“No one is able to claim any real knowledge about
God or God’s will.”
That statement, from a Bible study written for the 2001
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), is
breathtaking in scope and certitude.
If it is true, how do we deal with all the passages in
Scripture that speak about knowing God and his will? More
specifically, why did Jesus teach his disciples to pray “Thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven?”
Of course, if the statement is not true, if we can know and
do God’s will, we are still left with questions of how
God’s will is known and done.
Our next two studies will discuss what it means to pray that
God’s will “be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
First, however, we must consider what the will of God is and
whether and how it can be known.
Logical fallacies
The assertion that we can have no real knowledge of God or
his will comes from Session Five of Eung Chun Park’s
Rooted
and Grounded in Love, where he writes:
“In Romans 11:33, Paul says, ‘O the depth of the
riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are
his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!’ For Paul,
God is ultimately and completely beyond human comprehension.
No one is able to claim any real knowledge about God or God’s
will. Therefore we should never judge others according to our
putative knowledge about God’s will, as if we really knew
it. If anybody fails to recognize this and presumes he/she
knows something, that person does not yet know what he/she
ought to know, that is the fact that he/she really does not
know anything!” (p. 19)
Notice that in claiming that we can have no real knowledge of
God, Park asserts not only that God exists but that we can
know that God possesses the quality of existing. Further, to
insist that we cannot know God’s will Park must somehow
know that God has a will. In claiming such “real
knowledge” about God – that he exists and has a will
– Park disproves his own contention that God cannot be
known.
Beyond these logical fallacies is the more subtle
misunderstanding of the relationship between the part and the
whole. Here Park’s mistake is to assume that because we
cannot know God fully we cannot know God truly; that because
no human being can comprehend God completely therefore no
human being can have any real knowledge of God.
Consider, for example a husband and wife who have been
married 50 years. We would think it absurd to be told that
after five decades neither has any real knowledge of the
other. We would think it equally absurd to be told that each
knew every single thought and feeling the other ever had or
would have.
So it is with human knowledge of God and his will.
Hidden and
revealed
This brings us to the question of how we know God’s
will. By noting a distinction found throughout Scripture,
Thomas Oden identifies the cause of much confusion about such
knowledge:
“At times the divine will seems completely hidden to
finite searching, while at other times it seems clear and
revealed. This distinction between the hidden and revealed
will of God is found in Deuteronomy: ‘The secret things
belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to
us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the
words of this law’ (Deut. 29:29).”
What Oden calls God’s hidden will may be
described as God’s determination to do what he will do.
This facet of God’s will is said to be hidden because it
is known to God alone. (Some refer to this as God’s
decretive will, because it consists of what God has decreed
and what God decrees will come to pass.) He has neither
consulted with his human creation about these decisions and
decrees nor has he revealed them to us. Passages of Scripture
that deal with God’s hidden will include Psalm 115:3;
135:6; Romans 9:18-21; and Romans 11:33-34, which Park cited.
An example of God’s hidden will is found in the life of
Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers, but rose to
the rank of second highest in the land of Egypt. “You
intended to harm me,” Joseph later told them, “but
God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done,
the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20).
But Scripture has much more to say about God’s revealed
will, which includes what God tells us to do in the laws and
commandments he has revealed to us through Scripture. For that
reason it is also known as God’s preceptive will. This
facet of God’s will is described in passages including
Deuteronomy 30:14; Matthew 7:21; 12:50; John 4:34; and Romans
10:8; 12:2.
Throughout the Old Testament, God reveals to his people
certain patterns of behavior that he requires of them in
response to his covenant. God’s law may be understood as
the articulation of the ethical requirements of God’s
will. Therefore, doing God’s law (that is, doing God’s
will) is the essence of the appropriate life of response to
God’s covenant. Of course, for God’s will to be
done, it first had to be known and understood by his people.
In the New Testament, Jesus modeled a life lived in perfect
obedience to God’s will, and he showed us that this life
did not always take the easy course (Matt. 26:39-42). The Lord’s
Prayer shows that Jesus viewed God’s will as central to
the life of discipleship. Ultimately, the readiness of an
individual to acknowledge and then do God’s will
determines whether that person will be able to apprehend the
truth of Jesus (John 7:17).
God’s simple
will
Scripture clearly teaches that finite human beings cannot
fully know the infinite mind of God. Yet Scripture just as
clearly tells us that God has revealed a great deal of his
will for his human creation. To some, these truths may appear
contradictory. In fact, they are complementary. As John Calvin
points out with characteristic bluntness:
“God’s will is not therefore at war with itself …
But even though his will is one and simple in him, it appears
manifold to us because, on account of our mental incapacity,
we do not grasp how in diverse ways it wills and does not will
something to take place” (
Institutes, 1.18.3).
The claim that we can have no real knowledge of God or his
will may at first seem quite humble. But on closer examination
it proves to be a display of human pride. It denies the entire
Christian doctrine of revelation, a doctrine that includes the
creation of the universe, the inspiration of Scripture and,
supremely, the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Just a few verses past Romans 11:33 Paul says, “Do not
conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be
able to test and approve what God’s will is – his
good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2).
Far from teaching that God is “completely beyond human
comprehension,” as Park insists, Paul declares God and
his will can be known. Indeed, the result and the purpose of
the renewing of our minds is so that we can know God’s
will.
But we can know God’s will only as we offer ourselves to
him in holy living; only as we resist being shaped by the
world’s ways of thinking and acting; only as we allow him
to renew and transform our hearts and our minds.
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Additional Resources
John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia:
Westminister, 1960); Thomas Oden, Life in the
Spirit: Systematic Theology: Volume Three (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994); Eung Chun Park,
Rooted and Grounded in Love: A Bible Study for the
213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.) (n.p., 2001).
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