As I do the math, there are five great mysteries in theology:

1. Creation out of nothing (ex nihilo): How did God create being out of non-being? Being transcendent in relation to the universe (above all time, space, and matter), the reason for God’s being is necessary (hence why we often call him the “necessary being”), so his existence does not require a cause-and-effect answer. Yet where did he get the “stuff” to create all that there is? It could not have come from himself, as that would place him in our universe of time, space, and matter. Then we would just be looking for the really real God. The same is true if the “stuff” was outside himself. All that there is must have come from nothing as a rational and philosophical necessity. All other options are formally absurd. While creation out of nothing is not formally absurd, it is a great mystery or paradox.

2. Trinity: We believe in one God who eternally exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This would only be a formal contradiction if we said we believed that God was three Gods and one God or if we said we believed he was three persons and one person. But to say that the Trinity is one God in three persons is not a formal contradiction, but a mystery.

3. Hypostatic Union: We believe that the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, is fully God and fully man (at least since the time that he became man). We don’t believe that he is fifty percent God and fifty percent man, or even ninety/ten. Christ is everything that God is and has eternally, even in the incarnation, shared in the full divinity of the one God, yet he is everything that man is forevermore. Whereas the Trinity is one nature with three persons, Christ is one person with two natures. This is indeed a mystery, but has no earmarks of a formal contradiction.

4. Scripture: We believe the Bible is fully inspired of God, yet fully written by man. God did not put the writers of Scripture in a trance and direct their hand in the writing of Scripture (often referred to as “mechanical dictation”), but he fully utilized their personality, circumstances, writing style, and mood in producing the Scriptures. Another way to put it is that the Scriptures are the product of the will of God and the will of man. Mystery? Yes. Contradiction? No.

5. Human Responsibility and Divine Sovereignty: God is sovereign over the entire world, bringing about his will in everything. He does as he pleases in heaven and on earth. There is not a maverick molecule in all the universe. He even sovereignly predestined people to salvation before they were born, while passing over all others. Yet man is fully responsible for all his actions. There will be a judgment of the unrighteous one day in which God will hold people responsible for their rejection of Christ. How could there be a judgment if people were doing only what they were predestined to do? I don’t know. But I do know that they are truly responsible for their actions and rejection of God.  This is a mystery beyond any human ability to solve, yet not a contradiction.

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.

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.

Where God has left the puzzle pieces out, so should we. He knows what he is doing. Let’s just thank him for the pieces we do have and worship, for now, in the white mysterious area. Hand firmly over mouth is a good theological posture sometimes.

Let’s see if I can get you a verse here . . . Got it!

Deut. 29:29
“The secret things [missing puzzle pieces] belong to the Lord, but the things revealed [present puzzle pieces] belong to us and our children forever.”

Oh, and one more (my default NT go-to verse in these matters):

1 Cor. 13:12
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Keep the original design. It’s good stuff.


C Michael Patton
C Michael Patton

C. Michael Patton is the primary contributor to the Parchment and Pen/Credo House Blog. He has been in ministry for nearly twenty years as a pastor, author, speaker, and blogger. Th.M. Dallas Theological Seminary (2001), president of Credo House Ministries and Credo Courses, author of Now that I'm a Christian (Crossway, 2014) Increase My Faith (Credo House, 2011), and The Theology Program (Reclaiming the Mind Ministries, 2001-2006), host of Theology Unplugged, and primary blogger here at Parchment and Pen. But, most importantly, husband to a beautiful wife and father to four awesome children. Michael is available for speaking engagements. Find him everywhere: Find him everywhere

    144 replies to "The Five Great Mysteries of 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. […]

    • Clark Coleman

      Bill Mayor: I am happy to discuss whatever you want to discuss about these mysteries.

    • Bill Mayor

      Clark,

      Then let us start by looking at Romans 1:20 where we are assured that all that may be known about God is knowable from nature. This implies that anything not knowable from nature, no matter how well scripture seems to support it, is not correct.

      Now in Hebrews we learn that everything that is visible was made from that which is not visible. This fits perfectly with modern science and the Big Bang theory. It does not require creation ex nihilo. In fact, since it refers to that which is not visible, it actually contradicts creation ex nihilo.

      Now the Big Bang theory requires a point of virtually infinite POTENTIAL energy as a starting point. However, such a thing would not be visible because of it being too small for one thing, and for another because of a virtually total absence of light. While Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle precludes perfect darkness, it does not preclude darkness broken by no more than a single photon a millenium. Something was present prior to our current universe, whether we look at it from science or scripture, the unseeable was present.

    • As truely as we see in Salvation history and Reformed theology, Calvin is concerned to affirm that knowledge of ourselves principally means the knowledge of our sins. “But the knowledge of ourselves consists, first, in considering what was given to us at our creation, and how God sweetly continues His grace towards us, that we may know how excellent had been our nature, if it had remained whole; yet at the same time thinking, that nothing that we have is of our own, but is conferred upon us by God for us to hold precariously, so that we may depend upon Him.” (Calvin, Inst. II, 1.1.)

      Indeed humanity is always in both the First Adam and the Last Adam.. Christ! And only the latter is in the redemptive grace & glory of God In Christ!

    • Clark Coleman

      “Then let us start by looking at Romans 1:20 where we are assured that all that may be known about God is knowable from nature. This implies that anything not knowable from nature, no matter how well scripture seems to support it, is not correct.”

      I think you mean Romans 1:19 even more than 1:20. Reading 1:18 – 1:20 in context of the entire argument of the first two chapters of Romans, we can see that Paul says that everyone should believe in the existence and the divine power of God as Creator, because they can see his creation. Romans 1:20 only says that everyone can know his “eternal power and divine nature” among his “invisible attributes.” This is a minimal but important knowledge: that God exists and is powerful and is the Creator.

      Romans 1:19 says that “what can be known about God is plain to them [i.e. the unrighteous mentioned in 1:18], because God has shown it to them.” Followed by 1:20, we see how God showed it to them: through his creation.

      You are reading “what can be known about God” as if it means “everything that can be known about God.” The word “what” has a context in these verses: only knowing that God exists and that He is the Creator is argued by Paul in this passage. Many attributes of God are revealed in scripture, which is why the study of scripture is recommended in several places in scripture.

      Caution must be exercised when trying to interpret language that might seem absolute at a glance. The language always has a context, whether it be narrative, argument, poetry, or even the mindset of the audience being addressed by the writing. Generally, the scope and degree of the language is limited by the context. Luke 2:1: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” How many Mongolians got counted in that census? Native Americans? Pacific Islanders? Japanese?

    • Clark Coleman

      “Now in Hebrews we learn that everything that is visible was made from that which is not visible.”

      This seems to be a reference to Hebrews 11:3. There seems to be a translation issue here. Almost all reasonably literal translations read some form of “not made from that which is visible.” KJV; NKJV; ASV; ESV. A minority read some form of “made from that which is not visible.” NRSV; HCSB. I don’t know enough Greek to say where the word “not” should be placed.

      The first rendering in completely compatible with creation ex nihilo. But I doubt that I want to build any creation doctrine out of this one verse. Someone needs to convince me that it is a slam dunk case that one group of translations is correct and the other is incorrect.

      Trying to piece together a tenuous interpretation of Romans 1:18-20 with a debatable translation of Hebrews 11:3 to create a new doctrine, or mystery, or problem seems unwise.

    • All of Holy Scripture and Revelation is really “mystery”, (1 Tim. 3:16). And, “creatio ex nihilo” is an important philosophical & theolgoical construct, since it denies any active role in creation to the materials from which the world was made. But, Creatio or creation can also be distingushed into two stages, (1) creatio prima, the first creation, corresponding to Gen. 1: 1-2, during which God drew out nothing the materia prima or materia inhabilis, the primary or unformed matter; and (2) creatio secunda, according to which God produced individual beings by imparting form and life to the materia prima. Btw, Lutherans and the Reformed agree in calling the entire work of creation a free act of God resting solely on the goodness of the divine will. And for the Reformed the consequence of the creation is a necessity since the divine act of creation does result from the eternal and immutable decree of God!

    • Btw, no “Theistic Evolution” here! 😉 One can jump there, but that is certainly not in the “Text” itself!

    • And even if we use Ancient Hebrew Cosmology, the Bible nowhere dates the age of the earth or creation! Young or Old Earth, does not matter. And to my mind anyway, the Holy Scripture does not really posit modern science. It is here too, that the study and importance of biblical genre comes into play. 🙂

    • Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with theology and certainly epistemology!

    • William Huget

      5. Human responsibility/divine sovereignty. We have revelation on the other 4 points that give most of us consensus/clarity despite non-exhaustive understanding. The last point is only mystery, antinomy, conundrum if we assume hyper-Calvinism instead of http://www.opentheism.info (Molinism, Arminianism are also not fully helpful).

    • And this is certainly worth the read…

      ‘[The word of God] stands on a level high above all human authority in state and society, science and art. Before it, all else must yield. For people must obey God rather than other people. All other [human] authority is restricted to its own circle and applies only to its own area. But the authority of Scripture extends to the whole person and over all humankind. It is above the intellect and the will, the heart and the conscience, and cannot be compared with any other authority. Its authority, being divine, is absolute. It is entitled to be believed and obeyed by everyone at all times. In majesty it far transcends all other powers. But, in order to gain recognition and dominion, it asks for no one’s assistance. It does not need the strong arm of the government. It does not need the support of the church and does not conscript anyone’s sword and inquisition. It does not desire to rule by coercion and violence but seeks free and willing recognition. For that reason it brings about its own recognition by the working of the Holy Spirit. Scripture guards its own authority.’ (Herman Bavnick)

    • Certainly Open Theism is a modern spin from Molinism (the Jesuit theolog Louis de Molina, died 1600). And btw, it is not all that popular with today’s Catholic theologians/theolog’s. It has come to be more so a Protestant or modern Evangelical thing, (Craig, Boyd, etc.)

    • C Michael Patton

      Open theism will be covered on Theology Unplugged in a few months as one of our heresies. It is definitely destructive even though I have respect for those who hold it. It is exreme or hyper-Arminianism. Unfortunately, many Arminians get labeled such.

    • Indeed Michael, I will be looking for that! But again, it is most interesting that modern Catholic theology, itself, is not moving toward Open Theism at all, in fact the majority of Roman Catholic theology is Thomastic, and even somewhat Augustinian, as is Benedict/Ratzinger, at least. Btw, too bad we don’t have the voice of Karl Barth here, he would have taken the OT to great task, I believe!

    • William Huget

      Boyd used to say he was neo-Molinism. William Lane Craig is a proponent of it and against Open Theism. William Hasker has refuted philosophical, convoluted Molinism. Open Theism is a more biblical, coherent free will theism than Arminianism (it denies exhaustive definite foreknowledge, unlike Calvinism, Molinism, Arminianism). Open Theism is NOT Molinistic (middle knowledge).

    • Bill Mayor

      Might I note that the quote from Herman Bavnick could be used against the Trinity, as that doctrine was enforced by emperial decree. It was a capital offense to teach any other doctrine at one point in the Roman Empire. If scripture supported the doctrine so well, why didhte empire need to add its support?

    • Indeed this all moves in some way from Molina, etc. ‘Bird’s of a feather flock together’! 😉

    • @Bill, you need to be a bit more specific? The so-called Roman Empire, the Emperor, etc. And certainly Bavnick was a Trinitarian!

    • Darryl

      How difficult could it be to admit that humans have the opportunity to make decisions, even the ones that could possibly save their lives, but God still knows what decision they will make?

      It’s like a book where we all know the ending but we get to decide whether or not we will join up with the Lord and share in the victory or be defeated forever with the bad guys. It’s not that Calvinism has a problem with John 3:16 as much as the verses following it. Calvinism needs to have a God who came to the world to condemn it, not save it. And yet 3:17 says God came into the world so that through him the world might be saved and not condemned.

    • fishing

      William Huget, can you clarify:
      1. Why Open Theism is your preferred position?
      2. The problems you have with Molinism?

    • William Huget

      I believe Open Theism has the most biblical, logical, philosophical support. It allows us to take revelatory passages at face value rather than make them figurative to fit a preconceived theology. Determinism may be fine for Islam, but it is not a Christian option (free will, relational theism is the way to go). TULIP is problematic and impugns the character and ways of God. OT recognizes the two motifs in Scripture: some of the future is settled/foreknown, while other aspects are unsettled and known as possible vs actual. The nature of time vs eternity is another factor. Endless time (duration, sequence, succession) is the biblical portrayal, not Platonic, Augustinian ‘eternal now’ timelessness. This has implications on foreknowledge. I believe it can be demonstrated that exhaustive definite foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is logically impossible, even for God, etc. etc. Molinism is convoluted, philosophical, essentially deterministic, not self-evident in Scripture. One issue is that it talks about would/would not (will/will not obtain) counterfactuals of freedom. It fails to appreciate may/might may/might not counterfactuals. The proofs are technical and involve modal logic, etc. After 30 years of wrestling with this issue, I believe the problems with Calvinism/Arminianism/Molinism can be exposed, while the strengths of Open Theism can be defended (with answers to objections available). The bottom line is to ascertain which view is least problematic and most probable biblically, logically, theologically, philosophically.

    • fishing

      Thanks
      Why do believe that:
      1. It can be demonstrated that exhaustive definite foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is logically impossible, even for God
      2. Molinism is … essentially deterministic
      3. Molinism is not self-evident in Scripture.
      3. Molinism fails to appreciate may/might may/might not counterfactuals.

    • Certainly the subject of Molinism, Open Theism, etc. are quite in-depth, so we cannot get to it here, but again certainly they are connected, just as all the so-called shades of Calvinism. And it is also sad to see a few here be so anti-Calvinist! Again, one must bring into to play the depth and history of Calvinism. And it is here too btw, that we must note Augustinianism and even Thomism.

    • Btw William: I have been after it for over 40 years (I am 62, almost 3 in a few months) and I just don’t see Open Theism, but then I am foremost a biblicist, as an Anglican Reformed. And I have read too my share of Clark Pinnock over the years, now there was a man who changed along the way. I am too a Geerhardus Vos guy, with his biblical theology, though my Anglican eclecticism always kicks in (I am Historic Pre-Mill, and somewhat towards the PD).

    • William Huget

      What is PD?

      Fishing…we could write books of common sense and highly technical arguments for and against these major views. There are readable books and websites as well as technical academic papers. I don’t think I have the expertise or ability to prove these things in short post, but I do believe the statements are generally supportable.

      1. Determinism would make EDF possible. If an agent is making a contingent choice, how can a choice with an element of uncertainty (free will) be FK exhaustively from eternity past before the agent settles the potential future in real space-time? Calvinism/determinism can make a case for EDF, but I would argue that determinism is problematic to theodicy and not the way God has actualized creation. Arminianism assumes simple FK and eternal now, but I don’t think this resolves the issue, but begs the question. Molinism also begs the question by assuming highly philosophical middle knowledge, but does not explain how this is not deterministic in that God actualizes possible worlds and supposedly knows how a free will agent will choose given the circumstances He arranges. A free will choice must have an element of uncertainty (may or may not obtain), so how can God FK exhaustively if an agent can act out of character, etc.?

      2. If God determines the circumstances and then knows an agent will do this given those circumstances, it seems contingency becomes illusory and the agent is more deterministic. To have EDF, even with unexplainable middle knowledge, means the future is still fixed in the mind of God by some mechanism other than the agent.

      3. I doubt anyone would come up with Molinism/middle knowledge, etc. just by reading Scripture (same with Calvinism). It is a highly speculative, philosophical idea that many great thinkers reject or simply find no biblical basis for. I will side with Hasker over Craig, as brilliant as Craig is.

      4. Molinism assumes the issue is will/will not happen. However, if the choice is…

    • William Huget

      …if the choice is free…it may or may not obtain (actualize/happen), so there is an element of uncertainty. God knows reality as it is, so He would know the contingent future as possible vs certain/actual.

      Open Theism picks up both motifs/proof texts and sees that God settles some of the future and knows it (settled by His ability vs prescience), while other aspects are merely probable, possible, not actual until the future is settled by the agent other than God.

    • PD is for Progressive Dispensationalism. And God being sovereign, means GOD does not need to explain His great biblical tensions. And God is always both transcendent & immanent! And always the biblical primary act is not man to God, but God to man; here both Calvin and Barth are right (following St. Paul), and here is a biblical “unio mystica”.

    • Clark Coleman

      PD? EDF? A cardinal rule of writing is to define abbreviations when they are first used. This conversation is getting obscure.

    • William Huget

      I used exhaustive definite foreknowledge in proximal posts before I used EDF. Those familiar with this debate will recognize the standard abbreviation and those who are not can ask for clarification. PD was not defined in recent posts.

    • Clark Coleman

      “Those familiar with this debate will recognize the standard abbreviation and those who are not can ask for clarification.”

      No, that is a rude and selfish attitude. It is not how public communication is done.

    • Btw, I believe our blog host CMP, is a PD! 😉

    • As a classic Anglican, I am one who follows the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles, closely and theologically, because I believe them to be both “catholic” and “reformed”, historically, i.e. the via-media… the Church of the middle way, such is classic and historic Anglicanism. But, here my “Calvinism” is always seeking perhaps more of a Neo-Calvinism? But I am as I have written too, always, one who reads and follows the Ecumenical Councils and Creeds. Anyway, it is quite amazing to me that Calvin and Calvinism are still being read, (after 500 years). Note today the so-called New Calvinism, etc. Indeed Reformed Theology is alive and well! And it is here that I would recommend certainly, the writings and books of the American Richard Muller! 🙂

      Finally, as I have written too, I would recommend the rather new bio of John Calvin, by Bruce Gordon: ‘Calvin’, (2009, in paperback 2011, Yale University Press, 398 pages). This will last for years I feel, just a gem, and must read for Calvin students!

    • karen

      I don’t think we can handle the revelation about the mysteries mentioned above, so I agree we should really just enjoy what we do know and ask about it when we come face to face with Jesus ***sms***

    • […] more than five things belonging to the realm of mystery in theology, but for C. Michael Patton, these are the major ones. (We might use this at C201 today, […]

    • […] read things at source — they have a graphic that suits this well — so click through to The Five Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith. As I do the math, there are five great mysteries in […]

    • […] Scot McKnight agrees with John Piper. Roger Olson talks about Clark Pinnock. Michael Patton on the five mysteries of the Christian […]

    • Charles Horton

      Hello Mike,

      Like you, I look forward to that Great Day (!) in the next life when we will be able to see God and Jesus face to face. That alone should clear up the mysteries, and, it seems, if we still have questions about them, we will be welcomed to ask away. But I do want to ask this now concerning the apostle Thomas:

      In your mystery #5 on Human Responsibility and Divine Sovereignty, you said

      “There will be a judgment of the unrighteous one day in which God will hold people responsible for their rejection of Christ.”

      I agree, but I think the story about Thomas begs to make this more clear.

      In Thomas’ refusal to believe that Jesus was resurrected after his peers told him they had seen Jesus alive again, he rejected Christ. Of course we will never know whether or not Thomas’ disbelief would or could have changed if he had never seen Jesus alive and Jesus had never shown him the nail holes in his hands and gash in his side. Had Thomas never seen Jesus “face to face,” nail holes and all, what then? We don’t know for certain, but given his determination for hard evidence, his insistence on seeing for himself, it would be logical to conclude that without actually seeing Jesus, Thomas’ disbelief would only grow, and his rejection of Christ along with it, with the result that he could never see salvation.

      Instead, however, we do know for certain that after first rejecting Jesus, and then only after seeing Jesus, Thomas fell and said “My Lord and my God.” Through this we can logically conclude that Thomas would see salvation.

      So the question: In what way did God hold Thomas responsible for his disbelief and rejection of Christ, and what did God do about it?

    • Clark Coleman

      “Had Thomas never seen Jesus “face to face,” nail holes and all, what then? We don’t know for certain, but given his determination for hard evidence, his insistence on seeing for himself, it would be logical to conclude that without actually seeing Jesus, Thomas’ disbelief would only grow, and his rejection of Christ along with it, with the result that he could never see salvation.”

      Another possibility, which I find at least as logical, is that someone does not believe that which is hard to believe the very first time he hears it. However, had Thomas seen all of his fellow apostles not only repeat their claim, but begin LIVING as if they really had seen the risen Christ, then his initial skepticism would have been overcome. Maybe it would have taken six months or two years, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that we would not have seen a situation in which ten remaining apostles live as if they saw the risen Jesus, and one refuses to believe it for the rest of his life, despite their living example.

      You do not want to dream up theological problems from conjectures. We just do not have the wisdom of God and do not know which direction Thomas would ultimately go.

    • […] The Five Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith | Parchment and Pen. […]

    • Ed Yang

      Great summary of the biggies. Isaiah 55:8 – “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

    • Mark

      People need to realize that they don’t have any knowledge of God’s intentions. The reason that God is sometimes referred to as The Creator is describing how what we think came from nothing, it did not. Clearly the universe and everything in it came from something that we do not understand. The only knowledge of God that humans can understand are the things that we know of in God’s creation. For example, the laws of physics thus the laws of nature on earth and everything in the universe. Religion without science is just like science without religion. It is completely useless. God gave us a mind and apparently prefers us to use it more for thinking instead of being lazy and giving up and then calling that faith.

    • Mike Tyndall

      This blog proposed String Theory to explain the Trinity and how we experience the different parts of God as if He were three, even though He is one. http://observationsbytheobnoxious.blogspot.com/2015/01/science-and-holy-trinity-theres-been.html?m=1

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