Chapter 2 - God Incomprehensible

What is God like?

Can we even answer that question? In truth, no; however, thanks to glimpses given to us through the Word and the Holy Spirit, we have an idea that provides us pictures, similarities, and likenesses. Even wise and inspired men have had difficulty expressing what God is like; often times (actually, at all times) this is because the revealed description of God is wholly or in part delivered to those who are a part of the natural world. Despite the recipient's insight and/or wisdom, the revelation is of a God and a world that is above and outside of nature. This is why in scripture, we find so many times in which writers, having no frame of reference for what they've been shown, describe their visions and insights in terms of what it is like or similar to, rather than what it really is because they are unable to describe what they have been shown. An interesting point that AW Tozer brings up is that while the scripture says that man was made in the image of God, we are not to infer that it means we were created in the "exact image of God." Remember that much of this study is looking at the character and attributes of God, those things which set Him apart as unique in His Greatness; if we were made in the exact image of God, a replica of God, we would "lose the unicity of God and end with no God at all." It comes back to AW Tozer's distinction between That-which-is-God and that-which-is-not-God. When we lose that distinction between the two, we degrade our image of God to something no greater than the created being.

At this point, though, we arrive at a conundrum: our minds strive to discern what God is like, but our minds are limited and constrained from doing so because we can only really understand the ideas of that-which-is-not-God. We are instructed to have no other Gods before Him, but to have an image of God that is other than He is borders on idolatry, however ignorant or unintentional it may be. Again, we are stuck. If God is incomprehensible as the Apostle's Creed states He is, or unapproachable, as the Apostle Paul states He is,  how can we ever understand what He is like rightly? How can we acquaint ourselves with Him who is too high to know and how are we to be accountable to seek and know That which can't be known? Paraphrasing Zophar the Namathite: "Can you find out God by searching? Can you know the Almighty perfectly? It is high as heaven; what can you do? It is deeper than hell; what can you know?" Jesus answers these questions in John: "No man knows the Father, except the Son, and also to whomever the Son reveals Him." Paul also says in I Corinthians that God can only be known as the Holy Spirit, in the seeking heart, "performs... an act of self-disclosure." God reveals Himself, what He is like, through Jesus... but He does so, not to the reasoning mind, but to the seeking heart moving in faith and love. Tozer states, "Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience. God came to us in the incarnation; in atonement He reconciled us to Himself, and by faith and love we enter and lay hold on Him."

In the end, there is no acceptable answer to the question, "What is God like?" There is, however, a more acceptable and relevant question which is, "What has God disclosed about Himself that the reverent reason can comprehend?" Even though the name of God is withheld and His essential nature is outside our ability to comprehend, in His "condescending love", He has revealed certain things about Himself to be true... "These are we call His attributes."