Review Essay, Keeping the Balance

And herein lies the problem with some of the traditional arguments for God’s existence: “they treat God as though he were not a living, personal being to whom we are personally related, but as an object whose existence and nature is subject to disinterested scrutiny”. If we are going to understand people, Williams argues, it must be “within a certain context of relationships”, and the best context for understanding them is one of “willingness to learn and to serve, of humility and of love”. We find then that understanding involves “the disposition of the heart” as well as the function of the mind. Personal attitudes “can cloud or advance our understanding”. Consequently, we are justified in asking, “If there is a personal God, why should we believe that we can advance far in knowledge and understanding by purely intellectual processes?”

Of course, we haven’t yet resolved the question of whether or not there is a personal God, so is there really any point in talking about “attitudes of humility and so on in relation to the knowledge of God”? Williams replies with a resounding “yes”! For “according to the Christian witness, if the reality of God’s personal being comes in to view at any point, it is with the person of Jesus”. “If God is known supremely through Jesus, then we approach the knowledge of God by approaching Jesus”. This is the door that Christianity offers the world. It is here that we must knock. In knocking, we may find that there was nothing behind the door after all, but “this is certainly the direction in which we must now turn”.

Approaching Jesus as the way to approaching God Here is the logic, then: Jesus is said to reveal God. “Jesus was a person. He can be understood, if at all, only in the mode of personal knowledge. We have found that this is bound to require a certain disposition of the heart. It follows that if our enquiry about God takes the form of an enquiry about Jesus, it requires a certain disposition of the heart to conduct it aright”. Approaching Jesus is the next thing we must consider.

Tags: balance, carl trueman, christian student, daniel strange, david field, intervarsity, phillip duce, theology, theology degree

Category: In Depth, Spring 2006