But in the meantime, here is a wonderful quote from John Frame:
Sometimes in the Scriptures, "knowing" a person refers mainly to knowing facts about him, but most often it means being involved with him either as a friend or as an enemy . . . . When Scripture speaks of God "knowing" men, generally the reference is not to factual knowledge at all (since it goes without saying that God knows the facts). In such contexts, knowing generally means "loving" or "befriending" . . . .
Man's knowledge of God, then, is very similar to God's knowledge of man. To know Him is to be involved with Him as a friend or as an enemy. For the believer, to know Him is to love Him--hence the strong emphasis on obedience (as we have seen) as a constitutive aspect of the knowledge of God. Here, however, we wish to focus on the fact that the God whom we know and whom we love is of necessity present with us, and therefore our relationship with Him is a truly personal one. The intimacy of love assumes the present reality of the beloved.
--The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, pp. 46-47.
5 comments:
Amen to John Frame's quote. If the common OT idea of God "knowing" men is applied to Romans 8:29, as should be the case, then to be "foreknown" by God is to be "foreloved" by Him.
And I, for one, am very glad to be able to fly away knowing that my daughter is known for who she is, and is safe in your care.
There's no question that knowing in the biblical sense is almost exclusively a personal knowing; knowing more in the Deutsch sense of kennen rather than wissen. I mean, consider the fact that in the OT scriptures you may well "know" (hebrew: yada) someone by sharing their bed, if you get my drift. It's profoundly personal and intimate, not detached or, dare I say it, objective.
On a related note, this is one reason Christians shouldn't be scared of PoMo epistemology: it simply fits much better with a biblical account of knowing.
Of course, then, since I deal in the language of Wissenschaft (German for "science"), does that mean I don't truly know anything? Just kidding. I'm only being a bit provocative.
well, sitting in the middle of about 30,000 neuroscientists I could definitely decide I didn't "know" anything - one way or the other!
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