“Anyone else feel this way about themselves, or others?”

I think my answer would be yes, yes & yes!

Paradoxically, I think that even those who go the mystical route (‘we can’t really know God’) are just as dogmatic. In this case, the dogmatism is in dismissing the possibility of knowing God.

I suspect that our rationalistic streak can be made worse because of the importance of defending the truth that God can be known. I know that I get so determined to emphasise the truth that some of the subtleties get lost.

If I may reflect on our theological heritage for a moment I’d like to wonder if Broughton Knox insistence that theological language is ‘univocal’  (Selected Works Vol 1, p359) has left us with a difficulty in handling what we do and don’t know about God.

I found understanding the debate between Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark on the “incomprehensibility of God” a clarifying moment in my own thinking. Clark’s position seems similar to Knox’s (though Knox wrote so little on these matters that it is hard to tell). Van Til argued that human and divine knowledge coincide in that the point of reference for both is always God, but do not coincide in that human knowledge is always revealed and dependant while God’s is independent and comprehensive. So while both know that “2+2=4” God knows the “infinite number of relationships and implications [of this] that man can never exhaustively know”. In reply to Clark, Van Til claimed that he could never “state clearly” the difference between these two forms of knowledge, since to do so would require him to know exhaustively ( Van Til An Introduction to Systematic Theology   P&R;,  1978 p 172). I’m sure Van Til has a better approach.

See R.L. Reymond A New systematic theology of the Christian faith (Nelson, 1998) pp 96-102 for a summary of the deabte, though he takes Clark’s position.

No I think the names are right. Maybe I need to fill out some information. Van Til stated that because God is the incomprehensible reference point we can not know exhaustively though we know truly by revelation. Clark found this obscure and asked him to explain the distinction ‘clearly’. Van Til replied that to be able to explain ‘clearly’ how our knowledge differs from God would require us to know in the way God knows. In other words, our knowledge differs from God in ways which we can not know!

Donald Rumsfeld was mocked for telling the media about “unknown unknowns” in military planning (see http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/ ). Remembering that we don’t even know what we don’t know is important in theology. I’d have though it was pretty important in military planning too!