God of the prophets & the apostles, not of the philosophers & the wise By Edwin Vargas Christian & Postmodern Theology Examiner In a prayer that preludes the very first chapter of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, we hear Aiden Wilson Tozer addressing God in accordance with the claims of biblical religion: “not the God of the philosophers and the wise but the God of the prophets and apostles. ” In so doing, Tozer offers in principle what an unconverted ivory tower theologian and/or philosopher cannot: the ability to tell the difference between knowing God and knowing only about Him. Tozer proceeds to his subject-matter right after this prayer, saying, What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us … Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. For this reason, The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. God of the philosophers and the wise The thought of God has been a major subject of philosophical inquiries for centuries, whether ancient, modern or postmodern. Against the wishes of their antitheistic colleagues, many philosophers, who found it their duty to locate the traces of God, if any, in the created order, could not help but concur that, indeed, there must be a Being of infinite perfection: self-sufficient, eternal, pure, all-powerful. all-knowing, immaterial, immutable, with no unrealized potential, whatsoever. Otherwise, there could be no viable explanation for the origin, nature and purpose of the universe and everything therein. This God, the Unmoved Mover as they call him, sets all things into motion, the Uncaused Cause, the necessary Self-Existent Being. But what of it? For it brings too little a benefit to man. At best, it has made him feel that by knowing all this about God and many more, he must have found the road that leads through the heights of his intellectual prowess – something to brag about. At worst, it has given him the right to dismiss it altogether as irrelevant to his own existence, his struggles, his aspirations, his ambitions. In both cases, there has only emerged a distance between God and man. No relationship has been established.