That man is a worshipping animal is by no way a pious conclusion, but an evident fact which can be observed throughout history and prehistory. This is one fact about man that has distinguished him from all other living creatures from his first appearance on earth. Indeed, our own prehistoric temples in the prehistory of the Mediterranean region, which rank as the earliest free-standing stone monuments in the world, are a case in point.
Man is indeed a religious animal. Throughout the centuries, atheist, agnostic and Marxist philosophers, intellectuals and politicians have repeatedly poured scorn on religion, and invited men to grow up. But religion continued, and so it has done everywhere in the world ever since the dawn of history, notwithstanding past and modern religious persecutions, religious indifference and practical materialism.
No one can deny the fact that man is incurably religious. Hence the universal religious instinct of men through history and throughout the world. This is undoubtedly because there are so many facts, that taken together, not only make belief in God reasonable, but make it very hard indeed rationally to deny His existence.
It is obvious that analysis of physical laws and chemical constituents cannot explain human behaviour, reason, conscience, values, morals and worship in man; and design, order and purpose in the physical world. It is indeed much harder to reject the existence of a supreme being than to accept it.
But still, though man was from the beginning incurably religious, this supreme being still remained for him the unknown God. The problem was therefore how to discover His real inner nature. But how on earth could man ever succeed to penetrate with his finite mind the veil which hides the mind of the Infinite? How could man ever climb up to Him who is the source of both man and his environment, being the Lord over all human life?
Indeed we have to accept that no one could arrive at God, because God is too great for any of His creatures to pierce His incognito. Could the cup ever understand the potter, or the painting the painter who produced it? Man could never possibly find out God`s real inner nature, however hard he searches and studies.
For all man`s striving to know God by his own human efforts, God would still remain the unknown God. One can reasonably get so far as to admit and perceive His existence, but no further. Surely no one would ever dream to explain a problem in nuclear physics to a five-year-old child. Yet the gap between a five-year-old`s intelligence and the upper reaches of science are as nothing compared to the gap between the most brilliant human mind and the true nature of God. There is a limit to what the human mind, even at its best, can grasp and understand. Since God is an infinite Being, no created intellect, however gifted, can fathom His depths.
For man to come to know God`s true nature, it was imperative for him either to hear from God Himself or to have the chance to meet Him personally - or both. So no creature could ever possibly discover the Creator, unless the Creator Himself chose to disclose Himself to man. That is why all man-made religions are bound to disappoint. All man`s search for the divine through every kind of religion is bound to fail.
To discover the unknown God and His true nature, man does not need a religion, but a revelation. It was up to God Himself to reveal or communicate to us the truth about Himself. And that is precisely what Christianity claims to be. Not another man-made religion, but a revelation from God Himself.
Thus, unlike all other Holy Books of all the other man-made religions, the Bible does not bring us the story of men in search of God, but the story about the God who came in search of man and disclosed Himself to him.
The Bible in fact gives the account of the only faith which claims that the unknown God made Himself known to man. In fact, it recounts how God Himself, after having spoken over many centuries, His truth to us in many different ways through His prophets, beginning with Abraham, had at last spoken in the person of His own Incarnate Son, Jesus of Nazareth.
At long last men could perceive and know for sure God`s self-revelation in the living Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Through Jesus then God no longer continued to be the unknown God. That was indeed the first purpose of his coming to our world, to bring us the revelation of God without which we would still be walking in the dark as the people of prehistoric times. Jesus alone, as the Son of God whom God sent into the world in the likeness of human flesh, could say: "No man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten one, himself God, has made him known." (John I;8).
No other faith claims anything remotely like this. No other faith makes such lofty claims. That is why Christianity is quite distinct from all other ancient and modern religions. Christianity, strictly speaking, is thus not a religion at all, but a revelation. One that insists that God has intervened in history, and through Christ has revealed God`s truth about his nature by revealing to us the proprieties of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and their divine oneness.
That is the supreme `mystery` of the Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. This is the Christian faith that the One God is Father, Son and Spirit. Not three Gods, but One. And Father, Son and Spirit are not three aspects of God, but three persons in one God.
For man to know God means entering into a personal relationship with the Father who created us out of love and to whom we are infinitely lovable. The Son who made that love visible in his life and death. The Spirit, the love of Father and Son who confirms us in the power to live in faith and love. The Trinity is thus not an abstract mystery up in the clouds somewhere. God comes to dwell in us in Him we live and move and exist (Acts 17:28).
Of course such an intimate disclosure of the nature of a triune God is an utterly humanly incomprehensible union of three Persons in one God. A mystery so profound that the unaided human mind could never have arrived at this knowledge unless it was first revealed to us by God Himself. We believe it so because God says it is so. As to how it can just be so, we must wait God`s full unveiling of Himself in heaven.
Here we are dealing with a mystery of faith that no one, not even the greatest theologian, can hope in this life to really understand it. It is only a person, suffering from consummate pride of intellect would expect to fully understand the infinite, the inexhaustible depth of God`s nature.
But far from resenting our human limitations, we should be moved to gratitude that God has chosen to tell us much about Himself, about His own inner nature.