Tag Archives: knowledge of God

Is knowledge of God equally available to all, through the use of reason?

24 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by in Theology, Uncategorized

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In his Systematic Theology, Douglas Kelley makes an interesting observation concerning our knowledge of God. In his explain of how knowledge of God is made particular, within the context of the Church, Kelley draws the contrast with the Enlightenment belief that all knowledge is available universally, ahistorically through principles of reason:

The philosophy of the Enlightenment has had an aversion to ‘particularlity’, preferring instead supposedly universal ideas drawn by rootless, individual thinkers from concepts that the human spirit extracts from self, from nature and from history (in varying combinations)….That God should be known by a particular revelation in a particular community of faith was abhorrent to the, and in many respects their hostility to the particularlity of the revelation of God’s truth has constituted the deep, underlying fault-line dividing Western Culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.

Douglas Kelly, Systematic Theology: The God Who Is (Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications Ltd, 2008), 1:435.

The idea that knowledge of God (or indeed any related questions) should be knowable beginning from any particular position makes inherent sense to us post-Enlightenment souls. My-self and my reason are sufficient to know and to draw conclusions about God and the “meaning of life”.

By the way, this is not the profound, learned observation we may think it to be. I recall my brother as a child positing this argument, Why does anybody else think they know more about God than me? My opinion is as good anyone else.

This is the reason that another’s conclusions about God can be so unsetting to us: If I meet a man who holds to a different religion, it causes me to question my own. Since both of us are equally positioned to draw proper conclusions, then I must then question the rationality of my position. The only tenable conclusions will ultimately be either no-one knows or everyone knows. There is either no knowledge (and those who think they possess such knowledge are deluded), or everyone knows: in which case the knowledge of very low value.

But such solutions are untenable to most people. They fail on two grounds. Most importantly, they fail because they are unsatisfying. No one knows what life is bothers most people too much. Fortunately, a drug and entertainment culture are sufficient to keep most people distracted, amused to death.

Such solutions also fail because they offend our vanity. We desire to be better situated than others: to be smarter, more in the know, et cetera.

These two problems lead to various “solutions” such agnosticism as a badge of intellectual honesty and virtue or esoteric knowledge. We each have our taste and hence our solution.

But consider against Kelly’s observation: this knee-jerk belief, this Enlightenment doctrine is nothing than a bald assertion. How could one, by reason, possibly know that sufficient knowledge of God must be universally accessible to anyone who takes the time to think? Simple observation does not lead to such a conclusion. There are no universal conclusions which are reached by all. Thus, one posits reason to one’s conclusions: and a lack of reason must inform those who disagree. The agnostic must think the believer of what-ever religion lacking in reason; a quality which the agnostic (and those of his sort) alone possess. And thus, reason becomes a sort of revelation which only a certain sort of person can possess. We are back to particularlity.

Kelly asserts the Christian position that God can only be known on the terms and in the way determined by God:

However, if one wants to meet with the real God, it has to be on his terms. He will be met with in the community of faith which He established, and which He maintains personally by His Word and Spirit; a community which, in turn, bases its life and teaching upon the divinely revealed, particular word in a community that lives by the Spirit.

One can rejects this proposition (and many do). But it is not less intellectually honest to contend that God can only be known in a particular way than to argue that God can be sufficiently known by a-historical reason independent of place or person. The Enlightenment doctrine is an article of bad, blind faith which cannot reasonably assert general warrant for itself; beyond the number of persons who accept the proposition. Reason is really a kind of revelation; and the agnostic, atheistic position, or universalist position (those are the essential options), are particular communities which lay claim to the truth unknown to others.

We are all arguing from a particular community.

The Christian position is that the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to make the people of God, and thus God is only known in that space. (To be clear here, Kelly – and I – are Protestant Christians. And thus, I am not contending that God can only be known in the context of churches in commune with the Bishop of Rome, for instance. There is a potential ambiguity here on the question of “church”.)

This creates a coherent understanding of the knowledge of God, in that the Word of God acts to make us known before God. Kelly draws this point out further. If God could be found outside of the believing community, this would contradict the nature of God. “Otherwise, God could be found impersonally [the church requires personal relationship to disclose the personal God] and generally, rather than personally and particularly.”

It not only permits us to know God, it causes us to be known to God:

Hebrews 4:12–13 (ESV)

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

The Word of God makes God known to us; while it makes us known to God. It causes to be known.

Very often Christians use this passage in such a way that the knowing is really only subjective: the words of Scripture cause me to better understand my-self. The Word of God thus acts like a sort of flashlight to help me look around my own psyche.

But the text is claiming something different: I am not being exposed to myself; I am being exposed to God: “Even to come into a service where believers are worshipping the Triune God strips away pretense, causing one to be frightening unveiled before the Holy One.” 436.

This act of coming to know that I am exposed to God (because nothing is really hidden from God), is too much for many. “For such reasons, multitudes tragically prefer false gods who have been fabricated by other sinners, so as to keep themselves from being embarrassed by an honest exposure of who they really are, and potentially humbled and changed before the true God.” (436)

But to be humbled is to be freed; to be judged by this exposure is to be forgiven. For God is merciful and ready to dismiss all charges against us. He exposes like a surgeon cleaning a wound to end an infection. He kills that which kills us so that we be alive to God in Christ.

 

 

If you comprehend, it is not God ….

27 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Augustine, Epistemology, Theology, Uncategorized

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Involved here is a matter of profound religious importance, to which Augustine gave expression as follows: “We are speaking of God. Is it any wonder if you do not comprehend? For if you comprehend, it is not God you comprehend. Let it be a pious confession of ignorance rather than a rash profession of knowledge. To attain some slight knowledge of God is a great blessing; to comprehend him, however, is totally impossible.” [Quoting Augustine, Lectures on the Gospel of John, tract. 38, NPNF (1), VII, 217–21.]

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 48.

Study Guide, The Mortification of Sin, Chapter 12.b

19 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in John Owen, Mortification, Theology

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The previous post in this series may be found here

In the remainder of the chapter, Owen details the manner in which we do not know God. The study will pick up on page 111 of Kaipic/Taylor.

 

  1. Has any one ever seen God? What of Moses?

 

  1. The Puritans (as advised by William Perkins) would engage in the work of addressing objections to a doctrine (you will see this in Spurgeon’s sermons when he says, “Someone will say ….”). What is the objection which Owen addresses?

 

  1. While it is true that we have a fuller knowledge of God after the Incarnation, we still do not have a full understanding. What language does Paul use to describe our knowledge of God?

 

  1. Owen draws an analogy of how we understand God, and how a child understand his father. Explain and apply this analogy to our knowledge of God. (p. 113)

 

  1. What will say when we finally come to see God when we come into the presence of His glory?

 

  1. The next argument Owen uses to prove his point is an argument from the lesser to the greater: If we do not know what we will be (the lesser), how can we possibly know God (the greater)?

 

  1. Owen now seeks to detail and prove his point: We do not know God.

 

  • Note how God describes himself: “invisible, incomprehensible, and the like?—that is, he whom we do not, cannot, know as he is. And our farther progress consists more in knowing what he is not, than what he is.” (114). In-visible means not visible. In-comprehensible means not to be comprehended. These are negative describes, something is not, rather than an affirmative statement of God is.

 

  • Identify some verses which describe God as invisible or incomprehensible (or infinite, or other statement of what God is not).

 

  • Consider carefully these descriptions. We think in terms of what we can see. When it comes to things which we do not understand, we seek to see it. God is a being we cannot see. Take the next element, incomprehensible: Do you expect to comprehend God? Do you find that we human beings expect to be able to understand God, who God is, what God does? Do we — do you — ever attribute reasons to God (whom we cannot understand).

 

  • What is the effect of the light surrounding God? Can any creature approach unto God?

 

  1. If God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, then what is God? Can you imagine anything which is merely infinite? As soon as you conceive of something, you have made it finite? What of eternal, as soon you have any beginning or ending (or perhaps even now) you have something which is not eternal. Can you imagine something which cannot change? We cannot possibly understand the mere being of God.

 

  1. If we pretend to understand the incomprehensible God, what have we done?

 

  1. If our goal, if it is not to understand God’s being? (114).

 

  1. When it comes to the nature of God, the nature of the Trinity, is it a problem that we cannot explain such things? Are there things about physical universe which human beings do not understand? Can you explain the way in which the soul and the body interact? Can you explain how God moves upon the heart? Is it a surprise that we cannot explain God?

 

  1. If we cannot know God’s being, how can we know God?

 

  1. If we cannot know God by the “normal means” (our senses), how can we know God?

 

  1. Knowing something “by faith” seems like nonsense to post-Enlightenment Westerners: we have a prejudice to claiming that we only “know” things by senses. This is a problem in many ways. First, our senses can be wrong. Second, our beliefs about things are what permits us to know anything. We must believe certain things are true to know anything. Example: You must belief that there is a real world, that you are not dreaming, that there are other rational beings before you can know anything about them.

Moreover, we can only know certain things by faith, by belief. Imagine a young couple: each has formed a deep romantic love for the other, but that love has never been expressed. The love exists but it cannot be known until it is believed. What if the young man tells the lady, “I love you” — but she does not believe him. The love is real, but it is unknown. Only if she believes it to be real, is it real.

The truth about God is real and apparent: Creation, Conscience, Christ; yet, it is not known until it is believed.

Thus, faith in God is not a make-believe exercise.

  1. Since knowledge of God is relational it is regulated by the persons in relation; God is under no obligation to make himself known. What is required to lay hold of things not seen? Whom does God reward?

 

  1. While knowledge by faith is real, does it have any limitations?

 

  1. What are the affirmative statements in the NT which describe the manner in which we do know God?

 

  1. Do we know “enough” of God? In what way? For what purpose?

 

  1. What is the end of our knowledge of God?

 

  1. Explain how we comparatively know God better after the Incarnation?

 

  1. What is the difference in knowledge between a believer and an unbeliever?
  2. How can an unbeliever know “about” God? An unbeliever can know about God from Creation — even from the Scriptures. Unbelievers can study the Scripture and make conclusions based upon that data.

 

  1. Analogy: Is it possible for a historian to know a great deal about President Lincoln (without knowing Mr. Lincoln?)?

 

  1. What does God not intend by his self-revelation?

 

  1. What does God intend by revealing himself to us?

 

  1. A doctrine is never to known simply for its factual value: A doctrine is to known for its effect. What effect should the ultimate incomprehensibility of God have upon us?

Let us, then, revive the use and intendment of this consideration: Will not a due apprehension of this inconceivable greatness of God, and that infinite distance wherein we stand from him, fill the soul with a holy and awful fear of him, so as to keep it in a frame unsuited to the thriving or flourishing of any lust whatever? Let the soul be continually wonted to reverential thoughts of God’s greatness and omnipresence, and it will be much upon its watch as to any undue deportments. Consider him with whom you have to do,—even “our God is a consuming fire;” and in your greatest abashments at his presence and eye, know that your very nature is too narrow to bear apprehensions suitable to his essential glory. (118)

  1. How will such an effect result in deadening (mortification) of sin in our lives?

 

 

Of Communion With the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Digression 2a

17 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Biblical Counseling, Christology, God the Father, John Owen, Preaching, Study, Trinity, Wisdom

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The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/of-communion-with-the-father-son-and-holy-spirit-digression-1c-v-shame/

In 1 Corinthians 1:24, Paul writes that Christ is both the power and the wisdom of God. In the second digression, Owen unpacks the phrase “the wisdom of God”. First, he lays out the potential scope of meaning:

The sum of all true wisdom and knowledge may be reduced to these three heads: —
1. The knowledge of God, his nature and his properties.
2. The knowledge of ourselves in reference to the will of God concerning us.
3. Skill to walk in communion with God: —
I. What one may know of God

A. Knowledge of God in Creation: Creation itself, prior to Fall displayed attributes of God’s power and goodness; but without sin, there would have been no time for God to display longsuffering patience or endurance.

B. Knowledge of God in Christ: Yet, even if God had patience with humanity for aeons, there would still be aspects of God’s character which could not be known by in and through Christ. Of these Owen sets out two: (1) love & (2) pardoning mercy.

By “love” Owen intends a very specific application:

Love; I mean love unto sinners. Without this, man is of all creatures most miserable; and there is not the least glimpse of it that can possibly be discovered but in Christ. The Holy Ghost says, 1 John 4:8,16, “God is love;” that is, not only of a loving and tender nature, but one that will exercise himself in a dispensation of his love, eternal love, towards us, — one that has purposes of love for us from of old, and will fulfill them all towards us in due season. But how is this demonstrated? how may we attain an acquaintance with it? He tells us, verse 9, “In this was manifested the love of God, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” This is the only discovery that God has made of any such property in his nature, or of any thought of exercising it towards sinners, — in that he has sent Jesus Christ into the world, that we might live by him.

In addition to love, Owen marks the pardoning mercy of God in Christ: “Pardoning mercy, or grace. Without this, even his love would be fruitless.”

Pardoning mercy is God’s free, gracious acceptance of a sinner upon satisfaction made to his justice in the blood of Jesus; nor is any discovery of it, but as relating to the satisfaction of justice, consistent with the glory of God. It is a mercy of inconceivable condescension in forgiveness, tempered with exact justice and severity. Romans 3:25, God is said “to set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness in the remission of sins;” f58his righteousness is also manifested in the business of forgiveness of sins: and therefore it is everywhere said to be wholly in Christ, Ephesians 1:7. So that this gospel grace and pardoning mercy is alone purchased by him, and revealed in him.

C. Those things which are seen most clearly in Christ.

Owen notes another category of God’s properties which are known most clearly in Christ:

There are other properties of God which, though also otherwise discovered, yet are so clearly, eminently, and savingly only in Jesus Christ; as, —
[1.] His vindictive justice in punishing sin;
[2.] His patience, forbearance, and long-suffering towards sinners;
[3.] His wisdom, in managing things for his own glory;
[4.] His all-sufficiency, in himself and unto others. All these, though they may receive some lower and inferior manifestations out of Christ, yet they clearly shine only in him; so as that it may be our wisdom to be acquainted with them.

1. Vindicative justice. While evidence of God’s judgment exists outside of Christ, in the life and death of Christ we can see most clearly that judgment of sin could not be avoided. One think that God could simply forgive becasue he is merciful. But such an act of God would subvert his justice. In the passion of Christ we see the unavoidable demand of God’s justice. Owen refers to this as the “naturalness” of punishment due sin, “In him God has manifested the naturalness of this righteousness unto him, in that it was impossible that it should be diverted from sinners without the interposing of a propitiation.”

Moreover, in the death of Christ we see more plainly than elsewhere the depth of God’s judgment upon sin:

In the penalty inflicted on Christ for sin, this justice is far more gloriously manifested than otherwise. To see, indeed, a world, made (Genesis 3:17-19, 8:21; Romans 8:21, 22; 2 Peter 2:4-6, 3:6; Jude 1:6, 7) good and beautiful, wrapped up in wrath and curses, clothed with thorns and briers; to see the whole beautiful creation made subject to vanity, given up to the bondage of corruption; to hear it groan in pain under that burden; to consider legions of angels, most glorious and immortal creatures, cast down into hell, bound with chains of darkness, and reserved for a more dreadful judgement for one sin; to view the ocean of the blood of souls spilt to eternity on this account, — will give some insight into this thing. But what is all this to that view of it which may be had by a spiritual eye in the Lord Christ? All these things are worms, and of no value in comparison of him. To see him who is the (1 Corinthians 1:30) wisdom of God, and the power of God, always (Matthew 3:17) beloved of the Father; to see him, I say, fear, (Matthew 26:37, 38; Mark 14:33; Luke 22:43, 44; Hebrews 5:7; Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:33, 34; Isaiah 53:6) and tremble, and bow, and sweat, and pray, and die; to see him lifted up upon the cross, the earth trembling under him, as if unable to bear his weight; and the heavens darkened over him, as if shut against his cry; and himself hanging between both, as if refused by both; and all this because our sins did meet upon him.

2. His patience toward sinners. Certainly experiences teach that God does not immediately punish every and all sin. Yet, without a sight of God in Christ, how could we be certain of God patience? Christ demonstrates to us the basis of God’s dealing with the world:

In him the very nature of God is discovered to be love and kindness; and that he will exercise the same to sinners, he has promised, sworn, and solemnly engaged himself by covenant. And that we may not hesitate about the aim which he has herein, there is a stable bottom and foundation of acting suitably to those gracious properties of his nature held forth, — namely, the reconciliation and atonement that is made in the blood of Christ.

In this we see God’s kindness with an aim to save us:

That which lies hid in Christ, and is revealed from him, is full of love, sweetness, tenderness, kindness, grace. It is the Lord’s waiting to be gracious to sinners; waiting for an advantage to show love and kindness, for the most eminent endearing of a soul unto himself, Isaiah 30:18, “Therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you; and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you.” Neither is there any revelation of God that the soul finds more sweetness in than this. When it [one’s soul] is experimentally convinced that God from time to time has passed by many, innumerable iniquities, he is astonished to think that God should do so; and admires that he did not take the advantage of his provocations to cast him out of his presence. He finds that, with infinite wisdom, in all long-suffering, he has managed all his dispensations towards him to recover him from the power of the devil, to rebuke and chasten his spirit for sin, to endear him unto himself; — there is, I say, nothing of greater sweetness to the soul than this: and therefore the apostle says, Romans 3:25, that all is “through the forbearance of God.” God makes way for complete forgiveness of sins through this his forbearance; which the other does not. </blockquote.

3. The wisdom of God in managing all for his glory.

So, then, this also is hid in Christ, — the great and unspeakable riches of the wisdom of God, in pardoning sin, saving sinners, satisfying justice, fulfilling the law, repairing his own honor, and providing for us a more exceeding weight of glory; and all this out of such a condition as wherein it was impossible that it should enter into the hearts of angels or men how ever the glory of God should be repaired, and one sinning creature delivered from everlasting ruin. Hence it is said, that at the last day God “shall be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe,” 2 Thessalonians 1:10. It shall be an admirable thing, and God shall be for ever glorious in it, even in the bringing of believers to himself. To save sinners through believing, shall be found to be a far more admirable work than to create the world of nothing.

4. God’s self-sufficiency.

D. “There is no saving knowledge of any property of God, nor such as brings consolation, but what alone is to be had in Christ Jesus, being laid up in him, and manifested by him.” To know God outside of Christ is to know judgment. It is only in Christ that we can know the reconciliation of God’s justice and mercy:

This is to be received, that God has actually manifested the glory of all his attributes in a way of doing us good. What will it avail our souls, what comfort will it bring unto us, what endearment will it put upon our hearts unto God, to know that he is infinitely righteous, just, and holy, unchangeably true and faithful, if we know not how he may preserve the glory of his justice and faithfulness in his comminations and threatening, but only in one ruin and destruction? if we can from thence only say it is a righteous thing with him to recompense tribulation unto us for our iniquities? What fruit of this consideration had Adam in the garden? Genesis 3. What sweetness, what encouragement, is there in knowing that he is patient and full of forbearance, if the glory of these is to be exalted in enduring the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction? nay, what will it avail us to hear him proclaim himself “The LORD, The LORD God, (Exodus 34:6, 7) merciful and gracious, abundant in goodness and truth,” yet, withal, that he will “by no means clear the guilty,” so shutting up the exercise of all his other properties towards us, upon the account of our iniquity? Doubtless, not at all.

Moreover, it is only in Christ that we can know that God can but actually has reconciled justice and mercy.

It is then in covenant brought about by Christ that God does bring this reconciliation to bear in our relationship with Him:

There remaineth only, then, that these attributes of God, so manifested and exercised, are powerful and able to bring us to the everlasting fruition of him. To evince this, the Lord wraps up the whole covenant of grace in one promise, signifying no less: “I will be your God.” In the covenant, God becomes our God, and we are his people; and thereby all his attributes are ours also. And lest that we should doubt — when once our eyes are opened to see in any measure the inconceivable difficulty that is in this thing, what unimaginable obstacles on all hands there lie against us — that all is not enough to deliver and save us, God has, I say, wrapped it up in this expression, Genesis 17:1, “I am,” saith he, “God Almighty” (all- sufficient); — “I am wholly able to perform all my undertakings, and to be thy exceeding great reward. I can remove all difficulties, answer all objections, pardon all sins, conquer all opposition: I am God all-sufficient.” Now, you know in whom this covenant and all the promises thereof are ratified, and in whose blood it is confirmed, — to wit, in the Lord Christ alone; in him only is God an all-sufficient God to any, and an exceeding great reward. And hence Christ himself is said to “save to the uttermost them that come to God by him,” Hebrews 7. And these three things, I say, are required to be known, that we may have a saving acquaintance, and such as is attended with consolation, with any of the properties of God; and all these being hid only in Christ, from him alone it is to be obtained.

Ambrose of Milan: To Know God

11 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Church History, Quotations

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As Ambrose of Milan taught 1500 years ago, God can only be known by an obedient faith, “He who is unwilling to see God cannot see him. God is not seen in place, but in a pure heart; nor is God sought with corporeal eyes, nor is circumscribed by sight, nor grasped by touch; nor is he heard in audible speech, nor perceived by sensible approach.”[1]

[1] William Wilson, The Popular Preachers of the Ancient Church: Their Lives, Their Manners, and Their Work (London: James Hogg & Sons, 1859), 76.

Elemental Religion.2 James Denney (“The experience that God knows me”)

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, James Denney, Preaching, Psalms

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We are apt to speak in this connexion of omniscience, but there is nothing about omniscience in the Psalm.  Omniscience is an abstract noun, and abstract nouns are unequal to the intense feeling of the passage. The important thing in religion is not the belief that God is omniscience, but the experience that God knows me, and it is on this the Psalmist dwells. It is almost implied in the connexion of his words that in the heart of the writer there was a kind of passive resistance to this experience, a resistance which God’s overcame, piercing and discovering all his inner life. We are slow to know ourselves, and sometimes do not wish to; purposes form in the background of our minds, of which we are hardly conscious; latent motives actuate us; perhaps own words or deeds, in which they suddenly issue, startle us; we are amazed that we should have said or done such a thing. But it is no surprise to Him. “Oh thou understandest my thought of far off.”  Such knowledge of man by God is quite different from omniscience. Omniscience is a divine attribute, but what here is experienced is a divine action — it is God through His searching knowledge of us entering with power into our lives. It is God the besetting us behind and before, and laying His hand upon us. The Psalmist does not dwell particularly on the divine motive, so to speak, and the searching of man. It might be felt as the shadowing of the soul by an enemy, or is the over-shadowing presence of a friend. The one thing on which he does dwell is its reality and its completeness. It is too wonderful for him; it baffles him when he tries to understand it; but incomprehensible as it is, it is real. He only knows himself as he is conscious of being searched and known by God.

Preaching: Denney first works out his argument by overturning the assumption of the words: This is not about omniscience (although God is omniscient, and God’s omniscience stands behind God’s conduct here), but rather it is about the personal knowledge of God.

He explains the error of misusing this text by means of doing what should be done with the text. He shows how the wrong reading misses the intensely personal knowledge which the text conveys.

He describes the Psalmist’s experience so that it is well understood.

He ends the paragraph with a statement that the proposition ultimately baffles and with the proposition, “He only knows himself as he is conscious of being searched and known by God.”

Good preaching should open up one’s ways of thinking and transform one’s categories of understanding. There is a great deal of argument that we must make the Bible relevant to people in their current circumstance. While it is necessary to understand one’s culture, the important thing is that Christian thinking is conformed to biblical categories and methods – not that Christians have the Bible translated and defanged; domesticated to the culture.

This last sentence explodes our normal manner of thought: How does God prove himself to me? Here, Denney explains, it is only as God knows me that I can even know myself. God is the ground, the subject – I am the observed, the object.

Doctrine: Here is a strange thing: Another person, wise, eternal, knows me inside and out: There is God at hand with my thoughts, knowing my inclination before I admit to myself what I know of myself. The Greek aphorism γνῶθι σεαυτόν Know Thyself hangs dependent upon God’s knowledge: “He only knows himself as he is conscious of being searched and known by God.”

Such knowledge, whether we seek to avoid it or long for it, stands at the heart of human and Divine life: Adam sinned and sought to hide himself from God. God’s question, “Where are you?” Does not reflect ignorance by God, but rather the penetrating search of God – Adam cannot and does not hide.[1]

Am I what I think myself to be, or am I what God knows me to be? This is one element of the basic tension between God and humanity. We seek to define ourselves, but the believing heart knows that it is only God’s opinion which matters. Indeed, what is “confession” but saying the same thing of my sin as God?

Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Psalm 51:4 (ESV)

Now consider this as a true proposition: not as an abstract doctrine but as an actual knowledge/experience. He does not say that God speaks to him in any propositional manner. But rather that he knows that God knows him.

The propositional content will be in our reading of the Scripture: It is in the reading of this Psalm that I become aware of this knowledge. Hebrews 4 explains that it is in the operation of the Word of God that we are known by God:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:11–13 (ESV)

Thus, my conscience, my joy and sorrow, my affections and thoughts as they are informed by the Word of God become my valuation of who I am – it is not my judgment of myself, but God’s judgment of me which matters:

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 1 Corinthians 4:3 (ESV)

But there is something even more profound in this observation.

[1] In fact, God at times makes fun of human hubris on this point. In Genesis 11, the people seek to build a tower to heaven; a fortress so great that God cannot overcome it. But verse 5 reads, “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower”: the tower was so tiny, God could not see it from heaven!

Biblical Sexuality and the Knowledge of God

17 Tuesday Jul 2012

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Biblical Sexuality and the Knowledge of God

(I will be teaching on biblical sexuality at this conference http://bcdasocal.org/training/fall-2012-conference. My recent notes on suffering and these on sexuality are part of my study on the issues)

We can know things by direct experience, and we can know things by analogy. For example, let us say that someone spoke to you of Zuma beach in California. Let us also say that you have never been to California, but you have been Florida. One could say that Zuma beach is like Daytona beach. You could take your experience of Daytona beach and begin to imagine Zuma beach, by using the analogy of thing to understand the other.

Such analogies are necessary for human beings to understand God. God uses many anthropomorphisms to explain himself. An anthropomorphism is a figure of speech in which God speaks as if he were a human being: For instance, God speaks of his hand and arm (Jer. 32:21). Now, God being spirit (John 4:24) and thus has no “arm”.   The figure of speech, God’s arm, is given to help us understand what God has done. We look at our own arm, and we understand how our arm functions and we get a glimpse of God.

We are not eternal uncreated spirits, we are human beings. Thus, without God providing analogies in our life (like arms and eyes), we would be unable to understand a great deal of what God has said.  It would be like trying to imagine the beach and having never seen even a pond of water.

Marriage and sexual passion are one great element of God’s analogies in this world. God did not need to create sexual passion and desire to ensure the propagation of human life. Nature demonstrates that sexual reproduction need not entail passion or emotional desire. Why then would God create such a thing?

At one level, sexual passion has been the fount of extraordinary woe for human life. Sexual disruption runs through the biblical narrative as a deep and wide pit into which men as godly as David fall (2 Sam. 11). Paul lists out the destruction which sin brings to the human being, and sexual disintegration plays a starring role (Rom. 1:26-27).  Why would God let such a passion free among human beings especially since we don’t “need” it.

John Piper in his first sermon on “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ” writes

Therefore, I say again: God created us in his image, male and female, with personhood and sexual passions so that when he comes to us in this world there would be these powerful words and images to describe the promises and the pleasures of our covenant relationship with him through Christ.

God made us powerfully sexual so that he would be more deeply knowable. We were given the power to know each other sexually so that we might have some hint of what it will be like to know Christ supremely.

Human sexuality creates an analogy to understand God. Just as knowing Daytona beach gives you a glimpse of Zuma, so human love creates an analogy for the divine love of God.

Think of the many times wherein God refers to himself as the devoted husband and passionate husband of his people:

14 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. 15 And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. Hosea 2:14–15 (ESV)

Now we must be  careful of drawing too tight a connection between the picture and the original, for later in the same book, God refers to Israel as “my son” (Hos. 11:1). We must not understand anything graphic about the relationship between God and his people.

Yet, what we can see is that the passionate desire which God holds for his people finds its image in the passionate desire which a husband must hold for his wife:

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:25–33 (ESV)

Indeed, when reading through this passage, it can become difficult to know where Paul has in mind a husband and wife or Christ and the church.

It is interesting then to understand that one’s sexuality becomes a means of knowing God. Because in the act of learning to cherish one’s wife, the husband learns in part what it means when God expresses his love for his people. Consider our beach example:  Let us say that rather than merely visit Daytona Beach, you also travel about and go to San Diego Beach and Santa Monica Beach in California. As you learn more about other beaches, you will begin to have a better idea of what Zuma Beach.

In the same way, the husband who better loves his wife begins to better understand what it means for God to love his people.  By understanding the picture of human marriage, the human being begins to learn the depth of God’s love. You see, God created human sexuality as a basis, as an analogy to communicate to us the depth and character of love.

Since human sexuality exists to create an analogy for the understanding of (and thus relationship with) God, human beings are not free to use sexuality in any manner which we choose. Our sexuality is charge which we must keep to best understand our Savior. Piper explains:

Therefore, all misuses of our sexuality (adultery, fornication, illicit fantasies, masturbation, pornography, homosexual behavior, rape, sexual child abuse, bestiality, exhibitionism, and so on) distort the true knowledge of God. God means for human sexual life to be a pointer and foretaste of our relationship with him.

Christians will often times say that marriage is a parable of the Gospel for the world, but they can easily forget that marriage is a picture given for our own knowledge.  Thus, as a husband loves his wife, cares for his wife, protects his wife, the husband teaches his wife in part what it means for God to love her. By drawing the analogy, the wife may better understand the original.

Piper notes that this knowledge also helps to protect our sexuality: As we understand the depths of the love of God, it protects our hearts and thus our bodies from sexual sin. The better which we understand the love of God, the less we will be willing to sin against him.

Piper makes a similar point in his sermon, albeit form a different angle:

Each of these texts teaches that knowing God revealed in Jesus Christ guards our sexuality from misuse, and that not knowing God leaves us prey to our passions. Romans 1:28:

Since they did not see fit to have God in [their] knowledge God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. (literal translation)

Suppressing the knowledge of God will make you a casualty of corruption. It is part of God’s judgment. If you trade the treasure of God’s glory for anything, you will pay the price for that idolatry in the disordering of your sexual life. That is what Romans 1:23-24 teaches:

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

This is the old way. When we come to Christ, we take it off like an old garment. Ignorance of God’s wrath and glory does not fit us any more. The new way is sexual holiness, and Paul contrasts it with not knowing God. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5:

This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.

Not knowing God puts you at the mercy of your passions—and they have no mercy without God. Here’s the way Peter says it in 1 Peter 1:14-15:

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.

The desires that governed you in those days got their power from deceit, not knowledge. Ephesians 4:22:

Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.

The desires of the body lie to us. They make deceitful promises—promises which are half true as in the garden of Eden. And we are powerless to expose and overcome unless we know God—really know God, his ways and works and words embraced with growing intimacy and ecstasy.

I am convinced

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Puritan, Quotations, Richard Baxter

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I am convinced that it is far better to depart and be with Christ than it is to be here. But this conviction alone does not excite the desires of my soul. They are opposed by a natural aversion to death, which sin has greatly increased; by the remains of unbelief, which avails itself of the darkness in our flesh, and our too great familiarity with the visible world; and also by the want of a more lively foretaste of heaven. What is it that must be done to overcome this opposition? Is there no remedy? Yes, there is a Divine teaching by which we must learn “so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” When we have read and heard, spoken and written the soundest truth, and the strongest arguments, we will know as if we knew not, and believe as if we believed not, unless God powerfully impresses the same thing on our minds, and awakens our souls to feel what we know. Since we fell from God, the communion between our senses and understanding,  and also between our understanding and our will and our affections is violated and we are divided in ourselves by this schism in our faculties.

The Dying Thoughts of the Rev. Richard Baxter, Abridged., ed. Benjamin Fawcett (London: Religious Tract Society, n.d.), 107-8.