# “God is not a quantity that can be mastered” by David Wells

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2021/07/21/god-is-not-a-quantity-that-can-be-mastered-by-david-wells/
- Published: 2021-07-21T12:00:13-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“There are few lines quite so poignantly applicable to the theologian’s craft as
those of the medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote of ‘_The life so short, the
craft so long to learn. The attempt so hard, the victory so keen_.’

It is, in fact, surprising that the thought should ever cross our minds that the
theological undertaking could be otherwise, for understanding– understanding of 
God, of ourselves, of the world– comes so slowly, so painfully slowly, that ‘life’s’
summer passes and the winter arrives long before this fruit is ripe to be picked.

Or so it seems. And that, perhaps, is why we are so fiercely tempted to turn theology
into a technique that we can use to produce a more efficiently gained and bountiful
knowledge of God!

God, however, is not like the periodic table.

He is not a quantity that can be ‘mastered’ even though He can be known; and though
He has revealed Himself with clarity, the depth of our understanding of Him is measured,
not by the speed with which theological knowledge is processed, but by the quality
of our determination to own His ownership of us through Christ in thought, word,
and deed.

Theology is the sustained effort to know the character, will, and acts of the triune
God as He has disclosed and interpreted these for His people in Scripture, to formulate
these in a systematic way in order that we might know Him, learn to think our thoughts
after Him, live our lives in His world on His terms, and by thought and action projection
His truth into our own time and culture.

It is therefore a synthetic activity whose center is the understanding of God, whose
horizon is as wide as life itself, and whose mission echoes the mission of God Himself,
which is to gather together in Christ a progeny as numerous as the stars above (**
Gen. 15:1-6; Gal. 3:6-16**).”

–David F. Wells, “[The Theologian’s Craft](https://amzn.to/3kpYuYQ)” in [_Doing Theology in Today’s World: Essays in Honor of Kenneth S. Kantzer_](https://amzn.to/3kpYuYQ),
John Woodbridge and Thomas Edward McComiskey, Eds. (Grand Rapids: MI: Zondervan,
1994), 171, 172.

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