- May 24, 2011
- 7 Comments
Beyond Answers and Addresses: Love as Measure of Knowledge: Bible Study and the Church (3)
In the last post, we talked about the insufficiency of Addresses and Answers as ways of measuring our Bible knowledge. In summary I suggested:
1. Answers and Addresses can (and often do) lead us to think that “the point of Scripture is Scripture”…but the point of Scripture isn’t Scripture, it’s Jesus.
2. The “knowledge” Answers and Addresses measure is a narrow definition of “knowledge” that isn’t fully biblical.
3. Measuring by Answers and Addresses reinforces a flawed human anthropology that assumes stupidity, and not sin, is the fundamental human problem.
In future posts we’ll dig into why I think this is, but in this post I want to put forward the first of three inter-related characteristics that demonstrate and indicate bible knowledge – Love.
“Every critical attempt to approach [Jesus] from a position other than that of the faith witnessed to in the Scriptures can only result in a pallid, distorted picture unworthy of belief (and hence devoid of interest)…only the person who is convinced that Jesus knows him personally gains access to knowledge of him…Everything begins with the love of God: this is what gives rise to the real knowledge which can fulfill man’s yearnings.”
– Hans Urs von Balthasar
Love – Deep, true knowledge of scripture is demonstrated and enabled by loving God and loving people. This is Paul’s prayer that his people would know the love of Christ that “surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3.19). Love, Paul says, “never ends…although knowledge passes away” (1 Cor 13.8). Love is the measurement – the test – the Word gives us to decipher if we truly believe the Word (1 John 4.8, 1 Cor 8.1-3). Love, not answers and addresses, indicates whether we know the Bible.
But love not only indicates whether we know scripture, it also enables us to know (Phil 1.9-11, Col 2.2). Paul consistently weaves knowledge, obedience, love, and wisdom together as mutually reinforcing – and dependent – characteristics in the Christian life. We’ll get to wisdom and obedience in later posts (that’s a hint to where I’m going), but let’s really focus in on this aspect of love as the measure, demonstration, and empowering of knowledge.
The apostle Paul talks about two kinds of knowledge in his letters frequently, but perhaps the contrast is most explicitly seen if we compare 1 Cor 8.1-13 and Eph 3.14-19. Two kinds of knowledge – a knowledge leading to and flowing out of love and a knowledge that puffs up and leaves one loveless. Notice in these texts:
1. Knowledge puffs up but Love builds up – Knowledge has the tendency to deceive the knower unless love takes priority in the knowing. In 1 Cor 8 the “knowledge” of the enlightened Christian – when it takes priority over loving other Christians – ends up leaving one loveless and deceived. “Faith” – when thought of as knowledge abstracted from love – becomes something we use to justify ourselves. Knowledge divorced from committed loving relationships becomes another way we use and abuse power for our own purposes.
2. Love of Christ surpasses knowledge – Love cannot be contained to pithy propositional phrases or even blog posts. 
It is a work of God’s grace and power to even comprehend how unfathomable Christ’s love is for us (Eph 3.16-19). To be known is to know. To know is to surrender to Love. To be known is not to control or be controlled – but to submit, open, receive from another that which is only knowable through the receiving. This kind of love – this knowing – frustrates our Cartesian minds precisely because we can’t soak it in formaldehyde, dissect and catalogue it, and squeeze it into our text book.
3. This isn’t a Knowledge vs Love – We are so accustomed to thinking about things in opposites. We are “in love” with dualistic thinking. But what I’m suggesting (and what I claim the Scriptures suggest) is NOT a dualism; rather, closer to a synergism. A relational, reflexive reality. To measure our knowledge of scripture perhaps we shouldn’t start with OUR knowing – this is a reversal of whose knowing is most important in our knowledge (God’s knowing of us in love, not our knowing of God’s love). Not our knowing of God, but his knowing of us – and that knowing happens in love. If we love the God who longs to know us, we will be known and know.
When we vacate the goal of love – concrete, practical, on-the-ground demonstrations of commitment and submission…NOT…the superficial warm fuzzies that is often described as love in 80′s love songs and some Contemporary Christian music – we allow our learning to be de-contextualized from loving. Living, lasting faith is swapped for true ideas, theological theories, and quasi-pious ideology.
In the next post I’ll put forward some reasons why I think we DON’T typically measure knowledge the way scripture does – but first…
What say you? Is love an appropriate measure of scriptural knowledge? Do you see the connection between knowing and loving? Are we able to talk about this in non-dualistic ways, holding knowledge and love in apposition to each other while understanding they can never be separated? If you’re reading, you’re welcome to contribute to this discussion.
Categorized: Bible Study, Love Tags:Tags: Bible Study, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Knowledge, Love, Scripture
My wife and I just sat in a parent-teacher conference with our daughter’s preschool teacher. Lily is four years old. Her teacher began to tear up as she told us the story of how one day a classmate, from a broken home, was visibly sad and hurting. Lily noticed her friend’s sadness, went up to the teacher, and asked her to tell the little girl, “I like her.” The teacher told the hurting little girl that Lily likes her, and there was an instant change in the girl’s demeanor, as if all she really needed to “know” was that someone liked her. A little later, Lily went up to the teacher again and asked her to tell the little girl, “I love her.” She did, and from that moment the two girl’s were inseparable.
I don’t think my daughter, stumbling upon this opportunity, consciously assessed this situation in her brain; I don’t think she tried to “understand” what was going on before acting. There is no dualism in the mind of little children (they learn that from us). She intuitively “knew” in her gut that this little girl was hurting and that she needed to feel loved. And through Lily’s “word of knowledge” and simultaneous action the love of Christ was “made known” to the little girl, to Lily, the teacher, the teacher’s assistant, any classmates who may have noticed, to my wife and I, and to the people I have told this story to.
I like to think that because Lily is loved so much, because she “knows” love (without being able to articulate her knowledge of it), she is able to share love with others (without being puffed up by her evangelistic success). All the more reason for us to come to Jesus as little children. Or are we as adults now demanded to learn everything we can about the Bible in order to adequately love God and people? Heaven help us.
Ryan, That’ s BEAUTIFUL bro. So beautiful I’m going to steal it. For a sermon. Really. Precious. I do believe that’s what I’m writing at. Amazing how a 4 year old can listen to the Spirit of God and respond like that, isn’t it?
I’m really a fan of your framing knowledge and love as synergism. I think that the ‘friendship’ between the two is a really helpful way of thinking about it, so thanks Matt.
In some ways, this seems very simple, and perhaps that’s the point. Just reading something else that pointed to Wordsworth’s famous line “We murder to dissect.” Reminded of that when you talk about how frustrated we get when we cannot catalog our knowlege/love of God. It seems like sometimes we, myself included, try to think too hard about what ‘living faith’ looks like…when the answer is actually pretty straightforward.
Knowledge always seems to be an embodied knowing, as you indicate, so the extent of knowing IS actually our lives lived in tangible ways. As a person who often times is quite a fan of ‘theoretical theories’ this is a challenge to me and to our way of life as God’s people.
“…how frustrated we get when we cannot catalog our knowledge/love of God.”
I think the more we are known by God, and the more we truly perform the love of Christ, the less we are interested in measurements. Perhaps if ever we find ourselves trying to “measure” or “catalog” our knowledge and love of God and love for others, it is an indicator that we’re going about it unrighteously…
“We murder to dissect” – lots of truth in that statement.
Ryan – the act of measuring being an unrighteous activity – I need to think that through. I do think that we will be less self-absorbed and chronically anxious if we are REALLY getting it the more we are loved and love. Does that still leave room for those of us called to shepherd people to help discern and direct others to true knowledge? I hope so – I’m just not sure how that all works out. I do think you point out the tenuousness of this entire conversation – trying to use precise, measurable language and concepts for something that probably doesn’t fit that way of seeing the world exactly. Lots to ponder here…
Yeah, I’m still thinking it through, too. “Perhaps” is such a friendly word (:
Richard Rohr talks about a certain inexplicableness (immeasurableness?) to our intimacy with God, such that what happens in our mystical “secret” place is experience that you can’t quite put words to or prove validity. These experiences are just something you “know” deep down are real and formational. Perhaps
God wants it that way, perhaps we should keep (most of) those substantive, spirit-forming experiences to ourselves, because trying to measure them and explain them publicly oftentimes creates uneasiness and frustration in others, or sets up spirituality standards that we put on others to live up to, or creates cults.
That said, I suppose the “discerning of spirits” requires “spiritual knowledge” that can only come from being known by and knowing God. As shepherds we had better be filled with the knowledge and love of Christ as we call people into the kind of “biblical” knowledge of God we are after. And I don’t think this can be measured. It just is…or isn’t. Does discernment require measurement? Just pondering, but maybe our attempts to measure lead to judgment (based on our expert Bible knowledge), and maybe a better (righteous?) way of cultivating “biblical” knowledge is through discernment, and probably communal discernment at that, so as not to leave the shepherding work in the hands of an individual.
Rambling…
I like glassware. My ‘china’ is cobalt blue glass dishes. I have cobalt blue casserole dishes and serving bowls; cobalt blue glass goblets, tumblers, and ice cream dishes; cobalt blue glass vases, bottles, and sugar bowls.
One day I read a book about the history of glass. After reading the book I developed a whole new appreciation of glass. This new appreciation became an desire to visit the Corning Glass Museum which I had passed by summer after summer for ten years without stopping. Inside in the cases were examples of all the kinds of glass I had read about. I had seen glasswares in museums before, where the imperfections of hand blown glass seemed to put in a class below modern mechanized perfection. But now that I knew of glass history I was in awe and mesmerized by each piece. I knew how precious each piece was. I knew the labor and inventiveness that went into making that cup or bowl. Somehow knowledge I had gained when I read about the history of glass had transformed my love of glassware into something deeper and greater. I didn’t just like glass, I loved it.
I expect scriptural knowledge to have an affect similar to what I experienced when I read about the history of glass. Love just has so much more depth and meaning to it because I know the story of Christ. Love isn’t just for mommy or daddy or children or even your best friend. Love isn’t just this great sexual experience. Love goes beyond all that to conquer death and destroy evil by having mercy in the face of judgment; grace when it drains your very life energy. I can have faith that love conquers all because I know the story.