God made us with the desire to understand. Like the daughter in the Girl Scouts commercial who asks, “Why is the sky blue?” we want real answers. And often the Bible gives us answers, but not always. That’s because God is both knowable and incomprehensible (i.e. unable to be known exhaustively) at the same time.
The incarnation of the Son of God confronts us with the mystery of the Christian faith. Jesus is fully God and fully man—a paradox we confess to be true but cannot completely comprehend. The church father Gregory of Nazianzus said, “He remained what he was; what he was not, he assumed.” In other words, the Son remained God when he became man. He hungered and was never hungry, slept but never slumbered, was born as a helpless infant and yet ruled the universe.
Paradox is uncomfortable. When confronted with it, we treat the incomprehensibility of God as a problem to be solved, a mystery to be figured out. No, we think. Either he was hungry or he wasn’t; either he suffered or he didn’t. It’s true, God has given us minds to know him, so there is a lot we can understand. Still, God would not be God if we could completely comprehend him. So we must uphold both truths simultaneously.
The paradoxes of our faith are not meant to discourage us. Instead, they’re meant to lead us to worship. In the Old Testament, Job questioned God until finally God revealed himself. Job’s response was, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” When we hit the limits of our own understanding, we are moved to worship God for his limitless knowledge.
Gregory of Nazianzus depicts these paradoxes beautifully in On God and Christ (it’s long but will leave you in awe):
He hungered—yet he fed thousands. He is indeed “living, heavenly bread.” He thirsted—yet he exclaimed: “Whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Indeed he promised that believers would become fountains. He was tired—yet he is the “rest” of the weary and the burdened. He was overcome by heavy sleep—yet he goes lightly over the sea, rebukes winds, and relieves the drowning Peter. He pays tax—yet he uses a fish to do it; indeed he is emperor over those who demand the tax. …He is stoned, yet not hit; he prays, yet he hears prayer. He weeps, yet he puts an end to weeping. He asks where Lazarus is laid—he was man; yet he raises Lazarus—he was God. He is sold, and cheap was the price—thirty pieces of silver; yet he buys back the world at the mighty cost of his own blood. A sheep, he is led to the slaughter—yet he shepherds Israel and now the whole world as well. …He is weakened, wounded—yet he cures every disease and every weakness. He is brought up to the tree and nailed to it—yet by the tree of life he restores us. …He is given vinegar to drink, gall to eat—and who is he? Why, one who turned water into wine, who took away the taste of bitterness, who is all sweetness and desire. He surrenders his life, yet he has power to take it again. …He dies, but he vivifies and by death destroys death. He is buried, yet he rises again. He goes down to Hades, yet he leads souls up, ascends to heaven, and will come to judge quick and dead…
Our “faith seeks understanding,” as Anselm once said. When we understand, we worship God for his knowability; when our understanding fails us, we worship him for his incomprehensibility. Truly his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
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