A Review of Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy
Infused with prayer, confessed as inadequate, and rendered in the awe of God, the book The Knowledge of the Holy brings us closer to an understanding of our Heavenly Father. A.W. Tozer begins with the statement that our perception of God is the most important thing about us. He calls the reader to reconcile what they say they believe about God with what they think of when they consider God. As an evangelist or an exhorting father, Tozer calls the churched to account for their willingness to fashion God in their own image. He quotes Psalm 50:21, “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself.” Though Tozer is speaking to the church of the 1960’s, he couldn’t be more relevant today.
To really digest this book, we must look at Tozer’s techniques. He begins each chapter with a prayer—fitting, because without insight from the Holy Spirit, we are unable to comprehend any significant personal application regarding the personhood of God. The prayer commencement is a convention that acknowledges God as the great Mover—the Initiator without which we are lost.
Tozer brings a liturgical element into his work by quoting saints, poets, and authors, including such people as Charles Wesley, Anselm, Zinzendorf, Watts, and Faber. I imagine A.W. Tozer reflecting upon which Scriptures he would use to illustrate the concepts that he outlined for his book. After realizing the amount of Scripture that testified to the character of God, I see the thoughtful academic shrugging his shoulders and deciding that he would simply put in Scripture as it came to mind. References are included in the back of the book rather than in the discourse, which sharpens the pace. Though Scripture is used as a foundation, there is an element of reason included in Tozer’s thought. We see phrases such as “think steadily,” “let it be understood,” “focus our thoughts,” and, “serious-minded seeker.” He quotes T. Trahern who says, “As nothing is more easy than to think, nothing is more difficult than to think well.” Reason aside, Tozer acknowledges that faith, not intellect, is the conduit of God’s self-disclosure to Man. The book is written to fellow believers—the church.
“I AM that I AM” (Ex 3:14) exhibits the inseparability of God from His attributes. Though humans are called to “put on” godliness (Rom 13:14; 1 Cor 15:53), with God there is no such process. Not only is God one with the Son and Holy Spirit and one with His attributes, His attributes are equally inextricable with one another. This truth provides the bedrock for a study of God’s qualities, which the author repeatedly interweaves throughout the rest of the book.
An example of this inseparability of God’s attributes came to light recently in my own life as I was studying the inerrancy of Scripture. I found it very profound that Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by Your truth; Your Word is truth.” He did not say, “Your words are true,” but rather classified God’s singular Word as truth personified. This, spoken from the Jesus who was Himself revealed to be the Word. Jesus’ sacrifice was the allowance for our sanctification, “without which no one will see God” (Heb. 12:14). One could possibly identify the inseparability as an attribute of “inpenetrability.” However we identify it, I learned more from this assertion than anything else in the book regarding who and how God is. It puts to rest the common mistake of over-emphasizing one or the other of God’s qualities and pushing other (inconvenient?) attributes aside.
An understanding of Scripture as a whole is valuable in interpreting this content, and contemplating resources outside Tozer’s book helped me to digest it. For my personal Bible study, I am currently working through Kay Arthur’s Lord, Is it Warfare? that includes an examination of Satan’s traits. As I was working through this, I heard Dr. Edwin Lutzer speak about his book entitled God’s Devil. The premise of Lutzer’s book upholds Tozer’s assertion in chapter twelve regarding the omnipotence of God. Quoting Tozer, “He [God] has never surrendered one iota of power. He gives, but He does not give away.”
Regarding God’s divine transcendence (chapter thirteen), I found it enlightening that Daniel is recorded as praying, “I…saw this great vision…my comeliness was turned in me to corruption.” This is a picture of humility in one of the choicest princes of Judah. On the other hand, Ezekiel 28:17 describes Satan thus: “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.” Man’s propensity to follow the latter pattern rather than the former provided the corruption necessary to distort his view of God in the first place. Tozer says as much in chapter five: “The natural man is a sinner because and only because he challenges God’s selfhood in relation to his own.” The combination of these truths has given me a deeper understanding of God’s position in the supernatural battle continually raging around us.
The self-sufficiency and the eternity of God in chapters six and seven could easily be tied together by examining the “monogones controversy” that has had some attention recently by the church. Rather than Christ as the “only begotten,” monogones (John 3:16) refers to Christ as the uniquely other, the one-and-only. In other words, He needs no helpers (or creator), and He has always existed.
Tozer also reminds us that “He works through anyone,” which brings to mind 1 Cor. 1:26, “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called….” I remember a moving talk by Bill Myers, creator of the McGee and Me series (made popular by Focus on the Family) who said, “I sometimes wonder why God lets me do the work I do. He doesn’t need me! In fact, I may slow Him down a little…but He lets me be a part of His Father/Son project.”
In chapter fifteen, we are reminded again about the inseparability of God’s attributes:
God’s attributes are not isolated traits of His character, but facets of His unitary being. They are not things-in-themselves; they are, rather, thoughts by which we think of God, aspects of a perfect whole, names given to whatever we know to be true of the Godhead.
The church has a mistaken propensity to portray God as torn between justice and mercy, as well as other seemingly “opposite” traits. Says Tozer, “To think of God as inclining first toward one and then toward another of His attributes is to imagine a God who is unsure of Himself, frustrated and emotionally unstable, which…is to say that the one of who we are thinking is not the true God at all…”
Finally, we are reminded that “any forward step in the Church must begin with the individual.” The author introduces what he refers to as a “formula for personal revival.” He states, “The knowledge of the holy God is a free gift to men who are open to receive it,” and that “To know God is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing in the world.” If Tozer was a Baptist, I suspect that the first point of his formula would be to learn the Word of God, because knowing the Word brings knowledge of God.
Yet, we find that deep study of the Word is not even on the list of six actions Tozer suggests to bring us into deeper relationship with God. This is consistent with Tozer’s desire that the reader “know God” rather than “know about God.” He avoids the Pharisee trap (knowing Scripture without embracing Christ) altogether by his broad promptings of the heart and spirit: 1. Repentance; 2. submission to Lordship (or commitment to obedience); 3. death of self and life to Christ; 4. detachment from the world; 5. meditation on God’s majesty; 6. deeds of mercy as the fragrance of Christ.
The lack of mention regarding the habit of ingesting Scripture in this “how to” part of the book is a notable omission. In my experience, the Word—hand-in-hand with Christ’s lordship in our lives—encompasses the most effective way to know God. These two practices of Scripture ingestion and submission to Christ move the believer into all of the actions Tozer lists. Understandably, Tozer focuses on the deeds of holiness, but I would argue that this should include specific and intentional study of the Word.
The point that Tozer is trying to make as he wraps up this ambitious endeavor is that the end of result of a heartfelt knowledge of the Holy is the inevitable inspiration of worship, devotion, and awe. And Tozer’s work itself manifests that awe. As Tozer himself testifies in the discussion regarding divine transcendence, God is pleased “with even the feeblest effort to make Him known.” This statement comforts me and calls me to reject the illusion of required adequacy that holds so many of us back from serving God with our loaves and fishes. I desire to worship God by writing about Him—yet the very topics that are closest to my heart seem too deep to fathom, so writing about them seems impossible. I am taken back to my commitment that I will learn about God and His Word only in the context of deepening my relationship with Him. Everything I do must be an outflow of the Holy Spirit working in me.
Am I any closer to perceiving who God is by reading The Knowledge of the Holy? I picture myself reading this book hidden in the cleft of the rock as the presence of God passes by, unable to describe what I see. Moses’ description of this event is noticeably absent from the Scripture (Ex. 33). Why? Because we serve an unfathomable God.* Psalm 103 reminds us that we feel the warmth in the rays from a Being that we will never circumnavigate or even approach, yet while He only reveals His deeds to some, He reveals His ways to others.
“Your righteousness reaches to the skies, O God,
You who have done great things.
Who, O God, is like You?”**
* Rom. 11:33-36, Job 5:9, Psa. 92:5, Psa. 139:6, Eccl. 8:17, Isa. 40:28, (Tozer, ch. 2).
** Psa. 71: 19