Tim Challies, one of the Christian blogosphere’s elite, has been reading A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy, one of the best concise handbooks on the doctrine of God in existence. My first introduction to Tozer came as an ignorant but devout high schooler who had just enough sense to read more old books than new and was fortunate enough to have a father who authorized buying copies of Tozer’s The Pursuit of God for everyone in his congregation. I devoured it and quickly moved on to Knowledge of the Holy.
Now eight years later, I find Tozer just as illuminating as ever. Challies writes:
Tozer premises The Knowledge of the Holy on the statement that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” While he does not provide a Scripture reference to back this claim (I don’t recall a verse that states, “God spake thus: what thou believest about me is the most important thing about thee…”) I believe he is correct in this assertion. After all, “the history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.” If no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God, the same is true of individuals. We can never rise above our idea of God.
A caveat is necessary, though: it is, I think, far more important what God thinks of us than what we think of Him. It is, after all, his thought about us that will determine our eternal destiny. The task of sanctification is to think along with God about Himself and us.
Matthew Lee Anderson
Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.
