Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/69

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Systematic Theology For Members of Consistory

Topic - Consistory

Words and what they

Study of theology is unique. This means: it cannot be compared with any other study. True, just as in any other field of study you have to read, you have to think, here, as everywhere else nothing can be achieved by laziness, by taking it easy. In so far the study of theology has a good many things in common with any other discipline. But in theology there are elements which do not enter into the picture when your field of study is a different one.

For instance. There is a very gifted young man, intensity interested in the field of medicine, he is able to study medicine for many years and becomes an able doctor. There is another gifted young man, who wants to study theology, he studies hard and acquires his degrees, one after another: bachelor of theology, master of sacred theology, doctor of theology. Does this mean, as it did in our first example, that he is now a fit minister of the Gospel, a man who has insight into the things of God, able to teach others? It may be that this is not so at all, that all the knowledge he has acquired is only foolishness in the eyes of God! Why? Because in theology there is an element all important that is missing in other fields of study. When you study chemistry or biology, you study an object, but in theology you have to do with the living God and it is only and exclusively up to Him, whether He will grant you insight into the things of His Kingdom. The prime condition here is faith, is trust in God which includes obedience and humility, the sense that God is in heaven and you are on earth.

Everyone who studies theology has to keep in mind that our Lord Jesus Christ thanked God for the fact that He has hidden the things of Himself to the wise and learned and revealed them to children. But we have to add that a man with no more than public school education does not necessarily belong to the "children" in the sense in which our Lord used that word here, while very learned men may indeed belong to the "children".

Our Lord told the Jews that only the one who is willing to obey God, will be able to discern whether what He said was from God or not. So, in theology your insight is dependent 'upon something that has nothing to do with intellect at all and that is obedience. Calvin too has pointed out again and again that only in obedience we learn who God is. The study of theology can be an endeavour to "love God with our entire mind" but here especially is the word from the Letter to the Hebrews applicable: "without faith it is impossible to please God." Of course, you can study with mere intellect the things if God and even become a professor of theology, but then you will have no insight, the power of spiritual discernment will not be yours, for that can never be acquired on our own, it can only be given by God, if and when it pleases Him.

There is a second thing to remember for everyone who starts to study the things of God, no matter whether he is a minister, a professor of theology or a "layman", something he has to repeat to himself again and again. It is the old wisdom expressed in the sentence: "If two men say the same thing, it is not the same thing". For everything here depends upon what is meant. There is an enormous confusion in the world of theology and consequently with many members of the Church because this simple wisdom is not heeded. We have to learn (and it is not always easy, especially not at the beginning) what a man, writing or speaking about the things of God means with the words he uses.

That is supremely applicable to the word GOD. For when the average member of the Church hears an address or reads a book or article in which the word GOD is used, he too quickly assumes that the man is talking or speaking of the One about Whom our Church confesses: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," but in a good many cases, although he uses the word "God", what he means is something entirely different!

An example may clarify this state of affairs a bit. One of my fellow students in theology, a very gifted man, now a professor of theology in the U.S.A., had prepared a paper: "Prayer in Islam" (that is: in the Moehammedan world). He had worked hard for it and the number of books he had read about the subject was impressive. But in the discussion that followed, someone made a remark which cut the whole impressive piece of work to shreds. He said: "What prayer is, is determined by the One to Whom it is directed and as Allah (the God of the Moehammedans) is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it follows that Moehammedan prayer is different from Christian prayer and you have treated them as if they were the same." And that was perfectly true.

The philosophers of all ages have thought about the "ground of Being" and called that "God". They did not start in their thinking from God's revelation, they started from themselves, from their own ideas about "God" but this result of their thinking which they called "God" has nothing to do with the God Who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. It is simply an idol, an idol of the mind, just as other people make idols of wood and stone. And the human mind, as Calvin reminded us, is always busy to produce idols. When you read books written by Paul Tillich, bishop Robinson, Paul van Buren, and you read the word "God" you have to realize that this word has little or nothing to do with the God of Israel; this "God" only exists in the minds of those who write about their self conceived idols.

To know God

All the time we have to keep in mind that the verb "to know God" as it is used in the O.T. does not mean to, have knowledge about an object, as we can have knowledge about a piece of machinery. The Hebrew verb "to know God" means to have communion with Him, to stand in a living relationship to Him. Only on this basis of communion with Him the right theology is possible. Many years ago Dr. E. Brunner gave a lecture "The idea of God of the philosophers and the Creator God of faith": that is indeed an absolute contrast: the two simply nave nothing to do with each other. Therefore, when you read books or articles of theology, you have always to be on your guard whether the man who speaks or writes about God is referring to his own ideas of "God" (an idol which does not exist outside of his own mind!) or to the living God. Therefore: Christian writers who know this state of affairs are always careful to make it clear that the One about Whom they are speaking or writing is the God Who has revealed Himself in His Son Jesus Christ. They will either God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob", (quoted by our Lord in Luke 20 : 37) or they will say with Paul, the apostle "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" to make it perfectly clear that they are indeed referring to the living God and not to some idea about Him formed in the mind of philosophers.

Humility and obedience

Study of theology therefore includes everyday anew, an act of humility and an act of obedience and the two are one. For, as Calvin was not tired to point out again and again: When we read the Scriptures we find that they contradict again and again our own cherished ideas. Faced with that situation you can do one Of the following things. You can say: "Look here, these ideas cannot stand up against the perfect insight that we, people of the twentieth century, have gained; we have to explain these passages of the Bible in accordance with our modern ideas."

You can also take a totally different attitude. You can humbly admit that your ideas are wrong and allow yourself to be corrected by what God tells you in His Word. That is the way of humility, of obedience, the only Christian way. The Christian religion, Christian, theology is based on revelation. What does that mean,? It means that no human being has in himself the possibility to know Who God is; we can only know God because it has pleased Him to reveal Himself to us, to give us to understand Who He is, so that we may know Him and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent. That happens only in faith; God reveals Himself only to the One who puts his trust in Him; human intellect is not able to discover Him. Therefore there is nothing more important that to know Who God is, it is, as Calvin said, both the purpose of our human life and our perfect happiness. This included the negative knowledge of what He is not! With the Christians of all ages we confess that God is the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, our Creator and Redeemer.

Next time we hope to give you a bit of the history of doctrine so that we may see why the Christian Church was forced to formulate this doctrine of the Trinity against the false teachings (heresies) which threatened to destroy the Christian Church altogether.

Footnote

Everyone who is interested in these matters I would advise to order the cheap paperback: Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology - an Introduction. (Published by The Fontana Library, price 8 shilling 6 d.) From Mr. James Thin, 53-59 South Bridge, Edinburgh 1, Scotland. In this booklet the things which I was only able to touch in this article are brilliantly and clearly explained. Mr. Thin also informed me that he has some more Wallace books available:

Dr. R. Wallace:

Calvin's Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments - $1.08.

Idem of the Christian life - $1.50.

Handling and postage will have to be added, but even so the books are very cheap and a great value for your money.

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