June 12, 2021—Chapter Two, Paragraph One of the 1689 London Baptist Confession
Chapter two, paragraph one of the 1689 London Baptist Confession reads:
The Lord our God is but one only living and true God; whose subsistence is in and of Himself, infinite in being and perfection; whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but Himself; a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, and withal most just and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.
First, there are a few things this paragraph says about God which frustrate me. I don’t want to change them—I think they’re quite accurate to reality—but I am quickly frustrated when I think about them.
Let me show you what I mean.
[God’s] essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself
Well, why not? Why isn’t it within my abilities to comprehend God? That insults my pride. Which is annoying.
[God’s] subsistence is in and of himself
I don’t comprehend that. I thought I was smart. That’s annoying.
[God] dwells in the light which no man can approach unto
Well I’m fine if other people aren’t able to approach unto that light. But I thought I was special. Why can’t I approach unto God’s light? That’s annoying.
[God] is only living
[God] is immutable
I don’t think anyone has ever seen something which was both alive and immutable. In fact, I don’t think such a thing exists (other than God). And God isn’t just partly alive but is entirely alive. I thought only dead things were immutable. And all the other things which are now alive are in fact in the process of changing, of dying. Why can’t I comprehend him by comparing him to something he has made? That’s annoying.
God exhaustively knows everything about himself. And he knows that he knows it. And he knows that he knows that. And that. And yes, that too. And so on.
As a programmer I’m sort of familiar with recursion. And so I know that recursion is sort of like that. But at the same time there’s something lacking in my attempts to describe God’s knowledge recursively. I think it has to do with the difference between having an algorithm that can recursively compute something—want to know if a number is prime? Easy, just find out if it’s evenly divided by a number other than the number 1—versus already having the answer. God already knows what all the prime numbers are. It’s not that God has some procedure he has to follow in order to arrive at his knowledge (such as “write down ‘God knows that. And that. And that’ forever). No, God already has that knowledge in himself.
In fact God has always had all this knowledge. The Divine Nature has never learned anything because he is immutable.
Furthermore as a programmer I’m acutely aware of how difficult it is to make a computer originate facts. All I know is how to make it operate on information it gets from somewhere else. Yet all things exist by reason of God.
And to realize that God is also “most loving, gracious, merciful”—that’s amazing. Furthermore God is “most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty”—that’s amazing. And to think that God became a man in order to purchase people from his own wrath by dying for them—“amazing” just doesn’t do justice to the fact that God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ.
Comprehending God is too difficult for me. He is too different. He is too high. I think my head is going to explode.