Not is God known by the intellect.
“God is Spirit” (John 4:24), and therefore can only be known spiritually. But
fallen man is not spiritual, he is carnal. He is dead to all that is spiritual.
Unless he is born again supernaturally brought from death unto life, miraculously
translated out of darkness into light, he cannot even see the things of God
(John 3:3), still less apprehend them (1 Cor. 2:14). The Holy Spirit has to
shine in our hearts (not intellects) in order
to give us “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2
Cor. 4:6). And even that spiritual knowledge is but fragmentary. The regenerated
soul has to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus (2 Pet. 3:18).
(Arthur Walkington Pink, The Attributes of God [Watchmaker Publishing,
2011], 9, emphasis added)
[The 1646 Westminster] Confession
and the early church did not deny that the Holy Spirti can bring “inward
illumination” (WCF I.6) by which He is “bearing witness by and with the Word of
God in our hearts” (WCF I.5), or that their [sic] might exist some personal guidance
(see “private spirits in I.10) (Phillip Kayser, The Canon of Scripture: A
Presuppositional Study [Biblical Blueprints, 2021], 378 n. 566)
