Scripture’s Three Imponderables – And One Essential Ponderable
The Bible implicitly raises three profound questions about God's existence which are crucial to faith yet beyond human understanding.
Read Time: 6 minutes
The Bible proposes, though only by implication, three great questions. None of them is directly stated, discussed, or answered and only one is given even a nod toward explanation. All three questions are beyond human comprehension, yet awareness of them is vital to faith.
These three imponderables are:
- How do we account for a self-existent, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent Deity?
- How can God know and control all human events yet allow humans to behave of their own volition?
- How can New Testament ethics require us to be complete followers of Christ, perfect in every thought and behavior, when this is clearly impossible?
An Uncreate God
A purely material (atheistic) universe raises the question, “If there is no Creator, where did ‘stuff’ come from? Time, matter, and energy are not self-existent. They require a Creator. But that just shoves the question back one big step to “Where does this creator come from?”
This question has no answer because it is an invalid question. The Creator doesn’t “come from” anyplace or anywhere. The Creator always was and is eternal and self-existent. We call this Creator “God.”
Self-existence and eternity are given attributes of God, not of the physical universe. The eternal existence of God is logical, even if we can’t comprehend the “how” or the reality of an eternal God. Yet here we are. I’ll take the imponderable, self-existent, eternal God over the impossible physical-only universe.
The Bible does not attempt to explain the existence of God. The first sentence of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, elegantly assumes a God who is apart from the physical universe and called it into existence. This verse implies an eternal, omnipotent God, but Scripture never goes further than that by way of explanation. It’s a fact of theological life, and humans can’t grasp anything more.
Even more striking and incomprehensible is that the Creator God is also a personal God to every human being who has ever lived, even if the overwhelming majority of them declined to recognize this relationship.
Free-will and Foreknowledge
Like the existence of an eternal God, foreknowledge and free will are assumed but never explained. The tension between them is explicit but overlooked when Jesus declares, “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.” (Matthew 26:24). This statement includes more than the specific act of Judas’s betrayal; it would include all those responsible for his crucifixion.
Peter’s similar statement in his Pentecost speech (Acts 2:22-23) invokes both of these realities: God’s determinate plan (“set purpose,” NIV) and foreknowledge and the criminal minds and hands of Jesus’ murderers. Later in the speech, Peter lays that guilt on the whole assembly (“whom you crucified”) and bids them to repent, indicating that they were personally culpable of Jesus’ death. Personally culpable, as in it was their free choice to do so.
The Old Testament has several asides indicating that a particular event occurred as ordained by God, even though the participants acted according to their own judgment and intentions and ignorance of providence (e.g., Judges 14:6, Joshua 11:20).
God’s will and foreknowledge operate simultaneously with the actions of those who carry out God’s plan but act in accord with their own purposes and desires. They are doing volitionally (willingly) what God would have them do if they were marionettes on his strings.
How does this work? Scripture offers no explanation. It only teaches that this is indeed the case.
Paul’s extensive discussion in Romans 9-11 seems to take free choice off the board as an option. God makes people choose what they choose, so it appears. However, the context in this section of Romans is about God’s national purpose with Israel. This idea softens the conflict somewhat. Paul is not talking about faithful individuals because God has foreordained the matter, and they had no choice. Paul makes it clear elsewhere in Romans (e.g., 2:7) that individual choice, not Divine manipulation, steers one to belief. Yet it is also clear that God equips us with the power to believe and a brain to discern.
There is no point in trying to unscrew the inscrutable. Free choice, free will, and preordination have existed side-by-side since Adam’s creation, and how they happen is always utterly beyond human comprehension.
Imponderable number two: every thought and action you do is entirely yours, but it is in full accord with God’s purpose.
Be Perfect, Miserable Sinner
Imponderable number three—the impossible task of living a life in perfect accord with Jesus’ teaching. This puzzle taxes the mind differently than the first two imponderables. Maybe this is not so hard for you to figure out, and indeed, the Bible does give some leads on understanding this one. Perhaps I am sensitive to this matter because of my career in psychotherapy.
In addition to the selfish, short-sighted, and biased-to-pleasure natural mind, each one of us, some tragically so, grows up with psychological adversity. Taking a long view, we see all of us have been born into generations of accumulated psychological trauma engendered by wars, displacement, genocide, greed, alcoholism, adultery, and families broken by death, divorce, depression, and drugs. Directly or indirectly, immediate or remote, we’re all born and raised in this moral and emotional quagmire.
My clients were a daily reminder of how vicious life can be. People who were raped and sodomized, who had family members die by homicide and suicide, who were victims of physical and emotional abuse from alcoholic and borderline parents, and so on.
Many of their psychological traumas were less extreme but nonetheless left them with significant emotional problems. Perhaps theirs was “just” a father who never praised the 99% grade but criticized the one mistake or the distant mother who remained stuck in postpartum depression. Life hands us psychological affronts abundantly and variedly.
Yet Scripture makes no accommodation for what happens to us along the way. We are all expected to function as if we have no impediments to our emotional, spiritual, and psychological well-being. Scripture neither mentions tragic upbringings (though we can see familial dysfunction in the patriarchal and David narratives) nor gives any slack to such victims of abuse. The goal for everyone is the same: perfection in thought and behavior. Think right, do right, no matter your past.
So where’s the imponderable in all this? That each of us is the product of thousands of years of rampant human sin, yet God sorts all of this out and accepts us based on our faith in his grace. He judges us perfectly in our impossible quest to live a perfectly spiritual life.
What is Ponderable?
You can exasperate your brain trying to grasp these imponderables. The answers are not for human consumption. These imponderables, though, do have a practical role to play in our spiritual lives. They give a context for Christian character, broadly encapsulated in the fruit of the Spirit.
In contrast to unfathomable theological chestnuts, these character traits benefit our lives and society in general in manifestly obvious ways. Love, forgiveness, patience, kindness, and gratitude are easily understood as the guides to life and even more readily appreciated when experienced in our interpersonal affairs.
You’ll have no problem figuring out how gratitude, for instance, is spiritually and emotionally beneficial. Forgiveness heals relationships, a simple concept if not always easy to practice. Love makes everyone feel better and accepted. These concepts are readily grasped and, unlike the imponderables, practical in real life.
So, three cheers for the ponderable! Christian virtue is readily understood, good for you now, and prepares you for your place in God’s kingdom.
David Levin,
Denver Ecclesia, CO