Herein is Love | Page 7

source of life, and that the possession of knowledge delivers us from the power of evil. This is an ancient heresy that lives on in every generation. The desire to know and the achievement of skill in the use of knowledge are indeed commendable. But to know is not justifiable as an end in itself. Knowledge about God and man, about the Bible and the Christian faith, about the church and its history, is good and necessary for informed Christian living, but it can in no way substitute for our dependence upon Christ and the work of His spirit in us. We need to know about Christian faith, but it must not replace the need to love and to be loved. Knowledge about God must not become more important than our knowing God.
When religious and theological knowledge becomes an end in itself, the church is apt to become coldly intellectual and sophisticated. I am reminded of a group of laymen who became avid students of Christian theology, and who became so prideful in their achievement that they exhibited in their relations with one another, as well as with their other associates, a spirit of pride, arrogance, and competitiveness. They had acquired the knowledge of Christianity, but they had lost the spirit of the Christ.
The work of Christians is not so much to hold and transmit a knowledge of the faith as it is to be the personal representatives and instruments of Christ in the world. To be sure, Christ's representatives should know what they are talking about and intellectually be able to enter into dialogue with all men. But their knowing should incarnate them, both as persons and in their capacity to represent God and His Christ to men.
This brings us also to a controversy that exists in the field of Christian education. Many people feel that the purpose of the church school is to transmit the content of the Christian faith. Christian education, however, must be personal. It must take place in a personal encounter, and only secondarily is it transmissive. It is true, however, that Christian education is responsible for the continued recital of God's saving acts, and for the transmission of the subject matter of the historical faith and life of the Christian community. The content of our faith was born of God's action and man's response--a divine-human encounter. It is neither possible nor correct to reduce this to subject matter and substitute the transmission of subject matter for the encounter, with the assumption that it will accomplish the same purpose (it cannot, it never has, and it never will). Actually, the relations of transmission and encounter are complementary. Both are needed. The church, as the tradition-bearing community, contains both poles and should not subordinate one to the other. When the content of the tradition is lost, the meaning of the encounter is lost, and in the end even the encounter itself. Then tradition becomes idolatrous and sterile. Both are necessary to the community of faith, and both are meaningless, even dangerous, if separated. Christian teaching is concerned with both.
Mr. Knowles, however, is not happy about the required complementary relation between the content of the Christian faith and his life. As Mrs. Strait uses moralism for a defense, so Mr. Knowles uses his emphasis on the content of the Bible as a way of protecting himself from the deeper and more personal challenges of life. He is estranged from his family, and he is regarded as austere and unfriendly by his employees and many of his business associates. Personal relations frighten him, but by mastery of knowledge he gains superiority and power over others.
Intellectualism and gnosticism are not confined to the church. We see their influence in every walk of life. Many people talk much about the importance of love in human relationships, but they do not love. They use their knowledge about love as an evasion of their responsibility to express love. Man cannot be saved by what he knows, but only by the way he lives with his brother. "If any one says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar."[1] This is the stern but clear word of the Scriptures.
But we can be so frightened by the risks of expressing love that we may turn away from those who need our love and have a right to expect it from us. How much easier and safer it is to know about God and His love, and to confine this meaning to the sanctuary and the study group! Intellectualism, then, is another way in which we try to "play it safe."
Humanism
Professor Manby speaks for humanism, another point of view in the church. He, with others, says, "Give man time and he will work out his own salvation." Humanists, like Dr. Manby, often