GOD-01 What We Know About God

“Knowing God” means different things to different people — everything from experiencing personal intimacy with God, to witnessing his mighty works, to understanding facts about him that the Holy Spirit has revealed. Most of us realize that it’s valuable to have a personal relationship with God and to see him at work in the world. But unfortunately, many of us do not sense that it’s equally important to learn as many facts about God as we can. And it’s no wonder. Studying what traditional systematic theologians often call “the doctrine of God,” or “theology proper,” is so complex that it requires a great deal of effort. But as difficult as it may be, the more we learn about God, the more our personal relationship with him grows. And the more facts we know about him, the more our awareness of his work in the world grows. In fa­­ct, learning as much as we can about God strengthens every dimension of our Christian faith.

This is the first lesson in our series, We Believe in God, a series devoted to theology proper, or the study of God himself. We’ve entitled this lesson, “What We Know about God.” In this lesson we’ll introduce how evangelical systematic theologians have approached some of the most basic issues related to understanding who God is and what he does.

This introductory lesson on what we know about God will focus on two pairs of foundational issues. First, we’ll explore the revelation and mysteries of God — what God has disclosed about himself and what he’s hidden about himself. And second, we’ll examine God’s attributes and works — two of the main topics in traditional treatments of the doctrine of God. Let’s look first at God’s revelation and mysteries.

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll deal with the revelation and mysteries of God separately. We’ll begin with divine revelation, and then we’ll turn to divine mysteries. Let’s start with what Christians believe about God’s revelation, or his self-disclosure to the human race.

It would be difficult to imagine a more fundamental issue as we study the doctrine of God than divine revelation. What has God disclosed about himself? How has he done this? Our answers to these questions set the course for every facet of theology proper.