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John 7:17:
17If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.
In behalf of the growth in the knowledge of God there is great strength in conforming oneself to God's will.
There is a knowledge of God which comes to us by our thought, by our imagination, by inward experience, and so on; but in nowise can it be denied, that there is also a part of the knowledge of God which comes to us through our will.
The will of later times has come mightily to the fore as a means of explaining many things, in connection with which in former times no one thought of applying it.
An influential school of philosophy, which still holds its own, put the will so prominently in the foreground, that all other activity of our spirit appeared insignificant by the side of it.
The fundamental thought in connection with this is, that the will alone brings everything to pass, creates reality, and reveals itself as a power; and the deeper one enters into the question, the more forcibly one is brought to acknowledge, that the will is the power, the only power, which governs and employs all other faculties.
This is confirmed by history; it is observed again and again in the present time. In every department of life the strong-willed man exercises authority and overrides the weak. It was in man that one became acquainted with this wonderful power of the will. In the animal-world also a similar phenomenon could be discerned; but our knowledge of animals is too limited, and so it seemed safest to start out from the power to will as it showed itself in man.
But of course one could not stop with this. The phenomenon of the will is too great, and its dominance too prevalent, for it to exist in man otherwise than derivatively. Primarily—i.e., in the original state of things—the will existed outside of man, and man himself was the product of the great, supreme, Universal-will that brought all things to pass.
What until now had been worshiped in the world as God, or had been denounced as Satan, was nothing else than this Universal-will, i.e., the gigantic will-power, by which everything is that is.
The world least of all exhibits Wisdom, far less Love; it is nothing else than the product of a monstrous willÂpower. Hence the unsatisfactory condition of the world.
And since in us also, on a small scale, there is a will with power to will, the supreme duty of human life is that we should train our will, develop it, apply it to mighty deeds, and that with this strongly trained human will we maintain ourselves in the face of this Universal-will.
So everything that is, and everything that is called history, reduces our whole life to one power, and the only thing that is noble, and the only thing in us that can be called holy, is our personal will.
That the philosophical school, which spoke thus oracularly, is radically opposed to all religion, and particularly to the Christian religion, needs no further demonstration.
But it is noteworthy that in the Christian Church religion simultaneously exhibited an allied tendency which likewise put the will to the fore and, in the end, made every other utterance of the Christian faith subordinate to it.
We refer to that tendency in the religious world which is more and more lax in its interpretation of the Creeds, which allows feeling and sentiment ever less opportunity of being heard, and evermore shows the need and the inclination to exhibit Christianity solely in works and in display of power, i.e., in utterances of the will.
This idea and inclination, however, were not born nor borrowed from this philosophic school which interpreted the universe in terms of the will, but with it owed their rise to a general phenomenon which shows itself in human life.
In the Church, after the Reformation, there was first the barren period of dogmatics in the seventeenth century, and after that the period of emotional religion in the eighteenth century. And since neither of these brought satisfaction, and it became evident that with both of them Christianity was heading toward the shoals, it came about of itself that with the depreciation of doctrinal statements and an increasing distaste for emotionalism, the other extreme was reached, namely, from now on to interpret Christianity exclusively in works of the will:
Not the hearer, but the doer of the law shall be holy.
Not every one that sayeth, "Lord, Lord, ... but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven," shall be saved (Matthew 7:21).
"If any man doeth his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God" (John 7:17).
In brief, a number of clear, strong utterances of Holy Scripture can be cited in support of this new effort.
And so, a tendency developed everywhere which excelled in that it could boast of its exhibition of Christian works, and fell short in that it underestimated the creeds and mysticism.
A powerful aid in this direction was the well known fact that in the Christian conflict of the nineteenth century, English Christians took the lead.
The period of terse credal formulas was dominated by Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. The emotional period had come into power through German and French Sentimentalists. But with the nineteenth century, England came to the fore, England with its matter-of-fact system, with its commercial spirit, with its indomitable power of will.
From England this passion for good works crossed over to the continent of Europe, and what this will-tendency has accomplished in the sphere of philanthropy and missions can never be sufficiently appreciated.
It has given birth to a new life, and given rise to a newly-felt need to exercise power. It simultaneously put to shame the barren and meagre results of intellectual orthodoxy and the weak and sickly fruit of sentimental mysticism. There was evidence of a readiness to give, of a devotion, of an energetic faith, such as had not been seen among us since the days of the Reformation.
And even in the Salvation Army, which is the most sharply defined example of this will-tendency and at the same time its most spectacular expression, there revealed itself a many-sided activity in behalf of the unfortunate, which aroused sympathy even in unbelieving circles.
What remained, however, a matter of regret was the onesidedness of such an endeavor, which from the first incurred the danger of forsaking justification by faith, and of putting in its place salvation by good works.
The center of gravity was removed too far away from God and placed in man. The outward supplanted the inward life of piety. And as in unbelieving circles much self-sacrificing philanthropic activity was seen, soon the strange relation arose, that the men and women of this "Gospel of Works" felt themselves more closely related to unbelievers who found their ideal in similar endeavor, than with believers on Christ who fell short in acts of mercy.
Moreover, and this cut deeper still, it could not be denied that in this Gospel of the will real religion, i.e., the search after fellowship with the Eternal Being, was more and more lost.
Tender piety was sadly missing, and the plant of Godliness became more and more encrusted with mold.
The hidden walk with God, the quiet ways of the "being hid in Christ" were ever less considered, both in preaching and in the walks of life. In fact, no more was heard of it.
It must all be deeds, nothing but deeds, always facts and once again facts. And it even became the habit to estimate good deeds by numbers, and from these statistics, if they were favorable, to infer that God's blessing rested on one's works.
There were reports of the numbers of converts, reports of moneys raised, reports of the membership of one's society, reports of the hungry that had been fed, the naked that had been clothed, the sick that had been healed. Even flattery in regard to such reports was not always unacceptable.
And when you objected that in this way Christianity was externalized and the knowledge of God which is eternal life was relegated to the book of forgetfulness, the answer was that your surmise rested altogether upon a misunderstanding, because that very knowledge of God does not come to you through the intellect or the feeling, but through the will.
Only he who doeth and will do the will of God, knows the Eternal.
This pretext can not be dealt with now. We will do this in a following meditation.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be found in Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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