We do our theological study with hope—not optimism that we’re smart or that’s an easy subject, not pessimism that because God is different we must despair and fall into some sort of nihilistic darkness, but genuine hope that the God who we need to know and can’t know on our own is the same God who makes Himself known through Christ and by His Spirit and through the instrumentality of His Word as spoken and recorded by the prophets and apostles.