Dr Greg Bahnsen - Higher Thoughts: The Transcendence of God (Part 1)

Let's get started this evening with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we come into your presence tonight grateful that you are willing to have us be your people and to pray to you and to be before you to speak to you. We know that we do not carry with us any inherent right to that privilege, and that as a matter of fact, because of our transgressions against your holy law, we have no privilege whatsoever apart from your grace. And so we want to begin tonight by acknowledging with gratitude your mercy, your saving mercy toward us, the grace that has changed our hearts and opened our minds to your word, that has drawn us to you in faith in Jesus Christ. How we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you came into this world to lay down your life for us and that you've provided for us everything necessary for our lives now and for all eternity. And particularly you provided your own Holy Spirit, who gives us life and enlightenment and insight. We do pray that the work of the Spirit would help us to understand the Scriptures better tonight, to understand our holy faith and how to apply it to the competing claims that we hear in the world. Lord, we do ask above all that you would help us to know you so that we would be faithful to who you are, that we would glorify you in the way that you should be glorified. We do pray that you would help our feeble efforts to draw close to you and understand better, that you would bless those efforts even as you've given us your word, so that we would know the truth, that you would give us your spirit, that we would understand it properly. And we pray these things in the name of Christ our Savior. Amen. Our lecture series entitled Higher Thoughts, A Theological exposition of Isaiah 55, 8 and 9, is this evening going to take up the subject of God's transcendence. But before we get into the theological issue itself, I'd like you to open your Bibles to our thematic text in Isaiah. And I'm going to expound Isaiah by way of review a little bit what I said last week I'd like to repeat for you. As some of you know, we had some technical problems and didn't get that tape worked out, so the lecture is not available. So I'd like to just give a quick summary of some of the things we said about Isaiah, but then move very hastily into our theological subject for the evening after that. Isaiah 55, beginning the reading at verse one. And I'd remind you that here we now hear God himself speaking. Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for that which is not bread? Why do you expend your labor for that which does not satisfy? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat that which is good. Let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, come unto me. Hear, and your soul shall live. And I will make an everlasting covenant with you. Even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and a nation that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of Jehovah, thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee. Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth in bud, and giveth seed to the sower, and bread to the so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle. And it shall be to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Isaiah is a prophet that has many glorious chapters. We think of Isaiah 40 and 53 and so forth. The language is just overwhelming. You know, just in reading it, you say there's a blessing right there, just to hear this promise of covenant that will be the sure mercies of David and that will bring even creation into singing, for the goodness and the grace of God that he will extend to his people. But Isaiah does point out that in this promise of free salvation, the famous words at the beginning of the chapter, listen, anyone who is thirsty, hungry, come and God will give you food to eat, and he will give you milk and wine to drink, and he won't charge you anything for it. It will be utterly free to you. God will make provision for what you need in your lives. And of course, we see this as extending beyond our natural lives to eternal life. God is going to bring life out of the dead for you, and he will sustain you by his own mercy. Isaiah declares this glorious promise of God's grace. And yet he says, one must take advantage of the opportunity. Verse 6, Seek Jehovah while He may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Now, Isaiah is assuming something then about the nature of God when he tells us, you should seize the opportunity. And one of the things it doesn't take a course in logic to figure out is that Isaiah is saying, God is not at your disposal. God is not your heavenly servant to come at your beck and call so that you can say, well, yes, God is offering salvation now, but I don't have to respond later. If I get interested in this, then I can take advantage. He says, no, when God opens the way for you, when God draws near, you'd better take advantage of it. Call on him while he is near. While he is near suggests that in Isaiah's conception of God, it is not the default setting, if you will, for God to be near. The first and foremost thing that Isaiah thinks about God is that he is far off. God is not far off, if you will, a buddy with us and always traveling with us. For God to draw near to someone is a gracious opportunity, one that we need to seize upon. We might remember here how Isaiah describes his call as a prophet back in the sixth chapter of the prophecy. He describes God there, not as someone who is close in a hand, easily accessible, very much like unto us. But rather he describes this, in a sense, terrifying, overwhelming experience of coming into the very throne room of God. He said, in the year that King Uzziah died, he saw Jehovah high and lifted up. And there in the throne room of God, he sees the exaltation of the Holy One of Israel. He describes the seraphim, the angels that accompany the throne of God, and what they cry day and night unto one another. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. Holy, separate, set apart, consecrated, pure and righteous. So different from us, so much so that Isaiah falls down and, you know, is prostrate on the ground. He said, I can't stand in the presence of God. He says, I have unclean lips, and I come from a people that have unclean lips. We can't even speak to you, God. We can't even speak about you properly. We are unclean, we are unworthy, we are so much less than you. And it's not just that we are finite and you're infinite, but we are morally impure. And so for all these reasons, God is distant. He's far off, he's holy, he's separate. And of course, as I told you last week, the glorious part of that passage that God himself makes provision, the coals of the altar are brought and applied to the lips of Isaiah, figuratively speaking, so that he is purified and able to serve God. And immediately God wants to know who will go for him. And Isaiah says, I'm here, Lord, what do you want me to do? Those who've experienced the grace of God, the sanctifying grace of God, want to put themselves at God's disposal to serve him. This is what Isaiah does. But this by way of background to Isaiah saying, call upon God while he is near. Isaiah 55, 6. God should not be taken for granted about being near. God is a God who is far off. He is holy, he is separate, he is different from us. And the calling upon Jehovah while he is near is defined in verse 7. Is the wicked forsaking his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and returning unto Jehovah. And in so doing he will find that Jehovah will have mercy upon him and will abundantly pardon him. And I told you last week that this is one of the passages that teaches us the necessity of repentance. When we come to God in our day and age, we live so much for our own personal happiness. And people are so much on that wavelength that the message of repentance is offensive and it's uncomfortable. They don't like to hear that. Many evangelicals would just as soon appeal to people that, you know, come to Jesus, he'll make you happy. Well, there's a sense in which that's true. Jesus will make us happy. But in coming to know that happiness, one must first first know the brokenheartedness of their own guilt and sin before God. Isn't that what Isaiah says? He says, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous his thoughts. And in so doing, and turning from his life of sin and rebellion and unbelief, God will have mercy on him. It's not as though you can Go on living like hell and expect to go to heaven. One must repent, one must turn. And now focusing even more specifically on what Isaiah says, he says, the wicked must forsake his way and the unrighteous his thoughts. Then look at verse eight, after the promise of God's mercy, God says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways, my ways. So this is very well constructed and thought out literary passage. It ties together very nicely. You are to renounce your ways and thoughts because God says, your ways and thoughts are not mine. You must submit your ways and your thinking to my ways and my thinking. You mustn't think that you can have life with me and harmony with me while you live, contrary to the way that I think and the way I expect you to conduct yourself. You know, there are many people who think that we should be able to just live like we want to and that God would be so pleased just to have us as part of his kingdom and like, come on in. Even though you won't assume the characteristics of my family, God says, come on in and be part of the divine family even though you live, you know, contrary to everything that's godly. No, we must make our thinking and our conduct, our thoughts and our ways like unto his, if we are going to belong to Him. He does not invite us to belong to him so that we can be contrary to his character, but rather that we might emulate and submit to his character. The problem is that our thoughts and our ways have not been godly. They have not been God's. And that's why we have to turn from our own to His. And then I also said last week, there's kind of a very interesting paradox in a sense. Isaiah says, you must turn from your thoughts and ways and submit to God's. That's what we've been saying thus far. But now he tells us in verse 9 that even though we submit to God's ways and God's thoughts, we have to acknowledge as well that God's thoughts and God's ways are above ours, not just different from ours because of our sin and rebellion. But even when we live in submission to him, we need to acknowledge that he is beyond us. And so verse 9 says, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. And so there's a sense in which we are going to identify with God's thinking in ways. And yet in so doing we also say, God is beyond us. I want to be real Clear on this. I hope last week some of you didn't leave confused about it. The way in which verse 8 says, Your thoughts are not my thoughts is not the way in which verse nine is saying, my thoughts are higher than me. Your thoughts. God says, your thoughts and ways are not mine because you are sinful and unclean. That's why he's just said, let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts and return to Jehovah, and he will abundantly pardon. So in that sense, we have to acknowledge that we need to get in line with God's way of thinking. We need to get in line with God's call for a certain kind of conduct, a certain way of life, because our ways are not his ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. We need to repent and come into line with God's ways and thoughts. And then verse nine adds to this. And when we do this, we also acknowledge that God's thoughts and God's ways are above ours. That's the theological explanation for what we read in verse 10. For as the rain comes down and of the snow from heaven and returns not thither, but waters the earth and makes it bring forth in bud, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please and prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it. God says, you can count on my word accomplishing what I intend for it to accomplish. Your word is not like that. My word has a quality that your words and your thoughts do not have. That's also how Isaiah accounts for the sure mercy of God. You'll hear a bit about this and what I'm going to be preaching on Sunday as well. But you know, there's a very real sense in which when we hear the biblical declaration of forgiveness, we ought to say, that's unbelievable. Why should God forgive? How can God do that? That's not the way I act. It isn't. God says, but you have to understand, my thoughts are above your thoughts. My ways are above your ways. And so you can count on me being gracious, even more gracious than you are, even more gracious than anything you would expect. You will surely know my mercy because I am different than you. So in all these ways, Isaiah is telling us about God being different from us. And that leads to tonight's topic, which is the transcendence of God. When we speak of the transcendence of God. You need to know what that word specifically means. We are talking for something to be transcendent is for it to have a quality of originating beyond creation or man's temporal experience, or exceeding and going beyond creation or man's temporal experience. To transcend literally means to go beyond. And so when we say that something is transcendent, we're saying this doesn't come from man's experience in this world, man's temporal experience, experience. It doesn't originate there. And it does. It isn't limited by that. To transcend man means to exceed the boundaries of creation or man's temporal experience. And so to speak of the transcendence of God is to say that God goes beyond this world. God is different from this world. God exceeds human experience. And if nothing else is learned tonight, I hope this glorious truth is picked up on. If God is not transcendent, he's not God, is he. A God that is subject to the limitations of human thinking and human ability and human emotions is no different than a human being. If God does not transcend humanity, if God is not greater than humanity, if God does not in some sense exceed or go beyond the creation, then he's not God. So everyone who holds to the existence of God also, in so doing, holds in some way or another to a view of God's transcendence. To speak of a being or a person as God, God is to speak of that being or person as being different than the created order, different than man going beyond man in some fashion, or else we wouldn't call that being, that person, God at all. So again, let me define transcendence, the quality of originating beyond creation or man's temporal experience, or exceeding going beyond creation or man's temporal experience. And this is what Isaiah is telling us about God. He's telling us a lot of things that we'll talk about throughout our lecture series. But tonight we begin to see one of the first implications of what he's telling us about God in verse nine. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. God says, my thinking and my ways are not circumscribed by creation. My thoughts are higher than the earth, even as the heavens are higher than the earth, and so are my ways higher than your ways. God says, you cannot use yourself or your experience in the world as a benchmark for limiting me because I exceed those things. Indeed, I don't originate in your experience. I don't originate in the created order, I live and move and have an existence that is on a different plane. If I could use that metaphor, God says, I exist at a different level than you do. My thoughts are above the earth even as the heavens are above, above the earth. My ways are above your ways. So I am not like you. God says, to whom will you liken God? God says, don't liken me to you because I go way beyond anything that you could think or imagine. My thoughts exceed your thoughts. My thoughts are not limited by your thoughts. My ways are not governed by your ways. I am transcendent in a sense. I mean, it wouldn't be as glorious as Isaiah's prose here, but that's what Isaiah is saying. God transcends us. Now we want to talk about what that means. Let me give you a few related terms and concepts that theologians often use to explain the transcendence of God. To say that God transcends human experience is to say that he is unique or different from human experience. So when we talk about God's transcendence, we want to talk about how he is somehow different and unique from us in anything we know. The word otherness is very popular, especially in this century, for explaining the transcendence of God. God is other than us. Sometimes theologians say he is holy, wholly other than us. He is transcendent. He is distinct from us. Sometimes we talk about God being distant from us and remote. God is far off. He is remote from or distant from us. Another term that has been used in the theological literature is that God is hidden from us because, being transcendent, he's incomparable, literally incomparable to anything in the world and so mysterious to us. Often reference is made to when Moses goes to be with God personally and to receive revelation from God, he goes into a thick cloud. God is hidden. He's the God that we cannot see. He is mysterious and incomparable. Theologians speak of God being separate from the creation and removed from the creation, or, and this is one of my favorites because it's very close to biblical language, exalted above creation. God is the exalted one. He is above us. He is separate from us, removed from us. He's hidden to us, distant and remote. He is other than us, distinct and different and unique. And I'm sure there are probably others as well. But at least in my reading and education, these are the ones that, as I recall, most often are used as synonymous with, or a way of explaining the transcendence of God. There is that quality about God that He is different from us. He is unique and exceeds our temporal experience and our way of thinking. Dr. Van Till points out that what we call the incommunicable attributes of God are those which stress his transcendence. Now, this is going to take a moment of background. Theologians often categorize God's attributes in various ways. And one of the most popular ways in Reformed circles is that certain attributes of God are communicable, others are incommunicable. Which really goes back to archaic use of Latin or some language anyway, to say that we share certain attributes with God and others, we don't share the incommunicable. The ones that we don't have communication or commonness with, obviously are those that we don't share. And then the communicable attributes are those which we do share with God. Let's take a couple of illustrations. The Bible says that God is love. So love is one of the attributes of God. The Bible also calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love God. So we are loving persons, even as God is a loving person. In that sense, love is a communicable attribute. Not that his love is limited by ours or is like ours. His is pure and infinite and holy and so forth. And ours is inconsistent and tainted with sin and so forth and so on. But to some degree we share in that attribute. When we are loving, we are being Godlike. Makes sense. We have there a communicable attribute. However, there are other attributes of God that we don't share in. For instance, one of the most important attributes of God in terms of his transcendent deity is His. That's the Latin expression meaning God exists unto himself and is self sufficient and is completely independent of anything outside himself. Now is that true of us? Do we share in that attribute? Are we self sufficient, independent creatures? Absolutely. I mean, we depend on everything, the air we breathe. The more my physical body breaks down and more I'm conscious always of how dependent we are in this world. We're dependent in our intellectual and emotional life on things. We're dependent physically. As I've already said, we are utterly dependent creatures. So much so that I get kind of a perverse pleasure out of looking at not only actors and rock stars and athletes who are so arrogant in their public presentation. You take a singer who has made a career, you know, be it, you know, classical singing or being a rock star, what have you, and when that person attributes to himself or herself, you know, so arrogantly, you know, and I'm doing all this Just imagine what God can do by saying, simply altering in the slightest way the vocal cords of that person descending a disease or a laryngitis that they can't get rid of. Poof, there goes everything that Mr. Big Stuff was, you know, or these baseball players, you sometimes see them, you know, how they treat the kids, they won't even sign their, you know, won't give them their autographs, they're too busy for them and stuff like that. And I think you, you know, you really think you know your hot stuff. And yet it only takes the slightest damage to your hip, let's say. And even though you may be a professional athlete in two sports, guess what? You're sitting on the sideline like everybody else. You are a dependent creature. Don't ever forget that. Don't get so high and mighty as to think, well, you've got something going for you that you are, say you are independent. Only God is like that. God doesn't need anything. In fact, that's one of the wonders of salvation. God says, I don't need you. Do you think I'm saving you because I'm bored? Do you think I'm saving you because I'm lonely? Do you think I'm saving you because I feel defeated? I don't need you at all. Jesus declares the osseity of God in a sense, when he tells his opponents that if the people were not praising Christ as the one who has come in the name of God, even the rocks would cry out, God doesn't need people. I mean, God can use the rocks if he wants to. God could use a speaking donkey, for that matter. He doesn't need prophets. So when people think, oh yeah, well, at least God needs me to be a preacher. Remember the story of Balaam? God wants to. He'll send his message through an animal or through a rock. God doesn't need you. In the Psalms we read, God say, if I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you. Don't think I need your sacrifices, because even if I consumed them in the same way that you do, I wouldn't need to tell you if I was hungry. The whole world is mine. What makes you think I need you to feed me? And so we have these polemics which are humorous in one sense, but they're very biting spiritually too, where God says, you need to understand, I am not like you. I don't depend on you for anything. Totally independent. So on the one hand, you have an attribute of God that is communicable love. On the other hand, you have an attribute of God which is not communicable, his independence or his self sufficiency. So we tend to divide these attributes of God into these two categories. And what Dr. Van Til pointed out is that what we call the incommunicable attributes of God, those which are unique to his person, are precisely those that stress his transcendence, the way in which he is least like human beings. Traditionally, there are four such incommunicable attributes of God I've already mentioned. One, his independence or self sufficiency, his aseity. Secondly, his immutability. God doesn't change. We're always changing. That's part of the torture of human existence. The way our emotions bounce all over the place. But we change our minds about things, our bodies, bodies change. Change is just part of our human experience, but it's not part of God's. God doesn't change. Thirdly, he is infinite. And everything that we do have as an attribute, it's a finite attribute. But God is infinite. Now someone might say, no, wait a minute, the soul of man is infinite. And so in that sense it's like God. That's not true, is it? The God made us immortal souls. He did not have to make us immortal souls. We could have been a passing experience. And God said, that's it, pass out of existence. You've had your 70 years on Earth and that's the end of it. He did not have to make us so that we will live forever. And of course that he did make us. To live forever is on the one hand a great promise and blessing if you know him. And if you don't, that means all of the worst things of this experience that you've known multiplied to infinity will be what you know forever. And you'll never be able to get rid of your problems, all the things that hurt you and bring you down and make this life miserable. Now magnified to infinity will be what you know forever because you will not be able to die. That is the fact that our lives experience extend to eternity. In one sense it's a great threat if you don't know what it is to live in the presence of God. Now, of course, what I'm talking about is hell. Preachers often emphasize the imagery of the lake of fire and that sort of thing, which is good to talk about how horrible it's going to be. But I think there are other ways to talk about hell to get the point across to people. Do you really want to live forever and not. No. Physical blessing, emotional blessing, social fellowship and so forth. Because you're going to lose all of those in hell and it's going to be torture night and day, and it will never end. But my point is, God doesn't make cats and dogs like that. Now I've said it. I'm sorry. Those of you who think that your pets are going to be with you in heaven. God doesn't make animals to be his own image. They do not have immortal souls, or your favorite rose bush or your pet rock or what have you. We have been made with a personality. We have a soul. God has made us in that way, and he has made that soul immortal only. He, however, is infinite in and of himself. And then the fourth after of God, usually considered in the incommunicable attributes, is his unity and simplicity. There is but one God. That's his unity. And his simplicity is he's not a compound of parts. As though you could have a Mr. Potato Head approach to God. You know, one person has a God that has, you know, these attributes and this configuration. And other people, you know, and some people, you can remove this. No, all of God's attributes are a way of speaking of all the rest of his attributes as well. You cannot divide them up for purposes of education. We can talk about his love. We can talk about his mercy. We can talk about this and so forth. But God's love is always the love of a merciful, just, infinite God. It can never be mercy by itself apart from those attributes. So he is simple in the sense that you can't compound him from parts. And he is singular in that there's only one God. There are many human beings like you and me. We have our uniqueness. But there are people that are in the same category. There is no one that is in the same category with God. There is but one God who is simple and unified. So the point I've been making is that. That when we think about the attributes of God, we want to stress his transcendence in saying that certain of those attributes are not shared by human beings. Independence, immutability, infinity and simplicity. Now, having said that, there's a biblical basis for the transcendence of God. And it's important for our conception of God to stress that. I want to take a little bit of time now to point out that the attribute of God's transcendence can also be exaggerated. We can speak of God as though he is transcendent and not immanent, near to us or like unto us at all. And this has been the tendency throughout the history of philosophy. Throughout the world religions, and sadly, even in modern unorthodox Christian theology, to want to stress the Godness of God, his transcendence, in such a way that he really ceases being God, in kind of an ironic, paradoxical fashion. Let me explain this to you. When theologians say that God is infinitely removed from man and from creation, infinitely, when they say he is wholly other, there is absolutely nothing similar between God and creation. He is utterly different from what we are, or he is wholly hidden from us. What are they telling us? They are telling us that God cannot be known because of God's transcendence. Because God is infinite and our minds are finite, we can never really know him at all. By the way, I have heard that particular line of thought not only in sophisticated halls of learning, seminary or philosophy, or what have you, but you hear that from, you know, your next door neighbor who's an uneducated truck driver too. People have the idea that if God is infinite and we are finite, well then of course we can never think properly about Him. He exceeds us. Now, they don't know the language of transcendence and so forth. What they're saying is God is so transcendent that he can't be known. God is so God, because remember, to be God is to be transcendent, different from the created order. In man's experience, God is so much God that we can't ever know Him. He's infinitely different from us. And the result is we can have no knowledge of God and we can't even say anything about Him. There can be no statements made in human language that are true about God, because He's utterly different from us. Anything we were to say would be taken from the finite created order. It would be from this realm, if you will. And because God is infinite, infinitely different from us, we can't say anything. In that case, there could be no revelation of God. There could be no revelation of a transcendent God. By the way, in that case, we couldn't even say that there is no God, could we? We couldn't even say that God is transcendent. I mean, if God is transcendent in this exaggerated fashion, then he's not. We can't even say that he is transcendental, transcendent. Now, of course, that's part and parcel of the contradiction that's built into all unbelieving systems of thought. Unbelievers pull the rug out from under themselves. But when people say that, that is a legitimate response. Well, if God is wholly other from man, then you can't even say that he's wholly other from man, because to the degree that you can use human language and say he's wholly other, he's not wholly other. That much at least can be said about him in human experience and language. So to be totally consistent, a person who exaggerates the transcendence of God should say, there is no God, or I can't talk about God at all. It's beyond any discussion. But now, since God is excluded from human experience by this exaggerated assertion of his transcendence, in a practical sense, the prerogatives of God will then have to be exercised by men, won't they? Since God can't reveal himself, God, in a sense, is pushed out of the universe and out of my experience by his transcendence. Therefore, I'll have to exercise the prerogatives of God, the authority of God. That is to say, those who stress the transcendence of God in that exaggerated fashion end up being their own little gods. They exclude God from their experience and then they take his place. Of course, not very effectively, not very convincingly, not very successfully, but they end up having to do that in one way or another. In this sense. The irony is, by stressing the transcendence of God, theologians and other world religions can actually escape responsibility from God, can't know Him. Modern theologians are particularly perverse about this. They will say, well, no one can really say anything for sure about God because he's so transcendent. So then what happens to God telling us not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to murder and so forth? Well, of course, that's got to be the best human attempt to approximate a divine standard of righteousness. But even God can't say those things. In the end, we have to be the authority in ethics. We can't assume that God has clearly pronounced from Mount Sinai as they will ridicule us as thinking that thou shalt or thou shalt shalt not in these sorts of things. And so people live their own lives, they live as their own little gods, defining good and evil for themselves, just out of an alleged desire to honor the transcendence of God. It's perverse because in the Bible it's precisely because of the transcendence of God that He can come right into my experience. The transcendence of God does not remove him from my experience and therefore remove my responsibility to hear His Word. The transcendence of God is the very cement and foundation of the nearness of God and my responsibility to Him. And this is in a sense going to be the point of tonight's lecture. So if you haven't been listening, tune in at least long enough to get this. Here's the thesis. In biblical reasoning, God's transcendence is what enables him to come right into my experience and identify Himself and sovereignly exercise his prerogatives over me. Just because he is the high and exalted and sovereign One, he has the right to control creation and reveal Himself there in the created order, or in a book, or in the person of His Son. He can control this world and control my thinking so that I am always intimately responsible to him and what he has said. God's transcendence is the foundation then for his being part of my life and my responsibility to Him. Whereas in non Christian thinking, the transcendence of God is always something that pulls out against the notion of knowing God and being responsible to Him. In non Christian theological systems and in non Christian religions, God's transcendence is emphasized so that we don't really have to listen to his word or bow the knee to the Scripture. And then what we do is we make up a God in our own imagination. We play the part of God, we become the revealer or the authority, the religious authority ourselves. And that is the pattern that you see all the way back in the Greek religions, through the Middle Ages, through the world religious systems, and even in modern theology. Our time is short, but let me just see if I can come down a couple of places here and illustrate this for you. In ancient Greek religion, there was very big emphasis on the idea that no one can know anything about the gods. Greek philosophers would tell you that God is infinite, he's beyond us, and therefore no one knows anything. Well, now then, what takes the place of a knowledge of God? Are the Greeks making up their myths about the various gods? So we hear the stories, you know, of Mercury and of Pallas and Zeus and others. That is to say, God cannot be known. The gods cannot be known. In fact, remember in Athens how the Apostle Paul found even an altar to the unknown God. It's utterly mysterious. But then they turn around and said, let us tell you what he's like or what they are like. You have that contradiction that God is pushed out of the picture and then man's reason or man's imagination takes the place and devises a God. In late Roman philosophy and early medieval philosophy and in many Gnostic circles as well, there was an emphasis on the notion of God's transcendence, that he's utterly mysterious and there's nothing man can do to penetrate that cloud of unknowing. God is totally beyond us. And that's why, for instance, many Gnostic cults said that there have to be emanations from God. God overflows. And so there's a sub God level one, and that level overflows to sub level two. There are all these levels of being from the infinite being of God, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. And then that we finally reach humanity at a very much lower level 50 eons, levels of reality between the exalted, utterly mystical and unknowable God, till we finally get to, if you will, an angelic order that can speak to us and so forth. But you see the contradiction in that. And so the contradiction is that on the one hand, God is totally beyond rational thought and yet we can use rational thought to tell you about all these eons or levels of being between God and man. It's very convenient, isn't it? It's the perversity of Romans one that we suppress the truth about God and then turn around and make our idols in his place. No one can know about God, so let's make God this way. Now I realize unbelievers don't ordinarily bring the two aspects of their religious outlook together just that blatantly. But those two are there and you need to deal with that contradiction. We see this in modern theologians as well, people like Barth and Bultmann who will say that God cannot be known, he is the mysterious one, he's wholly hidden from us as humans. And then they turn around and they write tomes of theology about what must be true in theology. So I know that the way in which it's expressed and the manner is going to differ from religion to religion and throughout the history of man. But we see this pattern, pattern over and over and over again, where the transcendence of God is used as an excuse for making an idol, an excuse for substituting human authority for divine authority and for human thoughts about God, for God's own self revelation. Whereas in the Bible God's transcendence is precisely the basis of his ability to speak to us clearly and to hold us accountable. Accountable to what he has had to say. Colossians 1, verses 16 and 17 tells us, by him were all things created, which are in heaven and earth, visible and invisible. And so the Bible teaches us that he is the Creator. Since he's the Creator, he cannot be identified with the created order. Nothing in the created order, visible or invisible, can be identified with God. He made it all he is transcendent to the world, and he is God without any competition. Deuteronomy 4:39 Jehovah he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath. There is none else he is solely the the Creator and sovereign controller of all things. The creation cannot contain God our minds cannot encompass him. First Kings 8:27 Behold heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee or Isaiah 66:1 Thus saith Jehovah, heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What manner of house will you build unto me, and what place shall be my rest? For all things hath my hand made. God says, do you think you can make a house that I'm going to reside in? How could that be? I'm the creator of heaven and earth the earth is my footstool, figuratively speaking. So what manner of house would you make for me that could contain me? Romans 11:33 34 oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, who hath been his counselor? The utter transcendence of God. And because he is transcendent, he is the sovereign Lord over history. Because he is sovereign, there is nothing that obstructs his plan, nothing that gets in the way of him accomplishing whatever he wants to do. Isaiah 46:9 11 I am God, and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Yes, I have spoken it I will also bring it to pass I have purposed it I will also do it. Daniel 4:35 he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth, and none can stay his hand or say, what doest thou? There is nothing in all of creation that can stand in the way of God accomplishing what he wants to do. No one can say, what do you think you're doing? No one can turn back his arm or stand, stay his hand from accomplishing his decrees. Ephesians 1:11 God works all things after the counsel of his own will, or Psalm 115:3 our God is in the heavens he hath done whatsoever he pleased and so the Bible exalts God as the Creator of heaven and earth. He cannot be contained by creation he is solely God he is sovereignly God, and nothing can keep him from accomplishing what he wants to do now, that view of the transcendence of God does not allow you to escape responsibility, does not allow you to escape the revelation of God. You can't say, oh well, God is so transcendent, he can't even speak to me. No, the Bible says he is so transcendent that he can speak to you. He is so transcendent that he he made your mind. He created human language. He controls all things, and he can say whatever he wants and hold you accountable to it. You can't look at the Bible and say, oh, but God is so godlike that this really couldn't be His Word. No, just because he is so godlike, this is his word, and it will judge you on the final day. Scripture says that God very near to us just because he controls all things. Jeremiah 23, verses 23 and 4Am I a God at hand? Saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him, saith Jehovah, do not I fill heaven and earth? Saith Jehovah. See, this is not paradoxical. Paradoxical or contradictory in terms of Christian or biblical theological reasoning. The fact that God is creator of heaven and earth, and so heaven and earth cannot contain him, means that heaven and earth cannot escape from him either. He says, am I a God afar off, that I will not be near, that I will not know what you are doing? Of course not. Psalm 139, verses 7 to 10 where shall I go from thy spirit? Where shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall your hand lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. David says, where can I escape from you, God? Because you are the sovereign, transcendent creator of heaven and earth, then I confront you everywhere. I can't escape you. Acts 17:27 28 he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move, and have our very existence. In Deuteronomy 4:7, Moses declared, what nation is so great? Who has God so near unto them? You see, because God is sovereignly present, that is to say, trans ascendant, and for that reason able to become present to man. It's possible for the psalmist to speak of being so close to God. Psalm 73 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee and There is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth. But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish. Thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee. But it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all thy works. To draw near to God and declare all thy works. The transcendence of God does not prevent approaching Him. It makes it possible. The transcendence of God does not mean we cannot declare anything about Him. It enables us to declare very certainly because the transcendent One has guaranteed his own revelation. He has very clearly come into this world in the person of His Son. Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. How clear has God made it? Right there in the person of Jesus Christ? The word of God is perfectly clear. We open this book and God has spoken to us us in such a way that Paul can say, this has been breathed out by God. Even though it was written by the pen of Paul and Peter and others. What those men wrote because they were controlled by a sovereign, transcendent God, makes this word very near to you as the very clear word of God to which you will be held accountable. God is so transcendent in power and authority that he can become clearly present to man and hold men accountable to Him. Romans 1, verses 19 and 20. God has shown what may be known of him unto man. For the invisible things of him are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, the invisible things of him are clearly seen. First off, to think about the intentional paradox and play on words there. Paul says, God is transcendent and invisible, and for that very reason you can see him real clearly. Wait a minute now, Paul. But then you see, if you understand the logic of what I've been explaining to you from the Bible, that makes perfectly good sense, doesn't it? The transcendence of God is a foundation for his eminence and a guarantee of his clarity and our responsibility, rather than something that detracts from it. The biblical conception of God's eminence or nearness never distracts from his transcendence, but rather complements and emphasizes it. In closing, let's look again and at Isaiah, the 55th chapter. I'll read from verse 6. Seek Jehovah while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. This is the same Isaiah who will say in Verse nine. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. God says, I trust transcend you. Therefore draw near to me while I am. Come to me while I am near. Seek me while I am close at hand. The eminence of God is nearness and the transcendence of God do not detract from each other. In the very same paragraph, the prophet declares them side by side. And so in our theological exposition of Isaiah 55 tonight, we've noticed the first attribute of God that we learn about, and that's his transcendence. He is on a different plane from us. He's different from us. He is other than us. But that does not mean, as it does in the world religions and in false theological schemes, that God cannot come close to us, declare Himself clearly, and hold us accountable. In fact, it doesn't detract from it, it guarantees it. Next week I would like to take up the subject of theological rationalism. Theological rationalism, the idea that our theological convictions must be controlled by what we can rationally prove or find acceptable and understandable. And I'll be looking especially at why people have trouble with predestination. And I will argue that for the most part, it's not because they have exegetical problems, is because they are theological rationalists under the skin. Do you have any questions you'd like to ask before we stop the lecture tonight? Vicki? I was going to ask these theologians to say that God is utterly different, wholly removed, etc. How do they explain our being made into them? Theologians who insist that God is totally different from us have a problem being theologians at all. It's not just how do they account for our being made in his image? I mean, Karl Barth has written a great deal on man being made in the image of God. And on the other hand, given Barth's epistemology, his theory of knowledge, he shouldn't be able to say anything about God at all. So what he does is he picks up the Bible as man's testimony to God, kind of a jumping off point, if you will, for meeting God and having this mystical experience of the one that is wholly other. And then he goes on, as it were, to give a historical exegesis, or an exegesis of the best in man's religious expression. And so then he talks about the Bible, what the biblical writers meant by man being made in the image of God, and so forth. Now we would say, since the Bible is more than just man's attempt to express religious truth. It is God's own revelation that when God tells us we are made in his image, in so doing he says, you'll never escape me because in knowing yourself, you will always know me. My transcendence, therefore, can never be used as an excuse for saying, you don't know me. And so I'm glad you picked up on that. But modern theological theologians, I hate to be so short with them, but it does come down to this. They so readily accept contradictions in what they are doing that that's why Barth writes on man being in the image of God and yet stresses the transcendence of God and says nobody could ever speak in clear, scientific, human terms of God. JOHN. The invisible attributes of God include human nature. They are both. The God that we see through the created order is God. And remember, we can't separate all these attributes. Some people. I hope this will illumine your question, although it's not what you were looking for initially. Some people have asked from time to time, Dr. Bonson, do you believe the general revelation shows the tri unity of God and to their word thinking? Well, of course it can't. I mean, it shows that there is a God in some general orbit. It can't be as specific as the Trinity. My answer is no. It does. I believe that the God we know through the created order is the living and true God. Romans 1:21, Nantes Tan Theon Knowing the God, they don't glorify him as God and so forth. The Bible tells us that it's the living and true God and all of his divine glory and all of his claim upon our lives that we know through the created order. So I think we know his incommunicable attributes as well. That is to say, if someone had a truly, how can I put this? God glorifying and faithful experience of the wonder of the stars and the power of the sea. If they could articulate that without sin and all the other things that get in the way of using nature for our theological foundation, they would say God is assay, he is sovereign, he is triune. But of course, the problem is because of the fall of man, even Christians are not able to do that in the way that we would like to be doing it. A couple of years ago at Lake Tahoe, I gave a series on the knowledge of God and the created order, and I talked about this, that even Christians are not able to do a theology from, from nature and the way that we say ideally could be done because we still struggle with sin and We've never learned to think in that way. Glenn, from whatever age, are they emphasizing certain attributes or just talking about other attributes than we were talking about? Because I'm trying to look at the list of non communicable attributes. That's not really what they're saying. Well, it's, you know, 51 varieties, unbelief out there. I can't generalize. Some non Christian religions or unbiblical theologians stress this view of God and these attributes and others different ones there. It's not as though we stress these as the central attributes of God and then they pick up the peripheral ones and make more of them than they should. Because from a biblical standpoint, you can start with any of the attributes of God and understood properly, it will give you all the rest of the attributes of God. So it's not like here are 30 attributes of God and we stress these 10 and they stress numbers 29 and 30. It's not like that at all. Their understanding of any of the attributes is skewed by their unbelief and their failure to submit to God's revelation. One more question, Ken. Autonomous or autonomy is law of oneself. Yeah. To be autonomous is to be law unto yourself. And I'll say is to be independent, to exist in yourself. Those are two different things. You don't really contrast them. Yeah, they're talking about different matters. Okay, I'm going to let Mike come up and give a few announcements before we go home tonight. Thank you all for coming. It.