Shew me thy ways, O LORD,
teach me
thy paths. Psalm 25:4 by
Jack
Kettler
In this study, we will look at
how
to learn God’s ways! This involves
understanding or knowledge. What does the
knowledge of God produce in our lives?
As in previous studies, we will
look
at definitions, scriptures, commentary
evidence for glorifying God in how we
live.
Definition:
Question: What does the Bible
say
about knowledge?
Answer: The word knowledge in
the
Bible denotes an understanding, a
recognition, or an acknowledgment. To “know”
something is to perceive it or to be aware
of it. Many times in Scripture,
knowledge carries the idea of a deeper
appreciation of something or a
relationship with someone. The Bible is
clear that the knowledge of God is the
most valuable knowledge a human being can
possess. *
Scriptural
passage that instructs us concerning
knowledge:
“Shew me thy ways, O LORD,
teach me
thy paths.” (Psalm 25:4)
KJV
Lexicon
Shew
yada` (yaw-dah')
to know (properly, to ascertain
by
seeing); used in a great variety of senses,
figuratively, literally,
euphemistically and inferentially me thy
ways
derek (deh'-rek)
a road (as trodden);
figuratively, a
course of life or mode of action, often
adverb O LORD
Yhovah (yeh-ho-vaw')
(the) self-Existent or Eternal;
Jehovah, Jewish national name of God --
Jehovah, the Lord. Teach
lamad (law-mad')
to goad, i.e. (by implication)
to
teach (the rod being an Oriental
incentive):(un-) accustomed, diligently,
expert, instruct, learn, skillful,
teach(-er, -ing).me thy paths
'orach (o'-rakh)
a well-trodden road; also a
caravan
-- manner, path, race, rank, traveler,
troop, (by-, high-)way.
Gill's Exposition of the
Entire
Bible on Psalms
25:4 is clear and concise:
Show me thy ways, O Lord,
Either
those which the Lord himself took and walked
in; as those of creation and
providence, in which he has displayed his
power, wisdom, and goodness; and
which are desirable to be known by his
people, and require divine instruction
and direction; and particularly his ways of
grace, mercy, and truth, and the
methods he has taken for the salvation of
his people, both in eternity and in
time; or those ways which he orders and
directs his people to walk in; namely,
the paths of duty, the ways of his worship
and ordinances; a greater knowledge
of which good men desire to have, as well as
more grace to enable them to walk
more closely and constantly in them; teach
me thy paths; a petition the same
with the other, in different words. (1)
Comments:
The Psalmist asks the Lord to
show
him and teach him His ways and paths. This
petition involves attaining the
knowledge of God. Obtaining God’s knowledge
leads us to meditate upon His Word,
fear God’s name, which then leads to
adoration of God’s person and His works.
The
Psalmist makes this clear in the next
three passages:
“Teach me thy way, O
LORD; I
will walk in thy truth: unite my heart
to fear thy name.” (Psalm 86:11)
“I will meditate in thy
precepts,
and have respect unto thy ways.”
(Psalm 119:15)
“Give me understanding,
and I
shall keep thy law; yea, I shall
observe it with my whole heart.” (Psalm
119:34)
As seen in the above passages,
the
Bible speaks of knowledge and the
understanding of God’s Word. This acquired
knowledge
produces action or a response in the lives
of believers, i.e., “walk in thy
truth,” “respect thy ways,” and “I shall
keep thy law.”
The
next passage makes clear; believers are
too always to grow in both grace and
knowledge:
“But grow in grace, and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. To him be glory both now and
forever.
Amen.” (2 Peter 3:18)
“To him be glory both now and
forever. Amen” is a doxology or a scriptural
formula of praise to God. This praise
to God is the fruit of the knowledge of God.
How can anyone read the above
Psalms
and not believe that God is speaking to us
in the Scriptures in response to our
petitions, imparting knowledge to us with
real words that are understandable
and bear fruit in the lives of believers?
With this said, it could be a
conclusion to this study. Instead, we can
use what we have seen thus far as a
springboard to dig deeper into the study of
knowledge.
The study of the topic
knowledge is
more in-depth than might be expected. In the
philosophical world, philosophers
attempt to understand the mechanism of how
acquiring knowledge happens in a
human mind. This would be through the study
of epistemology. In this type of
study, you would learn about empiricism,
rationalism, and scripturalism.
In theological liberalism or
Neo-orthodoxy, the pursuit of knowledge does
not involve accepting the Scriptures
literally or seeking the historical truth.
When someone speaks of encountering
God, this may be a tip-off that a
Neo-orthodox liberal has been met. For the
Neo-orthodox,
the word of God is experienced or
encountered and is not connected to the
actual
historical events mentioned in the texts of
Scripture. Said another way, in
Neo-orthodoxy, the Bible is not understood
to be an objective text given by God
in history about real, historical events.
Instead, Neo-orthodoxy uses the
scriptures in a non-literal sense as a
jumping off point to encounter the
wholly other God. With its non-literal view
of Scripture, Neo-orthodoxy is very
mysterious, endlessly subjective, and
dangerously unbiblical.
What
is a biblical doctrine of knowledge?
In this study, we will look at
two
theologians whose articles, deal with the
range of knowledge and in particular,
knowledge of God that we learn about in
Scripture. The first essay will
contrast biblical, historical knowledge with
the Neo-orthodox theory of
knowledge. Also, this article will also deal
with epistemology. As will be
seen, the truth of Scripture will shine
brighter when contrasted with an error.
Presumably, knowledge, if it be
defined at all, means the possession of
truth by a mind. The problems that an
analysis of knowledge entails are enormous.
1. Biblical usage.
The Bible frequently commends
knowledge and wisdom: “The Lord is a God of
knowledge” (1 Sam 2:3). “Have they
no knowledge, all the evil doers who… do not
call upon the Lord?” (Ps 14:4).
“Teach me good judgment and knowledge.” (Ps
119:66). “Take my instruction
instead of silver, and knowledge rather than
choice gold.” (Prov. 8:10). “By
his knowledge shall the righteous one, my
servant, make you free: (John 8:32).
“Now I know in part; then I shall understand
fully, even as I have been fully
understood.” (1 Cor. 13:12). Asking that you
may be filled with the knowledge
of his will in all spiritual wisdom and
understanding” (Col 1:9). “We know that
the Son of God has come and has given us
understanding, to know him who is
true” (1 John 5:20). One may note relative
to this last verse that the
so-called epistle of love uses the word
“know” thirty times in its five chapters,
not counting words like “understand”,
“teach”, “see”, “hear”, “believe”, and
“truth”, all of which have to do with
knowledge.
In view of the misapprehensions
of
some immature Christians, what the Bible
does not say also should be pointed
out. Nowhere does the Scripture modify the
high value it places on knowledge by
deprecating “mere” human reason. Reason and
knowledge are integral parts of the
image of God in which man was created. In
the OT the term “heart” designates
the mind, intellect, or reason in about
three-fourths of its 750 occurrences.
Examples are: “The Lord said in his heart….”
(Gen 8:21) (obviously he did not
say in his emotions); “I will raise up for
myself a faithful priest, who shall
do according to what is in my heart and
mind” (1 Sam 2:35); “Make the heart of
this people fat….lest they ….understand with
their hearts” (Isa 6:10); “He has
shut …their minds [KJV hearts] so that they
cannot understand. No one
considers” [KJV “none calleth to mind”] (Isa
44:18, 19). In both cases, the
same Hebrew word is used.
Granted that the mind or heart
of
man can be and is sinful, as some of these
verses plainly indicate, the
antithesis between the heart and the head,
along with the suggestion that the
intellect is evil but the emotions are free
from sin, is nevertheless a
distortion of the Scriptural view of man.
Although the Heb. and the Gr.
verbs
for knowing usually bear the most ordinary
meaning, exemplified when one says
that he knows that David was king of Israel
and that Paul was an apostle, they
can also be used in other senses, some of
which are sources of confusion in
theology and philosophy.
The sense in which the words
are
used to designate sexual intercourse, as in
Genesis 4:1, “Now Adam knew his
wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain,”
is a sense that causes no
confusion. We simply note the usage and pass
on.
Confusion, however, may arise
from
another meaning which also has no place in
epistemology, for in addition to
knowing that David was a king, the verb also
means to choose, to select, and
therefore to approve. When Psalm 1:6 says
that “the Lord knows the way of the
righteous, but the way of the wicked will
perish,” it is not reflecting on
divine omniscience. In the ordinary sense
God knows the way of the wicked as He
knows everything else. Here the word is used
in the sense of approval.
Similarly, when Amos 3:2 says “You only have
I known of all the families of the
earth,” the prophet is not denying that God
knew the Egyptians and Canaanites.
This verse is no denial of omniscience. Here
the verb means to choose or elect.
This usage, so clear in the OT,
causes some theological confusion when NT
material is discussed. Those who
reject the doctrines of predestination or
unconditional election try to base
salvation on foreseen faith and election of
foreknowledge. Such a view is
inconsistent with the meaning of the words.
In 1 Peter 1:2, where the RSV gives
the correct sense, “chosen and destined by
God,” the KJV has the more literal
tr. “elect according to the foreknowledge of
God.” In 1 Peter 1:20 the KJV vs.
the same word “foreordained.” Similarly
Romans 8:29 does not speak of the mere
knowing ahead of time, as Eng. usage would
lead one to expect, as if God looked
ahead into an independent and undetermined
future and discovered (If anything
undetermined could be discovered) what was
going to happen; rather,
foreknowledge means foreordination.
In addition to the above source
of
theological confusion, there is an alleged
usage that causes philosophical
confusion. Or, perhaps, it may be said that
a certain philosophical confusion
tries to construe knowledge in a still
different sense. Some devout and fairly
orthodox theologians, and in general the
neo-orthodox thinkers insist that
there is a radical difference between
knowing a proposition and knowing a
person, or between knowledge “about” and
knowledge “by acquaintance.”
According to the neo-orthodox
position God does not reveal truths that can
be intellectually apprehended, but
He reveals Himself in a direct encounter or
confrontation. Now, insofar as
support for this view is sought in the
different compounds of γινώσκω
or in the other verbs οιδα,
ειδεναι and επισταμαι, the attempt is a
failure. Kittel’s Wörterbuch under the entry γινώσκω
states that this knowledge “is achieved in
all the acts in which a man can
attain knowledge, seeing and hearing, in
investigating and reflecting….also
personal acquaintance….Whatever can be the
object of enquiry can be the object
of γινώσκω.”
Kittel continues by
noting that Gnostic γνωσις
is no
different except as to the object. And in
the LXX γινώσκω and ειδεναι
both
tr. the one Heb. verb ידע
Kittel is
replete with all the lexicographical
details, none of which are of any help in
epistemology.
2. Faith and knowledge.
Noting the usage of the word
knowledge in its ordinary meaning offers
little aid in solving problems of
theology and philosophy. One such problem is
the distinction between knowledge
and faith. “Knowledge puffs up, but love
builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1), does not at
first sight agree with the praises of
knowledge quoted earlier; yet the
following verses indicate that the knowledge
referred to is either mistaken
opinion or a true proposition so misapplied
and conjoined with error that the
combination is false. Some commentators
explain v.1 as ironical.
A similar explanation is
required to
understand the Christian opposition to
Gnosticism. This religion in the early
centuries, using Christian terminology, made
salvation depend on knowledge,
and, by implication, not on faith. The great
objection to Gnosticism, however,
is not a repugnance to knowledge as such.
The real objection was twofold.
First, the Gnostic tenets amounted to a
texture of superstitious mythology.
Second, even if the Gnostics had propounded
a true science of astronomy, such
knowledge could not save. Salvation depends
on faith in Christ.
What then is the relation
between
faith and knowledge? Protestants have
traditionally analyzed faith into
knowledge, assent, and trust. This analysis
is not as simple as it seems.
Knowledge in this context apparently refers
only to understanding (not
believing) the meaning of a proposition. Of
course one can understand the
meaning of false propositions, such as,
David was king of Tyre; but undoubtedly
true propositions are intended because
assent to or belief in a false
proposition would be error, not knowledge.
Note that this last instance of
the
word knowledge does not bear the same
meaning it bears in the analysis. In the
analysis,
knowledge occurs as distinct from assent, as
a separate element in faith; but
if knowledge is defined as the minds
possession of truth, there can be no
knowledge apart from assent. This is one
difficulty. Furthermore, worse, the
element of trust, which Protestants
emphasize, defies all explanation and
remains in utter confusion. Illustrations,
such as actually depositing money in
a bank rather than merely believing that the
bank is sound, depend on a
physical action, in addition to the mental
act of believing. Such additional
external action is inappropriate to
represent the thoroughly inner mental act
of faith. Knowledge is an integral part of
faith, and not its antithesis.
3. Epistemology.
(a) Philosophical. The main
problem
of knowledge, which is the crucial question
in all the history of philosophy,
concerns knowledge in its most ordinary
sense. We say we know that two and two
are four, that the earth revolves around the
sun, or at least that a bright
disk appears in the sky, and perhaps that
God exists and stealing is immoral.
Epistemology is a theory of how one can know
anything. This question is not
explicitly discussed in the Bible; but
answers to it, however obtained, have a
profound influence on theological
formulations.
Since the matter is extremely
technical and difficult, some simplification
is necessary.
Systems of philosophy generally
can
be divided into two groups: empirical
philosophies are exemplified by
Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, and the
contemporary schools of Pragmatism and
logical Positivism-the second group
comprises the rationalistic or idealistic
philosophies, exemplified by Plato,
Augustine, Anselm, Spinoza, Kant, and
Hegel. The first group exhibits serious
divergencies, for Aristotle and Logical
Positivism are rather far apart; but
differences within the second group are
perhaps even greater.
Empiricism is the view that all
knowledge is based on experience alone.
Experience has not always been
restricted to the five senses, though this
is a common form of the principle;
but the Epicureans stressed the experience
of pain, the Sophists acknowledged
the experience of dreams and hallucinations
(a fact Descartes and other
rationalists use in opposition), others
admit aesthetic experience-coining the
word aesthetics from the Gr. word for
sensation, and, finally Schleiermacher,
the founder of modernism, and contemporary
liberalism develop religion and
theology out of religious experience.
Sensation, however, remains basic in all
forms of empiricism.
Rationalism (idealism is not a
good
name, for Berkeleyan idealism is completely
empirical) holds that all or at
least some knowledge is a priori, innate,
rational, non-sensuous.
Plato taught that the soul
before
birth is in contact with the ideal objects
of knowledge, and that here on earth
we remember what we previously knew. Spinoza
taught that without the aid of
sensation, doubtful aid because it is the
source of error, all knowledge can be
deduced from definitions by logic alone.
Even the existence of God, as Anselm
taught earlier, can be demonstrated from the
definition that God is the
all-perfect Being: if He did not exist, He
would not be all-perfect. Kant said
that the mind at birth is furnished with the
a priori (independent of
experience) intuitions of space and time,
and a set of twelve a priori
categories. Neither of these by themselves,
and much less sensations by
themselves, are knowledge, but when sensory
material is arranged and ordered by
these a priori forms, the combination is
knowledge. Finally, the dialectic of
concepts of the last philosopher listed,
Hegel, is just too complicated to
characterize in any space.
Two lines of procedure are now
necessary: one should evaluate the merit of
each of these main divisions of
philosophy, and one should attempt to
determine which, if either, the Bible
favors.
The first is a task for the
professional philosopher. Some
considerations, however, may be mentioned,
which
must be taken into account.
All philosophy, all theology,
and
all common conversation must make use of
so-called abstract concepts. In
philosophy the terms substance, cause,
quality, relation find a necessary
place; in theology there is sin and
righteousness, atonement and justification,
and so on; in common speech too one talks
about causes and relations as well as
about truth and falsity, times and places,
cats and dogs.
Rationalism specifically
asserts the
reality of such concepts. These are the
objects of knowledge that constitute
Plato’s World of Ideas. Philo Judaeus and
Augustine make them the content of
the Divine Mind. Thus far, rationalism makes
philosophy, theology, and
conversation possible.
Although nominalists such as
Roscellinus and Occam assert that concepts
refer to no reality whatever, that
they are mere sounds in the air without
meaning, and thus make philosophy and
ordinary conversation both impossible, still
the major empiricists try to
explain the genesis of concepts. Aristotle
attempted to abstract them from
sensory experience. The concepts were
somehow in the visible objects and could
be detached, or abstracted by imagination
and intellect. The British
empiricists build up concepts by adding and
subtracting particular sensations.
Thus they claim to make knowledge possible.
The question, of course, is
whether
or not concepts can in fact be abstracted
from sensations. Plato denied it.
Further, even the abstraction of such
“empirical” concepts as cat and dog
depends on a theory of visual imagery that
introspective psychology cannot
sustain. It is all the more difficult to see
how normative concepts such as
justice, can be derived from purely factual
material.
Kant forcefully extended this
argument in opposition to Hume. Knowledge,
Kant insisted, contains necessary
and universal judgments, such as two and two
are, are always, and must be four,
and, all pendulums always must swing in a
certain way. Note definitely that
when the law of the pendulum was formulated,
the scientists thought that all pendulums
in the past have swung and all future
pendulums will swing just as described.
But experience does not extend to all past
pendulums, and with even greater
clarity it does not extend to any future
pendulums. Experience gives neither
universality nor necessity.
Similarly, normative moral
principles can never be derived from
experience. We see acts of honesty and
instances of theft. The two are equally in
experience. Experiences can never
determine that theft is wrong or that
honesty is right.
Perhaps the simplest example of
an a
priori category is that of unity. The
concept of the number one is essential,
not only to mathematics, but also to all
learning; for learning could never
proceed unless we could distinguish one
thing from another. Berkeley, the
British empiricist, attempted to base the
idea of unity in sensation. The unit,
he said, is just any one thing you choose.
You can count chairs or grains of
sand. Thus we find our unit in experience.
Kant demolished Berkeley’s argument.
First, the empiricist misstated the problem,
which is not the selection of a
unit from among other unities; the problem
is the origin of the idea of unity.
Second, the idea of one must be present
before we can identify a chair or a
grain of sand as one. the idea is not
derived from the experienced object. And,
finally, no experienced object is strictly a
unity, since everything in space
has parts. Therefore, the concept of one
must precede experience. These sample
arguments must suffice to show the
philosophic advantages of rationalism, or a
priorism, over empiricism.
(b) Biblical. Does Scripture
take
sides in the dispute between empiricism and
rationalism? Obviously the Bible
has no such technical arguments as those
found in Kant. Nevertheless the
prophets and apostles tell us something
about the nature of man.
In the first place God created
man
in His own image. The animals were not so
created. The difference is that man
is rational, and animals are not. In
Proverbs 7:22, 23 and Isaiah 56:10 the
natural ignorance of animals is used as a
similitude to castigate the sinful
ignorance of men.
That knowledge is part of the
image
of God, and therefore that at least some
knowledge is non-empirical, is broadly
hinted in Colossians 3:10, where the effect
of regeneration is the renewal of
the knowledge original in the divine image.
Further, Romans 1:32 and 2:14
show
that even sin does not eradicate certain
innate moral knowledge. And with
respect to sin, all the historical churches
acknowledge that a depravity of
nature is inherited from Adam. This is
inconsistent with the view that the mind
at birth is a blank sheet of paper (Locke),
or morally neutral (Aristotle), and
requires the admission of some sort of a
priori. If therefore the more complex
matters of morality are innate, how can one
deny that simpler principles
antecede experience? Scripture therefore
seems to be on the side of a priorism.
4. Neo-orthodoxy.
The discussion so far has
maintained
the position that knowledge is commendable
and is essential to faith. Therefore
religion, or at any rate Christianity, must
hold theology in high esteem. At
various times, however, protests are made
against “cold” intellectualism or the
pride of “mere” human reason. Mystics have
commended trances; others make
religion essentially emotional; and most
recently neo-orthodoxy has enthroned
paradox and contradiction.
These modern theologians have
arrived at their position more by emotional
reaction than by logic. They had
been educated under a combination of
Scheiermacher and Hegel. This liberalism
looked on sin as a fast disappearing remnant
of man’s animal ancestors. The
kingdom of God was equated with socialism
and optimism flourished. Then World
War 1 revealed man’s depravity to Europeans,
and World War II to Americans.
Machine guns and concentration camps
liquidated the utopian doctrine of man’s
essential goodness and society’s progress.
Furthermore, Hegel’s
rationalistic
solution of all philosophic problems was too
neat, and therefore unreal. The
great dialectic came to appear as hollow
word-play. Yet these theologians were
equally unable to solve the problems. They
braved Socrates’ sad scorn of
misologists and declared that the problems
of life are rationally insoluble.
Life is a deeper than logic. The universe
and God Himself are
self-contradictory. We must make our
decisions in the freedom of blind faith.
Besides, religion is not an intellectual
matter anyhow: it is an experiential
encounter with God.
Emil Brunner states this
position
clearly. Rejecting the idea that revelation
is a communication of truth,
Brunner asserts that “All words have only an
instrumental value. Neither the
spoken words nor their conceptual content
are the Word itself, but only its
frame” (The Divine-Human Encounter, p. 110).
He then adds that “God can, when
he wills, speak his Word to a man even
through false doctrine” (ibid. p. 117).
Karl Barth earlier, in his
Romans,
had made a great deal of contradictions and
insoluble paradoxes. Though later
he lost some of his exuberance, he still
rejected logical consistency. The
latest edition of Church Dogmatics, in a
section refuting a defense of logical
consistency, argues that “The very minimum
postulate of freedom from
contradiction is acceptable by theology only
upon the very limited
interpretation, by the scientific theorist
upon the scarcely tolerable one,
that theology will not assert an
irremovability in principle of the
‘contradictions’ which it is bound to make
good” (Church Dogmatics, I, i, p.
8). This sentence is obscure: it neither
asserts nor denies that contradictions
are removable; it merely says that theology
should not assert their
irremovability. What follows in the passage
seems to let the contradictions
stand, for he says, “But the propositions in
which it asserts their removal
will be propositions about the free action
of God, and so not propositions that
‘remove’ the contradiction from the world.”
Continuing to talk of coherence and
systematization, Barth insists that “The
theologian ….should know what he is
doing when he transgresses them, and that as
a theologian he cannot escape the
necessity of transgressing them.” Or, in
very plain words, a theologian must be
incoherent.
Nevertheless the neo-orthodox
school
writes theology, and Barth and Brunner have
been esp. voluminous. But if they
do not recognize the necessity of being
consistent, of what value can their
theology be? In principle, every one of
their sentences is both true and false.
If we discard logic, then, when we believe
that David was king of Israel,
nothing prevents us from believing at the
same time that David was not king of
Israel. This would be simply the necessary
incoherence of theology.
In particular, the neo-orthodox
theologians, and some modernists as well,
believe that God reveals Himself
through contradictory systems in the Bible.
Brunner concocts a remarkable
conclusion that we could believe in the
resurrection of Christ, even if there
were no reports, for the witness to the
resurrection is not that of
eyewitnesses but of faith-witnesses. He
further makes Christ sinless but
fallible. Then, again, when Paul speaks of a
time before Esau’s birth, he means
the Edomites in the days of Malachi. And,
finally, “God and the medium of
conceptuality exclude each other” (cf. Paul
King Jewett, Emil Brunner’s Concept
of Revelation, p. 184 and passim).
If, now, all our theological
talk is
self-contradictory, if faith must curb
logic, and if God and thought are
mutually exclusive, then no knowledge of God
is possible, and religion must be
emotional and experiential. But it will not
be Christianity.
5. Knowledge of God.
In opposition to this
neo-orthodoxy
and to all other forms of thought that deny
God can be known, we are here
conclude with what was strongly hinted at
the beginning of this article in its
commendation of knowledge in general. We
shall simply add a few references to
knowledge of God in particular.
In the first place, all
Scripture is
inspired of God and is profitable for
doctrine The following vv. are some of
those which are most explicitly profitable
for the doctrine of God. “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the
earth” introduces the concept of
creation and of God as creator. That this
creation was decreed from all
eternity and is always controlled by
providence is taught in Ephesians 1;11,
“The purpose of him who accomplishes all
things according to the counsel of his
will, ” and in Daniel 4:35, “he does
according to his will in the host of
heaven and among the inhabitants of the
earth, and none can stay his hand,” and
in many other passages. The Bible also tells
us that God exists in three
persons; that God is eternal, omniscient,
and immutable.
That God can be known, that man
can
entertain truth, that theology is possible,
has been an unbroken tradition
among all Christians. To deprecate knowledge
in favor of some emotional
upheaval, to repudiate logic and enthrone
contradiction and incoherence, to reduce
the Biblical material to the status of a
symbolism that points uncertainly to
an unknowable something or other, is to
abandon Christianity and commit
intellectual suicide.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. S. Charnock,
Discourses on the Existence and Attributes
of God (1680); Kant, Critique of
Pure Reason (1780); B.B. Warfield,
Augustine’s Doctrine of Knowledge, in
Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (1921),
and Calvin’s Doctrine of the
Knowledge of God, in Calvin and Calvinism
(1930, 1931); P.K. Jewett, Emil
Brunner’s Concept of Revelation 91954); G.H.
Clark Karl Barth’s Theological
Method (1963).
G.H. CLARK (2)
The Knowledge of God by Herman
Bavinck
God is the highest good of
man--that
is the testimony of the whole Scriptures.
The Bible begins with the account
that God created man after His own image and
likeness, in order that he should
know God his Creator aright, should love Him
with all his heart, and should
live with Him in eternal blessedness. And
the Bible ends with the description
of the new Jerusalem, whose inhabitants
shall see God face to face and shall
have His name upon their foreheads.
Between these two moments lies
the
revelation of God in all its length and
breadth. As its content this revelation
has the one, great, comprehensive promise of
the covenant of grace: I will be a
God unto thee, and ye shall be my people.
And as its mid-point and its
high-point this revelation has its Immanuel,
God-with-us. For the promise and
its fulfillment go hand in hand. The word of
God is the beginning, the
principle, the seed, and it is in the act
that the seed comes into its full
realization. Just as at the beginning God
called things into being by His word,
so by His word He will in the course of the
ages bring into being the new
heaven and the new earth, in which the
tabernacle of God shall be among men.
That is why Christ, in whom the
Word
became flesh, is said to be full of grace
and truth (John 1:14).
He is the Word which in the
beginning was with God and Himself was God,
and as such He was the life and the
light of men. Because the Father shares His
life with Christ and gives
expression to His thought in Christ,
therefore the full being of God is
revealed in Him. He not only declares the
Father to us and discloses His name
to us, but in Himself He shows us and gives
us the Father. Christ is God
expressed and God given. He is God revealing
Himself and God sharing Himself,
and therefore He is full of truth and also
full of grace. The word of the
promise, I will be a God unto thee, included
within itself from the very moment
in which it was uttered, the fulfillment, I
am thy God. God gives Himself to
His people in order that His people should
give themselves to Him.
In the Scriptures we find God
constantly repeating His declaration: I am
thy God. From the mother-promise of
Genesis 3 :15 on, this rich testimony,
comprehending all blessedness and all
salvation whatsoever, is repeated again and
again, be it in the lives of the
patriarchs, in the history of the people of
Israel, or in that of the church of
the New Testament. And in response the
church throughout the ages comes with
the endless varieties of its language of
faith, speaking in gratitude and praise:
Thou art our God, and we are Thy people, and
the sheep of Thy pasture.
This declaration of faith on
the
part of the church is not a scientific
doctrine, nor a form of unity that is
being repeated, but is rather a confession
of a deeply felt reality, and of a
conviction of reality that has out of
experience in life. The prophets and
apostles, and the saints generally who
appear before us in the Old and New
Testament and later in the church of Christ,
did not sit and philosophize about
God in abstracted concepts, but rather
confessed what God meant to them and
what they owed to Him in all the
circumstances of life. God was for them not
at
all a cold concept, which they then
proceeded rationally to analyze, but He was
a living, personal force, a reality
infinitely more real than the world around
them. Indeed, He was to them the one,
eternal, worshipful Being. They reckoned
with Him in their lives, they lived in His
tent, walked as if always before His
face, served Him in His courts, and
worshiped Him in His sanctuary.
The genuineness and depth of
their
experience comes to expression in the
language they used to express what God
meant to them. They did not have to strain
for words, for their lips overflowed
with what welled up out of their hearts, and
the world of man and nature
supplied them with figures of speech. God
was to them a King, a Lord, a Valiant
One, a Leader, a Shepherd, a Savior, a
Redeemer, a Helper, a Physician, a Man,
and a Father. All their bliss and
well-being, their truth and righteousness,
their life and mercy, their strength and
power, their peace and rest they found
in Him. He was a sun and shield to them, a
buckler, a light and a fire, a
fountain and a well-head, a rock and
shelter, a high refuge and a tower, a
reward and a shadow, a city and a temple.
All that the world has to offer in
discrete and sub-divided goods was to them
an image and likeness of the
unfathomable fullness of the salvation
available in God for His people. Hence
it is that David in Psalm 16:2 (according to
a telling translation) addresses
Jehovah as follows: Thou art my Lord; I have
no higher good than Thou. Thus
also Asaph sang in Psalm 73: Whom have I in
heaven hut Thee? And there is none
upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My
flesh and my heart may fail, but God
is the strength of my heart, and my portion
forever. For the saint, heaven in
all its blessedness and glory would be void
and stale without God; and when he
lives in communion with God he cares for
nothing on earth, for the love of God
far transcends all other goods.
Such is the experience of the
children of God. It is an experience which
they have felt because God presented
Himself to them for their enjoyment in the
Son of His love. In this sense
Christ said that eternal life, that is, the
totality of salvation, consists for
man in the knowledge of the one, true God
and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
It was an auspicious moment in
which
Christ spoke those words. He stood at the
point of crossing the brook Kidron in
order to enter the garden of Gethsemane and
to suffer the last struggle of His
soul there. Before He proceeds to that
point, however, He prepares Himself as
our High Priest for His passion and death,
and He prays the Father that the
Father may glorify Him in His suffering and
after it, so that the Son in turn
may glorify the Father in giving out all
those blessings which He is now about
to achieve by His obedience unto death. And
when the Son prays in this way, He
knows of nothing to desire except that which
is the Father's own will and good
pleasure. The Father has given Him power
over all flesh in order that the Son
should give eternal life to as many as the
Father has given Him. Such eternal
life consists of nothing other than the
knowledge of the one, true God and of
Jesus Christ who was sent to reveal Him
(John 17:1-3). (3)
In
closing:
It is well worth repeating
Gordon
Clark’s admonition in his concluding
paragraph in his above article on
knowledge.
“That God can be known, that
man can
entertain truth, that theology is possible,
has been an unbroken tradition
among all Christians. To deprecate knowledge
in favor of some emotional
upheaval, to repudiate logic and enthrone
contradiction and incoherence, to
reduce the Biblical material to the status
of a symbolism that points
uncertainly to an unknowable something or
other, is to abandon Christianity and
commit intellectual suicide.”
Therefore,
the Christian can affirm:
“Blessed art thou, O LORD:
teach me
thy statutes.” (Psalm 119:12)
“Study to shew thyself approved
unto
God, a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of
truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)
Notes:
1.John
Gill, Exposition
of the Old and New
Testaments, Psalms, 9 Volumes, Romans,
(Grace Works, Multi-Media Labs),
2011, p. 284.
2.Merrill
C. Tenney, editor, Zondervan
Pictorial
Encyclopedia of the Bible, 5 Vol.
(Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan
Publishing House, 1975), pp. 834-840.
“To God, only wise, be glory
through
Jesus Christ forever. Amen.” (Romans 16:27)
and “heirs according to the
promise.” (Galatians 3:28, 29)
Mr. Kettler has previously
published
articles in the Chalcedon Report and
Contra Mundum. He and his
wife Marea attend the Westminster, CO, RPCNA
Church. Mr. Kettler is the author
of the book defending the Reformed Faith
against attacks, titled: The
Religion That Started in a Hat.
Available at:
www.TheReligionThatStartedInAHat.com