One of the most highly impactful and rewarding aspects of last year’s Discipleship Program was introducing the students to good Christian books. Over the course of this year's blog I have decided to provide our students and readers with what I hope is a series of helpful book reviews. Let’s jump right in…
John Reviews:
The Knowledge of the Holy
by A. W. Tozer
Overview
Tozer establishes the necessity to think rightly about God. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” The reason for this is summed up in his statement, “we tend, by a secret law of the soul, to move toward our mental image of God.”
As we worship and serve God, we worship and serve who and what we perceive God to be. Thus we must be careful to gain our understanding of God from God’s own revelation of himself, and not from our own desires or imaginations of what God is or should be. Tozer makes the bold claim that incorrect or imagined versions of God are idols that stand in for the true God.
Tozer goes on however, to express the impossibility of knowing God. God if self-existent and fundamentally different from anything created. This basically means that we have no frame of reference for God. As Tozer says, “God is not like anything.”
The answer to how we can know this God who possesses an unknowable nature is that God reveals himself to us. Through his Spirit and because of our position in Christ, we may see and know God beyond our normal limitations through faith. “Faith must proceed all effort to understand.”
Tozer than proceeds to address attributes, which he defines very broadly as truths about God. He spends a short, to-the-point chapter on each of the following: the trinity, the self-existence, self-sufficiency, eternity, infinity, immutability, omniscience, wisdom, omnipotence, transcendence, omnipresence, faithfulness, goodness, justice, mercy, grace, love, holiness, and sovereignty of God.
Writing
Tozer is not a bad writer. He has an impressive vocabulary and has a good grasp of using the right word rather than the fanciest word (a trait painfully rare among theologians). He is also very good at illustrations, word pictures, and concise explanations. His conciseness is particularly good, making his writing dense with content and value. On the downside, he does write like a speaker, which is not ideal. He tends to switch back and forth between styles of pros without warning. One paragraph will be a dry and clinical analysis, and the next will launch into a florid attempt at esoteric eloquence, to be followed in turn by a conversational, straight-forward piece. This can result in a bit of reader whiplash.
The work is quite dated (1961). However, because of Tozer’s tendency to use good words rather than jargon terms, I found the language was not a barrier.
Impressions
The Knowledge of the Holy is a concise, well done, and deeply thoughtful treatment of a vital topic – THE vital topic if you will: God.
I appreciated three things especially about Tozer’s approach. First, he emphasized the relational and experiential nature of seeking the attributes of God. That we know and love God as we embark on this journey. It is not a sterile exercise of academia. Second, that we must be careful to exercise metacognition in this pursuit. We must think careful and well, and not process God the way we do other creatures. Thirdly, he talked about the unity and perfection of attributes with God. We cannot see God as “simply” or “only” anything.
I had some issues with his logic in a few arias, and disagreed with a few things; but these were not significant enough to drudge up here. I did laugh when Tozer decried the new-fangled wimpiness of the 1940s-50s; which many today would imagine as the mythical “good old days”.
This is a book on God, but don’t think for a moment that Tozer’s book is a convenient summery of God. In fact, of all the approaches to God’s attributes, I felt like Tozer was one of a few who succeeded in not putting God in a box.
I would recommend this book to almost any believer. This is also a small and readable book. My copy is 117 pages.
Under Grace,
John Fritz
John Fritz is the Volunteer Coordinator for Thoughtful Life Ministries and the primary author of the Thoughtful Life Journal, which is published weekly from March through September. The purpose of this blog is to challenge and encourage those who have a desire to cultivate a more meaningful walk with Christ. Visit our Homepage to learn more about the ministry and our annual two-week summer Discipleship Program for teens and young adults.