Getting the Perspective Right

Like a Blind Man Trying to Understand Color 

Justin Taylor|
December 7, 2012


Herman Bavinck once wrote that “If God were to speak to us in a divine language, not a creature would understand him.” We could say that it’s like a blind man trying to understand color—as illustrated in the video below:

 
HT: 22 Words
But thanks be to God that he has graciously condescended to speak to us, in a sense, from the ground up, using what we can see, touch, hear, and feel to explain eternal and invisible things. Bavinck continues:

But what spells out his grace is the fact that from the moment of creation God stoops down to his creatures, speaking and appearing to them in human fashion. This is why all the names by which God calls himself and allows us to call him are derived from earthly and human relations. (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2: God and Creation [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], 100)

And yet this doesn’t mean that everything revealed is fully comprehensible. So the next time you’re tempted to think that certain things in God’s Word can’t be true or are irrational because they can’t be fully explained, just remember that perhaps it is like a blind man trying to understand color.