Knowledge of the Holy #4

Keeping with the tribute to the incredible literary awesomeness of A.W. Tozer and Frederick William Faber I'd like to post a few more bits from "Knowledge of the Holy".  I spent several hours every Wednesday this past semester discussing this book with some awesome guys.  Here were some of our favorite portions.

This post highlights some of our favorite thoughts from the portion titled, "Something True About God".

The study of the attributes of God, far from being dull and heavy, may for the enlightened Christian be a sweet and absorbing spiritual exercise.  To teh soul that is athirst for God, nothing could be more delightful.

Only to sit and think of God,
   Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the Name
   Earth has no higher bliss.
                         -- Frederick W. Faber

Glory thine attributes confess,
Glorious all and numberless.

If an attribute is something that is true of God, we may as well not try to enumerate them.

If an attribute is something true of God, it is also something that we can conceive as being true of Him.  God, being infinite, must possess attributes about which we can know nothing.  An attribute, as we can know it, is a mental concept, and intellectual response to God's self-revelation.  It is an answer to a question, the reply God makes to our interrogation concerning Himself.

To our questions God has provided answers; not all the answer, certainly, but enough to satisfy our intellects and ravish our hearts.  These answers he has provided in nature, in the Scriptures, and in the person of His Son.

Knowledge of the Holy #1
Knowledge of the Holy #2 
Knowledge of the Holy #3

Knowledge of the Holy #3

Keeping with the tribute to the incredible literary awesomeness of A.W. Tozer and Frederick William Faber I'd like to post a few more bits from "Knowledge of the Holy".  I spent several hours every Wednesday this past semester discussing this book with some awesome guys.  Here were some of our favorite portions.

This post highlights some of our favorite thoughts from the portion titled, "God Incomprehensible."

The child, the philosopher, and the religionist have all one question: "What is God like?"

God is not like anything that is, He is not exactly like anything or anybody.

We learn by using what we already know as a bridge over which we pass to the unknown.  It is not possible for the mind to crash suddenly past the familiar into the totally unfamiliar.  Even the most vigorous and daring mind is unable to create something out of nothing by a spontaneous act of imagination.

...when the prophet Ezekiel saw heaven opened and beheld visions of God, he found himself looking at that which he had no language to describe.  What he was seeing was wholly different from anything he had ever known before, so he fell back upon the language of resemblance. "As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire."

 To think of creature and Creator as alike in essential being is to rob God of most of His attributes and reduce Him to the status of a creature.

...there cannot be two unlimited substances in the universe.

When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not-God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, he is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which he has made and what He has made is not God.  If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.

 Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms.

If what we conceive God to be He is not, how then shall we think of Him?

...how shall we acquaint ourselves with One who eludes all the straining efforts of mind and heart? And how shall we be held accountable to know what cannot be known?

 "Canst thou by searching find out God?" -- Zophar the Namathite

 In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self-disclosure, although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love.  Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience.  God came to us in the incarnation; in atonement He reconciled us to Himself, and by faith and love we enter and lay hold on Him.

 "What is God like?"  If by that question we mean "What is God like in Himself?" there is no answer.  If we mean "What has God disclosed about Himself that the reverent reason can comprehend?" there is, I believe, an answer both full and satisfying.  For while the name of God is secret and His essential nature incomprehensible, He in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself.  These we call His attributes.

Sovereign Father, heavenly King,
 Thee we now presume to sing;
Glad thine attributes confess,
Glorious all, and numberless.
                        -- Charles Wesley

Knowledge of the Holy #1
Knowledge of the Holy #2

Knowledge of the Holy #2

For the second part of my tribute to the incredible literary awesomeness of A.W. Tozer and Frederick William Faber I'd like to post a few more bits from "Knowledge of the Holy".  I spent several hours every Wednesday this past semester discussing this book with some awesome guys.  Here were some of our favorite portions.


From Chapter 1 "Why we must think rightly about God"

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well.

 I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him.

Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.

Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom is a libel on His character. 

The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.

The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.

So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship and her moral standards declines along with it.

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him--and of her.

We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past.

O God of Bethel, by whose hand
   Thy people still are fed;
Who through this weary pilgrimage
  Hast all our fathers led!

Our vows, our prayers we now present
   Before Thy throne of grace
God of our fathers! be the God
   Of their succeeding race.
                        -- Philip Doddridge

Knowledge of the Holy #1
Knowledge of the Holy #3

Knowledge of the Holy #1

I'm a big fan of A.W. Tozer.  He was a big fan of Frederick William Faber.  It's as plain as the nose on my face (which is huge).  For the next couple of days I'm going to be sharing a compilation of various Tozer and Faber thoughts each day in addition to my regular posting.  This first bit comes from Chapter 2 of the book "Knowledge of the Holy" first printed in 1961.

Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Thy Presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak.  Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say?  Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.  Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe.  In Jesus' name.  Amen.


That God can be known by the soul in tender personal experience while remaining infinitely aloof from the curious eyes of reason constitutes a paradox best described as ...

Darkness to the intellect
But sunshine to the heart.
 - Frederick W. Faber

Knowledge of the Holy #2
Knowledge of the Holy #3