From Alpha to Omega -- Notes
"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to obtain." Ps 139:6
"Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know." Job 42:3
This is where I keep my personal observations about From Alpha to Omega. As such, the first thing I write is my confession that I know little. I had always thought that the two verses above should guide us in theology, doubly so when we search the very being of God. And though I write, as is necessary for the sake of clarity, with every appearance of confidence, the reality remains: He is who he is, and I am his creature. It is impossible that I should comprehend him but in part, and even that only by his initiative.
Once, I had asked how much of God we can understand. I knew that we could not understand God fully, but I wondered whether we can understand most of him, or whether we only know a infinitesimally small part of him. I had considered the possibility that God is something that we essentially don't know, that God would be nearly unrecognizable to us in his full being. I might have continued on this track and believed that God is fundamentally a mystery to us, but
"he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure," Eph 1:9
and when I consider this revelation, I cannot affirm that we essentially don't know God. In the end, I tentatively came to the conclusion that how much of God we can know is one of the things that we cannot know. But in light of the gospel, in light of the Incarnation, I am confident that what we can know about God is sufficient to give us the correct view of God's entire being. Besides, the fact that we know of God at all is already a miracle. So I see good reason for believing that, by the same grace, we may slowly begin to know the unknowable being of God. Eventually, when perfection comes, we shall know fully, even as we are fully known. But meanwhile, I continue to search and learn of God, acknowledging my ignorance, fearful of his mystery, yet rejoicing that God has given such powers to men.
Typically, a systematic theology will start out from the doctrine of the Scripture, then proceed on to theology, soteriology, eschatology, and the rest. The inspiration and the inerrancy of the Scripture is generally a highly esteemed doctrine, often called "fundamental", "foundational doctrine", or "central dogma". But I disagree with this assessment, and would like to do things a little differently.
Before cries of "heresy!" breaks loose, I should make it clear that I am not disagreeing with the inspiration and inerrancy of the Scripture, but just with the idea that it should be the most important doctrine. I strongly believe the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, and I, too, value the doctrine of Scripture highly, enough so that I believe it is the second most important doctrine my system.
What, then, is the primary doctrine in this system? The Doctrine of God, of course. It will be objected that we know of God because the Scriptures tells us of him, and that without the Scriptures we would get a false view of God. This I freely acknowledge. Starting with God is more likely to lead to error than to star with the Bible, since we don't have a clear idea of God apart from the Bible. But God is obviously ontologically prior to the Bible, and so it seems proper to me to start with him.
Must lead to Bible, would be great if equivalence can be proved, QM example, experiment & theory.
text for primary
text for derivative
text for plan
text for spiritual
text for physical
text for creature
text for gospel
text for sdg
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