Knowing God Analogically?

God’s Knowledge, Human Choice, and the Charge of Determinism

Address this real quick, if you will. God can know the moves without determining the person to make them. So you hear this all the time, right? If you assume incompatibilism. Yes. And so my whole point is, you just don't understand who God is.

And so we're not saying that God doesn't have to. Well, I'm saying, but if he's omniscient and he created this world, I'm saying that has necessary effects of who God is and who man is. And so this is the thing though, the way that this individual is using the word determined, promise you, it's the same way another human would try to determine the moves of another person.

They can't think in transcendent categories because if God determines your moves, David, then you don't really have any choice at all. We reject the initial premise that man and God are univocal in their ability to deliberate and welcome.

Univocal, Equivocal, and Analogical Language About God

So can I address that a little bit more of why I keep saying the word univocate? Yes, sir. There's three categories. So either God is wholly separate from man. And we would say that there's no correspondence at all, that we can know things equivocally from God, wholly separate than God.

God is too far removed from us. Well, that contradicts the Bible, right? Because God can be known in a true way. And so he's not wholly separate where there's no correspondence. We wouldn't have a revelation, right?

Now, the other extreme, this is where Leighton and the Flower Patch Kids live along with AK and all the rest, is that there are certain things that man possesses that are univocal with God. Meaning, and the best one is the ability to choose.

They're gonna say, and they may not say it like this, but this is what they mean. The way that God chose to speak the world into existence, we too can choose, contra-causal free will. I even remember Leighton saying this, and I literally was like, oh, it hurts.

He says the way that God speaks ex nihilo, this world from nothing, then we too can bring our faith from nothing. I'm like, this is the problem. When you bring God down and elevate man, you have a unification.

There are some features, some attributes of man that is one-to-one the same as God. And I'm saying, if you do this, there are devastating consequences to these necessary attributes of who God is. God cannot be omniscient if you're gonna retain this level of categorical ability for man.

Divine Immutability, Simplicity, and Analogical Knowledge

Now, me and AK disagree with that, and I don't care. He can go team up with the open theist all he wants. It doesn't bother me. You're gonna hear AK say things like, well, God is not immutable in his nature or ontos, just in his character.

And I almost wish I would have asked him, AK, do you think God is only immutable in his character? I bet you he would have went, I'm not sure. That's a tough question. Because the immutability of God, him being absolute is necessary for God's simplicity.

You know what I mean? And so there's a middle ground, and this is biblical, but we can know God analogically, meaning we can truly know him as reflecting his image. That sounds familiar, right? Because we are made as image bearers of God.

And so there's different levels of human language, right? To me, at the lowest, we can almost start talking about analogies, illustrations, parables. These are communicating literal truths to us. But the most didactic thing that we could talk about God is not one-to-one the same as God knows it.

It's analogical. Even the truth in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, okay? Well, we have some type of human speech that is literally true, but it has to be analogical at the end of the day.

God knows that he created the heavens and the earth, but he knows it wholly together different than we do. But there is a point of contact because that proposition we can know humanly, and then God can know it eternally.

Now, I almost guarantee you what I just said there, AK says, nothing can be known. But the problem is we're image bearers. So our most literal truth that we can understand, God still knows it comprehensively.

That's why we can only apprehend certain things about God.