God gives us theology, but how do we get it?

Reading in Richard Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics I came across an excellent explanation of where theology comes from and how we get it.  The short answer is God Almighty.  However, a two sentence blog post is to short so here are the little-bit-longer answers.

God Almighty is the cause of our knowledge about God and his world. That is to say, by the grace of God the Father in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit’s teaching work, we come to know God.  God has the perfect theology of God, “for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.  For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:10-11).

Well, how do we get this knowledge?  Answer: God by his grace.  This comes in basically three parts.  Muller only lists two in the section I read today, but in other places he cites the third part. 

Part one: “God as he wills, gives us to know the mysteries of his heavenly kingdom by means of his Holy Spirit”  (Muller. vol.1, Pg.242). 

Part two: “An attentive meditation on the divine Word, by the grace of the Holy Spirit’s illumination.”  (Muller. Vol.1, Pg.242).    Getting the knowledge of God is a supernatural blessing.  God the Spirit gives it by grace as he speaks through the Scriptures which he has also given by grace. 

Part three and best of all: Jesus Christ the Word of God.  Through him, the eternal and immutable Word of God we come to know God the Father, God the Spirit, and God the Son. 

John 14:9-11  “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

Matthew 11:27  “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Praise God Almighty.  He gave us theology!  We can worship him and love our fellow man because of his gift of theology.