The Divine and Perfect Knowledge of God (Turretin)

Back in 17th century Europe there was a religious group of people called Socinians. This group originated with the teachings of Lelio Socinus and his nephew Faustus Socinus. The former rubbed shoulders with Reformers such as Henry Bullinger, Philipp Melanchthon, and John Calvin. Lelio Socinus' teachings worried the Reformers because of his habit of always …

Knowledge and Emotional Experience (Boice)

In the opening pages of Foundations of the Christian Faith, James Montgomery Boice talked about knowledge in general and also about knowing God. He explained that in our context, there are two main views of knowledge: knowledge by reason alone and knowledge by experience. Concerning the latter, here's what Boice wrote back in 1986: In …

One Cannot Truly Know Self without Truly Knowing God (Calvin)

As many of our readers might know, John Calvin began his Institutes by explaining that true and sound wisdom has two parts: knowing God and knowing ourselves. Calvin then noted that without a true knowledge of God, a person cannot truly know himself. As Scripture says, in God we live and move and have our …

We Can Know! (Carson)

The Gagging of God by Don Carson is one of those books I read some years ago that I still think about and appreciate. I'm sure many of you have books like this: you read them, really enjoyed them, and you go back to them from time to time because they were super helpful in …

Our Finite Knowledge (Van Til)

 One aspect of being a human, a created being, is that our knowledge is limited and finite. For example, in Job 38ff God's rhetorical questions show that Job is neither omnipotent (do you give the horse its might? 39:19) nor omniscient (do you know the ordinances of the heavens? 38:33).  In fact, after God's rebuke, Job …