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Transcript - CH505 Survey of Church History© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 11 of 24CH505

Mystics and Scholastics

Survey of Church History

Greetings once again in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Join me in prayer as we begin. Eternal God, open our eyes once again that we might see what You want us to see. Open our ears that we might hear Your word, and open our hearts that we might be compassionate toward all of those around us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Over the past few lectures, we have been exploring various aspects of medieval Christianity. And I hope that in our studies together you have begun to be convinced, if you weren’t before, of the tremendous life and vitality which was evident through this period between the fall of Rome and the coming of the Protestant Reformation. I hope, for example, that our time together in exploring the monastic tradition helped you to formulate more clearly your understanding of Christian discipleship. Or that our look at the Iconoclastic controversy might have helped you to get a better handle on the proper uses of symbol and art in Christian worship. Or our exploration of the missionary expansion of the church might have inspired you to become even more involved yourselves in the great task of worldwide evangelization.

Today I want to carry our explorations a step further by focusing our attention upon two fascinating traditions which emerged during the Middle Ages, namely, (1) the mystics and (2) the Scholastics. We’re fortunate once again to have some good resources available for our study. Those of you who are following along with us in Latourette will want to look for the mystics, particularly on pages 416-446; and for the Scholastics, on pages 495-522.

But if you want to explore more fully, I would encourage you to find the Library of Christian Classics, volumes 10, 11, and 13. This series, put out by Westminster Press, is available in many libraries, and volumes 10 and 11 deal specifically with Scholastic themes, both of them edited by Eugene Fairweather. And volume 13 deals with what is called, Late Medieval Mysticism. It deals more with the mystic tradition, edited by Ray C. Petry.

Garth M. Rosell, Ph.D. Professor of Church History and Director

Emeritus of the Ockenga Institute at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

in South Hamilton, Massachusetts

Transcript - CH505 Survey of Church History © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.


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You might also want to look at books like G. R. Evans’ [book] Bernard of Clairvaux, published by Paulist Press in 1987. This is one of that series of classics of Western Spirituality which has produced so many useful things for us in recent years.

Those of you who may gain a special interest in Thomas Aquinas, one of the leading Scholastic figures, will want to look up F. C. Copleston’s [book] Aquinas, A Classic Text in the Pelican Paperback Series.

Or, if you want an interesting time, read G. K. Chesterton’s Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, put out by Doubleday. It is now in paperback [and was] originally published in 1956.

These and other sources are available for us. And as your interest is developed over the course of this lecture, you may want to go back and pull some of those out for your purposes and for your further reading.

The basic question I want us to deal with today is a central one in the history of the church. That is the simple question: How does one know God? This, of course, is a question that has occupied the minds of men and women of faith across the centuries. And we see many answers being given to this enormously important question. Some people will argue that knowing God is primarily a matter of the mind—by logic and rational deduction we come to know God. We’re going to see this emerging as one of the central motifs of the Scholastic movement.

Others will argue that we know God primarily by encounter with God. It is personal and subjective knowledge. And here we’ll find one of the central themes of the mystic tradition.

Others will suggest that we know God primarily by authority—by what has been taught us by the disciples, the apostles, the great leaders of the church.

Others will suggest (and this has become increasingly popular in our time) that we know God primarily by studying His creation—empirical evidence, the observation of phenomena. The task of science is to aim in that direction of understanding the Creator who put together this great universe that we can study. But we do so through empirical evidence.

Now these and many other paths have been options exercised by Christians across the years. And two of them occupy our time, particularly, today. And I hope they can highlight some of our own wrestling with this issue of how you know God: (1) the mystic



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path, and (2) the Scholastic path—the way of the heart and the way of the mind.

Let’s talk, first of all, about the mystic tradition. This is difficult to define in any final sense, but let me offer a suggested definition of mysticism: It is that teaching or belief that a person achieves knowledge of God through direct awareness or personal intuition more than through logic or reasoning. Not that it excludes the mind or logic or the rational processes, but that primarily we come to know God by encountering God Himself. This is an emphasis upon the soul’s direct contact with the divine in full awareness, usually with an intuitive or transcendental quality about it. There is possible union, the mystics say, of human beings with absolute reality.

Mysticism, then, emphasizes processes whereby one comes into contact with God. And these generally include such things as self-surrender, renunciation of the self, ascetic regularity, monastic discipline. And it won’t be any surprise to you that many of the medieval mystics were also monks and part of that great monastic tradition.

There are various tendencies among mystics—there are those who are more speculative like Meister Eckhart and there are those who are more affective like Bernard of Clairvaux, and there are many, of course, in between. By and large, the mystics follow an overall, three-way path to encounter with the divine. Ruth Underhill and others have described these in their work on mysticism.

The first of these is what is called purgation or self-knowledge. This almost always involves confession of sin and disciplined living.

Secondly comes illumination. This is associated with surrender to the divine, and it always involves obedience.

Then finally, union itself. Consummation, or what is often called contemplation.

Then the process begins all over again because the mystic path, through contemplation, through purgation, illumination, and union is toward union with God. And that union with God, then, thrusts us back in action to care for normal living, to love people, to deal with the realities of the world in which we live, and that then, thrusts us in our thirst and quest for union with God Himself again through purgation, illumination, and then finally union. So it’s a kind of breathing process, in and out, movement to God and



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back into life once again.

Mystics are often seen as those who are other worldly and who have no interest in the finite affairs of this world, with those who are hungry and those who are homeless and those who have great needs. We need to remind ourselves that mystics were among the most actively involved in caring for people and in caring for those kinds of concerns. In fact, many of them felt that their encounter with God necessitated that they then return to live out the faith in very concrete ways within their communities. And then seeking God again, coming before Him to be refreshed and replenished by that direct encounter with the divine.

Now there’s a long mystic tradition in the church, many people identify it as beginning fundamentally with Saint Augustine as so many other things began with Saint Augustine. Augustine actually describes seven steps of movement from normal living toward encounter with God—what he called ultimately, contemplation.

The first of those is poverty of spirit, involving confession of sin and self-awareness of one’s depravity. Then secondly, piety and receptiveness to the sacred Scriptures—the Bible always involved as a part of the process of moving toward God. Third, a knowledge in particular ways of one’s own failures and miserable defection from God. Fourth, the kind of painstaking cultivation of that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Fifth, the recognition of mercy extended to others as we wish to have mercy extended to us by God. Sixth, a clean-hearted, pure-minded, self-liberating preparation for the contemplative vision—an openness to God. And seventh and final, wisdom itself or contemplation, when our mind encounters the great mind of the universe. And this is the way Augustine would have talked about it.

Now Augustine tended to be on one end of the scale, toward the more contemplative, the more mental part of mysticism. More in the middle is his successor, Gregory the Great. And we’ve seen Gregory before, as you will recall from earlier lectures.

Gregory carries on the great mystic tradition by balancing the head and, what eventually will be the dominant emphasis by Bernard and others, the heart by balancing those two together within a very monastic kind of framework. We must prepare for this experience of encounter with God through seeking of self-knowledge. And how do you do that? Study the Bible, meditate on Jesus’ life, fast, pray, prepare yourself for that kind of encounter.



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Then in humility and purity of heart, open yourself up to a face to face encounter with the living Lord. You can understand the mixture there of Benedictine Rule and Gregorian Mysticism—the emphasis being on prayer and reading and meditation, study, these favorite emphases of the monastic life.

At the other end of the scale is one of the most fascinating figures of all of church history—Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard of Clairvaux emphasizes, in his mystic path, the physical, emotional, heart-oriented element of the encounter. He describes the difference between, what he calls, Scientia and Sapientia. Scientia is that “knowledge of divine things” that comes with contemplation or consideration. It is essentially an attitude of the mind. Sapientia, on the other hand, is that “supreme wisdom” which comes through charity, through fundamental love. It is a relational kind of element. And he sees this, in fact, talks about this in terms of the closest thing we have in the earth to this kind of relation, and that is the relation between a husband and a wife. He talks about the wedding, the sacred kiss, the kind of delight that a husband has in his wife and a wife has in her husband. That becomes the tool that he uses to try to explain this mystic encounter, this love relationship with the Divine Savior and Lord.

Bernard was born actually in France. And early in life, with some other companions, he entered a monastery and lived out as a monk the kind of disciplined life that monastic rule called for. Eventually, he himself founded several monasteries. And in fact, [he founded] a whole order, the Cistercians. He is responsible for the establishment of at least 163 separate abbeys. He is actively involved in the needs of others. He is deeply concerned about political life and, in fact, becomes an advisor to both popes and kings. In a sense, the first half of the 12th century might even be called, “The Age of Bernard” because of the enormous power and influence of this remarkable figure.

His hymns reflect much of his work. Those of you who are interested in hymnody will be aware very quickly that many of our great hymns—in fact, almost all of the hymns that we have in our hymnals prior to the Reformation, came from mystic writers. And among the most famous of these are the hymns by Bernard of Clairvaux—these will be familiar to you. Let me read a couple of them. And I do that from one of my favorite little hymnals, the InterVarsity Press Hymnal, which was produced in Chicago some years ago and is a marvelous little collection of hymns. Jesus the Very Thought of Thee captures some of the flavor of this love relationship that Bernard so often loved to talk about:



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Jesus, the very thought of thee, with sweetness fills my breast, but sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest. Nor a voice can sing, nor a heart can frame, nor can the memory find a sweeter sound than thy blessed name, O Savior of mankind. O hope of every contrite heart, O joy of all the meek, to those who fall, how kind thou art, how good to those who seek. But what to those who find [you see what he is talking about? The seeking and the finding—it is part of that mystic path], but what to those who find, ah this: Nor tongue nor pen can show, the love of Jesus what it is. None but his loved ones know, Jesus our only joy be thou as thou our prize will be. Jesus, be thou our glory now and through eternity.

Isn’t that a beautiful hymn? And it captures perfectly the kind of sensitivities which Bernard would want us to capture.

Let me read one more, one of my very favorite hymns, Jesus Thou Joy of Loving Hearts:

Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, thou fount of life, thou light of men. From the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to thee again [there’s that mystic path again—we live in a normal life, we are filled with activities, of concerns, of compassions, of preaching, of ministering, but we are never filled enough until we can come to Christ Himself and find our filling, our fullness in Him]. Thy truth unchanged, hath ever stood, thou savest those that on thee call to them that seek thee, thou art good. To them that find thee, all in all, we taste Thee, O thou living Bread [you have so many sensuous images, sense oriented images, in Bernard], and long to feast upon Thee still, we drink of thee the fountain head and thirst our souls from Thee to fill [here it is talking about the Eucharist]. Our restless spirits yearn for thee, where ere our changeful lot is cast. Glad when Thy gracious smile we see, blessed when our faith can hold Thee fast. O Jesus, ever with us stay, make all our moments calm and bright. Chase the dark night of sin away, shed o’er the world Thy holy light.

Like his predecessors, Bernard saw the mystic union as a kind of marriage. One goes through the rite of cleansing and then ultimately is joined in union with the beloved one. Bernard uses the terms of “ravishment” and “ecstasy,” this transforming action of God. He talks about the “symbol of the kiss,” the threefold kiss: (1) Kissing first the feet of Christ, as we prostrate ourselves



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in repentance for our sins before Him; (2) Then we kiss Christ’s hand, lifted up we find bestowed upon us the grace of God and His mercy, and we’re made to stand upright; (3) Then we kiss the very countenance of Christ’s glory. Only after the first two can we gaze upon the face of Christ our savior. And we do this only with fear and trembling. And here in this moment we are made one spirit with Him.

You see what Bernard is getting at? In very physical, almost painfully physical terms he is describing that wonderful love relationship. Not in perverse or sexual ways. What he is describing is that intimacy of a relationship which comes as one enters the presence of Christ and, forgiven of sins, encounters the living Lord.

You have there then, in Bernard, one of the most magnificent expressions of classic mysticism. And those of you who may want to read more of his writings, of his sermons, of his descriptions, may want to turn to G. R. Evans’ volume on Bernard of Clairvaux, his selected works that I mentioned to you earlier, published by the Paulist Press in 1987. It is a wonderful little collection that will help fill out some of that story that we have attempted to describe so far.

Isn’t there a sense in all of us that that mystic path, however we might describe it, is one that all of us want to be a part of. That there is a yearning in our heart, from the busyness of life, from the tasks of ministry, from the everyday affairs of this world, that we have a hungering and thirsting and a yearning in ourselves to meet Christ face-to-face. And evangelical Christians, I think, in particular, can understand that great mystic strand which runs not only through the history of the church, but runs as a central feature through the Pietism and Puritan Calvinism and ultimately classic evangelicalism, which is part of our own heritage. There is a sense in which we too can talk about direct encounter with God and Jesus Christ. And when we call people to faith, we call them not simply to a mental ascent, we call people to an active relationship, an involvement, with the living Lord. And in that way, we also become part of that great mystic tradition, which emerged in the Middle Ages and which has been described and developed for us in so many different ways by so many different individuals.

And whether we like the language of Bernard or we prefer to use the patterns of Augustine or of Gregory or of any of the others, the fact is that that path is one that helps us in a fundamental



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way to understand the Christ Who has revealed Himself to us in this world, Who became flesh and lived among us so that we might know Him and in our day become related to Him through what He did on the cross, through the great work of His death and resurrection.

One of the paths then, one of the understandings of how to know God is enlarged for us as we look at the mystic tradition. It is the pathway of relationship, of encounter, of direct face-to-face knowing of God in Jesus Christ.

A very different path is developed in parallel to this in the Middle Ages in, what we call, the Scholastic Tradition. Now the Scholastic method is essentially the method of systematic theology. It’s a process whereby we analyze, categorize, relate, interrelate, and develop our understandings of theology across the board. In order to do this, we need to use our minds. This is a matter of reason and logic and careful thought. Now some of you may be a little skittish about the use of the mind. You resonated far more to Bernard and others who wanted to spend their time talking to and relating directly with the person, Jesus Christ. Let me remind you, however, that it’s important for us to use the minds God has given to us as fully and as enthusiastically as we use any other facility to know God. We need to think about God as well as encounter and relate directly to God. And the Scholastics can help us understand the balance that needs to be part of our lives where we not only feel, we not only encounter, but we think. We study. We probe. Part of the reason for theological education, for what you folk are doing in listening to this lecture—and studying is as a worship of God—that God has given us our minds, and it is a wonderful privilege we have to think about the faith and to use those minds, to use those rational facilities, to come to understand God and His ways among us more fully.

So let me encourage those of you who tend much more in the mystic direction to balance your lives with more exercise of your own minds, just as I will remind those who exercise their minds that they need also to encounter the living Christ. And in doing both of those, to engage ourselves with that great ministry with people that God has called us to engage. Some people love to spend all their time in the library or in quiet rooms reading books. And for those of you who like that path, I need to remind you that there is more to the Christian faith that God calls us to in faithfulness than that. But certainly that’s important, and the Scholastics teach us a great deal about how to do that. They developed a particular kind of methodology to do it: (1) They basically started



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with a disputed question; (2) They posed alternatives; (3) They argued back and forth about those alternatives; (4) And then they proposed a solution.

The Scholastics themselves, often called “Schoolmen” were usually the teachers at the universities. And universities, of course, emerged in the Middle Ages as well, usually as schools operated by cathedrals or monasteries. And you have this marvelous institution of the university emerging out of the medieval context around those institutions of cathedral and monastic settlements. It is why many of our universities still use the language of the monasteries and the cathedrals—of provost and deans and the like. And you’ll remember we talked a little bit about that earlier on.

Those teachers in the universities came to be called the “schoolmen” or the Scholastics. These are the ones that applied Scholastic Methodology—posing a question, seeking for alternatives and ultimately discovering a synthesis. They are the ones that used that methodology then, both to study about God and His ways and also then to teach it to the students who would come to the schools for work.

Scholasticism reached its highest point perhaps about AD 1200, and this, of course, in the Western European Universities. It began to decline about AD 1600 even though we still find remnants of Scholastic thinking and Scholastic methodology in many parts of the church—particularly, I would suggest, within the Roman Catholic wing of the church. Much of Roman Catholic Systematic Theology is a direct result and outgrowth of Scholastic thought and methodology. This has begun to change a bit since the second Vatican Council in the 1960’s, but it is still very much a part of the Scholastic underpinning of Roman theology, and they often talk about this as the “Thomistic Method” or the “Thomistic Theology” which comes from the first name of Thomas Aquinas and is linked to the most notable [and] famous of all the schoolmen.

Again, Scholasticism reaches way back to Saint Augustine for its beginnings. And it reaches back to Augustine’s insistence that to understand, one needed to believe and to believe one needed to understand. So that there was always the mix in Augustine (I think a marvelous mix) between the mind and the heart. If you could add to that what the old preachers used to say, was the “hands” you have the whole of the faith. The heart, the head, and the hands describe for us in very graphic terms the kind of whole balance of what God calls us to in the Scripture. But Augustine had that nice



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balance. But he certainly valued the mind and the exercise of the mind, as anyone who reads Augustine will discover.

This was picked up in the ninth century by John Scotus Erigena. He distinguished between Auctoritas and Ratio—between Scripture, the source of the knowledge of God, which was the authority for the faith and reason, or the investigation, of the knowledge of God. And he placed new emphasis upon not only authority, which is something that Bernard and others tended to rely on almost exclusively, but on ratio (the use of reason, our minds) in order to understand that. He became actually the head of a palace school at Paris and was actively involved in a number of the theological issues of the day, including the great Eucharistic Controversy of Radbertus and Ratramnus, one of the most interesting things to read about that you can find anywhere in medieval theology and this focused primarily upon the Eucharist. In fact, it is one of the first great debates about the Eucharist that we have in the church.

Anselm followed Erigena. Anselm, who was one of the great thinkers of the church, formulated the program of Scholasticism. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury, [and was] perhaps, some have argued, the greatest intellect between Augustine and Aquinas. He preferred to defend Christianity by intellectual reasoning rather than by either scriptural or patristic authority. Not that he ruled those out, but that he preferred to use intellectual reasoning as a way of commending the faith to those who were the thinkers of his day. He stressed the rite of reason, to inquire into the revealed truths of God. We must seek to understand what we believe—that, in fact, is not only proper, but it is Christian worship. He is the one, probably more than any other, that in the Middle Ages moved the discussion away from authority as the base, to reason as the base. Now that has plusses and minuses to it. But it laid the foundation for the great work of Peter Abelard, who followed him, who developed the actual strategy and fleshed out the work of Anselm. Through his beginnings with a question, his listing of objections, his answer to the objections, and ultimately his synthetic solution.

Peter Abelard had continued debates with Bernard of Clairvaux over this fascinating issue of the relationship of authority and mystery to the rational work of the mind. The Scholastics argued, you see, that a person achieves knowledge of God primarily through reason and theological speculation rather than through this kind of immediate contact. They didn’t rule that out any more than the mystics had completely ruled out the mind. It was a matter of emphasis.



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The great schoolman, and the one whose name is attached most dominantly to this whole tradition, is Thomas Aquinas. He lived from 1225-1274. He was a Dominican. He taught mainly in Paris. And he wrote two great books. He wrote many other things as well, but two that I would commend to you if you want specific reading to pursue in studies of Thomas Aquinas are his Summa Contra Gentiles, “Writings Against the Gentiles.” It’s actually a textbook for missionaries. It was a defense of Christianity against the Islamic forces. And if you want an interesting, theologically based missionary text, you might want to read that great work. It doesn’t get nearly enough attention today. His better known work is the second of these that I would commend to you, and this is his great Summa Theologica. Everyone has heard of that, I’m sure, and it is the basis for much of modern theology, particularly Roman Catholic Theology. It is a kind of blending of Augustine and Aristotle in what is often called the “Thomistic Synthesis.”

What Aquinas attempts to do is to differentiate reason and faith. And if I could ask you to mentally build a triangle and at the bottom of the triangle write the word “Reason.” Cut the triangle about at the middle and at the top write the word “Faith.” Aquinas believed that certain things could be established by means of reason, by means of intellect, that all people, Christian or non-Christian, would have to accept simply because they made sense rationally and logically. Some things can be established by reason. Other things cannot be established by reason and must, in fact, be accepted by faith. And at the top part of the triangle are those things which are the provinces of faith or will or acceptance of moral decision—things that are taught by revelation in the Bible and tradition. Do you see what he’s doing here? He is arguing that you start with reason and establish as much as you can by rational process and then, when you can’t go any farther, you turn to authority, to Scripture, and you believe because you have faith.

Now Augustine had argued that the two of them should be seen more as a circle with a dotted line running diagonally through it. So that understanding and belief were two parts of one united whole and always continued to interact with each other on every issue. What Aquinas is suggesting is that the two operate as two separate categories—you can establish so much by reason and then you turn to faith for the establishment of the rest.

What did he do? Let me give you an example: He takes the issue of God’s existence, which is one of the classic philosophical issues. And he would suggest that you can establish for all reasonable people that (1) God actually exists, (2) that God is eternal, and



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(3) that God is the Creator. All of these things (including other things as well) can be established by reason. And if you go to the beginning of his great Summa Theologica, which you can find in many different forms, you will find his discussion of the existence of God. And he starts out with three articles. The first of them is the question: Whether the existence of God is self-evident? He proceeds to discuss that under Objection One. Let me read a little section of that for you:

It seems that the existence of God is self-evident, but those things are said to be self-evident to us, the knowledge of which exists naturally in us as we can see in regard to first principles. But as Damascene says, “The knowledge of God is naturally implanted in us all.” Therefore, the existence of God is self-evident.

Then, he moves on to Objection Two—that whole area of other objections that can be raised. And then [he moves onto] Objection Three, and he says, “On the contrary, I answer that [He’s responding to the objections]. And then specifically he has, “Reply to Objection One;” “Reply to Objection Two;” “Reply to Objection Three.” And then, finally, his conclusion: That, in fact, you can demonstrate the existence of God. And he goes on to demonstrate that by his famous “Five Argumental Proofs.” You remember these, among them is the “Argument from Causation”—first cause must be there to establish all other actions. In order to have anything happen, you’ve got to have a first cause. By definition, God is a first cause. Therefore, since you can see things caused in the world, it necessitates that first cause, therefore, necessitating God.

The same argument is given in different form for the “Prime Mover.” God is the Prime Mover in the world. We have motion in the world. All motion must be caused by an earlier motion. But that needs to work its way back to a Prime Mover that got things started in the first place. Therefore, one needs to define the existence of God who is that Prime Mover. And he goes through all of these arguments, including some discussion of that Anselmic Argument—the ontological argument, which is a kind of fascinating argument itself. And one can find not only his description of it, but some very interesting analyses of this whole approach.

But the end result is that Aquinas is convinced that, for all reasonable people, he can establish beyond any significant doubt that (1) God indeed exists, (2) that He’s eternal, (3) that He is the



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Creator. But he cannot argue, through rational processes, for the reality of the resurrection or the miracles of Christ, or of sin, or of redemption, or the need for incarnation. These are revealed only through Scripture and are accepted only by faith. So that if you look at it closely, you begin to see the kind of process that he and the others are attempting to establish. And that is to go at every issue that can be gone at with the mind. And then when you run out of resources there, to rely upon the arguments of faith and the great revelation of God in the special revelation of His Son and of Scripture.

Now others have developed this same basic argument as well. And one can look at a number of different elements of Scholastic life, but suffice it to say that when we talk about Scholasticism we are talking about another movement that emerges in the Middle Ages, pointing in the direction of Systematic Theology and the importance of relating all parts of faith, one to the other, of using a particular methodology to do that and of seating all of that process in the institutional life of the university.

Now once you’ve grasped that, you begin to see the nature of this particular path, the Scholastic path. And for those of you who may want to read further on that, let me simply remind you that Copleston’s little book on Aquinas and Chesterton’s book on Aquinas are very fine places to start in exploring that area and some of its dimensions.

Let’s come back to that basic question with which we started. How then do we know God—the One who remains “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8); the One who, in fact, has let us know that He wills to be known? He is the God of revelation. He wants to be known by His people. Let me suggest that to begin to genuinely know the beauty and complexity and magnificence of God, we must come to understand that all of the tools which have been given to us can be properly used in that quest: our minds, to think, to study, to examine, to compare, to probe. Don’t be afraid to use your minds, because God has given them to you and you can probe and think and question and explore anywhere in this universe, raise any question you want, because this is God’s universe. He created it. And any understanding of truth that comes from that examination is going to be leading us back toward God.

So use our minds, use our aesthetic sensitivities, our feelings, our emotions, our passions, the teachings of those who have gone before, our understanding of the past, our own experience of God’s presence. Primarily, of course, we come to know God as He

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has revealed Himself in His marvelous creation and supremely in His own Son.

Do you know God? Do you want to know God better? If so, open yourselves to His gracious revelation. Open yourselves to the Scriptures once again and let the knowledge of God wash over you like a mountain stream. For you see, God wants us to know Him, and He promises in Scripture that those “who truly seek will surely find” (Jeremiah 29:13). Amen.

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