By Job Ayuba, December 22,
2016
People
of faith all through the centuries gave a unified testimony to the need to know
God and self. John Calvin made the statement, “There is no deep knowing of God
without the deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without the deep
knowing of God.”[i]
Blaise Pascal wrote, “The Christian religion … teaches men these two truths;
that there is a God whom men can know, and that there is a corruption in their
nature which renders them unworthy of Him. It is equally important to men to
know both these points; and it is equally dangerous for man to know God without
knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his wretchedness without knowing the
Redeemer who can free him from it. The knowledge of only one of these points
gives rise either to the pride of philosophers, who have known God, and not
their own wretchedness, or to the despair of atheists, who know their own
wretchedness, but not the redeemer.”[ii]
To know God is to know his
attributes and character through the revelation of his acts and word. For God’s
attributes and character are revealed to us in his acts and words. A.W. Tozer wrote,
“To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from
evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the
individual. ‘He must be,’ they say, ‘therefore we believe He is.’ Others do not
go even so far as this; they know of Him only by hearsay.”[iii]
The three major ways to knowledge are tradition (being told), experience
(encounter with the empirical), and reason (deductive and inferential). These are
connected and interdependent. Each of the three has a place in our coming to
know God. Yet we cannot reason our way to God for the knowledge is not a
product solely of reason. And knowing God involve more than knowing what others
say about Him.
To know self is to discover
who (identity) and what I am (character).
Whether we start with
knowing God or with knowing self (e.g. Socrates, “Man, know thyself”), we will
all arrive at the realization that one cannot be known without the other. Thomas
a Kempis, “a humble self-knowledge is a surer way to God than a search after
deep learning.”
The right to privacy is our
claim to have something hidden about ourselves. We want aspects of our lives to
be lived without the watching eyes of other people. But we cannot make a claim
of privacy from the all-knowing God. To some, knowing that God is aware of all
of their lives is agonizing. But it need not be so. For the knowledge that God
is aware of our lives can bring a huge sense of relief and release us from the
burden of self-protection.
The knowledge of God is a
transformational knowledge. For as we get to know who and what God is our self
will become transform in response to that knowledge. This knowledge is
transformational because it is an “experiential involvement with what is known
… actual engagement with it.”[iv]
The nature of personal knowledge differs from that of objective knowledge.
Thus, the approach and method of inquiries also differ for the two types of
knowledge. It is possible to study and know a material object without engaging
with it (an objective knowledge). But that cannot be done with persons. We
study persons by engaging with them and through that engagement we can arrive
at the point where it can be said ‘I know this person.’ The difference between
a person and an object is in the ability of persons to make choices or take
self-determined course of action – self-determination. Even where factors (external
and internal influences personal choice the individual human person has to
co-operate with the deterministic conditions before they can affect the course
of action. This ability for self-determination, and for voluntary co-operation,
is the reason why human individuals can be held responsible for their actions.
Because we are embodied
beings we do not have the means of knowing and discovering disembodied reality.
We can only know of that reality when it enters into our embodied material
reality or experience. Therefore, what we can know of God is what God reveals
to us – what He allows us to know about Him. It is because of this fact that
theology speaks of the incomprehensibility of God. First, he cannot be known
unless He reveals Himself in our embodied material reality, and that material
reality is inadequate to contain or reflect God completely. Second, we cannot
have exhaustive knowledge of God, for He is greater than what our ability to
comprehend is able to grasp. These two points calls for the need to always be
humble with our orthodoxy.
But God revealed Himself. He
did it at/in creation, in the exodus or redemption of Israel from Egypt under
Moses, and supremely in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
To know God is to know Him
as the God who knows who and what we are and have become (good creation turned wretched,
because we are affected by sin) and still accepts us (Grace). It is actually the
knowledge of what God is to us – His treatment and behavior toward us. We get
to know His attributes and character only in relation to His treatment of us. What
matters in this engaging transformational knowledge is the fact that God knows
us. We only know that God knows and accepts us. Jeremiah 9.24 says “… let him
who boasts boast … that he understands and knows me … the LORD, who exercises
kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight ….” J.I.
Packer in Knowing God writes, “What
matters supremely, therefore, is not in the last analysis the fact that I know
God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that He knows me. We are
graven on the palms of God’s hands and never out of the Divine mind. All our
knowledge of God depends on God’s sustained initiative in knowing us. We know
God because God first knew us and continues to know us.”[v]
To know God is to know Him in how He relates with us and in His works. Therefore,
knowing God goes beyond knowing and acknowledging His existence. A person that
knows God knows and enjoys the benefits of His works.
To live one’s life privately
from God, or as if God is not relevant, is what it means to not know Him. For God
to be relevant to one’s life there must be appropriation and receptions of the
benefits of God’s works in one’s life. Thomas Merton said, “to be unknown by
God is altogether too much privacy.” Not to know God implies one believes that
God does not know them, either because God does not care or He does not exist. David
Benner puts it this way, “If God does not know us, we do not exist.” In other
words, not knowing that God knows us will also imply not knowing oneself. In knowing
God lies self-knowledge. In finding God is also self-discovery. In response to
the vision of God, the prophet Isaiah cried, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I
am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6.5). His privation and
depravity only became apparent when He saw and discover the majesty and
holiness of God. But in atoning and cleansing his sin, he encounters God’s
grace. God’s treatment of him is a revelation of grace and mercy. And this is
the nature of the knowledge of God. It is personal, experiential and acquire in
our encounter with God’s revelation.
The life of faith is founded
on the knowledge of God. Saint Augustine asked, “who can call on You, not
knowing You? For he that does not know You may call on You as something other
than You are.”[vi]
The goal of the spiritual
life is in knowing God. Saint Augustine prayed, “You awaken us to delight in
Your Praise, for You made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until
they rest in You.”[vii]
[i] John Calvin, The Institute of the Christian Religion.
[ii] Blaise Pascal, Foundations of the Christian Religion, 102-3.
[iii] A.W. Tozer, The Best of A.W. Tozer, Book 2, 97.
[iv] Dallas Willard & Don Simpson, Revolution of Character, 45.
[v] J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 45.
[vi] Saint Augustine, The Confessions, 11.
[vii] The
Confessions, 11.
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