We have just completed a 38-week study of the Sermon on the Mount, and now we turn to a series of shorter studies on what the Bible says about God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. In this article, we look broadly at what theology is, the nature of revelation, and the existence of God. We are making this article available in full to our free subscribers so they can see a sample of what our paid subscribers are receiving.
Theology comes from two Greek words: ‘theos’ is a word that means God; and the word ‘logos’ means the ‘study of’ or ‘understanding of’. Here it has to do with the study of God Himself. All people, in one way or another, have a theology; everybody has some view of God. Whether it is accurate or inaccurate, everybody has a view of God; even an atheist has a view of God. The good thing to do is to make sure that it is an accurate view. And so, we have to ask ourselves, what is the authority for our truth, and there is a need in the Scriptures for sound doctrine.
For example, if you were to turn to 2 Timothy chapter four, Paul exhorts Timothy about the importance of this very issue. This is the best epistle we have recorded on this, and he solemnly charges Timothy, in the presence of God, in chapter four verse one, “…and in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine…” That really means ‘healthy’ doctrine and thinking according to truth; and that health has an impact on our soul and even our body in a very real sense.
In an earlier epistle, in Titus chapter one verse nine, Paul tells his assistant Titus about the need to “…hold fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.” This idea of sound doctrine is a very critical theme in Paul’s teaching. In fact, if you turn again to 2 Timothy, you will see how he uses this idea and connects sound doctrine with the Scriptures themselves. In chapter three verses sixteen and seventeen Paul says, “All Scripture is inspired by God…” ‘Theopneustos’ literally means ‘breathed out by God Himself’, and it refers to the mysterious divine-human process where, by the Holy Spirit, He inspired people to record those things which are true and timeless and speak truth about God. “All Scripture,” he says, “is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
So, we see a theme here of the inspiration of Scripture, and it is designed to give truth about God. When we understand that, one way of looking at theology is to define it in this way: the discovery, the systematizing and the presenting of the truths about God in Scripture. I believe that most Christians are able to understand the doctrinal teachings of the Scriptures in considerable depth. Sometimes we don’t give the lay person credit and often we pitch our messages too low. I think it a question of clarity, and if we communicate these truths with a clarity and precision, they can be life-changing.
My own view is that theology should be explicitly based on the teachings of the Scriptures; it is our source book. General revelation is that which is known to all people at all times and all places; and special revelation has to do with the reality in which God has revealed Himself over the centuries in a progressive way. The key verse for that may well be Hebrews chapter one where the author of Hebrews, and we don’t know who it was, said, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets…,” so he is referring to the Old Testament revelation, “in many portions, and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” He goes on to say, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” The point there is that in the past God communicated in a variety of ways—through dreams, visions, prophets, and various oracles. But, in these last days, the author to the Hebrews invites us to see the most decisive revelation of God was in the incarnational, personal revelation of the God-man, where God literally took man into Himself in some mysterious and profound way, and there is a man in heaven—the God-man—in a resurrected, glorified body.
But when He was here, what did Jesus say about Himself? He said, “To hear Me is to hear the Father,” and “To see Me is to see the Father,” and “To believe in Me is to believe in the Father,” and “To reject Me is to reject the Father.” Remember when Phillip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and it will be enough to us’? Jesus answered, “How long have I been with you, and you have not come to me yet, Phillip?” The idea here is that He has communicated over and over that if you want to know the Father, just look at Him.
Archbishop Michael Ramsey put it so well when he said, “God is Christ-like, and in Him there is no unChrist-likeness at all.” If you want to know what the Father is like, the clearest, most palpable manifestation of the Father is the revelation of the Father through the Son.
I want to say that it is important for us to have clarity and the clarity is found in Scripture. The Scriptures give us a solid basis for understanding the truth. Now, I may say something that is unpopular, but I agree with Wayne Grudem when he says, “Somewhat like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, who shouted, ‘the emperor has no clothes’, I think someone needs to say, ‘it is doubtful that liberal theologians have given us any significant insight to the doctrinal teachings of Scripture that are not already to be found in evangelical writers’.” You see, if you reject the Bible as your source book, then why would you suppose you were going to come up with new insights about God? Where would it come from? It would come from human reason or human experience or conscience or something like that.
What is your authority for truth? My view here is that there are three sources of truth. One is human reason, so we have the whole idea of our rationality; another one is our experience, or we might say empirical evidence; but, those two by themselves will not give us answers to the fundamental questions of life. Unaided reason and unaided sensory apprehension—or empiricism—will not give us answers. If they did, then the history of philosophy would be one of convergence. Actually, philosophers continue to diverge and around the beginning of the 20th century most of them abandoned the quest for any coherent worldview or reality.
I am suggesting that a third way of knowing is what I would call ‘revelation’. If I deny that revelation, I am bound, now, to human perspective rather than a full grasp of reality. Let me suggest that theology, good theology, should meld the mind and the heart; it should affect both our thinking and our practice. So, my own view of theology is that it ought to affect both the mind and the heart. We ought to become clearer and clearer thinkers, and my view is that there is a joy that it can produce. The study of God is inexhaustible, but it also ought to touch the heart because, after all, that is where we live, and it is going to have an impact on the choices that we make.
What is the great commandment in Scripture? The great commandment is to ‘love’. “Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Notice that the sequence goes from the inside to the outside. As you go from the heart into the actions it is an inside-out process in which we are called to love God. But, He wants us to love Him with our minds as well as with our choices and as well with our affections. All of these things meld together. If we move in that direction of loving God and knowing Him better, then that will spill over into our relationships with other people. As a consequence, the more we know Him the more we will have a capacity to love Him.
Faith comes from hearing; and hearing by the word of God. So, it is prudent, then, for us to be students of the ord and to realize that there is no boundary to what we can learn as a consequence of this. I want to give you a definition of systematic theology—and there are different approaches, as you about to hear. One of those approaches is to call theology—the study of God—systematic; and systematic theology has to do with the idea of correlating the data of Biblical revelation. What you are trying to do is make a systematic exhibit of the total picture of how God revealed Himself. Another way of putting it is this way: systematic theology answers the question, ‘what does the whole Bible teach us today about any given topic’? I say ‘today’ because it has relevance and a bearing on our lives today. If it is not applicable for the way we live our lives today, then there is something wrong. If it is truth about God, it will actually work in life as well. Don’t reverse that. Don’t slip into the error of American pragmatism—if it works, it is true. No; that is pragmatic; if it is true, it will work. If it is true it will be lived out.
As I see it then, we want to understand that we are taking the whole counsel of Scripture; and we could take any topic we want. What does the Bible say about angels? There is a whole realm you could study, from Genesis to Revelation. And then you could correlate that together, and tie it together in a systematic way.
There are other approaches to theology as well. There is historical theology. There is Patristic theology. There is also Biblical theology; and here you could have a theology of the Old Testament, for example. What we are going to be focusing on tonight is, ‘how does the Scripture correlate ideas and put them together’? Now, there are two ways of having theology: systematic and disorganized. For example, a lot of people say that the Bible says that if you believe in Jesus you will be saved. That is a true statement. But systematic theology will develop that and enhance that and organize it in much more detail. It will take all the relevant texts and passages and shape that into a coherent idea. The more you go back to the text, the more it should expand your grasp of truth, and the more it should connect with itself because all Scripture relates to all other Scripture. It correlates; it is coherent; and it is comprehensive. It will relate to life itself.
Now, I want to make two assumptions or presuppositions before we progress any further. My first supposition is that what the Bible says is true, and that it is our only absolute standard for truth. The second assumption is that the God who is spoken of in the Bible exists, and that He is who the Bible says He is. Or, to put it the way Francis Schaffer might put it: “God is there, and He is not silent.” He is there; and that is to say there really is an infinite, personal being. Secondly, He has communicated to us in decisive ways—progressively and truly. You will never know all there is to know about Him, but it will be a true understanding. He is a boundless source of surprises, and He is infinitely more creative than you or I could ever begin to imagine.
I would submit anything in His created order for you to review. Many of you know that I have a great interest in studying the created order. For example, beetles: it turns out there are some 300,000 species of beetles. Each is extraordinarily unique and almost like a living jewel if you magnify them to a proper size. Also, we are now beginning to discover eerie and strange and grotesque creatures on the bottom of the sea. In the end, we simply don’t have the cognitive equipment to appreciate all His creations, let alone dream them up ourselves. We should understand that we can learn about God from looking at the created order. Not only is He intelligent and filled with creativity, but I am convinced He likes a good laugh as well. There is a lot of humor in the natural order. There is also subtlety, elegance, and design; all these things meld together.
It is my view, then, that ‘doctrine’ is a valuable thing for us to pursue and I want to suggest some ways we are going to approach this idea of systematic theology. I believe that when we study the person of God, this is not just some academic discipline. This is much more than that. We must approach it with prayer; after all, you will not know God unless He chooses to reveal Himself to you. There are moral and spiritual preliminaries associated with any knowledge of God. In fact, I would suggest to you that this issue of disobedience to God might well be a problem; a failure to have a devotional life may well cause a problem when we are trying to approach the person of God. Disobedience in your life will actually cloud spiritual knowledge. This isn’t like studying algebra; it is not like studying biology. I would suggest that the issue of your spiritual life has an impact on your theology as well. This also includes your personal devotional life as well as praying for wisdom and understanding. Those are prerequisites, because God is not just some subject to be known, He is a person to be obeyed, and to be loved and to be worshiped. So, theology and worship—doxology and theology—go together.
In other subjects, we become the masters of the discipline, but in this case we are becoming mastered by it. It is not so much whether you are going to judge the Scriptures, but that the Scriptures will judge us. So, the issue is one of approaching it with prayer and humility. I believe, in the writings that I have encountered on humility, that they tell us that the way to humility is to focus on the grace of God rather than on how weak or poor we are. In other words, humility is a matter of focusing and being amazed by grace. Otherwise, if you are focusing on how bad you are, ironically, that becomes a backhanded form of pride, because you are still being focused on yourself. When you become more consumed by the One for whom you were made, you have the blessed riddance of not focusing on yourself for a while.
So, systematic theology won’t lead to the knowledge, as Paul says, that “puffs up,” in 1 Corinthians 8:1. We should study theology not only with prayer and humility, but with reason. When we go into church, we aren’t built to check our minds at the door. Rather, it is a reasonable faith; it is a faith, as I say, that is founded on fact and has good, coherent, comprehensive, and consistent ways of presenting the way reality is. It is the best worldview that is available. When we approach it from reason, then, God has given us the ability to use our reasoning to draw deductions from passages of Scripture, so long as those deductions don’t contradict the clear teaching of Scripture. That is where we can get into trouble. There will be times when Scripture, as a revelation from God, will actually cause us to go beyond the ceiling of our own comprehension. There will always be things that He says or reveals that will remain outside human comprehension. I would expect the Bible to have things that are paradoxical. It doesn’t mean that they are ultimately contradictory; it means that you and I, in our limited grasp must embrace the tension. For example, God is sovereign; yet we are responsible moral agents. For example, Jesus Christ is fully God and He is fully man. For example, God is One and Three. There are many mysteries of Scripture that point beyond themselves and so it would be prudent for us to use our reason but also be aware that there will be boundaries and that our grasp only reaches so far.
I believe that when we see Him face to face, our capacity will be greatly enhanced, but it will not be omniscience; only God is omniscient. But it will always be an ever-expanding odyssey. We must keep this in mind: theology cannot be simply reduced to a logical system. It is more than logic. Logic is involved, but it transcends human logic; it is a higher rationality. However, there is no internal contradiction, even in Scripture or in God’s own thoughts.
Finally, let me say that we should study theology with a sense of rejoicing. In other words, worship.
Having laid out these ideas, I want to now hone in on the person of God. I want to say tonight just a few words about the existence of God, a few words about the ‘knowability’ of God, and then next week I want to talk about the attributes of God. What my ultimate goal is, over the next two weeks, is to stretch your minds, because the bigger your God, the smaller your problems. You don’t want it to be the ‘bigger your problems, the smaller your God’.
So, we are ultimately called to trust; not to understand, because we can never fully understand. We will see that that there are propositional truths, which have to do with concepts, but there are also personal truths. If all you knew of a person was what you read about them, and you had never met them, it wouldn’t be much of a relationship, would it? That will never substitute for a relationship. A dossier on a mail-order bride, I promise you, won’t tell you what that person is like. On the other hand, suppose you had a relationship with a person but never knew their name? That would be equally shallow, and I am saying that the two go hand in hand. It is the same with God. We learn about His truths, but it is meant to go from the mind to the heart. That is the longest distance in the world. In any event, my hope and my desire is to enhance your grasp of the greatness of the person, powers, and perfections of the mystery that we call God.
Now, let’s discuss the existence of God. There are two important passages, and Psalm nineteen is one of them; and Romans chapter one is another key passage. These texts invite us to see that we already have an inner sense of God. All of Psalm nineteen talks about how God has manifested Himself very clearly; not only in nature, at the beginning of the Psalm, but then in special revelation as verse seven begins, where it talks about the law of God, the testimony of God, the precepts, the commandments, and the fear of God. All these are revealed truths, but before that he talks about general revelation. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” The psalmist is saying to look to the heavens if you wish to know something about God. What might we learn about God from that perspective? We would learn that He is great and awesome and powerful and intelligent; and as I said before, creative, and full of surprises. But, the one thing you wouldn’t know from looking is that the One who crafted the created order loves you. That would require special revelation. You wouldn’t know that the One who created the cosmos also stooped to conquer and entered into space-time history and became one of us and made it possible, through His own death, to receive His goodness and righteousness while He received the weight of our sins and disobedience.
Romans chapter one also tells us that God has revealed Himself in very clear ways. Without unpacking that entire text, but starting with verse eighteen, we see, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” There is an internal knowledge of God and there is an external knowledge. The internal is that He has made the truth about Himself known to them, but then in verse twenty we see, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”
The idea is, then, that the created order tells us about His invisible attributes, His eternal power, His divinity, and therefore people are without excuse in knowing Him. But, Paul continues, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks…” The important idea here is that they became autonomous, “futile in their speculations;” and they substituted their own creations for the Creator. The point here is that sin has a way of crowding our minds and causes us to think in ways that are not fully rational. We then rationalize our own follies and own foolishness. That is why we employ the three powerful defense mechanisms of rationalization, denial, and projection. There is something that clouds our minds and the consequences create false conclusions about the character of God and even though it is evident within them, it still requires something more; it requires God Himself to break through that spiritual blindness.
In terms of general revelation, by the way, the Bible assumes that everything in the created order points beyond itself to the evidence of God’s existence. I would invite you to look at your hand for a moment. Is it more complex than a watch? It is a good deal more complex. In fact, forget the hand, any cell would do. Take the skill of a honeybee. They aren’t supposed to fly. Or take the majestic power of a thunder storm; there are millions upon millions of things that we just take for granted.
Now, they knew God but they did not honor Him and did not give thanks. ‘Give thanks’ is a key phrase there, and I have to say that thanksgiving is a major theme in Scripture that is largely overlooked. When we reduce thanksgiving and gratitude to spontaneous moments we miss a great deal. Having said that, we are called to be dependent upon Him and there is an overwhelming amount of God’s works and God’s word indicating that He is there, but these traditional proofs for God’s existence, though valid, are not going to be compelling for people who do not wish to know that. There become all sorts of ways these people choose to rationalize Him away.
The cosmological argument for God is that every known thing in the universe has a cause and so the universe itself must have a cause; and the cause of such a great universe can only be God. But people say, ‘but what caused God’? That is a category error because God is the ‘uncaused’ cause. He is not ‘self-created’, He is ‘uncreated’. You can’t say ‘where was God’ because you are binding Him to the time and space He created. Before He spoke the cosmos into being, He alone was all that was.
The teleological argument comes from the Greek word ‘telos’, which means ‘purpose’ or ‘goal’ or ‘end’. It has to do with design and the point is that harmony, order, design and everything else in the universe argues for a mind that is intelligent. The Intelligent Design debate is a resurgence of the teleological argument and points out that there are only three options: chance, necessity, and design. Chance and necessity are not sufficient to account for the rich information that we find in the human body, in the created order, as well as the fine-tuning of the cosmos.
A third argument used is the ontological argument, and this is the idea of a most-perfect being.
Finally, we have the moral argument, or what we might call the anthropological argument. This is the argument from the perspective of humanity. Subcategories would be, for example, that we have minds—where did the mind come from? We have morality; we have a sense of beauty; and all these things require a moral agency—something that is more than impersonal. Let me stress, again, that God must enable us to be persuaded or we still wouldn’t believe in Him. In spite of the evidence, if God does not break through we will reject Him. Because the gods of this world have blinded the minds of unbelievers from seeing the light of the Gospel, we are then dependent upon God to remove that blindness we have in our hearts and to cause us to evaluate the evidence correctly and properly.
Finally, let me say another word on the ‘knowability’ of God. Let me give you an important text from Scripture on this matter. Jesus said this, and it is a very powerful word. It is found in Matthew 11:27 and He says, “…and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” What is He saying? He is telling us that we cannot know Him unless He allows us to know Him. The greater being is the one who must be pursued, but ultimately, if He doesn’t invite us to know Him, we will not know Him.
So, the Scriptures invite us to see that the knowledge of God is not found through human effort or wisdom because we see in 1 Corinthians 1:21 that “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know God…” This is something that has to be revealed and it is spiritually revealed. As Psalm 145 puts it, “Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.” Or, as Psalm 147 says, “…His understanding is beyond measure.” Psalm 139 says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.” It is too much for him to grasp. In other words, what this means is that we can know God truly, but never exhaustively. You can have truth about Him, but not exhaustive knowledge about Him. Therefore, you will never tire because you are called to increase in the knowledge of God. Although God is incomprehensible, He can be known truly.
So, both of these things are in a tension with one another. All that Scripture says about God is true. Our capacity is bound, but there is a distinction between knowing facts about a person and knowing the person himself; and God tells us that we can know Him. Let me read to you from Jeremiah chapter nine, one of my favorite texts: “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not the rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on the earth; for I delight in these things.” He is saying we can know Him. Jesus says, as well, that “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” This is teaching us over and over again that we can know Him; and the word for ‘know’ does not just have to do with the head, but also with the heart, for it is a personal, relational knowledge.
The promise of the New Covenant is that all shall know God, “…from the least of them to the greatest of them,” as Hebrews 8:11 tells us. Also, John’s first epistle puts it this way: “…the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true.”
What are the prerequisites of knowing God? God has initiated the revelation. He is the initiator of revelation. Also, God gave us language so we could communicate. He created us in His own image and He has given us His Holy Spirit. By way of application, my view, then, is that the prudent person, if ultimate reality is personal, would seek to know that person. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Christianity is a proposition that, if it is true, it is utterly important; if it is false, it is totally unimportant. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” And guess what? That is where most followers of Christ make it out to be. They compartmentalize the knowledge of God to a small component of their life; something that they can do on Sunday mornings, or if they are real spiritual they might come to a Monday night Bible study. And, if they are really, really spiritual they will bring their Bible with them.
You know me; I am a big believer that there is no sacred-secular distinction. In my view, when we work, we can work to the glory of God. When we play, we can play to the glory of God. We can love God in the mundane and the ordinary. We can love God in the extraordinary. We can love Him by having an eye to look for Him in the created order. Frankly, most of us are missing out on the vast bulk of the tender mercies that God displays and showers upon us day after day. He wants us to know Him and to be amazed and to have a child-like sense of wonder and awe, rather than the cynical and jaded mindset of ‘what have You done for me lately’? That is the mindset that only prays to God when we are in trouble, rather than as amazed by God’s daily blessings and benefits.
I would invite you, then, to welcome Him into the various facets of your life and also to seek to know Him by showing up on a regular basis with an open heart and an open Bible. Invite the Spirit of God to speak to you, in your spirit, and to ask Him to make Himself known. That is a prayer that will be pleasing to God and He will be delighted to answer.
Let me close in a prayer. Father, we thank You that You have called us to know You, though we can hardly ever scratch the surface. Yet You have called us to increase in that knowledge and to apply that in each of the components of our lives. May we be a people who can, by Your grace, love You with all of our Heart and soul and mind and strength this day and forever. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.
Questions for Reflection
How has your view of God been shaped by Scripture rather than by culture, personal experience, or assumptions? What changes might occur in your life if your understanding of God became larger and more biblically grounded?
In what ways do you see evidence of God’s presence and creativity in the natural world around you? How might paying closer attention to creation deepen your awareness of God’s power and wisdom?
What is the difference between knowing facts about God and truly knowing God in a personal relationship? What practices could help move your knowledge of God from the mind to the heart?
How might a deeper understanding of God influence the way you approach everyday areas of life—such as work, relationships, and decision-making? What would it look like for your entire life to reflect the knowledge of God?