(The Nationalist, 16 January 2004)
Karl Barth, a Protestant, was once described by Pope Pius XII as the greatest theologian in the church since Saint Thomas Aquinas. Barth said, ‘When I think of God, I blaspheme, and when I speak of God, I blaspheme twice.’
We know so little of God. God is infinitely greater than anything we can think or imagine. Saint Augustine said that if anyone thinks he knows God, then whatever it was he knew, or thought he knew, it wasn’t God. When we talk of God we are like someone trying to describe a continent after having caught a glimpse of it while walking past a window.
Let us have the humility to recognize how little we know. Whatever we know of God by reason or logic is certainly inadequate, probably inaccurate, and possibly misleading. And indeed, how could we expect to know God when we hardly even know ourselves? We are a mystery to ourselves. How do we come to know God? By loving people. That is not logical but it is true. It’s a paradox confirmed by the experience of life. It’s intuitive, beyond reason.
God doesn’t communicate himself in the way of logic, but through images, symbols and mysteries. They point to something beyond themselves. We know they are inadequate; they don’t claim to be anything else. A mystery is not so much something we can’t understand as something about which we can never understand enough. The word “mystery” is not a STOP sign. It is an invitation to explore while recognizing that, when we speak of God, there will always be the unknown.
In the gospel of the baptism of Jesus, God speaks through signs:
- God the Father’s voice speaking from the cloud;
- the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove;
- the Son, Jesus, on whom God’s favour rested.
Baptism is a sign of our being flooded with God, of God being poured into us. We become one with him and he with us. The one who is baptized can say, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’
Why was Jesus baptized? Perhaps it was to give us a glimpse of the life of God, of what a right relationship with God can be like: ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased… the Holy Spirit rested on him.’
Baptism brings us into God and God into us. It brings about a mutual indwelling which lasts a lifetime. Baptism is a sign by which God graciously invites us into his life.