Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/70

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Knowledge of God and the Lordship Of Christ Part I

Topic - God

For one who writes, there is nothing more satisfying than to receive a reaction to what he wrote which is courteous, intelligent and thought provoking. Rev. J. J. Opmeer's "The one true God and the religions" is just that, which makes it a joy to answer him. A joy, but not an easy task! He has asked me to share with him my thoughts about:

1. The knowledge of God (true or false, perfect or imperfect).

2. Is there knowledge of God where Christ is not known or not accepted?

3. Is the Lordship of Christ manifest in this sense that we are able to present evidence of it?

4. What does the Lordship of Christ mean for those peoples of the world to whom the preaching of the Gospel has not yet come?

Well, each of these subjects is worthy to be treated in an academic dissertation and I am now invited to say something about them in a Pioneer article!

I am willing to give my thoughts for what they are worth in the hope that others will feel encouraged to enter into the debate so that by means of that our common Christian thinking may be clarified. May be the best thing to do is say now something about 1 and 2 and then about 3 and 4 in the next issue of Pioneer.

The knowledge of God

When we begin to think about this brief statement, we are right away up against a fundamental difficulty. This consists in the fact that we can ask: "What sort of knowledge?" and "Who is meant when we say 'God'?". In the Scriptures "knowledge of God" means: to have communion with Him, to have life in Him. ("This is eternal life: to know Thee Who alone art truly God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou has sent" John 17 3 NEB.) But now the expression "to know God" means for many: to have heard about God, to know Him in the intellectual sense of the word. This is the first difficulty and the second is this: What or Whom do we mean when we say "God,"? Do we mean the god of the philosophers or the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? To bring out the sharpest conflict here at once: Can we call the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? The Christians say: "Yes", the Jews say: No".

So first we have to say something about Israel and the knowledge of God, giving special attention to the Gospel according to John and the Letter to the Romans. Our Lord worked among the Jews of His days, men who were circumcised, who had been instructed in the Holy Scriptures, the very men "to whom the oracles of God were entrusted" (Romans 3 : 2). And yet, of those Jews who did not accept Him as Saviour and Lord Christ said clearly that they did not know God. There is here no question at all of knowing God only "imperfectly"; the contrast our Lord makes is final. "It is the Father Who glorifies Me, He of Whom you say: "He is our God", though you do not know Him. But I know Him; if I said that I did not know Him I should be a liar like you. But in truth I know Him and obey His Word" (John 8 :54-55). It is a horrible thing to say, but I cannot see that the Scriptures leave room for any other possibility here: If a Jew born and bred and educated in the Scriptures, hears the claim of Jesus Christ that He is the Son of God and rejects that claim, then, Christ says, this is proof that he does not know God. When (in John 15) our Lord prepares His disciples upon the fact that the Jews will persecute them, He does not say: "They will do these things because they are not willing to accept Me as their Messiah," it is infinitely more serious, for He says: "They will do these things because they do not know either the Father or Me."

One of the great Jewish thinkers of late was Martin Buber. His writings and his translation of the Old Testament have been read with profit and gratitude by many Christians. Can we now say, in the sense in which Christ used that word, that Buber "knew the true God?" With other words, is knowledge of God in the sense of communion with Him possible while a person rejects Christ as the Son of God? How terrible the conclusion is, I cannot see that the Gospel of John leaves room for that possibility. The Letter to the Romans too has to say a good deal about these matters. After Paul has stated that the whole world is subject to the wrath of God (chapter 1), he speaks about Israel in chapter 2. Endeavours to fulfill the Law do not bring any man in the right relationship to God. In chapter 3 all the advantages of being a Jew are summed up but when the question is raised: "What then? Are we Jews any better off?" the answer is a strong: "No, not at all! Jews and Greeks alike are all under the power of sin."

In the third chapter of Philippians Paul, the dedicated and convinced Jew who became a Christian sums up all the advantages he had (,compared with pagans) when he was a Jew but not yet a Christian. "If anyone thinks to base his claims on externals, I could make a stronger case for myself: circumcised on my eighth day, Israelite by race, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born and bred, in my attitude to the law, a Pharisee; in pious zeal, a persecutor of the church; in legal rectitude, faultless. But all such assets I have written off because of Christ. I would say more: I count everything sheer loss, because all is far outweighed by the gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for Whose sake I did in fact lose everything. I count it so much garbage, for the sake of gaining Christ and finding myself incorporate in Him, with no righteousness of my own, no legal rectitude, but the righteousness which comes from faith in Christ, given by God in response to faith" (Philippians 3 : 4-9). Could Buber have said this too? Of course not! All these advantages which Paul claimed to be "garbage" are in fact the very things the Jews appreciate as signs and seals of their belonging to the true God. There is no matter here of knowing God perfectly or only imperfectly; the contrast is between true knowledge of God in Christ and false, pretended knowledge. Romans 9-11 show how Paul has been tormented by the appalling fact that the Jews, the people of God, to whom the Messiah had been promised, who had waited for Him with great longing during all the centuries, rejected,, Him when He had come. As Christians we should follow Paul's example and daily pray for the conversion of Israel to the Messiah. But at the same time we have to remember "Brothers, my deepest desire and my prayer to God is for their (the Jews') salvation. To their zeal for God I can testify; but it is an ill-informed zeal. For they ignore God's way of righteousness, and try to set up their own, and therefore they have not submitted themselves to God's righteousness. For Christ ends the law and brings righteousness for everyone who has faith" (Romans 10 1-4).

When Christ came, the Jews had the Tenach (the O.T.) which was also for Christ and the Christians the Scriptures. Later on the Christians had the N.T. as well. But the Jews too had a continuation of the O.T.: the Talmud. In the first century "the Scriptures" were the same for Jews and Christians alike: the O.T. But now for the Christians the Scriptures consist of: Old and New Testament; for the Jews the Scriptures are: the O.T. (Tenach) and the Talmud.

It is enlightening to see what another prominent Jew, Franz Rosenzweig (quoted by Dr. K. H. Miskotte in "When the gods are silent") has to say: "What Christ and His Church mean for the world, we are agreed. No one comes to the Father except by Him. No on comes to the Father, but it is different when one need not come to the Father, because he is already with Him. And that is the case with the Jewish people (not with the individual Jew)."

With other words: "You gentiles need Christ to come to God, we Jews do not need Him, we are, already with God." So, for Fran Rosenzweig Romans 5 : 1 should read: "We then, justified by the fact that we are Jews, have peace with God - without Jesus Christ.'

The Christian conviction, base( on the N.T. testimony, is formulated by Prof. T. F. Torrance (Space, Time and Incarnation page 68): "Therefore, now that the Incarnation has taken place we must think of it as the decisive action of God in Christ which invalidates all other possibilities! and makes all other conceivably roads within space and time t( God actually unthinkable. In this way, the Incarnation together with the creation forms the great axis in God's relation with the world of space and time, apart from which our understanding of God and the world can only lose meaning".

Christ as the Saviour of the world

If we, faithful to the N.T. message, have to say to the Jews, "There is no true knowledge of God, in the sense of communion with Him, possible apart from Jesus Christ," then with even more emphasis we have to say the same thing to the pagan world and to the world of Islam as well. It is not even apt to speak here about perfect and imperfect knowledge, for any and every Christian's knowledge of God is and remains imperfect here on earth: only Christ has the perfect knowledge of God: He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. But that even the smallest measure of faith is honoured by Christ is clear from the fact that when the man crucified next to the Lord, said to Him: "Jesus, remember me when You come to Your throne," the answer was: "I tell you this, today you shall be with Me in paradise." But everything stands or falls with our willingness or unwillingness to accept Christ as Son of God and Son of man, Saviour and Lord.

As far as I can see, what Paul wrote in Romans I still applies to everyone who does not belong to Christ, it is the contrast between the old era and the new one. Only those who by faith have been ingrafted in Christ belong to the new era; part from Christ, which means at the same time without being guided by God's own Spirit, one can only belong to the old era without God and without hope in the world."

Perhaps it is helpful to quote here men who became Christians later in life. They in contrast to ourselves who grew up in. Christian homes knew what the transition means from ignorance of Christ to knowledge of Him. But first this. In a small booklet Dr. E. Brunner discussed the fact that many scholars claimed that for instance the Bhagavad Gita contains the same things you can find i,n the N.T. Brunner answered with one devastating sentence: "The Bhagavad Gita has everything the N.T. has, except Jesus Christ and that means: the Bhagavad Gita has nothing in common with the N.T." Augustine became a Christian later in life and when he was one, he gave a good deal of thought to the matters that concern us now: the relationship, respectively the contrast between the religions and Christ. He wrote: "It is one thing to stand on a high wooded mountain top and see the fatherland of peace from afar but to be ignorant about the way that leads to it, it is another thing to walk on the road that leads to it, a road that is guarded by the Lord of hosts."

Sadhoe S,oendar Singh was once visited by an English professor of 'Comparative Religions who did his best to show him that he had been wrong "to change his religion" as the professor expressed himself. He asked: "What specific ideas have you found in Christianity which you did not know when you were still a Hindu?" Soendar Singh answered: "I know Christ now, I did not know Him before." "Yes, of course," the other answered, "I know that but I mean what specific ideas, what special doctrines have you discovered as a Christian which you did not know before?" Again the answer was: "I know Christ now, I did not know Him before." No matter what the professor said, the answer was every time the same. To be a Christian means: to know Christ, to belong to Him, to have communion with the true God, which, apart from Christ is not possible.

This is what Christ testifies about Himself and as Dr. James Denney said: "To be a Christian (under one aspect of it) means: to take Christ at His own estimate." May I end this part of my answer with something I read in my student days? Then the books by the well known Methodist missionary in India, Dr. Stanley Jones were widely read. In his first (The Christ of the Indian Road) he relates the following. A fellow missionary of his, the Reverend Holland, had been engaged in a religious debate with a Hindu lawyer. The latter had the upper hand in the debate and therefore he said in a friendly tone: "After all, the difference between us is not so great! You Christians call yourselves converted when you have found God in Christ; we Hindus call ourselves converted when we find God in ourselves." The missionary answered: "Yes, but with this difference. In countries where Christ is known, conversions actually happen, whereas I never heard of a Hindu who claimed that he had found God in himself." The lawyer's face fell, he was silent for quite a time before he said: "You are perfectly right. I know far more Hindus than you do, of all denominations and sects and I too never met one who claimed that he had found God in himself."

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