Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life Book

Having never before read A.W. Tozer, I didn't know what to expect when I started reading this book, and if I expected anything I'm not sure that this was it.

The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life is a study in the unstudiable. It is a scrutiny of that which is inherently inscrutable. It is therefore I think doomed from the start, for the knowledge that it would convey is inexpressible and the wisdom it would impart is far beyond man's understanding. In fact, the book is filled with confessions of this very sort which made me wonder why such a futile project was attempted with such earnestness.

According to the text, Tozer believed that the failure of the church in the 20th century was largely due to a failure to properly conceive God. Tozer spends about 20 short chapters discussing the attributes of God. The real God, Tozer declares, is marked by His Majesty and this majesty is evident from His infinite nature. Whether speaking of God's power, His righteousness, His faithfulness, His knowledge, or any other attribute which is part of the nature of God, the real God is in all things unlike the things of the world in being infinite. The real God, Tozer claims, had been disconnected from the name of God so that when the church spoke his name it no longer reflected the actual God of the Heavens but rather some enfeebled and unmajestic conception of man.

This is actually a subject that I as a computer scientist take a great deal of interest in. Names are fundamentally important to the study of computer science. In computer science we are made aware of the distinction between the name and the thing that is named. The name of a thing is not the thing itself, but rather only a pointer to the thing. A name is valuable only in as much as it continues to point to the right thing. A name can become misaddressed, so that it no longer points to the thing it is supposed to. And, a name can become detached completely from anything, so that when we try to dereference it we find the name empty of meaning. So it is in fact a very real worry that we might still hold on to the name, but find that the name has no power because it no longer addresses the thing that its name is supposed to associate it with. A name that doesn't point to the thing that it labels, has lost referential power and like salt without saltiness is good for nothing.

Nothing is worse than asking directions of a null pointer.

Tozer is certainly right that the name of God can become lost. If it was not so, then God would have never warned us against using the name lightly. But if the address of the namespace of God becomes lost to us, the fault is not with God. God cannot be made null. The fault lies with us, in that we have made His name null within our namespace. But the problem herein is that if Tozer is right, and that the chief problem is that we've lost the address of God and our prayers are thereby null and ineffective, clearly no effort on our part can reinitialize that pointer. God must give us his address if we are to use it.

Which creates quite a conundrum, because how can Tozer expect to by any of his writing reinitialize the pointer to God? If Tozer is right, then all of his intellectuality and all of his logic, intelligence, and study is completely vain - even by his own account. All of the attributes of God are far beyond our understanding. Any conceptions we have of God are necessarily limited and therefore in some measure a false understanding. We cannot hope to contain the infinite within our finite understanding.

Perhaps it is for this reason that Tozer does what is I think the most fitting and valuable part of the work - he begins each chapter with prayer.

It's not so much that I think Tozer says anything that is false. I think he does a fine job reminding the reader how big God is. Or rather, I think he does as fine of job as any mere human can do speaking about the infinite to another mere mortal. This is to say, not very well at all really if the purpose is anything other than a philosopher's game. From Tozer's writing how can we come away with a pointer to God? If the problem is really that we don't imagine God big enough and don't hold him in awe enough, then what are we to do or how could we ever have any hope of Salvation? If only those that have sufficient intellect to hold the infinite in their understanding shall be saved, then we are all doomed for there is not a one of us so bright that our own strong right brain can save us.

The truth is that we cannot be saved through the completeness of our doctrines, our studies of theology, or the correctness of our thoughts. The problem isn't so much that I disagree with Tozer; it is that I think he gets it completely backwards. The loss of the namespace of God isn't the cause of the failing of the modern church, but a symptom of it. It's not that we are not right with God because we lack a proper conception of him, but rather we have not a proper conception of God because we are not right with God. Tozer is I think trying to treat a symptom rather than a cause.

At times Tozer's work is shockingly anti-intellectual, even to one such as myself, who can be sneeringly anti-intellectual, and yet I wonder if it doesn't go far enough. I don't think there is a thing here which will be convincing to anyone that needs convincing on these points. I don't think there is anything in the text that will convince the reader of anything he is not formerly convinced of. On a purely intellectual level, I don't think there are very many Christians who have forgotten the Majesty of God, or His infinite grace, mercy, faithfulness, or love. It's not that we've forgotten how big he is when we engage in these sorts of intellectual conversations; it is that we just don't feel it really. There is vast difference in the knowing of something in your head, and the knowing of something in your heart. The one enables you to speak eloquently on a subject, and the other empowers you to actually live as you claim to believe.

On the speaking eloquently or correctly on the subject of the unbounded matchless character of God, I think Tozer can be some help. But this is really not much help at all. What I need is some help in getting from a cold leaden too intellectual heart filled with worldly wisdom, toward really feeling the presence of God. But such an instruction manual - if anyone could provide it - never seemed to be in Tozer's ambition. I can't say whether or not merely thinking the right things was enough for A.W. Tozer, but it doesn't work too well for me.