How do we find God? How does God find us?

Overview of Christian Theology, Assignment 2

As a life-long seeker, I find these questions absolutely essential. If I am candid, I must also say that I have yet to encounter an answer to these questions that seems entirely satisfactory — both intellectually and spiritually.

This week’s readings (Guthrie , 39-69; McGrath, 1.19; 2.16; 2.17; 2.37) introduce us to two distinct ways in which we may come to know God: general and special revelation. General revelation of God is that which is available to all humanity by observation of nature, through the experience of one’s individual life and of human history, and in the working of reason. Special revelation is that knowledge of God which proceeds from our encounter with the Word of God in three forms: the person of Jesus Christ, the history and understanding of God’s dealings with humanity as set forth in the Bible, and in the community of the church. We say that we may find God through general revelation, but that God finds us in special revelation.

In defense of general revelation, we cite the order, beauty, rationality, and seeming purposefulness of the material world. We point to the promptings of conscience as the voice of the divine. We call upon the universal human awareness of a spiritual dimension to reality and to our own experience of an indwelling presence. We describe the shape of human history as progressing to a more just and happy world, and ascribe that movement to God. These claims are deeply challenged by modern science, which finds no need for God to explain the deep order of the natural world. They are disputed by post-modern thought, which tells us that conscience and human history are products of circumstance and constructs of human systems of control. The social sciences undermine claims of universal moral truth, and history itself puts the lie to the notion of continual progress. Perhaps the only portion of the general revelation project that remains relatively unscathed is the widespread phenomenon of personal spiritual experience. Yet each of us knows people who say that they have never had any such experience, and that those of us who have are delusional or, at best, indulging in harmless wishful thinking. (Maybe it was something we ate?)

By contrast, special revelation asks us to put our faith in sources and, by extension, in the ultimate Source outside ourselves. The premise is that in the person of Jesus, in Biblical texts that attest to him, and in the history and experience of the Holy Spirit alive in the church, God makes God’s true nature known to us most completely. We are asked to value the witness of the Bible, and the traditions, experiences, and judgments of community of the church over our own when they conflict. (In the Vatican I document, for example, we were instructed to condemn any scientific claim which contradicts the “doctrine of faith” as error with “the appearance of truth.”)

Since in special revelation it is God who seeks us, knowledge of God in this context is grounded in relationship. We are not studying an object, but rather getting to know a Person who has introduced Godself to us. We cannot be content with knowing about God. Nor is God some celebrity who we “know” by reading tabloid papers or watching entertainment news shows. One does not have a close relationship with another person intellectually or abstractly, but rather passionately, intimately, and in ways that grow and change over time. The challenge for Christians is that we dare not aspire to direct knowledge of God, but must have faith that we can find and be found by God in our own very earthly, very worldly, very specific human circumstances and relationships. We have to take care that, in the process, we are not misled into making an idolatrous god out of our own needs, desires, and perceptions.

One may ask how, then, this Christian project differs from that of any other human religion? Christianity seems to make claims for exclusivity: the revelation of God in Christ Jesus is the definitive revelation; all others are partial, uncompelling, or — which is worse — deleterious. As Guthrie says, we must “always be modest about what we think we know of God and God’s will.” Many of humanity’s greatest sins, some of the most extraordinary acts of evil, have been committed by people who were convinced they were doing God’s will. As there are no definitive rational arguments for God generally, or for the God we encounter in Jesus Christ, our knowledge of God must be located in a realm outside or beyond that of the merely rational or scientific. As we experience God in relationship, we are responsible for living into and modeling that relationship with everyone, everywhere. Since our human apparatus is inadequate for perceiving or defining God, we need to accept and rejoice in God’s freedom to act, to reveal, and to inspire in ways, people, and places that we could never anticipate and that we may not recognize. This is yet another reason to walk very humbly with the God who we only see now in an imperfect, darkened mirror.

Readings:

McGrath, Alister E. 2001. The Christian Theology Reader, Second Edition.
Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Inc.

Guthrie, Jr., Shirley C. 1994. Christian Doctrine. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.