Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord. –Jeremiah 9.23-4

Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him. –I Corinthians 8.1-3

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. I Corinthians 13.1-2

If anyone knows me, I am not against gaining knowledge; even intricate knowledge when it comes to knowing God. I am all for growing into the depth dimension reality that our ineffable God is in Himself. I believe most Christians, particularly when they have abundant means to do so, who don’t work at growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ are lazy (at best) and engaging in the sin of ἀκηδία or acedia. That said the other extreme of this is present mostly among those of us who would be labeled ‘academic’ or maybe even ‘scholastic’ in orientation. It was this class of people that Martin Luther largely had in his sights when he thought of a theologia gloriae or ‘theology of glory.’ These were the clerical class, and theologians who sought approval, not of God, but of other men; ironically in the so called pursuit of God. Luther disdained this sort of theological spirituality, and I would suggest this disdain was in direct echo of Christ’s heart in Luther’s.

God wants us to know Him deeply, but if we equate that with our credentials as Christians, and how those give us status within the church, God hates this; it represents the sort of lukewarm and beguiling state that Jesus, in the book of Revelation, says sickens Him. At some level, one way or the other, as Christians, we all dip in and out of this sort of self-centered sort of Christianity; it is the constant battle between the flesh and the Spirit (cf. Gal 5.17). Unfortunately, where this sort of ‘centeredness’ flourishes, and even has been institutionalized, is within theological higher learning. For those pursuing careers in this field, it is required of them to earn terminal degrees; write peer reviewed essays, book chapters, and books; and build a curriculum vitae that blows the socks off the nearest competitor. When all of this is built into becoming a professor, editor, dean of a seminary or university, so on and so forth, it becomes almost impossible to fight the good fight and not give into the flight of fancies that all of our hearts and minds play on us. When ‘glory’ is built into career status, or even more brutishly, into plain old intellectual standing among one’s peers, the game is almost lost before it even gets started. Irenaeus knew this, a towering Christian intellect of his day, and so he penned the following:

It’s better, and brings greater benefit, to be a simple, uneducated man or woman, and to become akin to God through love, than to be well-read and clever (in our own conceited opinion) and to blaspheme the God who made us, by making up some imaginary God and Father of our own. As Paul cries out, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1). Not that Paul wished to condemn himself. But he knew that some people fall away from God’s love by making conceited pretensions to knowledge, imagining themselves to have found some sort of perfection — and then proclaiming a Creator who is less than perfect! To strike down the self-importance in which these folk wall through their so-called knowledge, Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

There can be no notion more self-conceited than this — to imagine that you are better and more perfect than God who created you, formed you, put the breath of life into you, and decreed that you should exist. What good will it do you to have knowledge even of a single reason why anything in creation was made, if you then become proudly puffed-up with this kind of knowledge, and fall away from God’s love which is the very life of the human soul? Far better to believe in God and keep yourself in His love. We should seek no other knowledge but the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who for our sakes was crucified, rather than go downhill into ungodliness through super-smart inquiries and nit-picking explanations.[1]

May God in Christ have mercy on us all! We are all prone to wandering into self-incurved worship rather than worshipping the only true and living God. Without God we are as Calvin said (paraphrase) idol manufacturers; and as Feuerbach opined in his own way, we, as a people, self-project our image onto the heavens and see that as God. May we only see God, as we only can see God, in the prosopon or face of Christ; herein the glory of God is on full and cheerful display.

[1] Irenaeus, cited by Nick Needham, Daily Readings: The Early Church Fathers (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2017).