The Mystery of God

Theology for Knowing the Unknowable

Boyer, Steven D., Hall, Christopher A.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441240170
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Christianity Today 2014 Book Award Winner How can I know God if he is incomprehensible? Is it possible to know God in a way that takes seriously the fact that he is beyond knowledge? Steven Boyer and Christopher Hall argue that the "mystery of God" has a rightful place in theological discourse. They contend that considering divine incomprehensibility invites reverence and humility in our thinking and living as Christians and clarifies a variety of theological topics. The authors begin by investigating the biblical, historical, and practical foundations for understanding the mystery of God. They then spell out its implications for theological issues and practices such as the incarnation, salvation, and prayer, rooting knowledge of God in a concrete life of faith. Evangelical yet ecumenical, this book will appeal to theology students, pastors, church leaders, and all who want intellectual and practical guidance for knowing the unknowable God.

1

The Meaning
of Mystery

Mystery is the vital element of Dogmatics. . . . Dogmatics is concerned with nothing but mystery, for it does not deal with finite creatures, but from beginning to end raises itself above every creature to the Eternal and Endless One himself.

Herman Bavinck[5]

We are not now discussing possible ways of understanding the text. . . . It can only be understood in ways beyond words; human words cannot suffice for understanding the Word of God. What we are discussing and stating is why it is not understood. I am not speaking in order that it may be understood but telling you what prevents it being understood.

Augustine[6]

There are many ways to describe the sort of project that this book undertakes, and the word “mystery” would not necessarily appear in many of them. We have chosen the term both because it is commonly used in theology and also—perhaps even more so—because of its open-endedness. It definitely points to something, but to something that is not immediately clear, or rather to something that is clear precisely in a depth or an intensity or an immensity that makes even its clarity hard to pin down. In this way, “mystery” seems to open us up to . . . well . . . we do not quite know what it opens us up to. To something exciting and stimulating, no doubt, but also to something challenging and perhaps a bit frightening. We do not really know what is in store. And this is exactly where a fully Christian understanding of God should begin.

However, the term “mystery” has certain drawbacks, most notably the fact that it is used very flexibly in the English language. So we must begin by clarifying what we mean by it, so that we can then go on to describe (as best we can) the majestic God to whom it points.

Not Knowing and Knowing

We may distinguish no fewer than five significantly different senses in which the word “mystery” is used, and these different senses involve very different approaches to the mystery of the living God. All of these different meanings have something in common: they all refer to that which, in the language of Webster’s dictionary, “resists or defies explanation.” But things can resist or defy explanation in many ways, for many reasons, and with many responses expected.

First, and perhaps most obviously, a “mystery” might simply be an intriguing puzzle. We already noted this usage in our introduction. In this case, “mystery” refers to a state of affairs in which something is unknown and must be figured out, as expressed paradigmatically in detective fiction. This sort of mystery defies explanation in the sense that we do not yet have enough information to allow us to see the whole picture. We have certain clues, but they are not numerous or detailed enough to allow the sort of comprehensive explanation that would solve the puzzle, so that the true criminal can be arrested. To solve the puzzle, we (or the detectives) must do more investigating—and so we might refer to mystery in this sense as “investigative mystery.” The whole goal is to investigate and thus to solve the puzzle, to know what happened. This sense of “mystery” is often at work even when strange or uncanny phenomena are involved, as when we speak of the Bermuda Triangle or of the origins of Stonehenge as “mysteries” (though there may be other factors at work here as well). These are things that we do not fully understand, but we are trying to understand. By means of available clues and creative thinking, we are trying to solve the puzzle.

Now some people who have a philosophical bent are interested in investigating the “mystery of God” in just this way. There is currently much discussion among philosophers of religion about the so-called hiddenness of God—that is, about the apparent lack of evidence for the existence of God. “Why is God hidden?” they ask. Some critics of Christianity argue that the hiddenness of God is a strong argument that God (in the traditional sense) does not exist at all; many Christians argue that the evidence for God’s existence is available to those who are willing to see it, or that there are good reasons for the evidence to be as ambiguous as it seems to be.[7] Pretty clearly, thinkers on both sides of this debate are dealing with the hiddenness of God as a mystery in the investigative sense. There is something to be discovered, a question to be answered: Does God exist? We have certain bits of evidence, certain clues, that we must put together into a comprehensive explanation, and we are trying to show that one comprehensive explanation (say, the theistic one) is better than the others.

This philosophical discussion is a significant one for many people, both Christian and non-Christian, but we will not be pursuing it here. Our point is simply to note the kind of mystery that is involved, namely, an investigative mystery, in which the aim is to solve the puzzle. But let us consider a second and very different sense of “mystery.”

According to the most common (though not the only) biblical usage, “mystery” denotes a marvelous plan or purpose that God has revealed for creation. The emphasis on revelation is particularly significant, for in Scripture a “mystery” is almost always something that has been made known. Even in cases where the investigative sense is still present, such as when the young prophet Daniel must interpret the mystery (rāz) of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan. 2:18), the mystery ends up not being solved but being “revealed” (see Dan. 2:19, 30, 47; see also Rev. 1:20; 17:7). This connection to revelation is even more forceful in the New Testament, where, for instance, Jesus speaks of the apostles as those who have “been given the mystery [mystērion][8] of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4:11 NASB). Jesus is not saying that the apostles have been given a puzzle to solve or a question to answer. If anything, the mystery is the answer, so that the apostles are, so to speak, “in on the secret.”

Yet oddly enough, the mystery remains a mystery as well, and so it is not just a “secret.” This is both surprising and crucial. If the kingdom were simply a secret in the normal sense, then the apostles, having been “given” the secret, would be among the insiders—they would be “in the know.” Therefore, although the mystery would still be mysterious to others, it would no longer be mysterious to them—it would no longer defy their reason. Yet this is clearly not what we find in the Gospels, for the apostles go through most of the gospel story utterly confused and befuddled by the mystery that they now supposedly know. True, part of their problem is no doubt that their conventional Jewish expectations about the kingdom continue to lead them astray. But note that even as the story continues, even after the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, even after the apostles have begun to preach Christ with all boldness and authority, the mystery remains a mystery. The apostle Paul, who explicitly insists that to him “the mystery was made known . . . by revelation” (Eph. 3:3 NRSV) and whose whole commission is precisely to make known “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed” (Col. 1:26 NRSV)—even this apostle is happily ready to confess, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33 NRSV). For Paul, the marvelous plan of God is not an investigative mystery that is solved once it is communicated. Instead it is communicated precisely as a mystery.

This usage persists with some consistency all through the New Testament, as various aspects of mystery, or various related mysteries, are specified: the hardening of Israel is a mystery (Rom. 11:25); the final resurrection of the dead is a mystery (1 Cor. 15:51); the summing up of all things in Christ is a mystery (Eph. 1:9); the inclusion of the gentiles in the church is a mystery (Eph. 3:4, 9); the union of husband and wife as a picture of Christ and the church is a mystery (Eph. 5:32); “Christ in you, the hope of glory” is a mystery (Col. 1:27); “Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” is “God’s mystery” (Col. 2:2–3 NRSV). In every one of these passages, mystery is linked decisively with its revelation, its being made known, and yet the mystery does not cease to be mysterious as a result. The mystery is in some sense established, not eliminated or solved, by its revelation. We shall refer to this somewhat paradoxical biblical usage as “revelational mystery.” A revelational mystery is one that remains a mystery even after it has been revealed. It is precisely in its revelation that its distinctive character as mystery is displayed.

Now one is immediately struck by the contrast between this second sense of mystery and the first, for an investigative mystery revolves very intentionally around what is unknown, whereas a revelational mystery revolves around what is known. The whole fascination of a detective story lies in trying to solve the puzzle, and when one knows the solution the mystery is dissolved—it is no longer a mystery; it has lost its mainspring. But the fascination of many of the New Testament mysteries lies in their peculiar character even after they have been revealed. This unusual character explains why the response appropriate to revelational mysteries is so distinctive. A revelational mystery excites wonder, awe, amazement, astonishment. Think again about the mysteries that pertain to the gospel. We understand the good news, and yet it continues to overwhelm us by its elaborate intricacy, its unanticipated beauty, its stunningly benevolent glory. This is the way a revelational mystery works: we know, and yet the mystery remains.

Varieties of Revelational Mystery

It is not very hard to see how the mystery of God can be construed as a revelational mystery, since Scripture itself establishes the precedent. Yet we must now go a bit deeper, for it turns out that there are important differences among varying kinds of revelational mystery. Consider this question: What is it that would allow something that is known to remain a mystery nevertheless? The three possible answers to this question will introduce our three remaining senses of “mystery.”

One possibility is that what is made known in the revelation is simply too extensive or too complicated to be drawn coherently together. Thus, we might speak, thirdly, of “extensive mystery” and use this phrase to refer to a quantitative inexhaustibility, a magnitude or an internal complexity that puts some proposed objects of knowledge out of reach. The marvelous elaborateness or beauty of the gospel seems to signal a kind of extensive mystery, but we also find this sense in much more prosaic contexts. “The workings of this DVD player are a mystery to me” means that the inner mechanisms of the contraption are so complicated and intricate that we cannot make sense of them. We can probably understand some aspects of the gadget; we might be able to understand any of its particular aspects if it is properly explained. But we find ourselves unable to hold these many particular aspects together in any way that would count as comprehensive “understanding.”

We have referred to extensive mystery as “quantitative” in nature. Of course, an investigative mystery is quantitative too, but only in the sense that an insufficient quantity of information is available. This paucity of information is exactly why the mystery is not yet solved. With extensive mystery, however, we have an excess of information. It is all available; it has all been made known—but it is too much for us to grasp. Of course, this excess is often relative to the personal characteristics of the knower. The DVD player that is a mystery to an academic may not be too much for an electronics whiz kid. Yet every finite person, however brilliant or gifted, will reach a limit at some point, and it is at just this point that a mystery in this third sense materializes. An extensive mystery, therefore, defies explanation because of our limitation as knowers—because of what philosophers call our “epistemological” limitation (from the Greek word for “knowledge”). Unlike investigative mystery, the difficulty here results not from a lack of information, but from our inability to take it all in.

Now the mystery of God can easily be understood in this quantitative or extensive way too. Christianity insists that God has revealed himself—yet he nevertheless remains “too much to take in.” There are always new and unforeseen facets to be explored, new elements to be considered. And of course, this is hardly surprising. God is, after all, infinite, and we are finite, and so it makes great sense to say that the mystery of God is an extensive mystery.

Yet one wonders whether the quantitative explanation is the whole story. Do we really want to say that knowledge of God is like other knowledge, except that God is bigger or more complex than other things? To put it crassly, do we call God a mystery for the same reason that we call the DVD player a mystery? It seems that something else must be going on. It is not only that there is too much of God for us to grasp. There is also something about the nature of God that seems ungraspable. Even when we say that God is “infinite,” we seem to mean something more than quantitative extension, for one does not get to infinity by adding a little more and a little more. In this sense, infinity itself is qualitatively different from finitude. If this is so, then the thing that keeps us from exhausting the mystery of God cannot be only our epistemological limits. God is not just beyond our limits; God is limitless. An adequate account of the mystery of God, then, ought to be not just extensive or quantitative. It must also include qualitative elements.

So let us turn to a fourth sense, one that might be more attractive to many evangelicals. People sometimes use the term “mystery” to refer to a certain nonrational opaqueness in some experiences, a qualitative uniqueness that rules out rational explaining or “knowing” in the nature of the case. We might give to this kind of mystery the inelegant name of “facultative mystery,” for its central feature is that it seems somehow to resist rational, analytical investigation and to call instead for some nonrational avenue of approach—that is, for approach by means of a different, nonrational human faculty.

Of course, such a careful, precise description of this sort of mystery already seems too analytical. The whole point is that a mystery like this does not lend itself to thinking. Consider, for example, what is sometimes described as the “mystery of suffering.” Everyone “knows” (in the normal, rational sense) what it is to suffer, but “knowing” is not really the point. The mystery that is involved is not connected to a rational “knowing,” but to the existential reality of the suffering itself. Or in the religious sphere, consider what is often referred to as “mystical” experience, what Rudolf Otto has taught us to call experience of the “numinous.” We find ourselves confronted with a distinctive, inimitable, and somehow sacred phenomenon that cannot be mastered by a description or an analysis. Explanation is impossible not because of too little or too much information, not for any quantitative reason, but because the quality of the thing does not allow that kind of approach. The reality cannot be boiled down into neat, rational propositions—or even into words that have definite, clear-cut meanings. The attempt to “explain” the experience, or the thing experienced, leaves us with the feeling that we have missed its essence. We have not explained; we have explained away—and all of the sweetness has vanished as a result.

Now, this facultative understanding of the mystery of God seems to be very common among evangelicals, and for good reason. Even if we are suspicious of what sometimes passes for “mysticism,” we all want Christians not merely to know facts or doctri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Sun
• Part 2: The Landscape
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Back Cover