Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who
has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?
(Romans
11:33-34)
I saw all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work
that is done under the sun. For though a man labors to discover it, yet he will
not find it; moreover, though a wise man attempts to know it, he will not be
able to find it.
(Ecclesiastes
8:16-17)
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways,
And my thoughts than your thoughts.”
(Isaiah 55:8-11)
And herein
lies the danger of Sola Scriptura.
It involves
more than another logical contradiction—that the eternal Word of the infinite
God can be contained in a finite book. The danger is when one becomes convinced
that everything there is to know about God can be known, and that it can be
known from a book. When a person becomes convinced of this, he believes he
knows everything about the mind of God, which is a serious danger first of all
to himself. (Which explains the first commandment recorded in Scripture in
Genesis 2:16-17, and the grave consequences that ensued when it was broken.)
But then when
a man preaches as if he fully knows the mind of God, and tries to convince
others that man can completely understand the mind of God through the pages of
a book, even though the book is God-breathed, he is leading others along this
dangerous path as well.
We cannot fully understand
God—either from the Bible or the teaching of the Church. Ultimately He is
mystery. God is fully capable of doing things beyond our understanding, and
without our help. Where I find your views most disturbing is you belief that a
person who lives their life on earth loving, forgiving, being compassionate,
serving the least of Jesus’ brothers, but for whatever reason is not
intellectually able to recognize God and his Son, that such a person is
eternally damned.
Jesus clearly stated He is the
only way to the Father in John 14:6. In doing so he also defined who He is: the
Way, the Truth and the Life. It is possible for someone to live the Way, Truth
and Life that you and I would name Jesus even if they cannot name it as such.
In fact, in Matthew 25:31-40 the righteous are welcomed into heaven even though
they did not consciously realize they had spent their earthly life serving
Christ. They simply lived what they knew in their hearts to be the way, the
truth and the life. They knew Jesus in their hearts—their minds didn’t
recognize Him.
