many people’s faith is that their rationalistic epistemology will not allow God to be infinitely smarter than they are. Continental rationalism teaches that ALL truth can be known to man. This simply flies against the very nature of God and improperly espouses infinite understanding on finite man.
This is no excuse for us to stop searching for understanding. But, now check this out, it should comfort us to know that even if we understood every single thing God reveals about Himself to us in His word… we still wouldn’t know all there is to know about God.
What? That’s right, God is infinite. The Bible isn’t. There are things that God knows that we don’t need to know that He chose not to tell us about. So, the Bible itself is limited to what God chose to allow us to understand.
But as for the Bible. Yeah, James makes it clear we are called to understand, obey, and live up to all that we know from God’s Word.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But
the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and
continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he
will be blessed in what he does.
