Yesterday I shared in church about the failure of our confession of Who God is and the glory that is due Him and then today when I checked my email I found a wonderful article by John Armstrong about the limitations of our knowledge and explanation of God. Whatever it is that we affirm concerning God must include what we deny. Gregory Nazianzen rightly proclaimed, “how do you describe the Essence of God? Not by declaring what it is, but by rejecting what it is not.” St. Basil echoes the same sentiment when he writes, “We confess that we know what is knowable of God and yet what we know reaches beyond our comprehension.”
Particularly when we speak of the very essence of God, we must also recognize that all our descriptions fall far short of His Glory. Sometimes I fear that we in the church have created such neat and tidy theologies that we forget that the God of Whom we speak is indescribable and beyond comprehension. The LORD does not fit into a nice little dogmatic statement (though we rightly confess the historic creeds with all the Church), we must never fail to recognize that every confession must entail a confession of falling short of His Glory. It is such a wonderful thing that the LORD of all should condescend to make Himself known through the record of His covenantal relation to and with humanity (and particularly Israel) and not only that…He took on flesh and became one of us…Immanuel. Praise His Name!
