Is God's Presentation of Himself Accurate?

What is the relationship between God as He presents Himself in the Bible and God as He knows Himself?  This question gets at the very core of our understanding of God.  The reason is that all we can know about God comes from the Scriptures.  Therefore, what we believe about how He has presented Himself in them versus what He is actually like becomes very important when we consider that if God is substantially different in His essence from His presentation of Himself in the Bible, then can we truly say that we have come to know Him at all, even if we have studied the Scriptures extensively?  I think the key to understanding this question is found in two biblical aspects: The Imago Dei and the Incarnation of Christ.  I believe these two biblical truths tell us that the relationship between God’s understanding of Himself and God’s presentation of Himself in the Bible is that they are two different levels of the same truth.

The Imago Dei is a Latin term meaning “image of God.”  It comes from the account of the creation of man in Genesis 1:26-27.  In these verses God first presented the concept when He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  Then, in the next verse, He follows through with action: So God created man in His own image.  This was a spiritual image rather than a physical one.  God, at this point in time, had no physical form.  Therefore, His image must be His nature, His spirit, or His essence.  This was the pattern man was fashioned after, albeit at a lesser level.  Just as a painting or a photograph of a person is not the same as that person, so God’s image of Himself in man was not the same as Himself.  Yet, at the same time, it was still a facsimile of the original blueprint.  In other words, although man does not and can never attain to the level of God in his nature, he is still the best representation of God available in the created order. 

Now then, here is the point.  God’s revelation of Himself throughout the Bible is intrinsically tied to human concepts, human relationships, and human understandings.  To be sure, God is not down on man’s level and must condescend to communicate with him.  But I do not think that means that God’s communication is artificial or illusory.  I think that when He states that He made man in His image, that is exactly what He meant, with no obfuscations or circumventions.  And, when God proceeds to communicate with man and reveal Himself in a manner that corresponds to man, I think it is because man is on some levels similar to Him and can come closer to understanding Him through His own faculties than any other created beings.

I think this point is further driven home by the Incarnation of the Son of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  Prior to this, it would have been much more difficult to consider this issue with a satisfactory level of precision.  But, when God clothed Himself in human flesh, all the doors were opened and the curtains rolled back on God’s character that will ever be this side of Heaven.  Consider the following well known passages: Hebrews 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15, and Colossians 2:9. 

In Hebrews 1 God says that in the past He spoke to men through the prophets by diverse means and at varied times.  But now, He has spoken to us in His Son, who is Christ.  So, we know that God has changed the form of communication from human prophets to a divine Son.  But here is the point.  This divine Son is the fullest and most exact representation of God possible.  Verse 3 drives this home when it describes Jesus as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.”

Corresponding to that understanding is Paul’s letter to the Colossians.  In chapter 1 verse 15 we read that He, meaning Christ, is the “image of the invisible God.”  Again, we find the word image being used to convey the idea of a picture of God.  Then, in chapter 2 verse 9 Paul gets even more explicit.  Christ is not merely the best possible picture of God.  Paul says that in Him “the fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

The point is that Christ, in His incarnation, according to the Scriptures, is literally the fullest expression of the character and nature of God that it is possible to have.  Even considering that we still do not understand everything Christ did and said, just as we do not understand everything about God, it must be understood that by seeking to study and learn who Christ is we are literally gaining accurate knowledge of who God actually is.

Now then, because God is infinite in His understanding and His being, and because we are finite in all ways, we can never possibly hope to understand God completely, even though we spend the rest of our lives studying the Bible on a daily basis.  But, I believe the pursuit of such study is a pursuit of the actual and literal knowledge of God.  It is not an illusion or a tangent that is disconnected from the reality of who God is.  To suppose that God does not accurately present Himself in the Bible is, to first of all, fly in the face of the Imago Dei and the Incarnation, and second of all, I think it speaks ill of God Himself.  If God were to interact with mankind in this way it would be a false and duplicitous approach to the issue of communicating with His creations.  He wants us to come to know Him, truly, not some misshapen vision of Him found in Scripture. 

In John 17:3 Jesus defined eternal life in this way: “And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Christ’s Apostle, John, in stating the purpose of his first epistle, wrote the following in 1^st John 5:13: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.  

John’s use of the present tense of the Greek verb “echo”, or to have, is telling.  He is saying that we have this eternal life now, presently, in this life, after coming to Christ.  And, from the revelation of Christ Himself, we know that to have this eternal life is to know God.  Therefore, the conclusion must be that the knowledge we gain of God now is true and accurate knowledge.  Thus, it follows that God’s presentation of Himself in the Scriptures, the only detailed source of information about Him, must be also be true and accurate.

Two examples have been given of how God’s interaction with man might work; an ant on a computer screen and a dog being walked past a bank.  In the case of the ant, it’s understanding of the pixels behind the glass is nonexistent but the computer operator, even if he does not understand all the mechanics behind it, obviously knows much more than the ant.  With the dog and the bank, the dog can certainly see the walls of the bank, the sign on the outside, and the doors which provide ingress and egress to customers.  But clearly, he has no understanding of the purpose of the building, while his owner presumably does.

I think these illustrations are insufficient when it comes to God and His communication with man.  I believe a better analogy would be a father and his child.  The child is a product of the father’s DNA.  Many component parts of the child are directly influenced by what is within the father’s own body.  However, the father, by virtue of maturation, experience, and education, knows far more about the world around both of them than the child does.  The father desires his child to come, in time, to understand things accurately the way he does.  So, the father’s task then becomes to attempt to distill complex ideas down into manageable chunks of information that his child can deal with.  The father does not tell his child lies about the world around them; that would be counter-intuitive.  Yet, he cannot explain things the way he would to another adult, such as his wife.  So he uses language and terms the child can understand in an attempt to communicate truth.  It is not the complete picture of truth that the father knows, to be sure, but it is still truth at its core.

I believe this is how God communicates to man about Himself.  He cannot fully explain Himself because our minds do not have the capacity to either comprehend or contain the information.  But He loves us and wants us to understand Him better eventually.  So, He speaks to us on our level, the level of a child as it were, and gives us only what we can handle at that time.