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a somewhat similar vein Dr. W. A. Brown says: “We gain our knowledge of the attributes by
analyzing the idea of God which we already won from the revelation in Christ; and we arrange
them in such a way as to bring the distinctive features of that idea to clearest expression.”[Chr.
Theol. in Outline, p. 101.]
All these methods take their startingpoint in human experience rather than in the Word of God.
They deliberately ignore the clear self-revelation of God in Scripture and exalt the idea of the
human discovery of God. They who rely on such methods have an exaggerated idea of their
own ability to find out God and to determine the nature of God inductively by approved
“scientific methods.” At the same time they close their eyes to the only avenue through which
they might obtain real knowledge of God, that is, His special revelation, apparently oblivious of
the fact that only the Spirit of God can search and reveal the deep things of God and reveal
them unto us. Their very method compels them to drag God down to the level of man, to stress
His immanence at the expense of His transcendence, and to make Him continuous with the
world. And as the final result of their philosophy we have a God made in the image of man.
James condemns all intellectualism in religion, and maintains that philosophy in the form of
scholastic theology fails as completely to define God’s attributes in a scientific way as it does to
establish His existence. After an appeal to the book of Job he says: “Ratiocination is a relatively
superficial and unreal path to the deity.” He concludes his discussion with these significant
words: “In all sincerity I think we must conclude that the attempt to demonstrate by purely
intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experiences is absolutely
hopeless.”[Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 455] He has more confidence in the pragmatic
method which seeks for a God that meets the practical needs of man. In his estimation it is
sufficient to believe that “beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a
larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the
power should be other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if it only be
large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might
conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then
be the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves,
of different degree and inclusiveness, with no absolute unity realized in it at all.”[Ibid., p. 525.]
Thus we are left with the idea of a finite God.[Cf. Baillie, Our Knowledge of God, p. 251 ff. on
this matter.]
The only proper way to obtain perfectly reliable knowledge of the divine attributes is by the
study of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. It is true that we can acquire some knowledge of the
greatness and power, the wisdom and goodness of God through the study of nature, but for an
adequate conception of even these attributes it will be necessary to turn to the Word of God. In
the theology of revelation we seek to learn from the Word of God which are the attributes of