I. Essence and Energies
In considering revelation, it is important to hold to and emphasize the Creator-creation distinction, which is celebrated in the traditions of both Western theology and Eastern Orthodox theology. Both say that God so transcends creation in his incomprehensible majesty that we cannot even know God in his essence or God’s being in itself but only in and according to God’s works. Yet, God’s works are nothing less than God working.
Western theology is usually restricted to the category of essence: either divine or nondivine. Eastern theology introduced the category of God’s energies. The Cappadocian fathers and Eastern Orthodox make the helpful distinction between the essence of God (which we cannot know) and God’s energies (which we can know).
Where Western theology typically works with the categories of divine essence (source) and human essence (effect), Eastern theology recognizes that God’s working is divine without being an emanation or extension of his essence. As Michael Horton explains: “The sun’s rays are not the sun itself, but they are also not the ground that is warmed by the sun. Rather, they are the shining forth or effulgence of the sun. Similarly, God’s energies (energia) are neither God’s essence (ousia) nor a created effect but are God’s knowledge, power, and grace directed toward creatures.”3 We do not know God in himself but are warmed by the effulgence of his being. The “rays” are not an extension of God’s being, but of his power and activity.
We come to know God in his works rather than his essence. God’s works are neither God’s essence nor merely the created effect of his action, but God’s effective agency. For example, as Horton writes: “God’s act of creating the world by his Word is neither an emanation of God’s being nor itself part of creation. Rather, it is God’s activity.”4 John Calvin presupposes the essence-energies distinction when he writes: “The Spirit may be regarded as the essential power of God, whose energy is manifested and exerted in the entire government of the world, as well as in miraculous events.”5
This essence-energies distinction informs how we think about revelation. The patristic rule that the finite cannot comprehend or enclose the infinite is applicable to every form of divine revelation. Eastern Orthodoxy appeals to Exodus 33 for the distinction between the revelation of God in his essence (God’s inescapable glory) and in his energies (God’s gracious acts). God reveals his attributes or characteristics rather than his hidden essence—what he is like rather than what he is in the inner depths of his hidden mystery.
There is not revelation of God’s essence—direct or indirect. Nor is the medium of revelation (the Bible) either God’s essence or merely a creaturely witness. Scripture is identified as the locus of God’s revelation, even though God infinitely transcends it. As the canonical record of God’s acts and speech, it communicates to us here and now God’s powerful energies. As God’s living speech, the Scriptures are a series of divinely inspired interpretations of God’s gracious acts in redemptive history. God’s energies, not his essence, are communicated through the human writers of Scripture. They are sent by the Father to proclaim the Son in the power of the Spirit.
Concerning these distinctions, Calvin writes, “The essence of God is to be adored rather than inquired into.”6 In fact, “They are mad who seek to discover what God is.”7 Rather, we come to know God through his works in creation but especially through his Word: “Thereupon his powers are mentioned, by which he is shown to us not as he is in himself, but as he is toward us; so that this recognition of him consists more in living experience than in vain and high-flown speculations.”8 This view of revelation and mediation is God’s condescending mercy in order to reveal himself without destroying us.
II. The Knowledge of God
There would be no knowledge of God without God’s condescension to reveal and deal with the difference that finitude posits, as well as the noetic effects of sin. We will explore Aquinas’ concept of knowledge “according to the mode of the receiver” and Calvin’s concept of accommodation as we consider the Creator-creation distinction as it relates to the knowledge of God given to us by God’s self-revealing.
A. Aquinas and Analogy
Aquinas denies that we have quidditative knowledge of God (knowledge of what God is in his essential being), whether by reason or revelation, but only analogical knowledge of God.9 Aquinas’ discussion, “How God is Known by Us,”10 is grounded in his epistemological principle that all knowledge, as a matter of “reception,” is possible only according to the mode or condition of the receiver: quidquid reciptur, secundum modum recipientis recipitur.11 Based on this principle, the question is: how will it be possible for us, as finite and conditioned, to know God, who is infinite and unconditioned?
First, Aquinas notes that according to our “natural” powers, this is impossible:
For knowledge takes place according as the thing known is in the knower. But the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of every knower is according to the mode of its own nature. If therefore the mode of being of a given thing exceeds the mode of the knower, it must result that the knowledge of that thing is above the nature of the knower.12
However, the impossibility is overcome by grace, which Aquinas applies to the issue of finitude. Calvin’s teaching on God’s accommodating applies to human finitude, but also human sinfulness.
Second, Aquinas considers the objection that “if God is seen through a medium, he is not seen in his essence. But if seen by any created light, he is seen through a medium.”13 Aquinas’ reply to this objection moves toward an account of condescension: “A created light is necessary to see the essence of God, not in order to make the essence of God intelligible, which is of itself intelligible, but in order to enable the intellect to understand.”14 That which is infinite appears in terms that the created intellect can understand, otherwise it would fail to appeal to a finite perceiver. Thus God, in and from himself, concedes to the conditions of human knowing in order to be made known.
Third, Aquinas makes a careful distinction between “knowledge” and “comprehension,” which will be crucial to any account of the self-revealing God. While God can be known, God cannot be comprehended by any finite intellect since “what is comprehended is perfectly known.”15 Since all human knowledge is according to the mode of the perceiver, the finite creature cannot perfectly know the infinite God: “[I]n no way is God comprehended either by the intellect or by anything else; for since he is infinite, he cannot be included in any finite being.”16 The belief that God cannot be comprehended does not preclude knowledge of God altogether. Rather, because God reveals in the terms of the conditions of the perceiver, God can be known. Thus the principle of analogy, as well as Calvin’s teaching on accommodation, is a matter of God condescending to our finite capacities out of love.
B. Calvin and God Accommodating
Calvin argues that God in the depths of his being is past finding out: “His essence is incomprehensible; so that His divinity wholly escapes all human senses.” His theology of God accommodating in revelation, like Thomas Aquinas’ use of “analogy,” reflects the ontological difference between God and creation as well as takes into account the human condition. According to Calvin, revelation refers to a voluntary, mediated accommodation of what God wills to make known of himself to the capacities and limits of humans.
This seems to be what Calvin thought when we writes that “as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us. Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.”17
In the Institutes, Calvin uses either the verb accommodare or attemperare, when he describes the principle of accommodation. Accommodare and attemperare refer to the adjustments made by a speaker to the capacities and understanding of the listener they wish to persuade. Just as rhetoricians18 adjust their use of language and presentation to the level of their hearers, so God “accommodates” his self-revelation to the human condition. In effect, God “lisps” so that finite and sinful humans may hear the divine Word and receive knowledge of God.19
Before Calvin went the patristic witnesses who contend that in his self-revealing God was adjusting his revelation to the capacity of the human mind and heart. Unlike Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, or Chrysostom, Calvin makes this principle a consistent basis for every avenue of relationship between God and humans. Accommodation unlocks for Calvin God’s beneficent tutelage and pedagogy of his children.20
For Calvin, accommodation is a major characterization of the knowledge of God: “[God] accommodates to our capacity in addressing us.”21 God “cannot be comprehended by us except as far as he accommodates (attemperat) himself to our standard.”22 Calvin also writes: “God in his greatness can by no means be fully comprehended by our minds…there are certain limits within which men ought to confine themselves, in as much as God accommodates to our measure what he testifies of himself.”23 The term attemperat includes within its scope all the noetic aspects of the Creator-creation distinction and relationship: “For since he is in himself incomprehensible, he assumes, when he wishes to manifest himself to men, those marks by which he may be known.”24 Accommodation points to the difference between God and humanity that is dealt with only by God “in some way descending” to meet the limitations of human nature, never by humanity overcoming them. Commenting on this, Calvin writes: “It was necessary that he should assume a visible form, that he might be seen by Moses not as he was in his essence but as the infirmity of the human mind could comprehend. For thus we believe that God, as often as he appeared of old to the holy patriarchs, descended in some way from his loftiness, that he might reveal himself as far as was useful and as far as their comprehension would admit.”25
The essence of God is unknown and inaccessible to us, according to Calvin, and all speculations about it are idolatrous and blasphemous. This is the main error of those who discuss the being of God apart from revelation of God’s will: “Those, therefore, who in considering this question propose to inquire what the essence of God is (quid sit Deus) only trifle with frigid speculations—it being much more important for us to know what kind of being (qualis sit) God is, and what things are agreeable to his nature.”26 In his Commentary on Ezekiel, he writes: “God appeared under a visible form to his servant: could Ezekiel on that account do as scholastic theologians do—philosophize with subtlety concerning God’s essence and know no end or moderation in their dispute? By no means, but he restrained himself within fixed bounds.”27
The three “epithets” for God’s essence, “immensity,” “spirituality,” and “simplicity,” are not positive descriptions that form a base for speculation, but boundaries or limits that deny the access of speculation regarding the essence of God.28 In other words, these terms mean that God’s essence is not finite, not material, and not divisible, and therefore, are not comprehensible. Describing the boundaries of the epithets “immensity” and “spirituality,” Calvin writes:
What is taught in the Scriptures concerning the immensity of spirituality of the essence of God should serve only to overthrow the foolish notions of the vulgar but also to refute the subtleties of profane philosophy…But although God, to keep us within the bounds of sobriety, speaks but rarely of his essence, yet, by those two epithets, which I have mentioned, he supersedes all gross imaginations, and represses the presumption of the human mind. For surely, his immensity ought to deter us that we may not attempt to measure him with our sense; and his spiritual nature prohibits us from entertaining any earthly or carnal speculations concerning him.29
Calvin continues that God’s simplicity, when viewed alone as a positive attribute, gives us a “bare and empty name of God, which flits about in our brains,” and not the true God.30 In connection with the doctrine of the Trinity, Calvin further writes: “For how can the infinite essence of God be defined by the capacity of the human mind, which could never yet certainly determine the nature of the body of the sun, which the eye behold daily? Indeed, how can it, by its own efforts, penetrate into an examination of the substance (substantiam) of God, when it is totally ignorant of its own? Wherefore let us willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself.”31
It is the work, power, or activity of God that we know, not God’s essence or being.32 And even then, we know God’s work, power, or activity only in so far as they are directed toward us:
Whence we conclude this to be the right way and the best method of seeking God: not with presumptuous curiosity to attempt an examination of his essence, which is rather to be adored than too minutely investigated; but to contemplate him in his works, in which he approaches and familiarizes himself to us…Although he is himself invisible, in a manner he becomes visible to us in his works.”33
Thus, according to Calvin, theology does not handle what God is, only what God is in relation to the world: “His essence is indeed incomprehensible, so that his divinity is not to be perceived by the human senses, but on each of his works he has inscribed his glory in characters so clear, unequivocal, and striking that the most illiterate and stupid cannot exculpate themselves by the pleas of ignorance.”34 By this Calvin reminds us that humans must keep their thoughts within the limits imposed by the temporal and spatial creation. Speculations about infinite time and space are forbidden, and even within our temporal and spatial limitations, humans know God’s will only in a very limited way.
From the first edition of the Institutes to the latest, Calvin opens with the category of “the knowledge of God and ourselves” and not with speculations about being and existence.35 For Calvin, creation’s reason for being—the goal of accommodation—is God’s revelation to humanity and the resulting glory to and worship of God.36 Calvin writes: “No sooner was the world created than the Word of God came forth into external operation; having been formerly incomprehensible in his essence, he then became publicly known by the effect of his power.”37 Calvin warns against human speculation about God. Early in the Institutes, he describes the human mind’s powerful tendency to move away from God and how we always wander in error and never reach our goal if we leave the accommodated paths of revelation, which alone give us knowledge of God: “Suppose we ponder how slippery is the fall of the human mind into forgetfulness of God, how great the tendency to every kind of error, how great the lust to fashion constantly new and artificial religions.”38 Faithful listening to Scripture prevents us from turning to either side.
When we turn to God’s work of redemption, we find the accommodation of God to humanity capacities extended. The redeeming Word, like the creative Word, is accommodated to the aggravated condition of sinful creatures:
For there are two distinct powers which belong to the Son of God: the first, which is manifest in the architecture of the world and the order of nature; and the second, by which he renews and restores fallen nature. As he is the eternal Word of God, by him the world was made, by his power all things continue to posses life which they once received; man was endued with a unique gift of understanding, and though by revolt he lost the light of understanding, yet still sees and understands, so that what he naturally possess from the grace of the Son of God is not entirely destroyed. But since by his stupidity and perverseness he darkens the light which still dwells in him, it remains that a new office be undertaken by the Son of God, the office of Mediator, to renew by the spirit of regeneration man, who has been ruined.39
God’s special accommodation to human sinfulness occurs exclusively though the self-revealing that God undertook in the Incarnation: “[G]od himself would remain absolutely hidden (procul absconditus) if we were not illuminated by the brightness of Christ.”40 No redemptive knowledge is available apart from the mediatorial work of Christ: “For he assumed the character of Mediator in order to approach to us by descending from the bosom and incomprehensible glory of his Father.”41
Calvin argues that the principle of accommodation intervenes where the temptation of idolatry is strong—to say that God is known immediately. Examples of Calvin’s response to the idol of immediacy is found in his commentaries concerning the giving of God’s name—Yahweh. This name of God “is to be understood of the knowledge of him in so far as he makes himself known to us, for I do not approve of the subtle speculations of those who think the name of God means nothing else but God himself. It ought rather to be referred to the works and properties (virtutes) by which he is known, than to his essence.”42 To guard against idolatry regarding the name of God, Calvin notes “that we may not suppose that his eternal essence only is here exhibited, but also his power and goodness, which he constantly exercises toward us and by which he abundantly reveals himself…The world falls into the mistake of giving a naked and empty name to God, meanwhile transferring his authority to another.”43 He continues to argue against idolatrous names: “The name ‘strong’ is attributed to God…because it is not enough to acknowledge God’s eternal essence unless we also ascribe strength to him. But for this we shall leave him nothing but a bare and empty name, as the wicked do, who with the mouth confess God and then transfer his power to this and that.”44
God’s essence is a mystery even to those who know God’s name. Calvin writes that the Psalmist does not “speak of the hidden essence of God (absconditus Dei essentia), which fills heaven and earth, but of the manifestations of his power, wisdom, goodness, and righteousness, which appear publicly, although they may exceed the measure of our understanding.”45 The appearances of God are moments of concealing and revealing. The presence of God is not as exhibition of God’s essence but an illustration that God’s essence is unknowable—moments of God’s gracious veiled appearance that is accommodated to human capabilities. There is a double aspect to God’s communication, to reveal character and to conceal essence: “For when the Lord gives tokens (signa) of his presence, he employs at the same time some coverings to restrain the arrogance of the human mind…this admonition also pertains to us, that we may not seek to pry into secrets which lie beyond our perception, but rather that every man may keep within the limits of sobriety, according to the measure of his faith.”46 Calvin also writes: “As therefore our capacity cannot endure the fullness of the infinite glory which belongs to the essence of God, it is necessary whenever he appears to us that he put on a form adapted to our capacity.”47
The giving of God’s name and celebration of Yahweh’s redeeming activity are all within the economy of accommodation to the human condition and are subordinate to the final accommodation to human sinfulness, the Incarnation. Here, just like elsewhere, God’s accommodating character guards the borders. The Incarnation follows the same pattern as before: essence unknown, power exerted for the sake of revelation, with the main emphasis placed upon the revelation itself. Commenting on John 14:10, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” Calvin writes:
I do not consider these words to refer to Christ’s divine essence, but to the manner of revelation; for Christ, so far as regards his hidden divinity, is not better known to us than the Father. But he is said to be the express image of God because in him God has fully revealed himself, so far as God’s infinite goodness, wisdom, and power are clearly manifested in him. Yet the ancients are not wrong when they quote this passage as a proof for defending Christ’s divinity; but as Christ does not inquiry simply what he is in himself, but what we ought to acknowledge him to be, this description applies to his power rather than his essence. The Father, therefore, is said to be in Christ, because full divinity dwells in him and displays its power; and Christ, on the other hand, is said to be in the Father because by his divine power he shows that he is one with the Father.48
While Calvin believes that Christ participates in an identity of essence with the Father, he insists that the “main thing is, in what manner the Father makes himself known to us in Christ.” Commenting on Colossians 1:15, Christ is “the image of the invisible God,” Calvin writes:
[T]he term image is not related to essence, but has a relation to us. For Christ is called the image of God on this ground, that he makes God in a manner visible to us…[but] we must not insist on essence alone. The sum is this—that God in himself, that is, in his naked majesty, is invisible, and that not to the eyes of the body only, but also to the minds of men, and that he is revealed to us in Christ alone, that we may behold him as in a mirror.49
Calvin continues on this theme in regard to Second Corinthians 4:4:
When, however, Christ is called the image of the invisible God, this is not meant merely of his essence, as being the ‘co-essential of the Father,’ as they say, but rather has reference to us, because he represents the Father to us. The Father himself is represented as invisible, because he is in himself not apprehended by the human understanding. He exhibits himself, however, to us by his Son, and makes himself in a manner visible.50
In the Incarnation, Christ’s hidden divinity or essence remains unchanged51 and was veiled under the form of flesh, but in such a way as yet to be revealed.52 In the concealing-revealing character of the Incarnation, the “divine incognito,” the double aspect of accommodation is at its sharpest and most paradoxical. God’s deepest condescension or descent from God’s essence is both the high-point of humanity’s knowledge and the limit of it: “God is not to be sought out in his unsearchable height, but is to be known by us in so far as he manifests himself in Christ.”53 And again: “If God, then, has spoken now for the last time, it is right to advance thus far; so also when you come to [Christ], you ought not to go further.”54
Calvin describes our captus in many and varied ways. Sometimes it is our vision that is single out—we suffer from lippitudo (bleary eyes). Sometimes it is our hebetudo, our sluggishness, which stands in the way. However, it is our captus that God knows so well. As Calvin puts it, commenting on Psalm 78:60: “God, it is true, fills both heaven and earth; but we cannot attain to that infinite height to which God is exalted, in descending among us by the exercise of God’s power and grace, God approaches as near to us as is needful, and as our limited capacity will bear.”55
Calvin’s theology of accommodation offers an understanding of how God reveals according to the mode of the receiver but avoids the pitfalls of pantheistic immediacy on one hand and ignorance or agnosticism on the other hand. He argues that we come to know God through the revelatory Word of God. Beyond this, any supposed knowledge of God is speculative and must be avoided lest one, in deluded arrogance, pretends to grasp the hidden mind of God. One cannot get behind the act of God’s revelation and know the essence of God.
Calvin mentions the importance of accommodation (accommodare) several times. When he describes God’s revelatory activity, Calvin depicts God as a grand orator who speaks to an audience and thus uses a language that is clear and comprehensible. The most general form of this accommodation comes in the beauty of creation. In the splendor of creation, God “renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself.”56
Similarly, scripture is accommodated to our limited capacities and understanding. In his description of the process by which Moses wrote the creation account, Calvin writes: “Moses, accommodating himself to the rudeness of common folk, mentions in the history of Creation no other works of God than those which show themselves to our own eyes.”57 This is illuminating in that it portrays the accommodating Spirit of God working through the accommodating rhetoric of a human.
Calvin refers to accommodation in terms of a human teacher and not just in terms of divine accommodation. This can give insight on his understanding of God’s accommodation. In his Commentary on First Corinthians, Calvin reflects: “A wise teacher accommodates himself to the understanding of those who must be taught. He begins with the first principles in teaching the weak and ignorant and should not rise any higher than they can follow. In short, he instills his teaching drop by drop, lest it overflow.”58
III. Conclusion
We should not speak about God in ungodly terms but to speak of God in God’s terms given to us. We are always already immersed in the human condition of sinfulness and finitude. Humans can have knowledge of God only because God first condescends and accommodates to human capacity to reveal to us truth about himself. We have seen that humans cannot arrive, by themselves, at the truth about God. Left on our own, we are only good idolaters. Revelation is self-authenticating and God’s accommodation is the means by which God’s revelation is mediated. The acceptance of what is given in revelation is an acceptance made by humans in and by faith—a faith that is from God.
A. Archetypal and Ectypal theology
Christin theology rests on the self-revelation of God in human history to human ears. It is a claim that God is speaking God—a God who has spoken and still speaks. He discloses himself to us such that we can know him – and but not fully understand him.
In the opening pages of his Elenctic Theology, Francis Turretin writes:
When God is set forth as the object of theology, he is not to be regarded simply as God in himself (for thus he is incomprehensible to us) but as revealed and as he has been pleased to manifest himself to us in his word, so that divine revelation is the formal relation which comes to be considered in this object. Nor is he to be considered exclusively under the relation of the deity (according to the opinion of Thomas Aquinas and many Scholastics after him, for in this manner the knowledge of him could not be saving but deadly to sinners), but as he is our God (i.e., covenanted in Christ as he has revealed himself to us in his word not only as the object of knowledge, but also of worship).59
Turretin argues that theology deals with the revealed knowledge of God—but that in doing so, it does not claim that that is all there is to know about him. Theology should be divided into archetypal theology and ectypal theology.
Archetypal theology is the infinite knowledge of God that only God possesses and which is known only to God himself. It is the original whereas all else is the copy (ectypal knowledge). Archetypal knowledge is the pattern for all true theology. Ectypal theology is knowledge of God to which finite minds have access. It is creaturely knowledge that is revealed by God and accommodated to our finite capacities. Creaturely knowledge is always imperfect, incomplete, and dependent on God’s perfect and complete knowledge. Archetypal theology is simply not what creatures have ever had, can have, or will ever have. Our knowledge of God—ectypal—will never be comprehensive, even while it is true.
Turretin calls for theologia viatorum—a “theology on the way.” The theology of the journeying Christian as he or she heads towards the heavenly rest, but knows all along that what he or she knows now is not complete, and may even at points be faulty.
Ectypal theology helps us to be both confident and humble. We can be confident that what knowledge we have of God is true knowledge – a knowledge that is saving, personal, and real. We can make meaningful statements about God, because he has made meaningful statements about himself to us.
But we also ought to be humble. We should be aware of our own capacity for error. We should be aware that whatever we say about God is not a mastery or a limitation of who he is. We speak of God with confidence, but also with reverence and humility because cannot comprehend God, but we can apprehend God.
B. Language about God
It is important to hold to the distinction between the Creator and creation and we must never confuse the two. This leads us to the question of language about God. To maintain this Creator/creature distinction, theologians have used the terms univocal, analogical, and equivocal when speaking about how we know God. Those who argue for some type of univocal understanding (e.g. John Duns Scotus in the 13th century) seem to believe “some predicates applied to God and humans must be univocal (i.e., mean exactly the same thing).”60 The opposite makes God unknowable. And then others, like Thomas Aquinas (12th century), argued for an analogical view.
Michael Horton offers a careful explanation about the differences:
Neither being nor knowledge is ever shared univocally (i.e., identically) between God and creatures. As God’s being is qualitatively and not just quantitatively distinct from ours, so too is God’s knowledge. God’s knowledge is archetypal (the original), while ours is ectypal (a copy), revealed by God and therefore accommodated to our finite capacities. Our imperfect and incomplete knowledge is always dependent on God’s perfect and complete knowledge.
A covenantal ontology requires a covenantal epistemology. We were created as God’s analogy (image bearers) rather than as self-existent sparks of divinity; therefore, our knowledge is also dependent rather than autonomous. So there is indeed such a thing as absolute, perfect, exhaustive, and eternal truth, but this knowledge is possessed by God, not by us. Rather, we have revealed truth, which God has accommodated to our capacity.
Following Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), our older theologians therefore argued that human knowledge is analogical rather than either univocal or equivocal (two terms are related analogically when they are similar, univocally when they are identical, and equivocally when they have nothing in common).
When we say that God is good, we assume we know what good means from our ordinary experience with fellow human beings. However, God is not only quantitatively better than we are; his goodness is qualitatively different from creaturely goodness. Nevertheless, because we are created in God’s image, we share this predicate with God analogically. Goodness, attributed to God and Sally, is similar but always with greater dissimilarity. At no point is goodness exactly the same for God as it is for Sally. The difference is qualitative, not just quantitative; yet there is enough similarity to communicate the point.
God reveals himself as a person, a king, a shepherd, a substitutionary lamb, and so forth. These analogies are not arbitrary (i.e., equivocal), but they are also not exact correspondence (i.e., univocal). Even when we attribute love to God and Mary, love cannot mean exactly the same thing for a self-existent Trinity and a finite person. In every analogy, there is always greater dissimilarity than similarity between God and creatures. Nevertheless, God judges that the analogy is appropriate for his self-revelation. We do not know exactly what divine goodness is like, but since God selects this analogy, there must be a sufficient similarity to our concept of goodness to justify the comparison.
This doctrine of analogy is the hinge on which a Christian affirmation of God’s transcendence and immanence turns. A univocal view threatens God’s transcendence, while an equivocal view threatens God’s immanence.61
Adopting a view of God’s revelation accommodated to our human capacities and an analogical view of our knowledge of God guards against collapsing the Creator/creature distinction. We are, indeed, created in the image of God. Yet, we are not exactly like God.
Remembering God’s transcendence humbles us. God is far above humanity. He is high and lifted up. Remembering the utter uniqueness of God moves us to adoration, reverence, and worship. We must remember that our knowledge of God is dependent upon God’s accommodating self-revelation. Because God is beyond us, if we are to know him rightly, then he must stoop to our level. Graciously, he has done just that. God has “accommodated” to our capacities and we can know him truly—though never exhaustively. Our imperfect and incomplete knowledge is always dependent on God’s perfect and complete knowledge.
