The Knowledge of the Holy and The Pursuit of God are A.W. Tozer’s most popular titles and understandably so. Those who read them find genuine spiritual insight, heartfelt piety, and an invitation to worship from one in the very act of doing so.
They are different works, that came about in different ways. The Pursuit of God was the culmination of decades of thought on the Christian life, which flowed out of Tozer in one sitting. During an all-night train ride, with some toast and some tea, he wrote the entire book. The Pursuit of God opposes spiritual complacency, and calls for the deliberate, vigorous pursuit of knowing God in conscious personal experience. This book follows no predictable pattern, nor can it be comfortably pigeon-holed. Instead, it covers notions of surrender, consecration, spiritual apprehension, the need for illumination and self-denial, in a unity that makes sense once read in its entirety. Years of spiritual experiences surround the exhortations of each chapter, and those with seeking hearts will resonate with Tozer.
The Knowledge of the Holy began as a series of sermons which Tozer preached in his last years, while ministering in Toronto. Those sermons, also published as The Attributes of God, were hammered into book-form by Tozer, and published in 1961, two years before his death. A study in God’s attributes, it could not be more different than a work on the same topic by A.W. Pink. Tozer’s work is musical: poetic descriptions break off into a quoted quatrain from Faber, Watts, or Tersteegen. Sprinkled through the work are quotes from church fathers, puritans, and mystics. Tozer’s wordcraft is probably at its best in this work, combining both theological precision with imaginative metaphor to fire the religious imagination. Twenty one chapters deal each with one attribute of God. And worth the price of the whole book is the first chapter: “Why We Must Think Rightly About God”. I’ve often referred Christians to this chapter as an introduction to understanding the importance of the religious imagination.
Not everyone will agree with Tozer’s understanding of sovereignty and free will, or his views on prevenient grace. These seem to me to be small matters to overlook, given the genuine gold in the rest of the works. I encourage every believer to include these two books in his or her reading list.
About David de Bruyn
David de Bruyn pastors New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minnesota and the University of South Africa (D.Th.). Since 1999, he has presented a weekly radio program that is heard throughout much of central South Africa. He also blogs at Churches Without Chests.
