Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 116:462 (Apr 1959)
Article: Contemporary Problems in Biblical Interpretation Part II: How Can Man Know God?
Author: John F. Walvoord

BSac 116:462 (Apr 59) p. 99

Contemporary Problems in Biblical Interpretation
Part II:
How Can Man Know God?

John F. Walvoord

[Editor’s Note: This article is the second in a series on the general subject, “Contemporary Problems in Biblical Interpretation.”]

I. The Quest to Know God

From ancient times thinking men have searched for some explanation of the world in which they live and some key to the purpose and meaning of life. The Bible records that God revealed Himself to Adam and to some of his immediate posterity, but as the human race enlarged much of what had been revealed was forgotten. The great mass of mankind became increasingly ignorant of God and His way, though it is possible that much more was known about God in the early history of the race than has been preserved in any written form. The Book of Job, recording the thoughts of Job and his friends living centuries before Scripture was written, shows a remarkable knowledge of God, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

The beginning of modern intellectual development and philosophic thought as recorded in the writings of the early Greeks is theologically far below the level of Job’s time. Even brilliant men among Greek philosophers seem to have little knowledge of God. Their writings, however, testify to the insatiable curiosity of the keenest minds in the ancient world as they searched for some explanation of the origin and nature of their world.

The problems which the Greeks attempted to solve have again occupied the center of the stage in the twentieth century. The modern mind, having discarded Scripture as an authoritative voice and retired to the somewhat agnostic position that the nature of God cannot be known with certainty, has taken a new approach. The events of the twentieth century have demonstrated the mockery of any explanation of life which is not centered in God. The pressures of fear and uncertainty and the obvious shallowness of material prosperity have triggered the desire for an explanation of the enigma of life itself.

BSac 116:462 (Apr 59) p. 100

In a world which has discovered so much scientifically and so little about God there was demand for a renewed study of what man can know about God. Though much of the philosophic world is still agnostic and naturalistic, the theological world at least has come up with a new explanation of how man can know God.

That new answer, in a word, is crisis theology, the idea that man by a supernatural experience or crisis can bridge the gap between his finiteness and the infinite God. By this means man can, in effect, know God. The God thus revealed is an infinite, transcendent God who is sovereign over His creatures. Such a God cannot b...