Is God Knowable? Can We Know Him?

A. Unbeliever- the theistic arguments are a means of bringing the truth to bare upon his conviction.

B. Believer

1. Theistic arguments provide a pervasive sense of God's presence.

2. It provides the believer with confidence in his confrontation with opposing systems of unbelief.

"Block House" Methodology- Begin by proving Aristotle's unmoved mover, and then by leap of faith you conclude the triune God of the Scriptures.

2. Explaining Van Til's assertion that every fact is revelatory.

There is no such thing as a bare fact. So each theistic proof and all theistic proofs presuppose a basis for rationality and that basis for rationality is the revelation of God contained in the Scriptures.

3. God's knowability in terms of covenant keepers and covenant breakers; related to Romans chapter one.

A. Covenant breakers- God is knowable. Romans 1:21says that God has spoken and man has that knowledge. Although, the Scripture says that he actively attempts to surpress it. Romans 1:18 and Romans 1:32 says that those who oppose the judicial ordinance of God are aware of His holiness and His transcendent qualities. The covenant breaker knows God by virtue of his rebellion against all of that which testifies to God.

B. Covenant keepers- the knowledge of the one true God is the knowledge of eternal life. This knowledge finds its source in the sovereign will of God. It is a knowledge that involves love, and it's a knowledge that brings about transformation.

4. Discussing the assertion, "God can be truly known," and relating it to the issues of transcendence, immanence, and incomprehensibility.

If religious ideas are bound to the world of experience, they will lose their saving content. If the ideas of God transcend the world entirely, then the relation to the world is lost and we have a savior with no relation to those He must save.

We know God as He has chosen to reveal Himself to us, as His creatures.

A. God's immensity- beyond the created order. We don't understand the hidden will of God. We can't understand comprehensively God's revealed will.

B. Presupposes no ability. It is only as we know God that we know He is incomprehensible.

C. There is no incomprehensibility within the triune Godhead. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit know each other exhaustively.

D. Because God is infinite and we are finite, we can't fully understand Him. But, He has sufficiently given us information so we can live faithfully in covenantal obedience to Him.

5. Critiquing Charles Hodge's view of the spirituality of God. Is his methodology sound?

Hodge said that our God is a spirit. Our Lord authorizes us to believe that whatever is essential to the idea of a spirit, as learned from our own consciousness, is to be referred to God as determining His nature.
The Scriptures are the source for the meaning of spirituality. Hodge's methodology, therefore, is not sound.