"Man's original sin was a lust after self-sufficient knowledge, a craving to shake off all EXTERNAL (emphasis mine) authority and work things out for himself (cf. Gen 3:5-6); and God deliberately presents saving truth to sinnners in such a way that their acceptance of it involves an act of intellectual repentance, whereby they humble themselves and submit once more to be taught by Him. Thus they renounce their calamitous search after a self-made wisdom (cf. Rom 1:22; 1 Cor. 1:19-25) in order to regain the kind of knowledge for which they were made, that which comes from taking their Creator's word. So as to make this renunciation clear-cut, God has ensured that no single article of faith should be demonstrable as, say a geometrical theorem is, nor free from unsolved mystery. Man must be content to know by faith, and to know, in this world at any rate, in part."


----J.I. Packer, from an essay entitled "Revelation and Inspiration" (c. 1954)