Considering The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God

In my second year of seminary, John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God became required reading in the first year. Oh, well. It has only taken me about 20 years to read the book.  I began to read it 2 years ago, I think, while I was home “watching” the kids while CavWife taught a group exercise class on Monday afternoons. Last year I spent that time studying and developing a curriculum for the Book of Revelation. Though I no longer watch the kids on Monday afternoons, I resumed reading the book this Fall as time permitted. It was worth the work.

The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (an interesting title) is the first in Frame’s A Theology of Lordship series, of which I have already read The Doctrine of God (Salvation Belongs to the Lord is a shorter version that is quite readable). The title of this book suggests the main concern of the book- how can we know God. This is a book about epistomology, the study of how we know. We often take this for granted and never think through it. Those presuppositions drive many of the debates and arguments we have with people. We often fall into bad argumentation (logical fallacies for instance).

“Our criteria, methods, and goals in knowing will depend on what we seek to know.”

Frame wants to examine our presuppositions, and argue for a presupposition understanding of how we know what we know and what we can know.  He starts with knowing God, as Calvin did in The Institutes of the Christian Religion. But he starts with God as Covenant Lord. As Covenant Lord, He made us to think and understand as receivers of revelation. As Covenant Lord, he determines what is revealed to us.

“We do not come to know God, or anything else, in a vacuum. … Still, one has to start somewhere; he cannot relate everything to everything else at once, for otherwise he would be God.”

He touches on subjects like transcendence (God as head of the covenant) and immanence (God’s nearness or involvement with creation), authority,  control and presence, knowability and incomprehensibility etc. He moves out of the theoretical at times to show how these tensions reveal themselves in theological debate, particularly the disagreement between Van Til and Clark. In other words, he examines many of the implications of the Creator-creature distinction.

The most important part of all this is his development of triperspectivalism (normative, existential & situational). Remember, we don’t know things in a vacuum, but also in relation to ourselves and our circumstances or situation. For instance, a pastor in preparing a sermon should seek to know the text he is preaching, the people he is preaching to, and the culture and circumstances in which they live to which the text speaks. Apart from the existential and situational perspectives, we don’t really understand the Word of God and how to apply it.

He then moves into the justification of knowledge, or whether or not we have a right to believe what we believe. He briefly works through the various answers philosophers have provided to this question (rationalism, empiricism and subjectivism in their various forms). He then puts this question through the tri-perspectival grid to help us understand a distinctively Christian and Reformed way to answer this question. Among the many helpful things is the concept of cognitive rest (here I apply this to preaching).

He then shifts to the methods of knowledge: Scripture (normative), language,  logic, history, science and philosophy (existential), and the qualifications of the theologian. This makes us the majority of the book. It is impossible for us to know God, and about Him, apart from Scripture, language, logic and general revelation.

He wraps up the book with a chapter on method in apologetics (again viewed thru the 3 perspectives): both defensive and offensive. He is admittedly theoretical in this chapter. You may want to read his book Apologetics to the Glory of God to see this fleshed out more fully.

This is not an easy book to read at times. There will probably be unfamiliar concepts and terms for most young theologians.

It is also a rather lengthy book (though not as lengthy as the other volumes in the series) at about 400 pages when you include the numerous appendices. Many of them are quite helpful and they are various length.

But it is an important book to read to understand how to do theology. We often have personal bents or misconceptions. To do theology well (and that refers to accurately and obediently so we glorify and enjoy God) we really do need to stop and consider these seemingly mundane matters. It is lengthy because Frame is handling a number of topics in these pages that are often handled separately. Therefore you get a consistent approach to them.

Apparently some people do not like John Frame’s approach. I do (generally speaking). I find him quite helpful. I don’t agree with him on every point, but like with Calvin you should stop and ponder why you differ. No theologian is perfect. Based on some of the criticism of his book The Escondido Theology: A Reformed Response to the Two Kingdom Theology, you might think he needed to re-read this book. But I have yet to read that book. I have some issues of disagreement with how they express their 2 kingdom theology. But all of that is a subject for another time.