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| Limiting and Capturing God? | | Date Created: Aug 10, 2005, 01:46 PM |
 Some have argued that an infallible Bible, one that gives us the very words of God, is an inappropriate, even idolatrous way of limiting God. If we identify the words of Scripture with the voice of God, so the argument goes, we are idolatrously attempting to limit, even to capture him in human language. Hmmm.
What if God voluntarily limits himself? It seems to me that self-limitation (humility) is an inescapable corollary to self-revelation. You see, if I want you to get to know me, I will decide to speak to you. There's no other way for you to know me (cf.1 Cor. 2: 11). When I speak to you, I cannot possibly communicate everything I am to you. Assuming that I know myself and that I am telling the truth (two big assumptions for fallen creatures!), what I tell you will always be only some part of the truth about me. Nevertheless, what I do say to you about me will be accurate and sufficient as far as it goes. By deciding to speak with you about myself, I have humbled myself to reveal something about me to you.
What if you were to describe me to someone else by saying, "Jeff enjoys smoking cigars," and the other person would challenge you with "Oh, no, you don't really know Jeff well enough to say that"? Wouldn't you be correct to respond, "Well, Jeff's very words to me were: 'I enjoy smoking cigars'?"
Sure enough, the statement "Jeff enjoys smoking cigars" does not fully reveal who I am, but it is nevertheless accurate. Nor does it come close to describing the fullness of my relationship to cigars (or to anything else for that matter). But, you see, by making that statement I have communicated something about myself to you and am content with the necessary self-limitation that it implies. And if you understand the nature of personal communication, you will not be tempted to think that "I enjoy smoking cigars" is the whole truth about me, and at the same time, you will also understand that it is sufficient and true to what I intend to communicate about myself.
Why shouldn't God's communication be understood similarly? Or maybe I should say something like: it is evident that man's personal communication (type) reveals something about God's personal communication (archetype). When God speaks to us, he voluntarily limits himself in the act of self-revelation. It is not as if we are trying to limit him by attributing to him something he has not said. That's not what the church means by "revelation" or even the "inspiration" of the Bible. We are only saying, "Look, this is what God has said about himself. These are his very words!" Why should he mind if we point to his very words and say, "Look, this is what God is truly like. Here is how he has expressed himself." God's revelation of himself is true, but not comprehensive. How can that be construed as limiting God?
And what of this accusation of attempting to "capture" God? How is it that identifying God's words with the Bible gets labeled "capturing God"?
Captured by whom? This language of "capturing" has always confused me. Am I "captured" in my words: "I enjoy a good cigar"? No, but something about me is truly communicated in them. Someone can learn something accurate about Jeff Meyers because Jeff Meyers himself spoke these words (presumably without deceptive intent). Similarly, God is truly and accurately revealed in his Word. No one is trying to "capture" God in human language; God himself has spoken to us in human language. God himself has identified the Bible as his very words. He has control over these words. They do not capture him. He created human language as a means of revealing himself and his will to man. How can human language have some kind of power over God?
So, the Scriptures are indeed a self-limitation on the part of God (not necessarily an "accommodation"), but so what? How could it be otherwise? I can understand that God is not fully revealed in the Scriptures. But I deny that this implies that the Scriptures are not God's very words. The Scriptural evidence for this is overwhelming. |
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