Vos – Biblical Theology.
July 31, 2008 at 11:13 am | Posted in Biblical Theology, Covenant Theology, Reading | 2 CommentsTags: Biblical Thology, Covenant Theology, Geerhardus Vos, Knowing God, Making God Known
God’s self-revelation to us was not made for a primarily intellectual purpose. It is not to be overlooked, of course, that the truly pious mind may through an intellectual contemplation of the divine perfections glorify God. This would be just as truly religious as the intensest occupation of the will in the service of God. But it would not be the full-orbed religion at which, as a whole, revelation aims. It is true, the Gospel teaches that to know God is life eternal. But the concept of ‘knowledge’ here is not to be understood in its Hellenic sense, but in the Shemitic sense. According to the former, ‘to know’ means to mirror the reality of a thing in one’s consciousness. The Shemitic and Biblical idea is to have the reality of something practically interwoven with the inner experience of life. Hence ‘to know’ can stand in the Biblical idiom for ‘to love’, ‘to single out in love’. Because God desires to be known after this fashion, He has caused His revelation to take place in the milieu of the historical life of a people. The circle of revelation is not a school, but a ‘covenant’. To speak of revelation as an ‘education’ of humanity is a rationalistic and utterly un-scriptural way of speaking. All that God disclosed of Himself has come in response to the practical religious needs of His people as these emerged in the course of history.
Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology p. 8-9ish.
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Thank you for this post, Bryan. I needed to read and seriously meditate on these thoughts from a great man of God. Vos is right– true knowledge of God is holistic. It necessarily involves one’s whole person, including one’s thoughts, desires, and actions. If “knowledge” of God stays in the mind alone and is not acted upon, it either not a true, Biblical knowledge at all, or it is, at best, a very partial knowledge that radically shortchanges the Biblical model. Thank you for reminding me with this excerpt from Vos that I must never be satisfied with Biblical “knowledge” that is purely intellectual. True knowledge must change my heart and my actions!
Comment by Christopher Lake — August 5, 2008 #
it *is* either not a true, Biblical knowledge of God, I mean… sorry, left a word out there!
Comment by Christopher Lake — August 5, 2008 #