Does the God of the Bible discourage the pursuit of knowledge?

Q: “Does the God of the Bible discourage the pursuit of knowledge?”

That’s an interesting thought…what if…

God: “Let’s have one of these creatures we’ve designed bear our image.”

Jesus: “Great idea! We can share our agape with a whole world of little us’s!”

Spirit: “Yes, but don’t let them learn anything!”

That doesn’t sound right…Why?

Well, if we look at the metaphorical poetry known as Genesis, and the symbolically represented choices free image bearers have on hand, we can quickly see it’s not knowledge itself that’s discouraged, rather knowledge of good and evil was problematic. Why?

In the creation of all, well, creation, God repeatedly called it “good.” Good then, would seem to be the natural overflow of God’s very being, manifest in word and work. Far from an arbitrary ‘good because God said so’, or the independent ‘good because God knew so,’ the answer, Euthyphro, is neither. It is good, because God is good. Evil then, is a privation of this good, and simultaneously the absence of God, knowledge of which would entail replacing the goodness of God. Such knowledge usurps the judgement of good and evil from the ontology of God to the psychology of humans.

What about knowledge, per se?

Here is where modern evangelicalism has failed miserably to not only represent the God of creation to the world, but to represent the words of scripture to the church. Christianity, in the US particularly, is widely accused of anti-intellectualism. The false dichotomy of science or religion, initiated by a couple of embittered chaps angry at their religious (and intellectual) employers, has taken root not only in those enticed by naturalism, but within the church itself where science is feared, evolution heresy, and vaccines the mark of the beast. Even though science was birthed directly from the Christian worldview, evolution evidence of design, and vaccine inventor Edward Jenner a devout Christ follower. Go figure…

It turns out, the evangelical fear-mongering of all things “secular” was really just a ploy for power. This it appears at least linked to religious ideology of the so-called moral majority, and gave rise to slogans like faith over fear, ‘the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it,’ just have faith, and so on.

Such unthinking devotion to dogma isn’t interested in reasoning together, or testing what’s good despite Isaiah’s and Paul’s invocations, but rather, simply being told what to believe, who to vote for, and what to boycott next. And of course, any challenge to what these self-appointed elite interpreters of scripture declare by fiat, is not a challenge to man, but a complete disregard of scripture and of God. At least according to those men who interpreted scripture accordingly, declared themselves “authority”, and are somehow the victims of spiritual attack if and when they have a moral failure. This, sadly, leads many to trust blindly, not ask questions, and certainly not do any learning for oneself.

This disregard for any intellectual fortitude has created a church more obsessed with doctrine than actually living out the great commission, the Sermon on the Mount, or humanity’s vocation given in the garden.

N.T. Wright, in an excursus in Walton’s book below, notes how modern Christians who think like this, miss entirely the core message of scripture:

“Genesis, the Gospels, Romans and Revelation all insist that the problem goes like this: human sin has blocked God's purposes for the whole creation; but God hasn't gone back on his creational purpose, which was and is to work in his creation through human beings, his image-bearers. In his true image-bearer, Jesus the Messiah, he has rescued humans from their sin and death in order to reinscribe his original purposes, which include the extension of sacred space into all creation, until the earth is indeed full of God's knowledge and glory as the waters cover the sea.”

“Sin” has many definitions, but here it can easily refer to the knowledge gained in the garden, failing our vocation as image bearers, and, read the last line again, not filling the earth with the knowledge of God. This is why, earlier in this cited text, Walton explains:

“Whether the trees are literal or figurative, the basic point remains: life is gained in the presence of God, and wisdom is his gift (not to be taken on one's own). God is the source and center of wisdom-not us. Regardless of our literary interpretation, the theology must be maintained: life and wisdom are the gifts of God, and human representatives incurred guilt for all of us by grasping the latter illegitimately and therefore losing the former.” - The Lost World of Adam and Eve

Wisdom is a type of knowledge; you might call it a knowledge of all knowledge. All of Torah (Genesis included) is focused, not on law, as we (again because we were told to) think, but, rather on wisdom. A knowledge of right and wrong. Of good and bad. Of God and God’s purposes for humanity, and all of creation.

Not as told by self-elected authoritarians, but by the God whose infinite knowledge is a good thing, particularly when we humble ourselves, and seek it.