Episode 144 - We Know God By What He Does, Not By What We Imagine

What if our problem with faith isn’t doubt, but distance? We tease apart why abstract theology often feels hollow and show how truth becomes vivid when it is told as story. Rather than polishing concepts like omnipotence and omnipresence until they lose their edges, we trace how Scripture grounds God’s character in public acts: creation spoken into being, Israel led out of Egypt, the Son sent by the Father in the power of the Spirit, the cross and the empty tomb.

We walk through the “engagement ring” test for meaning and explain why data without narrative misses the truth of things. Acts 17 becomes our guide, with Paul summarising Genesis to reframe worship, human unity, and judgment through the resurrection. We examine the temple “not made by human hands,” the incarnation as God’s chosen dwelling, and Genesis 18 where the Lord comes down to see Sodom—an arresting picture of justice that is relational and present, not remote and impersonal.

Along the way, we challenge two tempting errors: the impersonal absolute that flattens the Bible’s stories into metaphors, and the diminished deity who cannot bring history to its promised end. Instead, we make a case for knowing God by his deeds and words within time. That’s how titles like Creator, Saviour, and Comforter gain weight: not as ideas we admire, but as realities we can name because they have happened. If you’re hungry for a faith that listens, acts, and can be lived, this journey into true myth—where history and meaning meet—will help rewire your sense of truth back to Jesus. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves theology, and leave a review to tell us which story most reshaped your view of God.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Mythic Theology Versus Abstraction

Rev Dr PRB 0:30

Well, welcome to the Christ Center Cosmic Civilization as we're continuing to think about myth and mythological theology as theology that takes history and facts seriously as full of meaning that is written into them by the author of reality, the Lord Jesus Himself. And we're resisting trying to do theology in a disengaged or abstract way. And we do that not because sometimes people will say, oh well, the good thing about abstract theology or timeless theology in that way is that it has a precision to it that is superior to narrative and story. And I I don't know whether that's true. My consistent experience has been that when you attempt to define, for example, the omnipotence of God or something like that, in abstraction, it kind of quite quickly runs into the ground and into paradoxes and very dry and barren kind of mazes sometimes. Whereas when we talk about the Lord God who, with his mighty arm and his outstretched hand, which is not simply a poetic way of saying God is omnipotent, because his mighty arm and his outstretched hand is, as the ancient church leaders used to say, that is a way of referring to the Son and the Spirit. It's saying the Father has his only begotten Son and His breathed out Spirit that can accomplish whatever he sends them to do. And he sends the Son in the power of the Spirit, and that that is how there is this out mighty arm and outstretched hand. So it's not mere kind of poetry that can be cashed into something timeless and abstract. It is it's indicating to us particulars, historical particulars as well. And again, I've used this example before, but it's that point that sometimes a person says, I what we want is to get to the kind of factual reality, the truth. And sometimes I remember somebody, this is years ago again, and they just kept saying, Isn't isn't the most important thing truth? And they kept saying the word truth with this intense kind of focus and energy. And at first I was like, yeah, no, truth's really important. But after a while I started to go, well, hang on, there's something, this is a bit weird. What do they mean by that? And for them, there was this idea that there are things that are sort of structurally timelessly true, and they were completely kind of captivated by that, but they weren't captivated by Jesus, even though they were like a Christian and things. But I felt the wiring had gone wrong. It was as if the truth wire should have been connected to Jesus, so that they sort thought of him as the the source of truth, the author of truth, the one who's right, who he decides what atoms are like and how many outer protons and electrons and neutrons, whatever. He's the one who designs all this in order to tell his story. So he's the he's the guarantee of truth, the author of truth. But it's as if the the wire that should have connected the concept of truth to Jesus inside the circuitry and got sort of bent round and attached back to truth. So truth was just its own thing, like which was you know, circular. Truth is important because it's true. In fact, they said that to me. They said, Isn't it powerful to think that truth is true? And I went only only as much as it's powerful to realize that green is green. To me, that wasn't particularly powerful. Like, truth is wonderful because it is an aspect of Jesus, Jesus is truthful, he tells us the truth, he writes the truth into reality, he gives us the scriptures that bring us into the story, he he gives us new eyes to see what the world is really like. So I give them the example of if you find a bit of metal that's been bent around into a small circle, and you can analyze that and you may discover what it is made of, what it weighs, its atomic number, and all that sort of thing. Do you know the truth of that? Well, you kind of know some incidental things, but what but the mythological so that could be a you might say that is a abstract truth, or sometimes people talk about scientific truth, but again, if you really understand science is got has got lots of narrative to it, and I found that like people often want to know where did the universe come from and where's it going? It's as if you science requires a narrative and cause and effect, chains of cause and effect, and so anyway. But if you found that little circle and you you analyzed it and you said, ah, this is what it weighs, this is atomic number, these are the different materials that have uh composing it. Do you know what have you got a truth about that? Because if it's an engagement ring, you actually almost know nothing. Like the to know the truth about that object requires you to know the story of which either that this ring, this engagement ring, is part of a story, and for you to know the truth about it, you need to know the characters. You might say, ah, that's that's the engagement ring that John has given to Sarah, and she's accepted that, and they're planning this, and they they've been together this long, and then and suddenly there's a narrative. Now you understand that ring, but without the narrative, you don't understand it at all, and that is true of everything in reality: trees, animals, weather, everything is like that engagement ring. In truth, it's filled with this narrative meaning, and the source of the narrative meaning is Jesus, really, and the Father sends Jesus to give that narrative to the universe in the power of the Spirit. So we let's let's let's think about this. That when we come to know the living God, and this is something we've addressed many times in in this podcast, that the way that if we try to approach God through the concept of like a divine essence, and we might say there's a divine essence that is an unmoved mover and powerful and just and things like that, that is that that's as false and crazy as true as that with that engagement ring, and you're saying, Ah, well, this is what it weighs, this is atomic number. So that that it doesn't mean anything at all to do that. But if we say, ah, the living God is presented to us as the shepherd who oversees like the universe, and then he searches for his lost sheep, then you're like, ah, now, okay, now that's got some reality to it. Or, for example, the creator, if we were to say, the father, like the Bible says, all things are created by his will, and by his will they are sustained. That's true of the Father. And in our creeds, we reconfess the Father to be the creator of the heavens and the earth, because he's the initiator and the source of that. But you can't have God as creator in the abstract. So for that word for for the for us to confess that he is the creator, there must be a creation story. And if we're gonna say that he's the saviour, he cannot be timelessly saviour without an actual story of salvation. It is the story of salvation that means he is the saviour. He cannot be the saviour if he doesn't save. He might say, I've got the potential to save, I'm thinking about saving, but uh, but you're not yet the saviour. He is the saviour because he's saved, and with the story of how he's saved, that is how that's what that title is. It's the title is about a story of salvation. Similarly, the store the title of creator is the story of how the universe was created, formed, and directed, and so on. Similarly, with the spirit, if we say the spirit is the comforter, it's not that the spirit has the potential to comfort. That's not why that title is there. The spirit is called the comforter because the spirit does comfort and equip and empower, and there are stories about that, and the Bible so often wants us to like remember how the Lord did this. Think about that as you read the Bible, how often the Bible does that, where it t retells stories like of the Exodus and things. Why? Because it's like remember this that he did, the events, how the father sent his divine angel in the power of the spirit to deliver you out of Egypt, and then the stories told in sometimes different ways with different emphases, because it's that it that is how we know he's a saviour, he's reliable, he's trustworthy, and so on, by telling the stories of him doing it. There's no point in simply asserting attributes, he is a saviour. Well, how do I know that? Well, let's tell the story of salvation. That is what Moses says to do, isn't it? And he has that verse about impress it on your children, and he does say, when people ask you, who is this God? Say he and he gives them the response to give. He says, Well, my ancestor was a wandering Aramean, and it's like you just gotta tell that story. You uh actually start with Abraham in there, like a guy, just a guy who meets Jesus. It's like, first of all, you've got to know this person who meets Jesus. That's how Moses says to do it. I think it's such an awesome passage when Moses does that, and I think he gets that from Jesus, because when Jesus introduces himself to Moses, he does say, and the Moses' like, Who are you? And he says, Well, I am the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. I am who I am, I will be who I will be. So he does go, he's like, You remember the stories, all the stories about I am, and then what the name I am means is I still am the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. He explains that to Moses that and so what that means is the history, because in a sense, history doesn't exist as soon as it stops, you know, it's like there's nowhere, there's nowhere where there's loads of dinosaurs running around, you can't like travel back in time and that sort of thing. But it is real in Jesus. So because they're still alive in Jesus, all that story's still alive, because like Abraham, you can ask Abraham, like, oh, what did Jesus do when you met him? And he's like, Oh, and you know, he'll tell you that's still alive. Whereas for all these other people, you say was, and it's like, you know, it's not true anymore for people who aren't alive in Christ. So that that is how Jesus introduced himself to Moses, and that's why Moses, and so the law is almost entirely stories. It's not even saying here's the abstract concept about what's right and wrong, and he does do that a bit. He does say, you know, do that, but it's almost entirely like Genesis is a very odd thing to include in the law because there's little about actual legislation, yeah, it's just all stories, and Deuteronomy is mostly stories, and you know, yeah, and and that's why sometimes people have said these are good stories because they illustrate what God is. And I'm like, nah, no, no, that's that's not that's it's as if you're saying we we know what he is, he is an illustration of what he is. No, no, no. These are the stories in which he is revealed. We only know what he is in these stories, right? That that's the point of the salvation thing. It's not that him saving is an illustration of the fact he's a saviour, no, he be he is the saviour because he did those things, and that's hugely important. That the store the historical events are what makes him what he is. He is he is a saviour, he is reliable. How is he reliable? Because every time his people have called upon him, he's delivered. It's not that it like the stories disclose him in a more powerful way, and without those stories, we can't know him to be those things. It's usually important. I even think it's interesting in Acts 17. Sometimes people like, oh, in Acts 17, Paul does philosophical theology, not mythological theology. And I'm like, no, no, no. What he says is when he addresses this like bunch I do always love the way Luke introduces them. The Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time doing nothing but just speaking about and hearing new things, and he's like losers who do nothing, just like hang around and reddit and stuff. And then Paul stands up and he's really upset about them, but he doesn't give them a philosophical disputation, he actually says, Let me tell you about creation. God made the world and everything in it, and he's the Lord of heaven and earth, and this god does not dwell in temples made with hands. Well, that is summarizing the story of Genesis, the creation. Now that's important because the gods they worship don't have those stories. They have narratives, the Greek gods, but they don't create the universe. So he's summarizing the narrative of Genesis 1 and 2, and just saying, look, this god I'm telling you about, let me just summarize the story. He created the universe, he created the heavens and the earth, and he doesn't live in temples, which again refers us back to Solomon, who says, Ah, even the heavens, the highest heavens, cannot contain him. So he's including story, and then Paul goes on to say, This God made from one blood every nation of humanity to dwell on the face of the earth. And so there you're getting the story of Adam, and out of Adam comes Eve, and from the two of them the whole humanity. Again, a radical truth that is known through the narrative. Like it's not as if the oh, there's a principle that humanity are all related to each other. It's like, well, are we related to each other or not? The reason we are related to each other, because we really are from Adam and from Adam and Eve, and then Eve and So that story is the reason they're all one blood together. But without that story, that doesn't the it's not as if there's something that's true without that story. The reason it's true is because of that story. And here in Paul's words in the abstract would lead you to the wrong conclusion. Like, Jesus describes his body as a temple, and it the fullness of deity dwells in that temple, but it's not built by human hands. So you might think, oh, God is placeless, is God Paul's saying. And it's not that at all, and you get that with the Old Testament temple, when he's like, you can build this temple and I'll dwell in it, but you're not allowed to there's not even the sound of humans working on things nearby. It can't be a temple built from human hands. In a much more mythic and literal sense, where it's just like, no, I don't want humans working on it. I refuse you know what I mean? Like that's what he said. And so then when Jesus is born, there can't be a man can't have had any involvement in it. It's got to be this virgin birth, because he refused to be built the temple built with human hands. Yeah. Or, you know, the hands of men. It's like it's very literal and mythical. Very literal, yeah. And then that's the that's what we're trying to get at with this. When we say mythological, we're not saying less true. We're saying that is what truth is. Truth is mythological, it is grounded in events and history and particularities and concrete realities. When that when we attempt to tell truth in any other way, we're it's a that is at best something diminished. There's always a loss of meaning and truth the more we uh step away from the way the Bible tells truth. So the Bible tells truth and tells these stories and things in many, many different ways, but even when it does it in s relatively abstract, like the prov proverbs is relatively abstract in a sense, because it's kind of little homely truths. But even when I was just reading it the other day, it constantly gives you little narratives, like a man is hiding on the roof because his wife's like annoying or something, and it gives you little narrative glimpses all the time, even when it's in its most abstract in that way. So, what we're trying to do is focus on this, trying to say, let's not try to know God or truth at arm's length as if we could abstract ourselves from reality. Let us rather, as we were saying, embrace the role of the Kairos, the moment, the history, and be part of the play. And then in that, then we know things as they are meant to be known. And I like, you know, we'll in a future episode we'll we'll come and visit Tolkien and C.S. Lewis better, where they talk about Christianity as true myth, and it's it's trying the getting at this idea that theology is not a series of timeless principles, but a series of events. To know Christian theology requires story telling the stories of creation, the fall, you know, the patriarchs, the life, the life and times of the nation of Israel, the birth of Jesus, the life of Jesus, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his future coming in glory, and of course, we've got the Global Church History Project, or at least one member of the team here, who, you know, the whole world's filled with these stories that show us the reality and character of the Father through the Son and the power of the Spirit. And again, in Acts 17, I forgot to even mention that Paul drives to that future that there is a day of judgment coming, the date has been set, and we know this because Jesus has been raised from the dead. So even in Acts 17, he never gets a historical. Does all this matter? It kind of does matter because if we think about concepts like omniscience, omnipresence, what's the other one? Uh uh omnipotence? Yeah, those what the omnis. People, what the difficulty of trying to approach God in that way is that those concepts have no meaning if they are not grounded in the reality of how God actually behaves and knows and makes himself present. Because if we try to say, no, no, like here's this principle that means that when the Bible says things about how God is powerful or how God is located or how God knows, what can happen is, and I just was watching a video today where there was like this theologian who kept saying, Oh, well, when the Bible says things like that, it we can't take that seriously. We have to understand that as like a kind of poetic language, and that what it's really just telling us is you know, omnipotence, omnipresence, and that. And I'm like, whoa, like it feels as if what you're constantly you know, the Bible has this incredibly rich and powerful narrative of how God acts in power and how God knows, and how God is located with us, and in the the Father's enthroned in the highest heaven, he sends the Son in the power of the Spirit and all this kind of thing, and then all of that is diluted away to this transparent abstraction where it's like, no, none of that is true. God is equally present in all places at all times, knows all things in exactly the same way at times. And and and they what even then was sort of say it's not that God can do everything, He does do everything, and it was like, What are you saying? PJ, help us with some of that. Well, they to think as we thought the s a lot of African mindsets have remained mythic and they've stay steered clear of the the the horrible influence of uh pagan philosophy. And especially in Ethiopia, we we do love Ethiopia, and they there was a great book I was reading where this person was defining how Ethiopic Christians understand the Omnis, they're all potential. And so Aristotle, this uh pagan hierophant that uh some Christians like using, he says all it's better to actualise than to have potential. And he doesn't really explain why, but I mean I suppose it's partly like if every time you're striving to do something, you want to achieve it, so the achievement's better than the striving or something along those lines. So it's always like if God's the best, he has to actualise every potential he has, he can have no potential, but that is incredibly strange. I think everyone knows potential. Well, once you're not in that mindset, everyone knows potential is better than actuality. Like if you had the film The Pursuit of Happiness, and then you think, oh, what a terrible film. If only he was rich at the beginning and stayed exactly as rich, that would have been a better story. That's a better story. And of course it's a terrible story, that's a terrible story. No, but it's wonderful because the Bible shows us how God accomplishes his plans, and then we're like, that's amazing, and he does it. Whereas if it's like, no, no, he's already achieved everything, he's got yeah, that's rubbish story, yeah. And then things like uh loads of verses just don't make sense, where it's like, now we have an advocate and mediator who understands what it is to be tempted. When it's like so that implies a story within God, and it implies knowledge obtained that was not, yeah, and this is so he was able to get all knowledge, and he did in fact acquire all the knowledge he needs, but it this here's the story of how he did it. Yeah, yeah, and that's and that's a bit like in Sodom uh Genesis 18 21, where the Lord God says, I will go down. He hears that it's like it's reported about what's going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, and then the Lord God says, I'll go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. And again, this theologian guy I was mentioning had said, Oh, well, that that's a silly verse because you can't take it like that. He obviously knows exhaustively and comprehensively what has happened with Sodom and Gomorrah, and and he knew that exhaustive and comprehensively even before he created the universe. And so it was like, wow, okay, one that the Bible doesn't actually say what he just said, but two, it it ends up making God sound silly in in front of his because what that verse says, of course, I guess there is this way in which, yeah, he he kind of does know what's going on in Sodom and Demora, but it's like the living God, it's not like that abstraction. The living God, this Lord God, the Father sends the Son in the power of the Spirit to say, you go and see that at first hand. I want you to engage with what's happening. We don't want to deal with that at some far distant, you know, even if we do know what exactly what's going on or whatever. We want to see that because that is how we govern the universe, not like at a distance, but firsthand, and this is something that's going on. We want to go and see that. I and so the Lord comes and engages with it and sees for himself, and there's something powerful about that, the idea that if you just said, Oh, well, he knows, but he's not gonna turn up to see, it's great when he says, Well, he does know, but he's coming to see anyway. Then you're like, Wow, because then there's the possibility that he knows my situation, but he still might come and see my situation and draw near to me in my situation, not for necessarily for good because the Son of Magora one's quite scary, they get destroyed, but it's that way in which a God who comes to see and to engage and be present in a situation is is that's a that's the god of the narrative of the Bible, and that is way superior to some abstract being who is in all places at all times, knows all things even before the universe began. And then that is not and and actually the people who advocate for such a god overtly say that God cannot have any real relations, yeah, and they're not embarrassed by that. And then there is a sense in which is God does God want what's best for us? And so when he's telling us to trust each other and that sort of thing, is he actually saying no, it's better not to be able to trust people and rely on people and that sort of thing? So if it were the case that lot, he's kind of relying on Lot to tell him what's going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, and then he's like, Oh, that sounds it can't be that bad, can it, sort of thing? Like just that, but like the idea he's genuinely like, no, he's got this perspective, I'm gonna trust, he's gonna, you know, isn't that better? Rather than he can't if he cannot trust and cannot rely and cannot make people worthy of being relied on, and he can't it doesn't that actually seem weaker if he's a creator who cannot make people or a redeemer who cannot redeem people so that they will be helpful or like you know they reliable. No, to you it's a God who a God who is capable of trust and personal relationships and engaging and listening to people genuinely listening to a person and and having genuine dialogue with them and taking them seriously what they say. You think that's better because you're coming from the Bible, but literally I've I've engaged with many people who are horrified at them. They'll say, no, no, no, the idea that God genuinely listens to prayers and they act in a in response to a prayer, they think is a terrible idea. For them, it's it's absolutely essential that God never listens to prayer, but actually has already, before the world began, determined all things, and that there is no real relations, no dialogue, no listening, no communication. They prefer such a God who has no personal relations. But I agree with you, to me, whatever God they're worshipping, and it maybe does sound an impressive God, and maybe they do look down on the God of the Bible who sends his son in the power of the spirit in humility and and all of this, and they they probably find the incarnation quite distasteful. I'm sure they do. And the cross, I'm sure, to them is foolishness, but to us, it is the power and the wisdom of God, and we love the fact we're we're thrilled, we are led to worship by the fact that this God does this and draws near to see for himself and to talk to us and take us seriously, take us seriously, and I love the way in that whole story, and he's like, Should I tell Abraham? Well, yes, he's a friend, I will do. And it's like I think that's how he like it I suppose, you know, those that want to write off all these stories as silly, they're missing out. I feel sorry for them because the God, the real God who is disclosed to us in the Bible, is more real, more real, more thrilling, more powerful, more wise than the fake God who's been dreamed up. And I think you can understand if you define God as love, as like an in infinite force of like cooperation or something, you don't understand that as loving at all. Whereas I think like when Jesus is surprised at how good that centurion is and how much he has faith, then he's like, Oh, I love that guy, and you can get that more. That he's like, What? I didn't know he was gonna be that good. The idea that you could actually surprise God by doing something really good, and then he's like, What? I didn't know you and so he loves that and he's excited by that, and he's like, Oh, I love you. That feels a bit more real than just the imperson. Well, it is impersonal, even if they say the word love, it's like if it's just like a four-person, it's like a tractor beam. That's true, and as if it as if he's constantly, no matter what you say, he's always like, I knew you were gonna say that. And it's like, I guess, like if you really wanted to abstract it, maybe he did know you were gonna say it, but like how how put it's it's a poorer view of Jesus than the Jesus who can genuinely be thrilled by what you say, and if you trust him with all your heart, he's genuinely like, wow, that's fantastic, rather than like, yeah, and you I in fact it's me who made you do that anyway, so like, yeah, nothing, nothing's happened, you know. It's it it's and I suppose like I don't want to totally caricature it all, but it's just that sense of it's a plea. What we're trying to give you is a plea from the heart to say, look, it's very tempting if you've been schooled in that pagan way of philosophy to undercut the Bible all the time, and no matter what the Bible says, you already know what God's really like because you've worked it out from abstractions, so then the language of the Bible has no power to reach you, and so our plea kind of is don't do that, like be prepared to just let the language of the Bible hit you, and then okay, yeah, I know sometimes people end up going too far. It like take that language and and let it one heresy is to undercut the language of the Bible in in in to to just end up with in personal abstractions. That's one heresy. There is another one that does occur where people go the other way and end up with God as just like he doesn't know what's gonna happen ever. And he's like, Yeah, he has no idea of the future, it's all totally random and open to him, and they end up with this incredibly diminished God who does who hardly knows what's going on, and gets like, I mean, even from that school of thought, there are those who have God as genuinely unable to bring about the final outcome of the universe, and it may not happen as he wants it to do, and things you're like, oh no, okay, that's another heresy. Yeah, that is a heresy, and these two heresies are kind of equal and opposite heresies. One is a god who is like uh lost in abstract absolutes, and the other one is lost in, I don't know, particular frailties or something, but say like curses on all of them. Why can't we have the real God of the Bible? The father who sends a son in the power of the spirit, and this god of the Bible does whatever he pleases, and he is pleased to engage with us and take us seriously, more far more seriously than we take ourselves, and come to us like and and and and engage with real relations, and then he becomes one of us and lives his li our life and dies. The immortal god dies and buys church with his own blood and all of it. But it's really then where it's a plea to take the story of the Bible seriously, and when we do that, we end up with this more wonderful God who is capable of so much more, and all these stories of what he's done in the Bible and then what he's continuing to do in church history thrill us so much more than if we're satisfied with either the weak God who ca who doesn't who who's i incapable, or the god who's so capable that he can't actually do anything.