_2_The Christian Knowledge of God

The Christian knowledge of God, which is derived from God’s Word, the Holy Scriptures, is Trinitarian; in other words: the Christian knows that the one true God is Father and Son and Holy Ghost. Luther’s thesis is correct: “The Holy Scriptures teach that God is absolutely one and that He is also three persons, absolutely distinct” (St. L. X:177).

First, Holy Scripture, both the Old and the New Testament, teaches that God is one (monotheism). Deut. 6:4: “The Lord, our God, is one Lord”; 1 Cor. 8:4: “There is none other God but one.” The entire Scriptures may fittingly be called a mighty protest against polytheism. In the Old Testament the gods of the heathen are called non-gods (, Jer. 2:11), nonentities, vanities without existence (, Lev. 19:4; 26:1); and in the New Testament “nothing” (1 Cor. 8:4), “vanities” (Acts 14:15). They can neither harm nor help man, because there is no breath in them () and they are a vanity, a dream () (Jer. 10:5, 14-15). Scripture therefore demands of man a monotheistic worship. Ex. 20:3: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”; likewise Mark 12:29-30, where the command to worship the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength follows immediately upon the great monotheistic sentence: “Hear, O Israel, The Lord, our God, is one Lord.” A plurality of gods would of necessity require a division of our adoration according to the number of gods. The polytheistic worship is in no wise a worship of God, cultus divinus. The sacrifices of the Gentiles are offered not to God, but to devils (1 Cor. 10:20). If the Gentiles really desire to worship God, they must discard their gods and turn to the one true God. Paul and Barnabas summarize the irreconcilable conflict between polytheism and monotheism in their address to the heathen of Lystra: “We preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God” (Acts 14:15). Thus Scripture teaches monotheism and denounces polytheism in no uncertain terms.

But Scripture just as definitely teaches that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There are three Persons in the one God. For the terms Father, Son, and Holy Ghost denote Persons. The Christian Baptism is Trinitarian, a Baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost (Matt. 28:19). The Christian benediction likewise is Trinitarian: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost” (2 Cor. 13:14). And at Christ’s Baptism God revealed Himself as the Triune God. “Go to the Jordan, and there learn the Trinity” (Matt. 3:16-17), where, as Luther says, “the Divine Majesty reveals itself as follows: The Father in the voice, the Son in His humanity, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove: three distinct Persons and yet only one God, one almighty, eternal, divine essence” (St. L. XII:1133). The fact that God clearly revealed Himself as the Triune God also in the Old Testament—though not so clearly as in the New Testament — will be treated in a special chapter.

This Christian knowledge of God is brought to us and is wrought in us not by God’s self-revelation in nature, history, and man’s conscience, but solely by God’s self-revelation in His Word. For in Holy Scripture, which is God’s Word, God speaks to us and with us and there reveals His innermost being and His loving heart. The natural knowledge of God, as Luther says (St. L. XII:629 ff.), enables us to know God, as it were, from without, from His works, just as we learn something of the character of the builder from the quality of the house he builds. Holy Scripture, however, which is God’s Word to man, gives us the Christian knowledge of God; it reveals God’s inner being, the gracious purposes in the mind of God, just as one man reveals his true nature, his feelings, and the thoughts of his heart to another by his spoken words. Modern theology attempts to erase this vast difference between the natural and the Christian knowledge of God. And this difference would indeed disappear if the Bible were no more than the record of human concepts of God as they were developed under Jewish and Christian influence. But, thank God! this Modernist claim is entirely groundless. Christ and the Apostles “identify” Scripture with God’s Word without any restrictions. If, therefore, we abide in the Scriptures, we hear what God declares about Himself. We learn that the one true God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as well as what kind of thoughts He has entertained from eternity toward fallen mankind. This brings us to a discussion of the practical value of the Christian knowledge of God.

The natural knowledge of God cannot deliver us from an evil conscience. The Christian knowledge of God, however, calms the troubled conscience. In fact, it is our salvation. Scripture does not propose the doctrine of the Trinity as an academic question or a metaphysical problem. With the proclamation that in the one eternal God there are three Persons of one and the same divine essence Scripture combines the further gracious message that God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son into death as the Savior from the guilt of sin and death; that in the fullness of time, the eternal Son became incarnate and by His vicarious satisfaction reconciled the world to God and that the Holy Ghost engenders faith and thus applies to man the salvation gained by Christ. When the Christian confesses, “I believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” he is saying, “I believe in that God who is gracious to me, a sinner.”

Throughout the history of the Christian Church, men have taken offense at the prolonged and sometimes acrimonious battle which the Church fought to preserve the doctrine of the Trinity. But the stakes in this controversy were high: the preservation of the Christian knowledge of God and man’s salvation. The Church of the Reformation, too, confesses in the first article of the Augustana the doctrine of the Trinity and renounces any and all fellowship with the deniers of the Trinity. The Apology maintains that all Anti-Trinitarians who have arisen within the Church are outside the Christian Church.8 Turning to Luther, we find that he likewise zealously maintained the doctrine of the Trinity as he did the central doctrine of the Christian faith, justification by faith. The two doctrines are found side by side in Luther’s writings, not only in carefully and precisely drawn theological theses,9 but in all his writings,10 and especially in his sermons. We call attention especially to two sermons for Trinity Sunday, in which Luther sets forth in popular language the difference between the natural and the Christian knowledge of God and the indivisible connection between the doctrine of the Trinity and justification. (St. L. XII:628 ff.; XIII:664 ff.) Every theologian will derive benefit from these sermons. In the first sermon Luther says in part: “This is the revelation and knowledge Christians have of God; they not only know Him to be one true God, who is independent of and over all creatures, and that there can be no more than this one true God, but they know also what this one true God is in His essential, inscrutable essence. The reason and wisdom of man may go so far as to reach the conclusion, although feebly, that there must be one eternal divine Being, who has created, and who preserves and governs, all things. Man sees such a beautiful and wonderful creation in the heavens and on the earth, one so wonderfully, regularly, and securely preserved and ordered, that he must say: It is impossible that this came into existence by mere chance or that it originated and controls itself; there must have been a Creator and Lord from whom all these things proceed and by whom they are governed. Thus God cannot but be known by His creatures, as St. Paul says: ‘For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead (Rom. 1:20).’ This is the knowledge (a posteriori) that we have when we contemplate God from without, in His works and government; as one, looking upon a castle or house from without would learn something about its lord or keeper. But from within (a priori) no human wisdom has been able to conceive what God is in Himself or in His internal essence. Nor can anyone know or give information of it except it be revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. For no one knoweth, as Paul says (1 Cor. 2:11), the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him, even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. From without I may see what you do, but what your intentions are and what you think, I cannot see. Again, neither can you know what I think unless I enable you to understand it by word or sign. Much less can we know what God in His own inner and secret essence is until the Holy Spirit, who searcheth and knoweth all things, yea, the deep things of God — as Paul says above — reveals it to us. He revealed it in this article, in which He teaches us the existence in the Divine Majesty of the one undivided essence, but this in such manner that there is, first, the Person who is called the Father; and of Him the Second Person called the Son, born from eternity; and proceeding from both of these is the Third, namely, the Holy Ghost. These three Persons are not of separate essence from each other, as individual brothers or sisters are, but they have one and the same eternal, undivided, and indivisible essence in common. This, I say, is not discovered or reached by human reason. It is revealed from heaven above. Therefore only Christians can intelligently speak of what the Godhead essentially is, and of His outward manifestation in His creatures and of His will toward men concerning their salvation. For all this is told them by the Holy Spirit, who reveals and proclaims it through the Word.

“Those who have no revelation and who judge according to their own wisdom, such as the Jews, Turks, and heathen, must consider this teaching the greatest error and rankest heresy; they must say that we Christians are mad and foolish in setting up three gods, when, according to all reason — yea, even according to the Word of God — there can be but one God. It would not be reasonable, they will say, that there should be more than one householder over the same house, more than one lord or sovereign over the same government; much less reasonably should more than one God reign over heaven and earth. They imagine that thus with their wisdom they have completely overthrown our faith and exposed it to the derision and scorn of all the world. As if we were all blockheads and egregious fools and could not see their logic as well as they! But, thank God, we have understanding equal to theirs and can argue as convincingly, or more so, as they with their Alkoran and Talmud, that there is but one God… . Now, we Christians have the Scriptures, which we know to be the Word of God. The Jews also have them, from whose fathers they have descended to us. From these Scriptures, and from no other source, we have obtained all that is known of God and divine works, from the beginning of the world. Even among the Turks and the heathen all their knowledge of God — excepting what is manifestly fable and fiction — came from the Scriptures. And our knowledge is confirmed and proved by great miracles, even to the present day. These Scriptures declare concerning this article that there is no God, or Divine Being, save this one alone. They not only manifest Him to us from without, but they lead us into His inner essence and show us that in Him there are three Persons; not three gods, or three different kinds of deity, but the same undivided, divine essence… . And what help will it afford you if you are not able to say more than that God is merciful to the pious and will punish the wicked? Who will assure you that you are pious and that you please God with your papistic or Turkish monkery and holiness? Is it enough that you say: God will reward with heaven such as are faithful to the order? No, dear brother, you may not order this matter according to your whims and imagination. I could do that as well as you. Such peculiar ideas are indeed widespread. One devises a black, and another a gray monk’s cowl. Instead, we should hear and know what God’s counsel is, what is His will and mind. This none can know of his own wisdom, and no book on earth can teach it except the Scriptures. These God Himself has given, and they make known to us that He sent His Son into the world to redeem us from sin and the wrath of God and that whosoever believes in Him should have everlasting life.”