The Knowledge of the Holy

by A.W. Tozer

True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time.

The messenger of Christ, though he speaks from God, must also, as the Quakers used to say, speak to the condition of his hearers; otherwise he will speak a language known only to himself.

They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy;

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and mans

spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.

Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or l...

Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God.

In Him word and idea are indivisible.

Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.

Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe.

We learn by using what we already know as a bridge over which we pass to the unknown. It is not possible for the mind to crash suddenly past the familiar into the totally unfamiliar. Even the most vigorous and daring mind is unable to create something out of nothing by a spontaneous act of imagination.

It is, for instance, to rob Him of His infinitude: there cannot be two unlimited substances in the universe. It is to take away His sovereignty: there cannot be two absolutely free beings in the universe, for sooner or later two completely free wills must collide. These attributes, to mention no more, require that there be but one to whom they belong.

The intellect knoweth that it is ignorant of Thee, said Nicholas of Cusa, because it knoweth Thou canst not be known, unless the unknowable could be known, and the invisible beheld, and the inaccessible attained.

Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like, and what He is like is of course a composite of all the religious pictures we have seen, all the best people we have known or heard about, and all the sublime ideas we have entertained.

The yearning to know What cannot be known, to comprehend the Incomprehensible, to touch and taste the Unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man.

The answer of the Bible is simply through Jesus Christ our Lord. In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self-disclosure, although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love. Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience. God came to us in the incarnation; in atonement He reconciled us to Himself, and by faith and love we enter and lay hold on Him.

That God can be known by the soul in tender personal experience while remaining infinitely aloof from the curious eyes of reason constitutes a paradox best described as Darkness to the intellect But sunshine to the heart.

In approaching God, he says, the seeker discovers that the divine Being dwells in obscurity, hidden behind a cloud of unknowing; nevertheless he should not be discouraged but set his will with a naked intent unto God. This cloud is between the seeker and God so that he may never see God clearly by the light of understanding nor feel Him in the emotions. But by the mercy of God faith can break through into His Presence if the seeker but believe the Word and press on.

It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it.

I believe that Christ died for me because it is incredible; I believe that he rose from the dead because it is impossible.

Let me seek Thee in longing, pleaded Anselm, let me long for Thee in seeking; let me find Thee in love, and love Thee in finding. Love and faith are at home in the mystery of the Godhead.

It is most important that we think of God as Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.

In His incarnation the son veiled His deity, but He did not void it.