The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable
"How is it possible to do theology if the 'theos that we believe in is too great for human minds to take in? Christians have always known that God is a mystery and have developed strategies to aid believers in knowing him genuinely, but in a way that takes seriously the fact that he is beyond knowledge. Steven Boyer and Christopher Hall argue that the 'mystery of God' has a rightful place in theological discourse and contend that considering divine incomprehensibility invites reverence and humility on the believer's part. They investigate the biblical, historical, and practical foundations for understanding the mystery of God and examine its implications for a variety of theological issues and practices.The Mystery of God will serve as a supplemental text in college and seminary theology courses. It will also appeal to pastors and church leaders seeking intellectual and practical guidance for knowing the unknowable God" -- Publisher description.
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Short Review: The Mystery of God is focused on helping us to understand how to talk about the mystery of God (how God is unknowable) in a way that allows for the revealed knowledge of God (scripture, Christ's incarnation, etc) and placing that in a historical and theological context.
Part one is a mix of historical theology and philosophical background. The authors looking at how historical theologians like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther and others and understood the God as both unknowable and knowable. There is a wide range of theological streams that the authors pull from so they quite adequately prove their point that God as unknownable and mystery is part of long term orthodox Christianity. And then mixed in with the historical theology is the philosophy of what knowing God is all about and how knowing God is fundamentally different from knowing other types of knowledge.
It is here that the authors using their ongoing illustration of how 2 dimensional people could theoretically understand how a ball is different from a circle, but they never can fully know the difference because they are unable to experience the full difference because they lack the ability to move in three dimensions. Or how a cylinder will look like both a circle and a rectangle depending on the angle if you are in 2 dimensions, but it is actually neither a circle or a rectangle in the reality of three dimensions. The illustration has its problems, but it gets the basic point across.
This first section is a bit dense and takes a bit to get through. But that leads to the second section where the authors walk through various doctrines and illustrate how mystery works and makes our theological life richer and more fulfilling. Using the Trinity, Christ's Incarnation, the nature of Election and salvation, Prayer and interfaith relationships, the authors show how we should and should not use the concept of mystery appropriately.
This is a book I am planning on reading again soon. Well worth reading.
My full review is at my blog at http://bookwi.se/mystery-of-god/
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The publishers provided me a digital copy of the book for review through netgalley.