I'm currently reading Truthfulness: the future of the church by Hans Küng and Poetry and Prayer by Richard Griffiths. Both are well worth a read and both have had something to say about the provisional nature of our understanding of God.
Küng argues that the church must be provisional, unassuming, ministering, conscious of guilt, and obedient in order to be true to Jesus' proclaimation of the reign of God as a "decisively future, end-time final event."
Provisional: "Is not that church alone able to maintain her truthfulness which always remembers that she will find her goal, not in herself, but in God's kingdom? Because she thus knows that too much is not required of her, that she does not need to provide anything at all final, to offer any lasting home, that she must not be surprised if - in her provisional nature - she is shaken with doubts, blocked by hinderances and oppressed by cares?"
Unassuming: "Since the church then knows that, with all her efforts, what ultimately counts is not her theories and practices, that it is not her catalogue of achievement and her brilliant statistics which guarantee the coming of the kingdom of God and hence that no want of an echo may prevent her from continuing to call, no failure dishearten her."
Ministering: "Does a church which in this end-time overlooks the fact that she exists for selfless service to men, to enemies, to the world, not ose her truthfulness and thus also her dignity, her validity, her reason for existing, because she abandons the true imitation of Christ? Consequently does not the church alone which remains aware of the fact that it is not she, but God's reign, which will come 'in power and great glory', does not this church alone find her true greatness and thus her truthful existence only in being small."
Conscious of guilt: "... can she - even with all the proofs of grace reaching her and precisely because of these proofs - in fact ever give herself airs as a self-righteous caste or class of the pure and holy. She can in fact never imagine evil, unholiness, impurity as existing only outside herself. There is in fact nothing within her that is perfect, not in peril, not fragile, not dubious, that does not need to be constantly correctd and excelled."
Obedient: "Can the church ever be allowed to avoid this radical obedience to God's will? ... As if she could declare as eternal laws what are always time-conditioned arrangements and which can then be adapted to the ever-recurring present only with the aid of artificial and twisted interpretation. As if in matters of decisive importance she could 'swallow a camel' and on the other hand with petty casuistry 'strain at a gnat'. As if she could thus lay on men's shoulders the burden of innumerable laws and regulations which they are not able to bear. As if instead of a heartfelt obedience out of love for God she could demand a blind obedience out of fear: the obedience of someone who does not act in this way because he understands and approves the requirement, but only because it is commanded, and would act otherwise if it were not commanded. As if there could be a question here of external legality instead of internal conviction, of the 'traditions of the elders' instead of the 'signs of the times', of lip-service instead of sincerity of heart, of 'commandments of men' instead of the absolute, uncurtailed will of God."
Richard Griffiths reminds of the 'reflections' or fleeting insights into God's being of which St Paul speaks in the famous passage from his First Epistle to the Corinthians:
"Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles, but then we shall be seeing face to face. Now, I can only know imperfectly; but then I shall know just as fully as I am myself known. (1 Corinthians 13. 12)
"In this world of ours, the mysterious nature of God can only be half perceived. Only later, at the end of time, will we be able to see face to face."
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Michael McDermott - Tread Lightly.
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