Knowing the Lord
Last night, I started reading John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, a book I read for the first time back in 1990. I enjoyed it then, but I think over the last couple of years in particular I’ve learned some things (and, I hope, gained some theological maturity) which will help me appreciate it even more. This book really ought to be a standard textbook for first year theology classes! Here’s a sample quotation from the Introduction:
We tend to forget how often in Scripture God performs His mighty acts so that men will “know” that He is Lord (cf. Exod. 6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29f.; 10:2; 14:4, 18; 16:12; Isa. 49:23, 26; 60:16; etc.). We tend to forget how often Scripture emphasizes that although in one sense all people know God (cf Rom. 1:21), in another sense such knowledge is the exclusive privilege of God’s redeemed people and indeed the ultimate goal of the believer’s life. What could be more “central” than that? But in our modern theologizing — orthodox and liberal, academic and popular — this language does not come readily to our lips. We speak much more easily about being saved, born again, justified, adopted, sanctified, baptized by the Spirit; about entering the kingdom, dying and rising with Christ; and about believing and repenting than we do about knowing the Lord (p. 2).
I also love his reference to God’s “mysterious historical slowness, which is never too late” (p. 2). Between this book by Frame and The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, I’m in for some good reading in the days to come!