R.C. Sproul

We say that the embezzler absconds with the funds.

That is, he steals what he has, and then he goes off into hiding, right?

To abscond means to go into hiding, and when he speaks about God's being the deus absconditus, he said that He's the hidden God, referring to that aspect of God's being

for whatever reason God has in and of Himself, He's not been pleased or chosen to unveil that.

He's not revealed all there is to know about Himself to us at this point.

There remains things that are hidden.

At the same time, we also firmly believe in the deus revelatus, that there is a revealed aspect, and it's because God has revealed Himself to us verbally

meaningfully, and because He's made us in His image, which we'll explore more later.

We can speak about Him, and we can speak meaningfully.

Now what happened in the nineteenth century was the uniqueness of God, the way in which He is higher and greater than the created universe was all but obscured by a theology that became more and more pantheistic, identifying God with the sum total of nature.

God is all that is, and all that is is God, and so on.

So the uniqueness of God was being blurred and obscured.

That is, His transcendence, the sense in which He's other than us, was being lost.

And so the theologians at the turn of the century reacted against that and said, we've got to recover the truth about God that God can never, ever, ever be equated with or identified with the universe.

We must always distinguish between the Creator and the creature.

Then they came up with this wonderful idea that God is not only other from the creation, but He's wholly other, W-H-O-L-L-Y, totalitor, alitor, gonts, ondorin, whatever language you want to use.

He's completely different from creation.

I once had a discussion with some theologians on this point who loved that thing that God was wholly other.

And I said to this particular theologian in their company, I said, well, how do you know anything about God?

And he didn't hesitate.