The Mystery of God's Knowledge
“Gentlemen, we just don’t know, do we?”
I can still see Rev Dr Freddy Vokes, Archbishop King’s Professor of Divinity, who lectured me in New Testament and Church History, standing with a glint in his eye. We had tried to tie him down on some point of interpretation as he lectured us on St John’s Gospel - he just looked back at us and said in his sing song English voice, “Gentlemen, we just don’t know, do we?” For some of us that was quite infuriating. Questions had answers and answers were either right or they were wrong. I actually found it quite liberating as Freddy went on to say, “Sometimes the most honest thing I can say is ‘I don’t know’.”
Many people came to Jesus with questions - there were questions that came from the heart, questions that represented a search for truth, for meaning in the face of suffering. Then there were the questions, such as we read of this morning, that were intended to entrap, or trip him up, questions “that would cross a rabbi’s eyes”.
Jesus discouraged speculation. On different occasions people, including the disciples, came to him with questions for which there was no answer. On more than one occasion he was asked when was the Father going to bring in the Kingdom, to which Jesus replied, “Not even the Son of Man knows”. Jesus felt comfortable living with uncertainty in the context of his total trust in God.
The apostle Paul, as he reflected on the mystery of Christian love, acknowledged the limitations of his own knowledge in his first letter to the Church at Corinth, [9] For we know in part and we prophesy in part, [10] but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. [11] When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. [12] Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Cor. 13:9-12)
Before God all of us are able to see but dimly. Like Paul, all of us need to acknowledge the limitations and imperfection of our knowledge of God. The early theologians of the Church as they sought, in the light of Scripture, to understand the nature of God used the term incomprehensible. They used this term not in the sense that we cannot know him, rather that we cannot define him, describe him as we can aspects of his creation - he is beyond our understanding.
We began thinking about questions that were asked of Jesus. There were questions from the heart, questions seeking meaning and purpose and then there were questions that were simply designed to “cross a rabbi’s eyes”, to trip him up, to entrap him. Questions asked by people who though they knew all the answers. Their certainty arose from hearts that were closed, impervious to ideas other than their own. They had no conception of God outside their own definitions. We too can seek to restrict God to the limits of our own understanding, our own definitions.
Jesus pointed them beyond a God of their own formulae to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, God not of the dead but of the living. A God whom we not only worship but with whom we can engage.
I frequently thank God for Freddy Vokes and his simple yet profound observation, “Gentlemen, we just don’t know, do we? Sometimes the most honest thing I can say is that I don’t know.”
It is as I confess that I don’t know, that I don’t have all the answers that my heart is opened to the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ and with Paul I confess in my heart, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor 13:9)