While teaching from the Psalms, I came to the conclusion that we are often teaching what we think about God. It is true that we are to think about God, but as the Psalmists says, “how precious to me are your thoughts, O God.”(Psalm 139:17). It is not our thoughts about God but His thoughts about Himself that should be the center of our focus. Many people feel that God, if He exists, is whatever we want him or her to be. We can make up our own definitions and descriptions of God. Hence, we never reach a clear and definite conclusion because we do not have a point of reference.

The Apostle Paul says that we are “to take every thought captive to obey Christ,”(2 Cor. 10:5). Another way of phrasing that verse is to “think God’s thoughts after Him.” Dr. Cornelius Van Til, theologian and apologist, constantly made that statement. He was a teacher of, and later taught with, John Frame at Westminster Theological Seminary. Frame has since written cogently about Van Til’s apologetic and based his own upon it.

Frame, a friend and a renowned Christian scholar, has written a volume that enables us to better think God’s thoughts after Him. This has never been more necessary than it is today.

I said to my colleagues that if we could study only one book at this point in history, this would be the book. As it establishes a process of helping us think about God in God’s way and in an apologetic manner, it deals with almost every basic issue we need to face today. This includes Open Theism, the New Age movement, postmodernism, the sufficiency of the Word, and the Lordship of Christ.

Frame has planned a four-book series entitled “A Theology of Lordship.” The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God  was the first in the series. Like many of Frame’s writings, it challenged us to think more biblically and consistently about God, life and reality. The Doctrine of God, the second book, will take the reader deeper and further into the truth, particularly dealing with the person of God. Frame writes, “The Spirit, therefore, gives the regenerate person a new mind, the mind of Christ. He enables the Christian to think in a new way, as part of the renewed life. That new way is to think biblically. As we have seen, Scripture contains a distinctive epistemology. Knowing is not an autonomous activity. It is not merely a manipulation of empirical data, logical principles, and human experience. It is submitting our thinking to God’s revelation in Scripture and in the world, and letting Scripture govern our interpretation of the world. And Scripture must take precedence in our thoughts over the reasoning of scientists, philosophers, psychologists, Bible critics, or historians.”

In writing about God, Frame necessarily addresses the sufficiency of God’s inscripturated revelation of Himself. And, as we indicate in “In Case You're Are Asked,” he puts it in its proper framework. He writes, “So everything in this book has an apologetic force. The biblical doctrine of God (as everything else in Scripture) presents a way of looking at everything that makes the existence of God not only plausible, but utterly persuasive. It presents a worldview in which every fact bears witness to God. In the biblical worldview, nothing makes sense apart from the presupposition of God’s reality.”

Frame is writing out of his own experience of studying, teaching, writing, and counseling. Though written as a scholar, his thoughts have been hammered out in teaching and interacting with hundreds of students. Consequently, he writes that we must not dichotomize life and doctrine but rather our doctrine is our life and vice versa. This theme is also proclaimed in “The Other Six Days.” [See the book review in this issue.]

Frame’s contentions that while the Protestant Reformers focused on removing much of the philosophical language from the doctrine of salvation, they did not do the same with the doctrine of God. While much of our theology, which helps us “to formulate that message, applying biblical teaching about God to us and to our time,” had failed to do the same with theology in general. This has caused the church to be less effective than it could be in applying theology to life. However, Frame writes, “Calvin’s interest was not in developing an academically respectable system of thought, but to show the applicability of the great doctrines to everyday life.”

The central motif of Frame’s book is that God is the Lord of the covenant. “All acts, attributes, and personal distinctions that Scripture attributes to God are expressions of his lordship.” Frame claims that moving in this way keeps a balance among the biblical message of salvation and its teachings on the nature and acts of God. His section dealing with ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics is worth the price of the book. There he shows the relationship between philosophy and theology. And, he helps us think through a consistently biblical framework for doing ethics and knowing God and His relationship to the world as its creator.

There are nine appendixes written by different authors, which add to the value of the book. This second in a series of four volumes, while best read in sequence, can also be read on its own.