Connecting the Dots Between Humanity and God

“How can God be three and one? How can God take on a human nature? If God planned everything, how can I be responsible? Do my prayers make any difference in God’s plan? Will we finally know everything when we get to heaven?

“These are questions that recognize some of the mysterious tensions that Scripture presents to us. They are good questions, but wrong answers to good questions can rob us of a full and fulfilled Christian life, and they rob God of his proper glory. Proper answers—answers that allow the mystery of God and His ways to shine brightly—will evoke in us proper worship.”

The profound mysteries at the heart of Christian faith can be at once paradoxical and awe inspiring. They’re not problems to be explained away or puzzles to be solved and dismissed. The more we engage with them, ponder them, and recognize them in the biblical story, the deeper they lead us into proper worship.

Written with deep theological knowledge and threaded with everyday implications, The Majesty of Mystery connects the dots between humanity and God, belief and practice, mystery and worship. Drawing from the Reformed tradition and the Westminster Confession of Faith, K. Scott Oliphint invites readers to rediscover the purpose to which all theology aims.

Praise for The Majesty of Mystery

“This book is far from a cold theological study. It sings!” says Dr. William Edgar. He and many others have already found The Majesty of Mystery to be a powerful and edifying read. Oliphint wrestles with these grand mysteries in a refreshingly honest and timeless way.

Here’s what a few people have to say about this book:

Knowing God as He is, in all the fullness He will allow us, is the church’s highest priority and greatest privilege today. Scott Oliphint’s powerful exposition of the majesty of mystery is a much-needed and bracing antidote to the casual, buddy-buddy theology that is so common in our times.

—Os Guinness, author, The Call

At first when we hear that God is mysterious, we think: he’s unknowable. What Scott Oliphint argues in this extraordinary book is just the opposite. Divine mystery, as he proves from Scripture, provides the only real hope that we can know God. It is just his greatness that makes him accessible to us. God is indeed way beyond our imagination. But in his love he has ‘stooped to conquer.’ Indeed, unless mystery pervades all of life we are left with a gray, purposeless existence. This book is far from a cold theological study. It sings! When we put it down, we want to say not ‘what a great text,’ but ‘what a great and worthy God.’

—Dr. William Edgar, professor of apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Nothing is more important about our knowledge of God than recognizing that it begins with his incomprehensibility and remains bounded by that recognition. Reflecting the results of a major area of Oliphint’s interest in his lecturing and writing over many years, a key concern of this book is to speak about the mystery surrounding God and his activity in a way that honors the way that God himself speaks to us in Scripture. Its careful, often penetrating handling of this sublime mystery is enhanced by a worshipful tone throughout.

An instructive and edifying read for those wanting to grow in their knowledge of God.

—Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., professor of biblical and systematic theology, emeritus, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

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The Majesty of Mystery is now available in print and digital formats. Read it and take up its challenge to worship our incomprehensible God.