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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.
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