Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Isaiah 45:15
“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”
We trust that our study of the names, metaphors, and attributes of God over the last few weeks has helped us have a better understanding of our Creator. At this point in our look at the Lord’s character, it will be important for us to focus on a truth about God that qualifies our knowledge of Him, because it provides an important backdrop for our study of God’s will that we will begin tomorrow. The truth that we will consider today is divine incomprehensibility.
Christian theologians from all theological traditions have confessed that God is incomprehensible. It appears in our Reformed tradition in places such as Westminster Confession of Faith 2.1. Just reading the word incomprehensible might lead us to think that by divine incomprehensibility we mean that God cannot be known at all. The term incomprehensible, however, has a particular definition in the field of systematic theology. Dr. R.C. Sproul gives us this definition: “Theologically speaking, incomprehensible does not mean that we cannot know anything about God but rather that our knowledge of Him will always be limited. We can have an apprehensive, meaningful knowledge of God, but we can never, not even in heaven, have an exhaustive knowledge of Him; we cannot totally comprehend all that He is.”
As Dr. Sproul notes, God’s incomprehensibility means that we will never understand the Lord or His ways completely. What God does tell us about Himself is true and gives us an accurate understanding of Him that is appropriate for creatures. Nevertheless, the Lord does not tell us everything about Himself (Deut. 29:29). Indeed, He could not because we would be unable to handle it. He is infinite, and complete knowledge of Him would overwhelm finite beings such as ourselves. Truly, God’s “greatness is unsearchable” (Ps. 145:3).
Scripture speaks of divine incomprehensibility in many places. For example, today’s passage tells us that it is the prerogative of the Lord to hide Himself (Isa. 45:15). As noted, His incomprehensibility is also a necessity in light of other divine attributes such as divine infinity and omniscience and our own finitude. Divine incomprehensibility should lead us to a great humility before God and a disposition that would lead us not to try to say more about Him than He has revealed. We are finite and should be content with what He has told us about Himself.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Many theological errors result when we seek to say more about God than He has actually revealed to us. In fact, the first sin in the garden consisted in Adam and Eve’s wanting to know more than God had told them, even to know things in the way that God knows them (Gen. 3:1–6). May we strive to speak of God only according to what He has revealed to us.
For further study
- Job 42:1–6
- Psalm 139:6
- Isaiah 55:9
- Romans 11:33
The bible in a year
- 1 Chronicles 1–2
- John 7:32–53