Knowledge of the Holy

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What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

AW Tozer, ‘The Knowledge of the Holy’

This is a startling statement, but Tozer goes on to explain why…

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.

Agree or disagree? Why or why not?

In this section, we’re going to lay some groundwork that will help us to have more accurate thoughts about the nature of God, and what we can reasonably expect our experience will be like living in eternity with Him.

Romans 1:18-25 NIV
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, [19] since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. [20] For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. [21] For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. [22] Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. [24] Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. [25] They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.

Knowing is Not Comprehending

Systematic theology makes a differentiation between knowing God and comprehending God. In short, God is knowable (to some extent), but incomprehensible (fully and without limitation). Let’s take a look at what some theologians have to say about this.

Tozer: Thinking Accurately about God

Tozer makes that case that thinking accurately about God is so critical that if we err, we are liable to be committing the sin of idolatry.

As Moses gives his parting words to the Israelites, he mentions – and warns them – not to create any idols from what they think God looks like.

Deuteronomy 4:15-19 NIV
You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, [16] so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, [17] or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, [18] or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. [19] And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars-all the heavenly array-do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.

Tozer echoes Moses in that idolatry is arguably the most offensive sin to God, and that when we try to visualize God in His full glory – as He is – then we are in jeopardy of creating an imaginary idol…

Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is – in itself a monstrous sin – and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness. Always this God will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges. A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God. “Thou thoughtest,” said the Lord to the wicked man in the psalm, “that I was altogether such as one as thyself.” Surely this must be a serious affront to the Most High God before whom cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”

-AW Tozer

Grudem: The Knowability of God.

In his Systematic Theology book, Grudem states some conditions for knowing God while explaining the Incomprehensibility of God…

If we are to know God at all, it is necessary that he reveal himself to us. Because God is infinite and we are finite or limited, we can never fully understand God. In this sense God is said to be incomprehensible, where the term incomprehensible is used with an older and less common sense, “unable to be fully understood.” This sense must be clearly distinguished from the more common meaning, “unable to be understood.” It is not true to say that God is unable to be understood, but it is true to say that he cannot be understood fully or exhaustively.

-Wayne Grudem

At first, it may seem somewhat saddening that we can never know God fully and completely. But thinking through the process, this is a good thing when contemplating eternity…

This doctrine of God’s incomprehensibility has much positive application for our own lives. It means that we will never be able to know “too much” about God, for we will never run out of things to learn about him, and we will thus never tire in delighting in the discovery of more and more of his excellence and of the greatness of his works. Even in the age to come, when we are freed from the presence of sin, we will never be able fully to understand God or any one thing about him. This is seen from the fact that the passages cited above attribute God’s incomprehensibility not to our sinfulness but to his infinite greatness. It is because we are finite and God is infinite that we will never be able to understand him fully. For all eternity we will be able to go on increasing in our knowledge of God and delighting ourselves more and more in him, saying with David as we learn more and more of God’s own thoughts, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand” (Ps. 139:17 – 18).

The key thought here is that teh finite cannot comprehend the infinite. It is impossible.

Systematic Theology (pp. 149-151).

Hodge: God Can Be Known

Theologian Charles Hodge affirms the knowability but incomprehensibility of God

It is the clear doctrine of the Scriptures that God can be known. It is, however, important distinctly to understand what is meant when it is said, God can be known. This does not mean that we can know all that is true concerning God.

-Charles Hodge

Berkhof: God Incomprehensible, Yet Knowable.

Berkhof quotes the Scholastics and Reformers discussing the ‘revealed’ God. This idea of how God reveals himself to all, called ‘general revelation’ is often tied to Romans 1…

The Scholastics distinguished between the quid and the qualis of God, and maintained that we do not know what God is in His essential Being, but can know something of His nature, of what He is to us, as He reveals Himself in His divine attributes.

Luther speaks repeatedly of God as the Deus Absconditus (hidden God), in distinction from Him as the Deus Revelatus (revealed God). In some passages he even speaks of the revealed God as still a hidden God in view of the fact that we cannot fully know Him even through His special revelation.

To Calvin, God in the depths of His being is past finding out. “His essence,” he says, “is incomprehensible; so that His divinity wholly escapes all human senses.”

-Louis Berkhof

Systematic Theology (pp. 11-12).

John Piper: Chasing the Knowledge of The Holy Forever

Quoting Amy Plantinga Pauw, Piper capsules it as follows:

Because “heaven is a progressive state,” the heavenly joy of the saints, and even of the triune God, will forever continue to increase. . . . Saints can look forward to an unending expansion of their knowledge and love of God, as their capacities are stretched by what they receive . . . there is no intrinsic limit to their joy in heaven. . . . As the saints continue to increase in knowledge and love of God, God receives more and more glory. This heavenly reciprocity will never cease, because the glory God deserves is infinite, and the capacity of the saints to perceive God’s glory and praise him for it is ever increasing.

Piper, Pauw, Edwards

source: https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-glory-of-god-and-the-reviving-of-religion

(Pauw, “The Supreme Harmony of All”: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards [Eerdmans, 2002], 180-181).

Conclusion.

There’s a general consensus among theologians – and scripture – that God is not only knowable, but that He reveals Himself to man and seeks a personal relationship with him.

However, because we are finite beings who are bound by time and space, and woefully limited in many areas, it is impossible for us to fully comprehend an infinite Being.