Your Quintessential Knowledge Source: God's Word
Genesis 3:19-9 is the most tragic section in the whole Bible. It talks about the fall of Adam
and Eve. In the text, Eve, who could be
called the first enthusiast, departs from the quintessential knowledge source, God’s Word, and eats the forbidden fruit. She believed Satan contrary to
God’s Word. This was the Devil’s plan: to
distance her from the Word. Adam, being the head of the
family, should also have trusted God’s
Word, put Eve over his shoulder, brought her to God, confessed her sin, and
said, “Now take my life.” However, Adam took the fruit as
well, disobeying and distancing himself from God’s Word. Therefore, “since the fall of
Adam, all human beings who are born in the natural way are conceived and born
in sin. This means that from birth they
are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess true fear of
God and true faith in God.”[1] Mankind, who was created in the
image of God, now has an image that “is not
lost, but turned to its opposite.”[2] Otherwise stated, because of the
fall “sinners have further diminished
their ability to comprehend who God is and what his disposition toward his
human creatures is.”[3] Mankind’s nature is weak, his
view of truth is tainted, his reason warped, his worldview blurred; mankind
loves carnal things because man is bound in sin and the deception of the evil
one. Therefore, in regard to the Word,
we confess that the “words of Scripture are not spoken
merely in order to elicit agreement of noble feelings among the hearers, but
rather to form, reform, the hearers.”[4] Because of mankind’s need for the
Word, after the fall, God did not abandon His creation but rather
“entered into conversation with his human creature immediately after they had
broken off their relationship with him, and God has continued to make contact
with fallen sinners in order to reveal himself to them as well.”[5] Simply put, “The Word of God
invades the world of sinners”[6]
and continually functions as the only source, rule, and norm of the church’s
faith and practice. The Word must invade; it must be
the church’s source of knowledge and faith. For apart from the Word, the church
and the world are left in despair with counterfeit and fallen knowledge sources.[7]
As already stated, the truth of God’s Word is the
quintessential knowledge source for the church and world. "According to Scripture the
Church has no doctrine of its own, no doctrine alongside and without Christ’s
Word.”[8] However, the Word of God is not
without competition; other counterfeit sources of truth confront individuals
and the church. For example, while logic,
scientific method, and the tenets of rationalism do contain elements of truth,
these systems have inflicted substantial consequences upon church and culture by diminishing the authoritative status of the Word. The Scriptures are even abrogated
“by substituting for it the regenerate reason, or, as it is also called, pious
self-consciousness, Christian experience, Christian Ego, faith consciousness,
faith, spirit, etc. . . . all these sources and norms, when they are used
alongside and apart from the Bible, are simply illusions.”[9]
In 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 the Apostle Paul discusses the message of
the cross in the midst of other knowledge sources saying:
For the word of the cross is folly to those
who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it
is written, "I
will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I
will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the
debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For
since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it
pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For
Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the
foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than
men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according
to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But
God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is
weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in
the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so
that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you
are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and
sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one who
boasts, boast in the Lord."
In
this text, Paul identifies three different epistemological systems; networks on
which all else rested. The first is the Jewish
epistemological system, the second is the Greek epistemological system, and the
third is the Theology of the Cross as an epistemological system. Concerning the first two ways of
thinking, Paul is saying that, “the Jews seek for ‘miraculous signs,’ and the
Greeks seek wisdom and through these means they hope to find the answers to
questions about God and life.”[10] Otherwise stated, the Jewish way
demanded external signs and wonders in order to judge whether or not a
messenger was of God. They demanded and wanted tangible
signs, subsequently laying forth criteria of what is truth and what is not. The Greek way held to their love
of philosophy and knowledge. They held to the wisdom of the
world as their epistemological system.
What
both of these epistemological systems have in common is that the learner/knower is
ultimately in control. In both cases, knowledge and
truth need to be validated by set expectations.
The
third option that Paul describes is the cross of Christ. Interestingly, the cross was
rejected by the Jewish and the Greek
way of thinking. W. Harold Mare comments on this
saying:
To
the unsaved Jews, however, this message of a crucified Christ was a ‘stumbling
block,’ an offense for they expected a political deliverer. To the non-Jewish world the cross
was ‘foolishness’—criminals died on crosses, and they could not see how the
cross provided any moral philosophical standard to help them toward salvation. Furthermore, the Greeks and
Romans looked on one crucified as the lowest of criminals, so how could such a
one be considered a savior? From their viewpoint, the Greeks
would have had difficulty in conceiving of how a god, being spirit, could
become incarnate and thus provide a god-man atonement for sin. [11]
Both the Greek and
the Jewish epistemological systems, which are impacted by mankind's fall,
cannot process the message of the cross. Furthermore, the message of the
cross is still a stumbling block today. Robert Kolb and Charles Arand
state:
God’s
saving and life-restoring Word causes those whose minds are trying to master
life on their own terms to stumble. People are accustomed to
controlling their lives and their environments by learning through signs and
empirical testing or through logical and rational analysis. Such people are offended by
having to learn about the most important aspects of life, God, and their
relationship to him just by simply listening and receiving God’s gifts. They think the cross of Christ
reveals nothing but the end or absence of wisdom and power. They are wrong. Into sinful chaos and darkness,
God’s Word speaks the might and the prudence of his way of recreating fallen,
straying human creatures in order to restore light and life. [12]
Contrary
to the competing messages of various knowledge sources, the word of the
cross is the Christian’s message
The
word God speaks from the cross leads them back to listening to him and taking
him at his word. It permits them to acknowledge
him in the midst of death and despair. This word from the cross enables
them to fill in the blanks in their lives. It clings to his promise when
everything else contradicts the word of his love from the cross. It enables his people to confront
and describe themselves and the world around them honestly and forthrightly. The theology of the cross liberates
God’s children from having to construct falsehoods in order for life to make
sense. The truth of the cross sets them
free to speak the truth, no matter how bad it is, so that God’s truth in Jesus
may restore the good. [13]
The message of the cross is the Christian’s knowledge source in the midst of other knowledge sources.
Keep in mind, though, that "the 'theology of the cross' does not mean that for a theologian the church year shrinks together into nothing but Good Friday. Rather, it means that Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost cannot be understood without Good Friday."[14] Otherwise stated, "Always it is from the cross that everything is understood, because hidden in the cross is the deepest essence of God's revelation."[15]
[1] The Augsburg
Confession, Article II, The Book of
Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds. Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,
2000), 37-38.
[2] Gerhard Forde, Theology is for Proclamation (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 1990), 49.
[3] Robert Kolb and Charles Arand, The Genius of Luther’s Theology: A
Wittenberg Way of Thinking for the Contemporary Church (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2008), 144.
[4] William H.
Willimon, Pastor: The Theology and
Practice of Ordained Ministry (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002), 113.
[5] Robert Kolb and Charles Arand, The Genius of Luther’s Theology: A Wittenberg Way of Thinking for the
Contemporary Church, 144.
[6] Ibid.
[7] See John
15:1-ff.
[8] Francis Pieper,
Christian Dogmatics: Volume 1 (St.
Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1950), 202.
[9] Ibid, 200.
[10] W. Harold Mare,
Romans through Galatians: Volume 10,
The Expositor’s Bible Commentary with the New International Version. (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1976), 194.
[11] Ibid, 195.
[12] Kolb and Arand, The Genius of Luther's Theology: A Wittenberg Way of Thinking for the Contemporary Church, 146.
[13] Ibid, 147.
[14] Hermann Sasse, We Confess: Anthology, trans. Norman Nagel (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1999.), 38.
[15] Ibid, 39.
Comments