How Can We Know an Infinite God?

0:00 You can be open-minded, but when you see enough evidence to draw a relatively firm conclusion, it would be empty-minded not to draw that conclusion. [Music] Do you see any wisdom in learning to be okay in yourself regardless of a belief in a resurrection? >> What do you mean by that? Like so it seems like the human mind takes conceptual frameworks and it can provide us this sense of certainty and it gives us this sense of assuress of where we are in the universe and our purpose and our meaning. But it seems like it's always a double-edged sword where the second we have that belief system in our mind, it's kind of like what you

0:45 mentioned with identity. Someone else comes along and questions it and then oh, we don't know who we are anymore. And so my question is like, do you see wisdom in just being okay with not knowing? Still seeking truth, still doing philosophy, still doing theology, but learning to be okay with not knowing. Well, we actually covered that in the first couple chapters of I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Yeah, sure. There are some things we may never know, but I think there's a difference between being open-minded and empty-minded. You can be open-minded, but when you see enough evidence to draw a relatively firm conclusion, it would be empty-minded not to draw that

1:32 conclusion. So, I think that's the case if you really take an honest look at the evidence for Christianity. I think it's actually not a virtue to not take a conclusion on this if the evidence is adequate to conclude that Christianity is indeed true. In fact, according to the scriptures, it's an eternal error. I I definitely agree and I think that's where the the yogis and the mystics can be a bit dogmatic in a sense because they develop the spiritual connection through meditation >> but then they can go a step further and say oh I don't need to study the Bible I don't need to listen to your arguments or your rationality because it's all

2:18 beyond the mind it's all mystical and I think um you can get in a dark place like you were saying in your mind if if you're not balancing the rational with the non non-conceptual. >> Sure. And I agree. But when the yogi or mystic says that when they says it when they say it's all beyond the mind, that's a self-defeating statement. >> Exactly. >> Because they're saying they know something here and now when they're denying the fact they can know something here and now because they say it's beyond the mind. Sure, God is to a certain extent beyond our comprehension. He's beyond reason, but he's not against reason. And he might be beyond what we can understand, but we can still know enough about him to know approximately

3:06 what he's like because we know God by analogy now. And now we don't know him directly as Aquinas would say. Okay. So yes, he's more than our arguments, but he's certainly not less than our arguments >> and our theology if our theology is correct. >> Last question. >> Yes. Um, how do you know that the totality of God is beyond the arguments? Well, because if you follow the arguments all the way to their conclusion, or maybe better put all the way to their origin, when you get to a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, moral, personal, intelligent creator whose every attribute is infinite.

3:53 Then you realize that you can't know that being completely because you're finite. So you know enough about him to know that he exists, but you're not going to have exhaustive knowledge of him. Certainly not this side of eternity. And even when we get what theologians call the beatotific vision, this is based on first John 3:2. We're not going to completely understand God. God is the only perpetual novelty as an infinite being. You will you in your finite capacity and my finite capacity will never know him completely but we will know him better when we get that beatotific vision. All right. Thank you sir. Great questions.

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