A. The knowledge of God.
1. Relation between this article and Article 1. The confession of God by the believer presupposes that God can be known. One cannot confess anything concerning God except one know Him.
2. And yet there is a difference between knowledge and comprehension. To know God does not imply comprehension. “Can’st thou by searching find out God?” Job. 11:7. To say that the human finite mind can comprehend God is to deny His infinity.
3. But this knowledge of God is not merely an intellectual knowledge, but is spiritual and ethical and comes from the heart. “For to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent is life eternal.” John 17:3.
4. Thus the only way to know God is through revelation.
a. Neither reasoning nor some subjective “inner light” or false mysticism can ever result in a knowledge of God. To say that the powers of reason can result in a knowledge of God is to fall into the error of rationalism which is ultimately skepticism. All Quakerism and subjective religion speaks of an inner light as the means to the knowledge of God. This is impossible.
b. This implies:
1) God must reveal Himself. God knows Himself, and He alone. And because He is God, no man can ascend to heaven to discover God. God must come down to man in revelation and make Himself known. Then alone will we know Who and What God is. We can only listen and bow.
2) God must reveal Himself in a way that can be understood by man. For man is the creature and God is the Creator. There is an infinite gap between the two. The wonder of revelation is that the infinite God adapts a correct revelation of Himself to the understanding of a finite creature. The result is that revelation is complete and adequate for our salvation, or in the words of this article, it is “full… as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to his glory and our salvation.” But revelation also always points to infinite depths in God that still remain.
3) God must make us capable of receiving this revelation. In perfection this was by virtue of man’s very creation in the image of God. This he lost through sin. This is renewed by the operation of the Spirit of Jesus Christ whereby we are given eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to understand. Without the Spirit we are blind and deaf to the revelation of God.
B. The revelation of God in nature.
1. Creation and providence are the handiwork of God. In the words of Scripture, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge.” Ps. 19:1, 2. Or in the words of this article, “It is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God…” Or as Augustine once wrote in his Confessions, “And what is this? I asked the earth, and it answered me, ‘I am not He;’ and whatsoever are in it, confessed the same, I asked the sea and the deeps, and the living creeping things, and they answered, ‘We are not thy God, seek above us.’ I asked the moving air; and the whole air with his inhabitants answered, ‘Anaximenes was deceived, I am not God.’ I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars, ‘Nor (say they) are we the God whom thou seekest.’ And I replied unto all the things which encompass the door of my flesh; ‘Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me something of Him.’ And they cried out with a loud voice, ‘He made us.’”
2. Through creation God reveals His power and Godhead by a general testimony of the Spirit in the hearts of all men. And although this is sufficient to leave men without excuse, by it they can never come to a saving knowledge of God, or construct what is sometimes called a “natural theology”.