Here we find Calvinism's vision of God set before us in two long paragraphs, the first of which is one long sentence.

It is, perhaps, worth noting Prof. Murray's comment on the Confession of Faith in general that there is "so much in so little. The divines had a profound sense of the speciality of their task, and the economy of words was their con­cern" (The Theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith in Collected Writ­ings, Volume 4, p.247). And of the passage before us he says: "so inclusive and yet so compressed are the two sections dealing with the being, attributes and counsel of God that it is difficult if not impossible to discover the order of thought followed".

For this reason, we will need to bring the statements of the Confession's doctrine of God together in some logical order of thought.

Two Important Parameters⤒🔗

The twin considerations within which God can be truly, though not fully, known by us are, first, that God is incomprehensible, and, second, that He is knowable. The Confession stresses both of these.

God's Incomprehensibility←↰⤒🔗

This is brought before us in the use of the words immense and incomprehensi­ble, two negatives which remind us that as far as God is concerned, there is a level beyond which finite human understanding is unable to extend. This is brought before us in Scripture in various ways.

Job 11:7, for example, asks: Canst thou by searching find out God? Isaiah 45:15 tells us that He is a God who hides himself. Paul reminds Timothy that God dwells in light which no man can approach, whom no man has seen nor can see.

All theological endeavour shows the theologian how little he has learnt, and how much more there is to be known. Natural man, even in his sin, is capable of seeing clearly God's eternal power and Godhead (Romans 1:18) in the things which are created. Man in grace, with an enlightened mind and a renewed vision, is able to see further and appreciate more than man in nature. He sees the glory of God in the face of Christ. The Holy Spirit searches out the deep things of God in order to apply them to the Christian. Man in glory will have a vision, a beatific vision, which will excel the best that we have seen here, and will be co-ordinate with the height of glory to which he is exalted, seeing and going on seeing. Here there is desire with dissatisfaction. There the desire knows only deep fulfillment and unending delight.

But always there is limit. Only God knows Himself exhaustively. To Him there is no mystery; but always to us there is mystery as we look into divinity. A.A. Hodge puts it thus: "no bounds can be drawn around the boundless. God can be known only so far forth as he has chosen to reveal himself ... every glimpse we have of his being involves the outly­ing immensity or the transcendent perfection which cannot be known" (Evangelical Theology, pp10-11).  Or, as Bavinck  reminds us, "Mystery is the vital element of Dogmatics"  (The Doctrine of God, p.13).

God's Knowability←↰⤒🔗

The indispensable action required for our knowledge of God is God's revelation of Himself. Hence the Confession begins with a chapter teaching both that God revealed Himself in a general way in creation, and in a specific way in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa­ments.

There is, says Calvin, in the minds of all men, an "innate knowledge of God"; Calvin means by this that "There exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of deity" (Institutes l.iii.1), and that it is from this "as from its seed, that the religious propensity springs" (l.iii.2). Calvin's position is that all religious awareness, life and practice, springs from a realisation that there is a God who has revealed Himself.

The position of the Bible is not that men need to have the existence of God demonstrated to them by rational argu­ment, but that all men are acutely aware of the God who is there. Those who profess to be atheists are suppressing the truth that is clearly seen by them (Ro­mans 1:18ff).

But it is in special revelation that we have a sure knowledge of God, and of the benefits of knowing Him. So Calvin continues: "The course which God followed towards His church from the very first, was to supplement these common proofs by the addition of His Word, as a surer and more direct means of discovering Himself" (I.vi.1).

In other words, to use Bavinck's distinction, our knowledge of God is to be acquired rather than innate. Acquired knowledge comes by searching the Word of God, for the Scriptures testify of Him (cf. John 5:39). Van Til puts it thus: "Without revelation, God is not merely incomprehensible but inapprehensible" (Introduction to Systematic Theology, pp 168-9).

So God is both unknowable and knowable. The nature of our knowledge of God in this connection formed a famous debate in the 1940s between Van Til and Gordon Clark. Van Til argued that it is necessary to preserve a distinc­tion between the Creator and the creature in the realm of knowledge; this is what makes God incomprehensible. Clark, on the other hand, wanted to prevent scepticism, and argued that it is possible to know God truly on the basis of revelation. Van Til stressed the disconti­nuity between God and man; Clark the continuity in the area of knowledge and epistemology (see. J.Frame The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, pp21ff).

To be sure, there were elements of truth on both sides of this debate. Our minds are both finite, and they are compromised by sin. We require God both to give us revelation, and the ability to receive it: something to know and a means of knowing it. The more God reveals of Himself to us, the more we are faced with the discontinuities between our knowledge of God and God's knowledge of Himself.

B.B. Warfield summarises: "The Christian's God is no doubt the God of nature and the God in nature; but before and above all this He is the God above nature, the supernatural fact. As Christian men, we must see to it that we retain a worthy conception of God" (Biblical and Theological Studies, p.9). It was in pursuit of this 'worthy conception of God' that Westminster laboured with an intensity of spiritual devotion.