The Five Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith

Nice! For me its not so much that God has left out pieces, as He is just always mystery, and divine mystery really cannot be solved!

“Keeping/holding the mystery of the faith with a pure/clear conscience.” (1 Tim. 3:9)

But having said that, we do have in the Ecumenical Councils, especially, as the essence of the Nicene “homoousios”: In Christ is ‘very God’! Of course God & Man, Christology that is theocentric. However, this reminds me of something Luther said and wrote: “That it is not enough nor is it Christian, to preach the works, life and words of Christ as historical facts, as if knowledge of these would suffice for the conduct of life, although this is the fashion of those who must today be regarded as our best preachers.” (Luther, Treatise on Christian Liberty) And indeed too, we see this so much today, even in Evangelical circles.

I am convinced that these mysteries are one of the proofs of the Christian faith. I would expect the real God to be beyond our understanding. But we would not invent a God we did not understand. I suspect the reason He has not told us the answers to these things is that we would not be able to understand them if He tried. But that they are there shows we are dealing with someone bigger than ourselves.

I am always mystified by the fact that so many people think they know what Jesus looks like and post pictures, even though the Bible condemns graven images.

Say what? Did you read the post? It has nothing to do with what Christ looks like. Nor is this picture being leaned upon for worship in any sense.

In the culture of the day, idols or images were used for power plays and manipulation of the gods. If you had an idol, the god represented was more obligated (in their minds) to do as the one who possessed it requested. Therefore, the second commandment is an issue of divine sovereignty. Follow the spirit of the law, not the letter and you will be free.

But this post will certianly not be about such a tangental issue (important as it may be).

Hope you enjoy argument made: there are many theological issues that need to remain a mystery.

Hope you are doing well my friend.

Fr.,

There are certainly some thing that the finite cannot understand of the infinite. But, being infinite, don’t you think God could give us a satifactory understanding to some of these things, he has just chosen not to. They are “secret things” that belong to him, but not necessarily things that are always beyond our comprehension.

The prohibition against ‘graven images; is the worship of them.

We have many depictions of Jesus around our campus and one in our sanctuary. They are aids to worship Him. We don’t worship the pictures.

@Michael: My point of the great mystical reality of God was not a negative, and surely we can “know” something absolute of the great “mysteries” of God, in fact St. Paul said, of the apostolic and ministers: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” (1 Cor. 4:1) But in the end, these are again: “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness, etc.” (1 Tim. 3:16) 🙂

Just a note about “images”, with the Incarnation the image of the Crucifix is still a remarkable visual. And I still have a use for the tasteful Crucifix, myself. But then I am an Anglican! 😉 Indeed, we must see things since the Incarnation as redemptive ‘In Christ’, the Last Adam, but always spiritual and in “spirit and truth”! 🙂

Michael,
I don’t think I understand the point for sure.
What does it look like for the Trinity to “remain a mystery” and” But the history of the church has seen that when these are solved, heresy or serious aberration is always the result. “?

Do you mean that we should wonder at it be satisfied with theology as “sighing and stammering” (Barth) and that if we arrive at a more “satisfactory” answer it’ll be heresy?

The question is what does it end up looking like practically?

@Aaron: And I am not sure I get your point? the word “mystery” (Musterion) fills the Letters of Paul! It is both a Greek Hellenistic and Greco-Roman word, that Paul certainly uses in his theology and revelations! But certainly in the NT it denotes more of the reality of that which is only God’s Revelation, given in especially St. Paul’s “dispensation”, and understood spiritually, i.e. spiritual truth in general!

Note Jesus too, in Matthew 13: 11, etc.

1) God created something where there was nothing through exercising effectively infinite power. That’s not really a mystery, just something we can’t do because we don’t have that sort of power.

2) Jesus as hypostatic wisdom fits nicely within Jewish philosophy.

3) Understanding Jesus as hypostatic wisdom makes sense of Jesus as God and man. Jesus was God’s wisdom, now he is God’s wisdom with the additional nature of a man.

4) Scripture is a truthful record of God’s words to human beings, and his interaction with them throughout human history. Anyone can write an error free account. 1 + 1 = 2, I can do it myself.

5) Calvinism is irrational. That’s not a mystery, that’s a logical contradiction. Slapping the label “mystery” on it doesn’t make it coherent. Simple foreknowledge, where God’s knowledge of who will answer his call leads to him preordaining them for salvation before the foundation of the Earth, removes the mystery completely.

With the possible exception of 3 I didn’t find those particularly challenging. Christianity is God’s revelation to human beings. He is well aware that the vast majority of human beings are rather thick. He wouldn’t make things that complicated. As Fr Robert points out, “mystery” as used by Paul relates to God’s revelation, those things which wouldn’t be discovered by human reason, but once revealed can be understood by human reason.

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2

For reason is a property of God’s, since there is nothing which God, the creator of all things, has not foreseen, arranged and determined by reason; moreover, there is nothing He does not wish to be investigated and understood by reason. Tertullian

What is interesting about this list that most of these “mysteries” are considered core to the faith and salvation. It is considered that one MUST believe in the Trinity in order to be saved. Or that Jesus was fully God and fully man. Or, as you’ve discussed before, the infallible nature of Scripture.

I’m not saying that these doctrines ARE necessary for salvation, just that they have been considered as such. Which, to me, has been scary. Because they are mysteries, it is easy to get wrong. It is easy to really misunderstand the Trinity and move into what has been historically considered heresy. Or even the nature of the humanity of Christ!

It is interesting.

I don’t think there’s anything simple about the Son not created but begotten from eternity. I do think some things are learned through reason, but definitely not all. They are higher than our reason can reach, rather than our reason reaching higher than the mysteries of God.

One of my favorite CS Lewis quotes, from Till We Have Faces:
Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

Here is free audio of lecture by Peter Kreeft, on Till We Have Faces, about why we can’t understand God…
http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/16_cslewis-till-we-have-faces.htm

I love that C.S. Lewis quote too Irene! Indeed the “mystery” is always in God! Just think of it, we will have an eternity ‘In Christ’ to gaze and think on all the mysteries of Christ! (Col. 2: 2-3) But just to see Him will be quite nice to start!

@James: It is one thing to not understand God’s mysteries, this is on a curve for all of us. But quite another to stand in unbelief or even agnosticism. Note the true agnostic does not believe that the human mind can know that God is the ultimate cause in the material universe, etc.

We are making a big picture of this as part of the tour of the Credo House. We want to make sure that people understand the necessity of allowing for mystery in our theology.

@Fr. Robert, post Number 10
I wasn’t trying to make a statement. I was trying to ask a question.

If nothing else, I think my question was partially answered in the responses: seeing both heresy and the pride.

[…] The Five Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith: […]

[…] The Five Great Mysteries in the Christian Faith […]

[…] The Five Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith: Are there more than these? Most certainly. But in theology, these are the biggies. These are the big pieces of our puzzle that are missing. Why are they missing? I don’t know. I just know they are. God chose not to tell us. I will ask him when I get there. But I will try to trust him until then. After all, don’t I have to borrow from his morality in order to judge him for leaving the puzzle unsolved? I think I will pass on that. […]

Where does the Bible actually say God created something out of nothing? It never says there was nothing. It just says “In the beginning, God created….” It never says there’s nothing there for him to create with.

@Tiffany Newton
Hebrews 11v3 is the answer to your question: “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

Excellent post Michael. We constantly bump up against mystery as we encounter the infinite-personal God revealing Himself to us in His word — and how could it be otherwise. Question — to your 5 great or primary mysteries should we not add a 6th —- the Theodicy concerning suffering and evil?

@Fr. Robert: I totally agree. We must not look at these “mysteries” as stumbling blocks. What I find interesting is that they are often considered core doctrines and yet they are mysteries.

For example, the trinity. It is a “mystery” as to how it works, but if you get it wrong you are in danger of Hell!

@Bruce: Indeed “Theodicy” is a great mystery, but we can thank Leibniz for the term and idea. We must always be careful not to fall into some form of dualism! Indeed God is Immutable, and somehow always outside of time. But certainly defending the goodness and omnipotence of God in the face of suffering and evil, is also part of God’s great Immanence also!

@James: Yes indeed 🙂 , at least great loss and heterodoxy, if we loose God’s great mystery!

[…] Great Mysteries in the Christian Faith Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with trying to solve these, and I think everyone needs to get into the ring and wrestle with these issues. But church history has seen that whenever these are “solved,” heresy or serious aberration is always the result. Unfortunately, many continue to opt not to let these mysteries remain. Often with good intentions, Christians have found “solutions.” But these “solutions” normally have to distort God’s revelation to do so. Preferring a settled logical system, many find pieces of another puzzle and force it to fit. The result is an obscured and inaccurate, sometimes even damnable, view of God. […]

@ Aaron Walton That verse just tells me that God took invisible things and made them visible, not that He made something from nothing.

Michael, you have mentioned the mystery of creation ex nihilo previously as well. I just don’t get what you find a mystery. Can you expand on this as I don’t see what needs explaining? God creates matter and…?

Perhaps a more detailed post at some stage?

Yup – same 5 that I would list.

[…] Five Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith – “Are there more than these? Most certainly. But in theology, these are the biggies. These are the big pieces of our puzzle that are missing. Why are they missing? I don’t know. I just know they are. God chose not to tell us. I will ask him when I get there. But I will try to trust him until then. After all, don’t I have to borrow from his morality in order to judge him for leaving the puzzle unsolved? I think I will pass on that.” (H/T) […]

[…] you had to list the five great mysteries of the Christian faith, what would they be? Here are C Michael Patton’s. I think he does a good job of highlighting those truths that will […]

@Bruce
I totally agree. Michael left the big one off the table–the goodness of an omniscient, omnipotent God and the existence of suffering and evil. It’s the biggest stumbling block to faith there is. The biggest and most personal mystery that people have to face.

Guys —

The attempt to claim that these mysteries are not formal contradictions is vain. They are, indeed, formal contradictions, given our universe as a premise. That is what makes them mysteries — because, though they contain contradictions, they are nonetheless true.

The solution to these mysteries lies outside our universe. The premises of formal logic presented by our universe apparently do not hold outside of our universe; but we have no way of knowing which premises do not hold, or in what way. Sometimes we have clues from Jesus’ statements (i.e., “I pray that they will be one as we are one,”) but the truth is that until we have stepped outside our universe and experienced the presence of God, we have no way to verify whether our interpretations of these clues is correct.

I maintain that the existence of such mysteries is inevitable when we’re attempting to describe a God who exists apart from our universe, simply by virtue of the fact that our language and thinking is rooted in our experience and cannot express what lies outside of it. Trying to describe God accurately is like trying to describe a color one has never seen.

Kent wrote:

Michael left the big one off the table–the goodness of an omniscient, omnipotent God and the existence of suffering and evil.

He left it off because it is genuinely simple to resolve. There is not even the appearance of a contradiction.

The possibility of evil appears as soon as free will appears. God did not create evil, because evil is not a thing. God created beings with the ability to choose, and the outcome of choices that violate the character of the God who created us is called “evil.” The horror of it explains why God commands us not to choose such things.

Of course, not all suffering is evil. Some is simply resistance necessary for growth. You would not be able to stand up if your muscles and skeleton were not opposing each other in places. By the same token, you would not be able to grow to maturity without challenges that test your virtue.

The challenge for us is believing a truth that the Apostles declare, and which must logically be true if God is truly good: that for every evil that a created being chooses, God produces a greater and more potent good to overbalance it. “…where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…” (Rom 5:20)

2 thoughts:

First, on a philosophical level we’re talking simply about the impossibility of the finite creation ever having full understanding of the infinite Creator. I think it’s important to dispel a common tenant of folk theology I heard a lot growing up in evangelical churches – that once we’re in heaven we’ll have all our questions answered and understand everything. We will certainly have a new clarity about the existence we’ve already understood “in part,” but we will never know everything as that is, of course, an attribute God shares with no one.

Second, regarding the creation – since the text reads as a matter of fact narrative that (as is typical) moves from broad statement into detail, it has seemed to me that Genesis 1 reads like God’s first creative act was to create distinctions from Himself (His first act to define holiness: “set apart”). These distinctions would necessarily (and consistently with the text) be CHANGEABLENESS (since He is unchanging), which defines TIME; ORIENTATION (since He is everywhere), which is SPACE; and PHYSICALITY (since He is Spirit), which is MATTER. God can and does manifest Himself in time, space, and physicality, but He is necessarily separate from and superior to them.

In other words, Genesis 1:1-2 tells us God created Time (“in the beginning”), SPACE (“over the face” – 2x), and MATTER (“heavens and earth”). He created the laws to allow for and govern creation, then He created the raw stuff of creation, then He formed that stuff in the ways that follow.

Also interesting on the subject of creation is that scientists have been concluding that the mysterious stuff of string theory, the unknown force behind the existence and sustenance of everything is VIBRATION. God created how? … He spoke. His Word reverberates perpetually through all creation. Only His Word can destroy and remake it.
(Interesting that Tolkien interpreted creation’s WORD as song).

This stuff gets me going. I’ll shut…

Good post. Mystery is important to my faith in a God who is so Transcendent that He could be Immanent and become one of us. I agree with many of the posts about mystery. Mystery is not that we can say nothing about a doctrine. I just think that in the end it is a realization that we cannot just reason ourselves into knowing God completely. Tozer once compared this to the dark side of the moon. I like that. I thnk mystery is often a guard against using reason too much or too exclusively. There are limits to our human reason. Not all I could say about mystery but all I want to say now because mystry is mysterious.

I think you left out the sacrmanets though. I would have put them in also. Transubstantiation vs. Consubstantiation vs. spiritual presence vs. memorial view. Heck often people use the word mysteries for the sacraments.

1) It’s not the “out of nothing” part I have a problem with… it’s that only John, not Genesis expresses the idea. Everyone in the ANE believed in functional ontology… they didn’t even have a concept of zero at the time.

2) Didn’t you read The Shack? lol

3) Easy. Quantum Entanglement.

4) I do a lot of TC work, both in the NT and LXX. Inspiration isn’t a doctrine for me so much as an inescapable observation.

5) This is what I’ve never understood… how can there be a contradiction if it is indeed God’s sovereign will to allow human beings free will? What if that’s the highest honor or value to Him, even if we chose wrongly? That we are free to choose Him as opposed to coerced seems more in character with God than a contradiction. It’s like marriage, my wife and I disagree about how many times I’m allowed to watch the same episode of Law and Order. She says once. I say she’s not home that much. We certainly don’t divorce over it.

philwynk,

I do not agree. I think it is still a mystery. Why did a good God created beings with the ability to choose evil? I like the explanation you give regarding free will but I do not think it answers the problem completely. I think there is still a large mystery to it. Like C.S. Lewis, I was a lot quicker to state the answer to this problem until I went through a real dark time. Then these answers seemed not as helpful as before. The traditional (actually much of the Patrisitc) view of the doctrine of God and deification really helped me but not the whole free will argument.

Pelagianism, and even semi-Pelagianism have not served the true Gospel! The historic Church needs once again, ‘Law & Gospel’, in the face of Jesus Christ! (St. Paul’s 2 Cor. 2: 14-17 with 4:1-7, etc., are profound here. But indeed, always “mystery”!

I would have to say that these five mysteries hold only from certain philosophical viewpoints. To suggest that answers to them venture into heresy is to ignore that almost any theological statement is heresy. Even the Council of Nicaea could be counted as heretical as “homoousious” was declared heretical by the Council of Antioch 268-9.

Might I also note in response to I think it was post 19, citing Hebrews 11:3, that this merely states that the visible was created from the invisible, which is not creation from nothing. Given our modern understandings of physics, there are ample ways to understand this.

FR. Robert,

Disagree but only in the fact that I think God has used Pelagianism and Semi-pelagianism for his own glory and even to serve the church and the gospel. But this is only because I think God can use bad things for his glory. I assume that I agree with what I think your basic view of these views though.

Kent wrote:
Michael left the big one off the table–the goodness of an omniscient, omnipotent God and the existence of suffering and evil. It’s the biggest stumbling block to faith there is.

It is definitely a challenging aspect to any faith that sees God as omnipotent and also good. How can we trust a Sovereign who has the power to affect good, but does not? Of course, it seems to me that the very question assumes that we know better than the Sovereign. But leaving that aside for the moment….

The only meaningful answer to the problem of evil (for me) is that of eschatology. Eschatology (last things) is of great concern in the OT as well as the new. It is one of the main elements of our faith…that God has a future for the company of the redeemed.

In short, God never promises that this world is the “best of all possible worlds.” Rather, we only believe that this is the BEST WAY to the best of all possible worlds. And, we do that by faith. Christ significantly moved the concept forward in His resurrection from the dead… a type of first fruits that we will follow (eschatolgically), into the best of all worlds.

Of course, we Christians differ on what those future steps and goals look like. 🙂 Still, it is this resurrection hope, where we participate fully in the rule of God, that is a hope almost all Christians would claim. And it is in THAT hope that we can let go of a “claim” that things OUGHT TO be better in this life. Yes?

@Carl: Yes, God can even speak thru the apostate Balaam! But, they surely don’t “know” the kerygma of the true Gospel!

Fr. Robert,

Yes. They do not know the Truth. I only meant to say that God uses even the foolishness of man for his glory and for the good of his family. I think we agree.

We do..! 🙂 But then were Reformational and Reformed!

Election has always been a tough issue but here is a solution. God chose certain people on the basis of the severity/number of their sins. While all have sinned and fallen short, God recognizes as the redeemed the “misdemeanants” and the reprobate are “felons”.

Have you had gay or premarital sex?
Have you committed adultery?
Have you murdered anybody?
Have you ever spent a night in a jail for a crime?
Were you born in a Protestant household?
Do you go to church each Sunday?

If you answered “No” to all but the final two questions, then you’re almost certainly elect. You can rest assured that your sins have been paid for by Jesus because frankly, the sins you have committed are “misdemeanors”, thus you are forgivable.

Darryl —

How does what you described differ from earning one’s own salvation by behaving well?

What do you say regarding those who have committed sins 1-4 but have repented?

What do you say to those who have not committed any of those “felony” sins but have no love for Jesus whatsoever?

I’m sorry, but what you’re describing sounds like a weird version of 1st century Judaism watered down to attract a modern, Protestant crowd. It does not sound like anything described by either Jesus or Paul, or any of the other apostles for that matter. Their teaching is more apt to call on everyone to repent and devote themselves to God, regardless of what they have done in the past.

Personally, I think the doctrine of election is the least useful doctrine in the book. I don’t see any difference whether the young believer frets over whether he might lose his salvation, or whether he is not one of the elect; they’re both fretting over things that they cannot control, and they both need to stop fretting and trust God. Jesus Himself warns against attempting to judge election by appearances before the Day of Judgment. If it turns out, after death, that I was predestined from the foundation of the world (which I don’t doubt, btw,) then I’m grateful, but I’m not placing any stock in the fact before I actually stand before the throne. My trust is in the Father, not “election.”

Alternate title: “Four Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith, and One Unnecessary Problem Introduced by Calvinism.”