If you are like me then I assume you want to click over to another of your favorite Christian blogs simply to avoid the rather frightening sesquipedalianism plastered across the title of this post. It is a big, unfamiliar word, but it need not scare you. Much like the overlong word used in the first sentence (which is ironically defined as long word), epistemology is easy to understand.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It is a branch of philosophy which attempts to make sense of how humans know things. I beg you not to tune me out because I am discussing philosophy; I assure you that this post will be both understandable and pertinent to your life as a Christian. Trust me.
So, how do we know things? This may seem like a silly and pointless question on the surface, but it has massive implications. Most notably, the American university has allowed this question to shape the way in which they teach the students who come to them for a higher education. To quote Ravi Zacharias, “The modern student goes away to college in order to learn. They come back from the same school knowing that there is no way to know anything.” I would also add that that we leave knowing one other thing – that college is freaking expensive. Sorry for the digression. My point is that the simple, silly question asked at the outset of this paragraph has brought many people and institutions into some strange places.
For Renee Descartes, a French philosopher living in the 1500’s, the question of knowing things took him into an oven for two days. That’s right, he locked himself into an oven for two days and from that experience he went on to his famous quote cogito ergo sum; “I think, therefore I am.” He was responding to the idea that man can know nothing, and his response was that there is one thing man can know – “man is a thinking creature.”
For other people who try to answer this question, the final response is that man cannot know anything. The reason we cannot know anything? Because all of our learning experiences are inextricably tied to perceptions relayed to our minds by our senses, and because our senses are imperfect and susceptible to alteration (i.e degenerative hearing, taste, or eyesight) they cannot always be trusted. Therefore, some people say we cannot trust any knowledge gained in our life. This line of thought was presented and ferociously defended by Thomas Huxley. Modern academia has gone this route also.
The result of the academy following Huxley? Postmodernism. They came to postmodernism by defending the idea that man cannot speak honestly or accurately about foundational truths, such as God’s existence, because our senses are getting in the way. Therefore, for brevity’s sake, they will tell you there is no truth.
Now, I would like to point out one other example of where the original silly question may lead. Agnosticism. This philosophical framework says that it is not possible to know whether God exists. Do not brush this aside; while most self professed agnostics may just be intellectually lazy, there are many who hold to their agnosticism as a virtuous form of skepticism. Dr. Al Mohler wrote a blog post about the rise of this type of agnostic and I encourage you to check it out. The link is posted at the bottom of this post.
Finally, what is the Christian response to this silly question? Firm reliance and trust in the Bible as God’s authoritative revelation of Himself. Let me share with you the fatal flaw in Huxley’s argument that man cannot know whether God exists. He starts with himself. He attempts to figure, divine, or understand God on his own. I agree with him that it is impossible. I think of G.K. Chesterton when he stated that it is impossible for man to figure out God. It is as though we are attempting to build a bridge over an infinite river, thereby making it finite. We cannot do it. But what if God explained Himself to us? We would not have to figure, divine, or understand Him on our own. Which is exactly what the Bible, and the final revelation of Jesus did for us, they exegeted the Father to us. The Bible is the basis of our epistemology.
Now, it must be mentioned that sin has a major role in Christian epistemology. Romans tells us that all men have been given some knowledge of God through the imago dei. It also tells us that men suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Therefore, to fully know the truth of God’s existence we must be enabled by the Spirit to understand the revelation which God has provided to us, and this chain of revelation begins with salvation. This is the true secret to knowledge: Christ.
Click here for Dr. Mohler’s blog on the new wave of agnosticism.
August 12, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Great article. Pertinent fdoe sure.
January 9, 2011 at 1:47 am
I feel that you’re missing an obvious point to the entire discussion; one that surely did not escape the attention of Renee Descarte. We know the bible through our senses, to use the bible as proof that we can trust our senses is to make the classical philosophical mistake of “begging the question” or assuming that which you are trying to prove. I’m not quite sure how you missed the point so badly.
Furthermore we’re not supposed to know that God exists. If we knew he existed then we wouldn’t have need of faith. We’re all supposed to be agnostic; we’re not supposed to know that God exists. We’re supposed to believe he exist on faith. Knowledge doesn’t enter the picture. We wouldn’t need faith if we knew he existed. It should be obvious to any one with faith that you cannot know that God exists. Knowledge destroys faith. If we knew God existed what would be the point?
The Christian response to the question should be the same as everyone’s response to the question. “oooh we could be living in the matrix. Cool. Next question.” We don’t know if God exist or that anything else exist. So what we have this little thing called Faith… heard of it?
Another point you make is that Huxley’s flaw is not that he “starts with himself” (and when you’re being a skeptic where else could you start?) That’s not his flaw. Actually his argument is flawless. It’s sound. We can’t know anything from our senses. (Of course when I use know I’m talking with absolute certainty). It’s a denial of logic to assert that we can know things from our senses. David Hume pointed out the flaw in using inductive reasoning to prove inductive reasoning.
Your article sucks. Take a philosophy class and get a clue. One can agree with the skeptical claim without it impacting one’s life at all. Faith and Belief are untouched by acknowledgment of skepticism. We should all be skeptics and believers. One would have to deny logic in order to arrive at your conclusion. I’m a philosophy major and we definitely never learned that “There is no truth.” We learned that we cannot know certain things about reality. Kant said this, Hume said this, Plato said this; c’mon who didn’t say this. Jesus said it for his own sake!
January 9, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Justin,
Thanks for checking out our site and taking the time to comment on my article. You make a couple of points worth discussing; you also make some that deserve the vitriole you dished out towards me. I will deal with both to attempt to satisfy (which will not happen, but I want our regular readers to see how to and how not to engage in serious discussion).
First off, what did Descartes lead up to once he came to his conclusion that man is a thinking creature? He went from there to build propositional statements which led him to the existence of God. He found the wall of limitation to skepticism: Man cannot doubt his ability to doubt without falling into absurdity. Now, becasue this is a blog, not a scholarly position paper, I did not walk our readers through the propositions which led to Descartes’ acceptance of the Bible. His foundation of his ability to reason led him to the moral law, which inexorably leads to the existence of an external reality. From there, he recognized the need for something which started the chain of causality which is our universe. The explanation the Bible provides for the existence of man, the laws of our universe, the need for an “unmoved mover”, and many other of the great questions of life create a more plausible, consistent, coherent, and pragmatic worldview than any other rival, including skepticism.
Your two paragraph lesson on faith is playground atheism. I should expect more than a lexical trap from someone who is a philosophy major. This is about the same as me responding “you should not even care to engage in this debate because your parenthetical statement about Huxely’s skepticism shows a strong bias towards a belief in relative truth. Therefore you have to say that I am right.” I would feel like a fool making that argument, for it would be like a five year playing gotcha on the playground.
Addressing your defense of Huxely: my point is that he began his argument with incorrect premises. Namely, his foundational satement about the world is the non-existence of God. One of the inviolable aspects of a sound argument is the truth of its premises. For instance, if there was in fact a god, and this god explained to us, his creatures, how it is that we come to attain knowledge (through him) and that some people would never attain true knowledge (becasue they refuse him) then it would appear that I have a much better explanation for why two people, both intent on living reasonably, would come to such different conclusions about life, the universe, and everything. The Bible says that you must be enlightened by the Holy Spirit in order to fully understand. I would suggest reading Alvin Plantinga’s book Warranted Belief if you would like a full introduction into Christian epistemolgy as it intersects with the practice in general.
As a side note, I have finished my major in the discipline of philosophy, so now that we have equal footing in the “accolades therefore authority” department, let us speak plainly. I will personally send you a check of one hundred dollars if you can show me the place where Jesus says that “man cannot know things with certainty.” It is not there, because Jesus was the ultimate revelation of truth to man. Truth is revealed in order to be understood.