Deuteronomy chapter four is one of the great touchstone passages in all of Scripture. As we come to this passage, my heart and soul are absolutely struck by the question – a rhetorical question, but a very real question – asked in verse 33: "Has any people heard the voice of the Lord, the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, and survived?"
What brings us here? What brings us to this institution, to this campus, to this hour, ready for learning and study? Something summons us here. There is some mandate, some basis, some foundation. This is a theological seminary and college. We dare to speak of God. We even dare to define what we do here as Christian education. What an audacious claim! We actually say that here we teach what God has taught.
This would be a baseless and foundationless claim, an incredible claim, if God had not spoken from the midst of the fire and allowed us to hear. On what authority are we here? To dare to speak of these things, we must speak invoking the authority of God, who alone could speak these things, reveal Himself, and tell us what we must know. This is the answer to the question that haunts the postmodern mind – on what basis can we claim to know anything?
The great philosophical crisis of our day is an epistemological crisis. It is a crisis of knowing, a crisis of knowledge. In particular, it is a challenge for Christianity and for the Christian thinker, the Christian theologian, the Christian minister, the Christian preacher, and the Christian institution. How do we know what we claim to know? How dare we teach what we dare to teach? As Francis Schaeffer understood well, and he took the answer as the title of his most significant contribution: We speak because He Is There and He Is Not Silent.
I first read that book as a sixteen-year-old, and to be honest, I think the greatest assurance I got from it is that some smart person believed in God. Even at that age, however, and lacking the vocabulary to understand what I was experiencing, I understood the epistemological crisis. How do we know anything? How can we speak of anything? And furthermore, how do we jump from the empirical knowledge of what we can observe to speaking of God whom we cannot see? To claim knowledge in terms of empirical and scientific observation and study and phenomenology is audacious enough. But to speak of the immortal invisible God only wise – that is a new leap of audacity altogether. Dr. Schaeffer understood the epistemological problem of silence, the claim and the implication that we can know nothing. And he understood that there is only one epistemological answer – revelation. Thus Christianity depends upon a Christian epistemology or a Christian theory of knowledge that is based in revelation alone.
There is no greater challenge than this – to make certain that we know on what authority we speak, and that we know on what authority we know. In Deuteronomy chapter four, Israel is reminded of the authority by which they live. They are reminded that they heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire and survived.
This great sermon, of course, comes at the conclusion of the introductory section to Deuteronomy. It begins and ends with a parallel structure, and in the middle is a large section reflecting the form of a suzerainty treaty, an Ancient Near Eastern convention whereby a conqueror sets down the terms of surrender. In this case, of course, the conqueror is none other than the Lord God Jehovah, the conquered is none other than His own chosen nation, Israel. God sets down the terms, and they are very easy to understand. It comes down to a very simple formula: hear and obey and live. Refuse to hear, disobey, and bear the wrath of God. Continue >>
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