We Cannot Love God if We Do Not Love His Word

Emil Brunner, the twentieth-century Swiss theologian and one of the fathers of neoorthodox theology, wrote a little book titled Truth as Encounter. His thesis was that when we study the things of God, we are not studying truth in the abstract. We want to understand theology not merely so that we can make an A on a theology exam. We want to understand the doctrine of God so that we can understand God, so that we can meet the living God in His Word and deepen our personal relationship with Him. But we cannot deepen a relationship with someone if we do not know anything about him. So, the propositions of Scripture are not an end in themselves but a means to an end. However, they are a necessary means to the end. Thus, to say Christianity is not about propositions but about relationships is to establish an extremely dangerous false dichotomy. It is to insult the Spirit of truth, whose propositions they are. These propositions should be our very meat and drink, for they define the Christian life.

Recently I read some letters to the editor of a Christian magazine. One of them disparaged Christian scholars with advanced degrees. The letter writer charged that such men would enjoy digging into word studies of Christ’s teachings in the ancient languages in order to demonstrate that He did not really say what He seems to say in our English Bibles. Obviously there was a negative attitude toward any serious study of the Word of God. Of course, there are scholars who are like this, who study a word in six different languages and still end up missing its meaning, but that does not mean we must not engage in any serious study of the Word of God lest we end up like these ungodly scholars. Another letter writer expressed the view that people who engage in the study of doctrine are not concerned about the pain people experience in this world. In my experience, however, it is virtually impossible to experience pain and not ask questions about truth. We all want to know the truth about suffering, and specifically, where is God in our pain. That is a theological concern. The answer comes to us from the Scriptures, which reveal the mind of God Himself through the agency of the Holy Spirit, who is called the Spirit of truth. We cannot love God at all if we do not love His truth.

It is very sad to me that in today’s sophisticated Western culture, people are more familiar with the twelve signs of the Zodiac than with the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve Apostles. Our world likes to see itself as sophisticated and technological, but it remains filled with superstition. Christians are not immune to this. We, too, can succumb to the new-age desire for the power to manipulate our environment. We do not have to go as far as accepting the foolish idea that the courses of the stars determine our destinies, our prosperity, our achievements, and our successes. However, it is equally superstitious to equate our feelings and inclinations with the leading of the Holy Spirit. It seems so much more exciting to live with a freewheeling openness to the leading of the Holy Spirit rather than practicing the laborious discipline of mastering His Word. This is exceedingly dangerous ground. If we want to do the will of the Father, we need to study the Word of the Father—and leave the magic to the astrologers.

A distorted view of the actual God does not constitute “a god of one’s own making.” It constitutes a distorted view of the actual God. And every believer is going to have that in greater or lesser degrees until actually meeting God in heaven, purified from all sin. Yes, even the most sincere bible fanatic.

There seems to be an implication here that God is something we have to construct perfectly in our heads to be real. Maybe this is an implicit confession that this is what God is to THEM!

I have tried to point out, perhaps to deaf ears (oxymoron in metaphor? I might say blind eyes?) that sans a relationship, which means a communicating presence of God understood as what it is, the Word might as well be gibberish to us. Like talking about color to a blind man. It deals in a domain we cannot grasp before that, because we will not grasp God at all.

ALL what the Church does as part of its liturgical and ritual practices, and beliefs in communion with Christ, the saints, and its martyrs.

So you have shown you have a relationship with your religious institution, not Jesus Christ...

In the Eucharist, Catholics have the Living Body and Blood of Christ as He Himself promised during His time on earth and the Last Supper.

It's a piece of bread and wine...

Even if it did come to life and you ate it, that's not a relationship with the Risen Savior...You must have communication...

No one is saying that the “the leading of the Holy Spirit is absurd.” Rather, because of the diverse and often contradictory beliefs of Protestants and Episcopalians, each cannot claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit. That would make the Holy Spirit a contradiction unto itself.

Surely, the congregations of Joel Osteen, Jimmy Swaggart; Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Billy Graham, and hundreds of your neighborhood local Foursquare Churches cannot each claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

Well of course they can...God gave us all a spiritual instruction book...God does not force anyone to follow the instructions...Some follow it more than others...

Some don't want to believe the book...Some decide they are smarter than the book, reject it and become Catholic teachers...

Agains shallow Bible Christianity is in full display.

The Catholic Church is founded by Christ- ONE Church, ONE truth for ALL time.

You say God gave us all “a spiritual instruction book.”

This is ridiculous nonsense at its most absurd level. There was NO book given by Christ, at least not until the fourth century when the books were infallibly assembled by the Catholic Church. That infallible teaching did not evaporate eleven centuries later with the Reformation. So for fifteen centuries the followers of the Catholic Church, its theologians, saints, and martyrs all got it wrong on this “spiritual instruction book”?

And as if things can’t get more ridiculous, you say: “Some follow it more than others.”

So “you” know exactly what it says as opposed to Joel Osteen, Billy Graham, Rev. Wright? And what about those eminent Protestant theologians who after a lifetime of study and teaching followed this “spiritual instruction book” and converted to Catholicism?

So Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict all got it wrong about this “spiritual instruction book” including the early Church Fathers who assembled this “spiritual instruction book.”?

I am getting a bit dizzy here. I have to stop.

**Pope Benedict XVI (the theological Einstein of our times) captured this brilliant in the following passage. In the middle volume of his triptych, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI tried to describe those Resurrection-changes in history and nature (which are, of course, ultimately indescribable)**

Tried to describe what is ultimately indescribable??? Theological Einstein?? (in your opinion). Captured this brilliant??

I know one thing he doesn’t know how to describe, and that is Jesus Christ, AS HE descibes HIMSELF: The Son of God (never once did he or his disciples ever describe him as “God the Son””.

**The brilliant Catholic theologians after whom colleges and universities have been named.**

Did they also describe Jesus Christ as ‘God the Son’? If they did, they aren’t so brilliant after all.

**To deny the Eucharist, you will have to REFUTE:
1. Scripture itself. John 6:53**

Why do you stop there, and not include 6:63? Is it the same reason that you folks don’t include verse 6 in your interpretation of Revelation 12:1-5?

You folk say that the ‘eucharist’ is how you get Christ inside. Jesus Christ takes John 6:63 even further in John 14:16-20, where he teaches his disciples that...”ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.......AT THAT DAY ye shall know that I AM in my Father, and ye IN ME, and I IN YOU”.

Further proof of the Spirit, which dwells in every cell of Jesus, being what Christ was talking about being inside of believers, is the emphasis the apostles put on being born of the Spirit.

If the Lord’s Supper was literal flesh and blood, why no detailed teaching of it in Acts? Did the ‘first pope’ drop the ball?

If it is so literal, why did Paul only give a written detailed description of the Lord’s supper to the Corinthians, and not to the other churches that he wrote to?
(when he wrote to the Romans, he hadn’t even been to Rome yet. Why no Lord’s supper instructions to them?)

Don’t you think that if it’s so literal, and for salvation, that it would have been hammered home several times in Acts and the Epistles?

Does the ‘theological Einstein teach this:...

Jesus drops in on the home town, after preaching and performing miracles elsewhere, preaches in the synagogue, and astonished the very people he had spent AT LEAST 18 YEARS growing up and living among. (He was 12 when Mary forgot him when leaving Jerusalem. Don’t know how many years he had lived in Nazareth after being brought out of Egypt.)

The people in Nazareth knew Joseph, Mary, Jesus, and his siblings well enough to be confounded as to how Jesus was so incredibly different from the rest of them.

I’m sure the ‘theological Einstein’ teaches followers to pray to Mary. Does he teach followers to pray to the Centurion that asked Jesus to “Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed”? Does the expope teach followers to pray to the woman from Canaan? Jesus Christ praised both of those souls as having great faith. Surely those two would be as good at intercessing as Mary.

Does the ‘theological Einstein’ teach that the seating of Bathsheba next to her son, Solomon, in her act of intercessing for Adonijah, as symbolic of Mary? If so, does he teach that that solitary case proved that Bathsheba was not supposed to be intercessing in such matters? (Adonijah could have gone direct in his request, if he knew it was legit, with no need of an intercessor. But he knew it wasn’t.)

We can ask those mortal believers around us to pray to God. If our requests that are made known to God are legit, He will hear them, without a heavenly relay.

If tradition is man-made, it’s not God’s word.

**The resurrection is not some simple belief of a dead man coming to life.**

Jesus Christ expects us to believe him like a little child. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

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