  Foundations of the Faith
Foundations
of the Faith explores
and explains Thy will By Robert P. Mills, The LaymanVolume 34, Number 6, Posted October 5, 2001 |
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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).”
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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