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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In one systematic volume, James Montgomery Boice provides a readable overview of Christian theology. Both students and pastors will benefit from this rich source that covers all the major doctrines of Christianity.With scholarly rigor and a pastor's heart, Boice carefully opens the topics of the nature of God, the character of his natural and special revelation, the fall, and the person and work of Christ. He then goes on to consider the work of the Holy Spirit in justification and sanctification. The book closes with careful discussion of ecclesiology and eschatology.This updated edition includes a foreword by Philip Ryken and a section-by-section study guide. Both those long familiar with Boice and those newly introduced to him will benefit from his remarkable practicality and thoroughness, which will continue to make this a standard reference for years to come.
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FOUNDATIONSof theCHRISTIANFAITH
REVISED & EXPANDED
A Comprehensive & Readable Theology
FOREWORD BY PHILIP RYKEN
To him whom to know is life eternal
Contents
FOREWORD
Philip Ryken
Over the course of the forty years or so since it was first published, this book by James Montgomery Boice has become something of a classic. Many Christians have come to a deeper understanding of biblical doctrine—and a closer relationship with Jesus Christ—by reading its pages and carefully studying its profound truths.
Dr. Boice served for thirty-two years (from 1968 until his death in 2000) as the senior minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church, a historic congregation near the heart of Center City, Philadelphia. As you will learn from the book’s preface, each chapter was first preached to Tenth’s large, multiethnic, multigenerational congregation. This context helps to explain the book’s warmly personal and pastoral tone. Dr. Boice was trying to help the people under his spiritual care grow in the love and knowledge of Jesus Christ. But as he edited his sermons for publication, he also had college students in mind. He wanted to write a complete basic course in Christian theology that would serve as a foundation for a lifetime of service in the church and witness to the world.
The overall structure of Foundations of the Christian Faith is trinitarian. The first three major sections of the book (originally published separately and widely read by students in InterVarsity and other campus fellowships in the late 1970s and 1980s) offer basic teaching on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, with the fourth and final section addressing the work of the church and the work of God throughout human history (and on into eternity). Most of the chapters are based on a particular Bible passage. By taking this approach, Boice produced a book that is theologically comprehensive, addressing most major topics in Christian doctrine, and at the same time thoroughly biblical, helping readers understand and apply scriptural teaching to daily life.
The best way to get the most out of Foundations of the Christian Faith is to read it from start to finish. But the book’s coherent structure and clear chapter titles also make it useful as a theological reference book whenever questions arise about particular points of Christian doctrine. It is not primarily for learned theologians but for ordinary people who are serious about their faith and want to become better theologians and better Christians.
Perhaps you would like to know more about what kind of person James Boice was and what kind of pastor he became. We served together in ministry for five years at Tenth Church, and although other people knew him much better than I, we worked closely enough for me to have a good sense of the man.
The first and most important thing to say is that Dr. Boice’s life was squarely focused on God and what God said in his Word, especially about salvation in Jesus Christ. For that reason, you will not find many personal stories in this book. Dr. Boice was more interested in drawing worship to Christ than in calling attention to himself.
Dr. Boice was learned enough to be a serious scholar, but he also had a rare gift for taking complex topics and making them clear enough for most people to understand. He was definitely a Calvinist in the best sense of that word: he believed strongly in the sovereignty of God and the absolute graciousness of God in salvation, as John Calvin did. As a result, he was very joyful in public worship, often smiling as he preached or as he sang his favorite hymns in church. In fact, one of my clearest memories of Dr. Boice is seeing him smile broadly when he heard me preach—not because my sermons were especially good (or funny), but because he regarded them as faithful to God’s Word, which was his primary passion. This passion fueled his popular radio broadcast, “The Bible Study Hour,” which has attracted devoted listeners across the United States and beyond.
James Boice was deeply committed to the city—specifically, to God’s work in the city of Philadelphia. Together with his wife, Linda, he not only raised three beautiful daughters in the city but also founded a Christian school there that is still thriving today. He was committed to racial reconciliation, and as a white pastor built strong relationships with leading black pastors in Philadelphia. He faithfully supported outreach to the poor and homeless, to people suffering and dying from AIDS, to people in bondage to sexual addiction, and to women with crisis pregnancies. In short, Dr. Boice believed that the gospel is powerful enough to address the most difficult problems we face in the world today.
Dr. Boice also believed in the power of the risen Christ to conquer death, including his own death. On Good Friday, in April 2000, he received an unexpected diagnosis of liver cancer. His case was terminal. Barely a week later he stood in his pulpit and addressed his beloved congregation for the very last time. As Dr. Boice encouraged his congregation to pray for him, he posed the question, “Pray for what?” Here was his answer:
Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God. If you think of God glorifying himself in history and you say, Where in all of history has God most glorified himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though he could have. Jesus said, “Don’t you think I could call down from my Father ten legions of angels for my defense?” But he didn't do that. And yet that’s where God is most glorified.
If I were to reflect on what goes on theologically here, there are two things I would stress. One is the sovereignty of God. That’s not novel. We have talked about the sovereignty of God here forever. God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It’s not as if God somehow forgot what was going on, and something bad slipped by. God does everything according to his will. We’ve always said that.
But what I’ve been impressed with mostly is something in addition to that. It’s possible, isn’t it, to conceive of God as sovereign and yet indifferent? God’s in charge, but he doesn’t care. But it’s not that. God is not only the One who is in charge; God is also good. Everything he does is good. And what Romans 12 verses 1 and 2 says is that we have the opportunity by the renewal of our minds—that is, how we think about these things—actually to prove what God’s will is. And then it says, “His good, pleasing, and perfect will.” Is that good, pleasing, and perfect to God? Yes, of course, but the point of it is that it’s good, pleasing, and perfect to us. If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good. So that’s the way we want to accept it and move forward, and who knows what God will do?1
The goodness of God, the grace of God, and the glory of God in Jesus Christ—these were the foundations of James Boice’s faith, and you will learn more about them on every page of this marvelous book.
PREFACE
Shortly after Harvard College was founded in 1636, the trustees of the school wrote, “Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well [that the] maine end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ . . . and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” In the 350 or so years since, Harvard (as well as most other schools, colleges, and universities) has moved far in a purely secular direction. But the words of those early trustees are still true, and many people still see their chief goal in life as knowing God better.
It is for such people that this book, originally published as four separate paperback volumes (InterVarsity Press, 1978–1981), has been written.
Not often do I, as an author, sense an area in which no book seems to exist and for which one should be written. But the area covered by this volume is an exception, in my judgment. For years I had looked for a work that could be given to a person (particularly a new Christian) who is alert and questioning and who could profit from a comprehensive but readable overview of the Christian faith, a basic theology from A to Z. But I could not find anything that was quite what I had in mind and, thus, determined that I should attempt to write it myself.
It is impossible for anyone to do something of this scope perfectly, of course. So I delayed the beginning of my work for several years. I could have delayed indefinitely. A time comes, however, when regardless of limitations one should simply go ahead and do the best one can. The result is this four-book, sixteen-part work, corresponding more or less to the ground covered by John Calvin in the four books of his monumental Institutes of the Christian Religion.
This volume is not a rehash of the Institutes, however, although I am greatly indebted to Calvin and although the theology of this work is Calvinistic. Rather, it is an attempt (a) to cover the same ground in highly readable language, yet at the same time (b) to introduce themes that Calvin did not treat but that call for treatment today, and (c) to seek to relate all doctrine to contemporary rather than ancient views and problems. Book one deals with the doctrine of God and how we know God, book two with sin and the redemptive work of Christ, book three with the Holy Spirit and the application of redemption to the individual, and book four with the church and the meaning of history.
I am indebted to a number of other writers and thinkers, as the footnotes indicate. Among them are men whom I have come to know and with whom I have worked as a result of the annual Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, founded in 1974—John R. W. Stott, J. I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Roger Nicole. I am also indebted to (and quote from) Thomas Watson, B. B. Warfield, R. A. Torrey, A. W. Tozer, A. W. Pink, C. S. Lewis, Emil Brunner, F. F. Bruce, John Warwick Montgomery, Jonathan Edwards, Francis A. Schaeffer, and others. In book three my biggest debt is to John Murray, who has dealt with the work of the Holy Spirit brilliantly and concisely in Redemption Accomplished and Applied. In my discussion of the doctrine of the church, I have been helped immeasurably by others who have explored the nature of the church and its ministry in recent days—Ray C. Stedman, Gene A. Getz, and Elton Trueblood. I have also been helped by older thinkers such as James Bannerman, a Scottish preacher and seminary lecturer of the nineteenth century. It has been harder to find good contemporary Christian works on history, but I have read and drawn on works by Reinhold Niebuhr, Oscar Cullmann, R. G. Collingwood, Herbert Butterfield, and others.
A portion of this material has already appeared in an article titled “New Vistas in Historical Jesus Research,” Christianity Today (March 14, 1968). Other parts are similar to portions of my other writings, particularly the material on Scripture that appears in The Gospel of John, vol. 2, chapters 12–15. Some material has appeared in a shortened version in the June–August 1976 and June–August 1977 issues of Bible Studies Magazine. A discussion of “The Bondage of the Will” has appeared in similar form in Tenth: An Evangelical Quarterly (July 1983). “The Marks of the Church” is condensed from The Gospel of John, vol. 4, chapters 50–55, 58, and has been printed in Earl D. Radmacher, editor, Can We Trust the Bible?
The decision of the publishers to reissue this work in a new format has given me an opportunity to re-edit the whole and change portions in accord with what I think I have learned since the four separate volumes were issued. The most extensive changes are in book three, particularly in the discussion of the place of works in the Christian life. I have also made alterations to the discussion of the will in book two, based on the contribution of Jonathan Edwards. Books one and four have few changes.
I wish to express appreciation to Miss Caecilie M. Foelster, my editorial assistant, who helps in the production of all my books. She carries the heavy burden of typing, proofreading, and preparing the indexes. I am also thankful to the congregation of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, to whom these chapters were first preached in sermon form and who responded with many helpful comments and suggestions.
May God be honored in the distribution and use of this volume, and may it cause many to awake to him whose call is life eternal.
BOOK 1
The SOVEREIGN GOD
BOOK 1~THE SOVEREIGN GOD
PART I
THEKNOWLEDGEOF GOD
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
BOOK 1~PART I
CHAPTER 1
ON KNOWING GOD
One hot night in the early years of the Christian era a sophisticated and highly educated man named Nicodemus came to see a young rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. The man wanted to discuss reality. So he began the conversation with a statement of where his own personal search for truth had taken him. He said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him” (Jn 3:2).
With the exception of the word Rabbi, which was merely a polite form of address, the first words were a claim to considerable knowledge. Nicodemus said, “We know.” Then he began to rehearse the things he knew (or thought he knew) and with which he wanted to begin the discussion: (1) that Jesus was continuing to do many miracles; (2) that these miracles were intended to authenticate him as a teacher sent from God; and that, therefore, (3) Jesus was one to whom he should listen. Unfortunately for Nicodemus, Jesus replied that such an approach to knowledge was wrong and that Nicodemus could therefore know nothing until he had first experienced an inward, spiritual transformation. “You must be born again,” Jesus told him (Jn 3:7).
Nicodemus’s subsequent remarks showed at least an implicit recognition of his lack of knowledge in important things. For he began to ask questions: “How can a man be born when he is old? . . . How can these things be?” (Jn 3:4, 9). Jesus taught him that true knowledge begins with spiritual knowledge, knowledge of God, and that this is to be found in God’s revelation of himself in the Bible and in Jesus’ own life and work, the work of the Savior.
CONTEMPORARY CRISIS
This ancient conversation is relevant to our day. For the problems and frustrations that Nicodemus faced nearly two thousand years ago are with us in our time also. Nicodemus possessed knowledge, but he lacked the key to that knowledge, the element that would put it all together. He knew certain things, but his search for truth had brought him to the point of personal crisis. In the same way, much is also known in our time. In the sense of information or technical knowledge, more is known today than at any previous time in history. Yet the kind of knowledge that integrates information and thereby gives meaning to life is strangely absent.
The nature of the problem can be seen by examining the two almost exclusive approaches to knowledge today. On the one hand there is the idea that reality can be known by reason alone. That approach is not new, of course. It is the approach developed by Plato and therefore assumed by much of the Greek and Roman thought after him. In Plato’s philosophy, true knowledge is knowledge of the eternal and unalterable essence of things, not merely knowledge of changeable phenomena. That is, it is a knowledge of forms, ideas, or ideals. Our nearest equivalent would be the so-called laws of science.
On the surface, this approach to knowledge through the exercise of supposedly impartial reason seems desirable, for it is productive—as the technical advances of our day often indicate. But it is not without problems. For one thing, it is highly impersonal knowledge and, as some would say, highly depersonalizing. In this approach reality becomes a thing (an equation, law, or, worse yet, mere data), and men and women become things also, with the inevitable result that they may therefore be manipulated like any other raw material for whatever ends.
An example is the manipulation of poorer nations by rich nations for the sake of the rich nations’ expanding economy, that is, the injustice analyzed and rightly condemned by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto, Capital, and other writings. Another example is that of communism itself, which, in spite of its desire to better the lot of the masses, actually manipulates them for ideological ends. On the personal level there is the science of behavioral technology and the frightening teaching of a man like B. F. Skinner of Harvard University who claims that individuals must be conditioned scientifically for the good of society.
There is also another problem with the attempt to know reality through reason alone. The approach does not give an adequate basis for ethics. It can tell us what is, but it cannot tell us what ought to be. Consequently, the extraordinary technical advances of our time are accompanied by an extreme and debilitating moral permissiveness that promises in time to break down even the values and system that made both the advances and the permissiveness possible. Interestingly, the same thing was also true of the Greek philosophers, who, although they were men of great intellect, on occasion led depraved lives.
In recent years the failures of the rationalistic system have impressed themselves on a new generation, with the result that many in the Western world have abandoned reason in order to seek reality through emotional experience. In the ancient world, in reaction to the impersonality of Greek philosophy, this was done through intense participation in the rites of the mystery religions. These promised an emotional union with some god, induced by lighting, music, incense, or perhaps by drugs. In our time the same approach has surfaced through the drug cult, rediscovery of the Eastern religions, Transcendental Meditation, the human potential movement, and other supposedly “mind-expanding” practices.
This modern approach also has several problems. First, the experience does not last. It is transient. Each attempt to achieve reality through emotional experience promises some sort of “high.” But the “high” is inevitably followed by a “low,” with the additional problem that increasingly intense stimuli seem to be necessary to repeat the experience. Eventually this ends either in self-destruction or acute disillusionment. A second problem is that the approach to reality through emotion does not satisfy the mind. Promoters of these experiences, particularly drug experiences, speak of a more intense perception of reality that results from them. But their experience has no rational content. The part of the human being that wants to think about such things and understand them is unsatisfied.
The result of this situation is a crisis in the area of knowledge today, as in ancient times. Many thinking people quite honestly do not know where to turn. The rationalistic approach is impersonal and amoral. The emotionalistic approach is without content, transient and also often immoral. “Is this the end?” many are asking. “Are there no other possibilities? Is there not a third way?”
A THIRD WAY
At this point Christianity comes forward with the claim that there is a third way and that this way is strong at precisely those points where the other approaches are lacking. The basis of this third approach is that there is a God who has created all things and who himself gives his creation meaning. Further, we can know him. This is an exciting and satisfying possibility. It is exciting because it involves the possibility of contact between the individual and God, however insignificant the individual may appear in his or her own eyes or in the eyes of others. It is satisfying because it is knowledge not of an idea or thing but of a supremely personal Being, and because it issues in a profound change of conduct.
This is what the Bible means when it says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7). And, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Prov 9:10).
Here, however, we must be clear about what we mean when we speak of “knowing God,” for many common uses of the word know are inadequate to convey the biblical understanding. There is a use of the word know by which we mean “awareness.” In this sense we say that we know where somebody lives or that we know that certain events are transpiring somewhere in the world. It is a kind of knowledge, but it does not involve us personally. It has little bearing on our lives. This is not what the Bible means when it speaks of knowing God.
Another use of the word know means “knowing about” something or someone. It is knowledge by description. For instance, we may say that we know New York City or London or Moscow. By that we mean that we are aware of the geographic layout of the city; we know the names of the streets, where the major stores are, and other facts. We may have gained our knowledge of the city by actually living there. But it is also possible that we may have gained our knowledge by reading books. In the religious realm, this type of knowledge would apply to theology that, although important, is not the whole or even the heart of religion. The Bible tells us much about God that we should know. (In fact, much of what follows in this book is directed to our need for such knowledge.) But this is not enough. Even the greatest theologians can be confused and can find life meaningless.
True knowledge of God is also more than knowledge by experience. To go back to the earlier example, it would be possible for someone who has lived in a particular city to say, “But my knowledge is not book knowledge. I have actually lived there. I have walked the streets, shopped in the stores, attended the theaters. I have experienced the city. I really know it.” To this we would have to reply that the knowledge involved is certainly a step beyond anything we have talked about thus far, but still it is not the full idea of knowledge in the Christian sense.
Suppose, for instance, that a person should go out into a starlit field in the cool of a summer evening and gaze up into the twinkling heavens and come away with the claim that in that field he has come to know God. What do we say to such a person? The Christian does not have to deny the validity of that experience, up to a point. It is certainly a richer knowledge than mere awareness of God (“There is a God”) or mere knowledge about him (“God is powerful and is the Creator of all that we see and know”). Still, the Christian insists, this is less than what the Bible means by true knowledge. For when the Bible speaks of knowing God it means being made alive by God in a new sense (being “born again”), conversing with God (so that he becomes more than some great “Something” out there, so that he becomes a friend), and being profoundly changed in the process.
All this is leading us, step by step, to a better understanding of the word knowledge. But still another qualification is needed. According to the Bible, even when the highest possible meaning is given to the word know, knowing God is still not merely knowing God. For it is never knowing God in isolation. It is always knowing God in his relationship to us. Consequently, according to the Bible, knowledge of God takes place only where there is also knowledge of ourselves in our deep spiritual need and where there is an accompanying acceptance of God’s gracious provision for our need through the work of Christ and the application of that work to us by God’s Spirit. Knowledge of God takes place in the context of Christian piety, worship, and devotion. The Bible teaches that this knowledge of God takes place (where it does take place), not so much because we search after God—because we do not—but because God reveals himself to us in Christ and in the Scriptures.
J. I. Packer writes of this knowledge,
Knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as His word and works reveal it; third, accepting His invitations, and doing what He commands; fourth, recognising, and rejoicing in, the love that He has shown in thus approaching one and drawing one into this divine fellowship.1
WHY KNOW GOD?
“But just a minute,” someone might argue. “All that sounds complicated and difficult. In fact, it seems too difficult. If that’s what is involved, I want no part of it. Give me one good reason why I should bother.” That is a fair objection, but there is an adequate answer to it. In fact, there are several.
First, knowledge of God is important, for only through the knowledge of God can an individual enter into what the Bible terms eternal life. Jesus indicated this when he prayed, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). At first glance even this does not seem important enough to make people want to know God at all costs. But this is because, lacking eternal life, they cannot begin to understand what they are missing. They are like people who say that they do not appreciate good music. Their dislike does not make the music worthless; it simply indicates an inadequate grounds of appreciation in the listeners. So also those who do not appreciate God’s offer of life indicate that they do not have the capability of understanding or valuing what they are lacking. The Bible says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).
It might help such a person to be told that the promise of eternal life is also the promise of being able to live life fully as an authentic human being. This is true, but it is also true that eternal life means more than this. It means coming alive, not only in a new but also in an eternal sense. It is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn 11:25-26).
Second, knowledge of God is important because, as pointed out earlier, it also involves knowledge of ourselves. Our day is the day of the psychiatrist and psychologist. Men and women spend billions of dollars annually in an attempt to know themselves, to sort out their psyches. Certainly there is need for psychiatry, particularly Christian psychiatry. But this alone is inadequate in the ultimate sense if it does not bring individuals into a knowledge of God against which their own worth and failures may be estimated.
On the one hand, knowledge of ourselves through the knowledge of God is humbling. We are not God, nor are we like him. He is holy; we are unholy. He is good; we are not good. He is wise; we are foolish. He is strong; we are weak. He is loving and gracious; we are filled with hate and with selfish affectations. Therefore, to know God is to see ourselves as Isaiah did: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Is 6:5). Or as Peter did: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Lk 5:8). On the other hand, such knowledge of ourselves through the knowledge of God is also reassuring and satisfying. For in spite of what we have become, we are still God’s creation and are loved by him. No higher dignity has been given to women and men than the dignity the Bible gives them.
Third, the knowledge of God also gives us knowledge of this world: its good and its evil, its past and its future, its purpose and its impending judgment at the hand of God. In one sense, this is an extension of the point just made. If knowledge of God gives us knowledge of ourselves, it also inevitably gives us knowledge of the world; for the world is mostly the individuals who compose it written large. On the other hand, the world stands in a special relationship to God, in its sin and rebellion as well as in its value as a vehicle for his purposes. It is a confusing place until we know the God who made it and learn from him why he made it and what is to happen to it.
A fourth reason the knowledge of God is important is that it is the only way to personal holiness. This is a goal that the natural person hardly desires. But it is essential nonetheless. Our problems derive not only from the fact that we are ignorant of God but also from the fact that we are sinful. We do not want the good. At times we hate it, even when the good is to our benefit.
The knowledge of God leads to holiness. To know God as he is is to love him as he is and to want to be like him. This is the message of one of the Bible’s most important verses about the knowledge of God. Jeremiah, the ancient prophet of Israel, wrote, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD” (Jer 9:23-24). Jeremiah also wrote about a day when those who do not know God will come to know him. “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer 31:34).
Finally, the knowledge of God is important in that it is only through a knowledge of God that the church and those who compose it can become strong. In ourselves we are weak, but as Daniel wrote, “The people who know their God shall stand firm and take action” (Dan 11:32).
We do not have a strong church today, nor do we have many strong Christians. We can trace the cause to an acute lack of sound spiritual knowledge. Why is the church weak? Why are individual Christians weak? It is because they have allowed their minds to become conformed to the “spirit of this age,” with its mechanistic, godless thinking. They have forgotten what God is like and what he promises to do for those who trust him. Ask an average Christian to talk about God. After getting past the expected answers, you will find that their god is a little god of vacillating sentiments. He is a god who would like to save the world, but who cannot. He would like to restrain evil, but somehow he finds it beyond his power. So he has withdrawn into semiretirement, being willing to give good advice in a grandfatherly sort of way, but for the most part he has left his children to fend for themselves in a dangerous environment.
Such a god is not the God of the Bible. Those who know their God perceive the error in that kind of thinking and act accordingly. The God of the Bible is not weak; he is strong. He is all-mighty. Nothing happens without his permission or apart from his purposes—even evil. Nothing disturbs or puzzles him. His purposes are always accomplished. Therefore, those who know him rightly act with boldness, assured that God is with them to accomplish his own desirable purposes in their lives.
Do we need an example? We can find no better one than Daniel. Daniel and his friends were godly men in the godless environment of ancient Babylon. They were slaves, good slaves. They served the court. But difficulty arose when they refused to obey anything in opposition to the commands of the true God whom they knew and worshiped. When Nebuchadnezzar’s great statue was set up and all were required to fall down and worship it, Daniel and his friends refused. When prayer to anyone but King Darius was banned for thirty days, Daniel did as he always did: he prayed to God three times a day before an open window.
What was wrong with these men? Had they fooled themselves about the consequences? Did they think that their failure to comply would go unseen? Not at all. They knew the consequences, but they also knew God. They were able to be strong, trusting God to have his way with them, whether it meant salvation or destruction in the lions’ den or the furnace. These men said, “If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Dan 3:17-18).
A weak god produces no strong followers, nor does he deserve to be worshiped. A strong God, the God of the Bible, is a source of strength to those who know him.
THE HIGHEST SCIENCE
So let us learn about God and come to know God in the fullest, biblical sense. Jesus encouraged us to do this when he said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Mt 11:28-29). This is true wisdom for everyone. It is the special duty and privilege of the Christian.
What is the proper course of study for one who is a child of God? Is it not God himself? There are other worthwhile areas of learning, it is true. But the highest science, the most mind-expanding area of all, is the Godhead. Spurgeon once wrote,
There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go on our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the . . . solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday and know nothing.” . . . But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. . . . Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continuing investigation of the great subject of the Deity.2
Every Christian should confidently pursue this goal. God has promised that those who seek him will find him. To those who knock, the door shall be opened.
BOOK 1~PART I
CHAPTER 2
THE UNKNOWN GOD
Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”1 These words from the opening paragraph of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion mark the point to which the preceding chapter has brought us, but they also introduce a new problem. If it is true that wisdom consists in the “knowledge of God and of ourselves,” we are at once led to ask, “But who has such knowledge? Who truly knows God or knows themselves?” If we are honest, we must admit that as long as we are left to ourselves and our own abilities, the only possible answer is “No one.” Left to ourselves, not one of us truly knows God. Nor do we know ourselves adequately.
What is the trouble? Clearly, we do not know ourselves because we have first failed to know God. But why don’t we know God? Is he unknowable? Is the fault his, or is it ours? Obviously, it is more appealing to us to blame God. But before we jump to that conclusion, we should be conscious of what is involved. If the fault is ours, although that fact in itself may be uncomfortable, then at least it can be corrected, for God can do anything. He can intervene. On the other hand, if the fault is God’s (or, as we might prefer to say, if the fault is in the very nature of things), then nothing at all can be done. The key to knowledge will inevitably elude us, and life is absurd.
In The Dust of Death, Os Guinness makes this point by describing a comedy skit performed by the German comedian Karl Vallentin. In this routine the comic comes onto a stage illuminated only by one small circle of light. He paces around and around this circle with a worried face. He is searching for something. After a while a policeman joins him and asks what he has lost. “I’ve lost the key to my house,” Vallentin answers. The policeman joins the hunt, but the search eventually appears useless.
“Are you sure you lost it here?” asks the policeman.
“Oh no!” says Vallentin, pointing to a dark corner. “It was over there.”
“Then why are you looking here?”
“There’s no light over there,” answers the comic.2
If there is no God or if there is a God but the failure to know him is God’s fault, then the search for knowledge is like the search of the German comedian. Where the search should be made, there is no light; and where there is light there is no point in searching. But is this the case? The Bible declares that the problem is not God’s but ours. Therefore, the problem is solvable. It is solvable because God can take, and actually has taken, steps to reveal himself to us, thereby providing us with the missing key to knowledge.
AWARENESS OF GOD
We must begin with the problem, however: strange as it may sound, the person who does not know God, still in some lesser but valid sense, does know him yet represses that knowledge.
Here we must go back to the distinction between an “awareness” of God and truly “knowing God.” Knowing God is entering into a knowledge of our deep spiritual need and of God’s provision for that need, and then coming to trust and reverence God. Awareness of God is merely the sense that there is a God and that he deserves to be obeyed and worshiped. Men and women do not naturally know, obey, or worship God. But they do have an awareness of him.
This brings us to some of the most important words ever recorded for the benefit of humanity—from the apostle Paul’s letter to the newly established church in Rome. They contain the apostle’s first thesis in his greatest exposition of Christian doctrine.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Rom 1:18-23)
Here we see three important ideas. First, the wrath of God is displayed against the natural person. Second, humanity has willfully rejected God. Third, this rejection has taken place in spite of a natural awareness of God possessed by each person.
TWOFOLD REVELATION
The third point, the natural awareness of God possessed by every person, is the necessary place to begin. For here we see that, although no one naturally knows God, the failure we have in knowing God is not God’s fault. God has given us a twofold revelation of himself, and we all have this revelation.
The first part is the revelation of God in nature. Paul’s argument may be rephrased as saying that all that can be known about God by the natural person has been revealed in nature. Of course, we must acknowledge that this is limited knowledge. In fact, Paul defines it as just two things: God’s eternal power and his deity. But although such knowledge is limited, it is sufficient to remove excuse if any person fails to move on from it to seek God fully. In contemporary speech the phrase “eternal power” could be reduced to the word supremeness, and “deity” could be changed to being. Paul is saying then that there is ample and entirely convincing evidence in nature of a Supreme Being. God exists, and human beings know it. That is the argument. When men and women subsequently refuse to acknowledge and worship God, as they do, the fault is not in a lack of evidence but in their irrational and resolute determination not to know him.
The Old Testament speaks of the clear revelation of God in nature.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world. (Ps 19:1-4)
The point is that the revelation of God in nature is sufficient to convince anyone of God’s existence and power, if the individual will have it.
There is a second part to God’s self-revelation. We might call it an internal revelation or, at least, the internal capacity for receiving one. No one in his or her natural state has actually come to know God in the full biblical sense. But each person has been given the capacity for receiving the natural revelation. Paul is talking about this capacity when he says that “what can be known about God is plain to them” (Rom 1:19).
Suppose that you are driving down the street and come to a sign that says, “Detour—Turn Left.” But you ignore this and drive on. It happens that there is a police officer present, who then stops you and begins to write out a ticket. What excuse might you have? You can argue that you didn’t see the sign. But that makes no difference. As long as you are driving the car, the responsibility for seeing the sign and obeying it is yours. Further, you are responsible if, having ignored the sign, you recklessly plunge on over a cliff and destroy both yourself and your passengers.
Paul is saying, first, there is a sign. It is the revelation of God in nature. Second, you have “vision.” If you choose to ignore the sign, and so court disaster, the guilt is your own. In fact, the judgment of God (like that of the police officer) comes, not because you didn’t or couldn’t know God, but because being aware of God, you nevertheless refused to acknowledge him as God. Paul writes, “So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom 1:20-21).
Paul is not saying that there is enough evidence about God in nature so that the scientist, who carefully probes nature’s mysteries, can be aware of him. He is not saying that the sign is there but hidden, that we are only able to find it if we look carefully. Paul is saying that the sign is plain. It is a billboard. No one, no matter how weak-minded or insignificant, can be excused for missing it. There is enough evidence of God in a flower to lead a child as well as a scientist to worship him. There is sufficient evidence in a tree, a pebble, a grain of sand, a fingerprint, to make us glorify God and thank him. This is the way to knowledge. But people will not do this. They substitute nature or parts of nature for God and find their hearts darkened.
Calvin gives this conclusion: “But although we lack the natural ability to mount up unto the pure and clear knowledge of God, all excuse is cut off because the fault of dullness is within us. And, indeed, we are not allowed thus to pretend ignorance without our conscience itself always convicting us of both baseness and ingratitude.”3
REJECTION OF GOD
When Calvin speaks of baseness and ingratitude, he brings us to the second point of Paul’s argument in Romans: the fact that all have rejected God in spite of God’s revelation of himself in nature. However, in developing this point in Romans (Rom 1:18) Paul also shows the nature of our rejection and why it has taken place.
The key to this universal rejection of God is found in the phrase “who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” In Greek the word translated “suppress” is katechein, which means “hold,” “hold fast,” “keep,” “take,” “hold back,” “restrain,” or “repress.” In a positive sense, the word is used to mean holding to whatever is good. Paul speaks of “holding fast to the word of life” (Phil 2:16). In a negative sense it is used to mean wrongly suppressing something or holding it down. Thus other translations of the Bible speak in Romans 1:18 of those who “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (NIV), “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (NASB), and “keep truth imprisoned in their wickedness” (JB). The New English Bible says that such people are “stifling” the truth. This, then, is the nature of the problem. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against human beings, not because they have simply and perhaps carelessly overlooked the truth, but rather because they have deliberately and wickedly repressed whatever, deep in their hearts, they know about God.
R. C. Sproul has called this argument “the heart of Paul’s psychology of atheism,”4 pointing out it is here that human guilt lies. Sufficient knowledge has been given to all people to cause them to turn from themselves and their own way of life to God and so at least to begin to seek him. But this knowledge, like a great spring, has been pressed down. Now the spring threatens to leap up and demolish the views and lifestyle of the one repressing it. So that person holds it down, suppressing the truth.
Why do we do this? If it is true, as pointed out in the last chapter, that the knowledge of God leads to our chief good, and if, as we have just said, the beginning of that knowledge is already present to us, then why do we repress it? Would we not welcome such truth and seek to draw it out? Are people simply irrational at this point? Or is Paul’s view faulty?
Paul is not wrong. Men and women do suppress truth. But their reason for doing so is that they do not like the truth about God. They do not like the God to which the truth leads them.
Notice that Paul begins these verses from Romans by saying that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all “ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Ungodliness has a variety of meanings. Here the meaning is not so much that human beings are not like God (though that is true) but that in addition they are in a state of opposition to God in his godly nature. God is sovereign, but people do not like his sovereignty. They do not want to acknowledge that there is one who rightly exercises rule over them. God is holy, but men and women do not like his holiness. His holiness calls our own sinfulness into question. God is all-knowing, but we do not like his knowledge. We do not like a God who sees into the dark recesses of our hearts and knows us intimately. Nearly everything that can be known about God is repugnant to the natural person in one way or another. So we repress the evidence that would lead us in the direction of a true knowledge of God.
The second word is “unrighteousness.” Everything about God is repugnant to the natural person, but the dominant cause of this repugnance is God’s righteousness. God is holy, but people are unholy. People are unrighteous, and they like their unrighteousness. Consequently, they do not wish to know a God who would press moral claims on them. To know God would require change. In other words, the refusal to know God is based not so much on intellectual causes as on moral ones.
REJECTING KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
At this point we have come to the true source of the human problem. Men and women have rejected the beginnings of the knowledge of God for moral and psychological reasons. But they find it impossible to stop there. They have rejected God; but they are still God’s creatures and have a need for God (or something like him) in their intellectual and moral make-up. Being unwilling to know the true God and being unable to do without him, they invent substitute gods to take his place. These gods may be the sophisticated scientific laws of our culture, the gods and goddesses of the Greek and Roman worlds, or the depraved, bestial images of paganism.
The universality of religion on this planet is not due to men and women being seekers after God, as some have argued. Rather it is because they will not have God, yet need something to take God’s place.
The process of rejection is a three-stage process well known to contemporary psychologists: trauma, repression, and substitution. In his analysis of atheism, Sproul shows that confrontation with the true God shocks and injures people. It is traumatic. Consequently, we repress what we know. “There is no trauma if the eyes are forever closed so that no light penetrates. But the eyes close in reaction to the shock of the light—after the pain has been experienced.”5 The important point here is that the knowledge of God, though repressed, is not destroyed. It remains intact, though deeply buried in the subconscious. The lack is therefore felt, and substitution of “that which is not God” for the true God follows.
GOD’S WRATH
At last, then, we arrive at Paul’s first statement, having taken the three main points of the passage in reverse order: the wrath of God is justly revealed against human beings because they suppressed the knowledge of God that was plain to them.
Some people are deeply disturbed by the teaching that the great God of the universe expresses wrath. They understand that God is a God of love, as indeed he is, and cannot see how God can possess the one characteristic as well as the other. In this, they fail either to understand or to know God. A God who does not have wrath against sin is a deformed or crippled God. He lacks something. God is perfect in his love. That is true. But God is also perfect in his wrath, which, as Paul tells us in Romans, is “revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men.”
In any logical presentation of doctrine, the wrath of God is the first truth we have to learn about him. Why didn’t Paul begin by saying that the love of God is revealed from heaven? It is not that God is not love, for he is, as Paul will show later. Rather, it is so we will recognize our deep spiritual need and be prepared to receive the knowledge of God in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior, where alone we can receive it. If men and women come to God boasting of their alleged spiritual knowledge, God will declare them to be ignorant. If they come to God boasting of their own achievements, God cannot and will not receive them. But if they come humbly, recognizing that they indeed have rejected what has been clearly revealed about God in nature, that they are without excuse, that God’s wrath justly hangs over them, then God will work in their lives. He will show that he has already made a way for removing the wrath due them, that Jesus has borne it, and that the way is now open for their growth in both the love and knowledge of God which is salvation.
BOOK 1~THE SOVEREIGN GOD
PART II
THE WORD OF GOD
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
