Knowing God – Week 2:
Chapter 1: The Study of God
apostle’s creed
REVIEW
What it is to know God?
As Creator/Redeemer
Through General Revelation
Through Special Revelation
What is God known by?
El-Shaddai – God Almighty
Elohim – God of eternity
YHWH (Jehovah) – I AM
Compassion/mercy, grace, patience, love, faith, forgiveness and justice
What is the purpose of this knowledge?
Worship
Obedience
Holiness
Our cure for the “Ignorance of God – ignorance of his ways and the practice of communion with him” is Knowing God
Basic themes
Foundation Principles – 5 Basic Truths
God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation. (Special Revelation – the teaching of one mind, the mind of Christ)
God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections in all that he does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore him. (God as Creator)
God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to bless them accordingly. (God as Redeemer)
God is triune; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.
Calvin – There are thus three:
not in status, but in degree;
not in substance, but in form;
not in power, but in its manifestation
Godliness means responding to God’s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in the light of God’s Word. This, and nothing else, is true religion.
Our purpose for knowing God
Our cure from ignorance of his ways and the practice of communion with him
? What main themes will we be studying? Any that make you uncomfortable? Any challenges?
The Heidelberg Catechism – Question 21
What is true faith?
True faith is not only a certain knowledge (Godliness – true religion), whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word (special revelation), but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart (applied redemption); that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits (God as Redeemer).
Westminster Confession of Faith (S – 4/L – 7) - Chapter 2 – Concerning God and the Holy Trinity
There is only one living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a completely pure spirit, invisible, without bodily parts or human emotions, unchangeable, immensely vast, eternal, beyond our understanding, almighty, completely wise, completely holy, completely free and completely absolute.
He works everything according to the purpose of His own unchangeable and completely righteous will for His own glory. He is completely loving, gracious, merciful, and patient. He overflows with goodness and truth. He forgives wickedness, transgression, and sin, and rewards those who diligently seek Him. His judgments are completely just and awesome; He hates all sin and will not acquit the guilty.
THEology
? What comes to your mind when you hear the word theology? What is your attitude toward theology?
Carolyn Custis James
“theology is knowing God…it is about what it means to be a Christian…in reality, theologian, is just another word for Christian”
“Knowing God is not like we are spectators but participants in a relationship”
Women Need Theology for:
Themselves
Each Other
Their Children
Men
? Why does Packer think that “a study of the nature and character of God…is the most practical project anyone can engage in?
Page 19 – “we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.”
Philip Schaff
“It comes as a new life; regeneration, conversion, and sanctification; as a creative fact in experience, taking up the whole man with all his faculties and capacities, releasing him from the guilt and the power of sin, and reconciling him with God, restoring harmony and peace to the soul, and at last glorifying the body itself.”
“Every true advance in Christian knowledge and life is conditioned by a deeper descent into the mind and spirit of Christ”
Knowledge of God in Christ distinguished:
Truth
Divine substance
Living and life-giving power
Infinite, unchanging and eternal
Dogma (doctrine)
Human apprehension or statement of it
Logical formula
Finite, changeable and perfectible
danger zone
? What are your motives in pursuing this study?
A Little Exercise for Young Theologians
A young student has a question that he is eager to raise in the discussion period following the Bible study hour. Under the pressure of putting it into words, because of his excitement and embarrassment, his pulse beats high. But finally he takes this pounding heart of his into his hands, stands up, frames his question and lets himself speak out freely with a couple of critical objections.
Now you should see how the young theological "pro's" feel summoned to the lists. With lances lowered and at a rattling gallop, with their lips painfully locked, hardly repressing a howl of triumph, they pounce upon him. Then the technical terms fly around the uninitiated ears of the unhappy layman.
…
The student was in bitter earnest. Whoever is in earnest instinctively reacts with unusual sensitivity. And this instinct makes him say quite rightly: "Although my fate and my life were at stake, those others came at me with their routine. I found in them no trace of life or truths learned by experience. I smelled only corpses of lifeless ideas. I would rather go back to the less rigid young heathen. Granted that they haven't much to say to me, and that what little is probably wrong, at least it is genuine. I was looking for a Christian in whom I could detect a flame. I found only burnt-out slag. Maybe there was a glow underneath, but I am just so unused to it that I wouldn't see such hidden fire."
JI Packer
Young Scholar, “Theology is bad for one’s soul”
Older Scholar, “But this only shows how a good thing can be spoiled”
Going Bad on Us (pg 21-22)
Pride
Conceit
Intoxication
Self-Satisfied/Self-Deception
Psalm 119: 97-105
? What should be our ultimate aim in studying the Godhead?
? How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God?
meditation
Defined
Princeton University, “continuous and profound contemplation or musing on a subject or series of subjects of a deep or abstruse nature”
Packer, “the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God.”
Etymology – to remedy
Spurgeon, “No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God…I know nothing which can so comfort the soul…”
Psalm 27: 8, “My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, LORD, I will seek.”
open discussion
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