theo-logy (God logic)

I heard a preacher on Sunday who talked, among other things, about the difference between philosophy and theology. His was a beautifully stated observation, and I have found myself thinking about it over and over, as it has a lot to do with how I understand and engage with culture.

Philosophers base their objectives and outcomes on human logic, using the law of non-contradiction as the starting point.  And so, matters of faith become almost impossible for them when they run into a contradiction that cannot be explained, humanly speaking. For example, to a philosopher, Jesus might be all God or all man — but to be both/and represents an unexplainable contradiction. God might be all just or all merciful — but to be both/and is contradictory. Thus Christ’s death might either serve as penalty for sin or an act of mercy, but not both. We see the fruit of this kind of thinking all around us in culture today. God must either be all love or all wrong. The mere idea of hell is intolerable or nonsense. The cross is pure foolishness, as it has been in ages past as well.

On the other side of the equation, the theologians’ job is not to end contradiction or solve the mystery of God (although we certainly try, and I don’t see anything wrong with that), but to engage in the study of theology; literally ‘God-logic’. We use human experience (because God has promised that he is near), scripture and tradition to study this “unknown God” as Paul puts it to the Greeks in Acts 17. Our alpha and omega in the process is not our own ability to think things through and arrive at the truth, but a wholly different way of thinking that suspends my own powers of reason (the created) for one whose thoughts and ways are higher than mine (Isaiah 55), the Creator, ironically given the name “Alpha and Omega” in scripture.

This is God-logic! To us there are inherent contradictions and always will be until the day we see him as he is (1 John 3) and know him, even as we are known by him (I Cor. 13). I don’t know about you, but I can make space in my brain for all of that; because as much as I love to solve a good mystery, and find my way out of things that don’t make sense — I still understand that I am limited. And that’s very logical, as even the scientists and philosophers must accede.