Epistemology 101
by Grover Gunn
| 1 | I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. |
| 2 | Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. |
| 3 | Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable. |
| 33 | Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! |
| 34 | "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?" |
| 35 | "Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to him?" |
| 36 | For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. |
Epistemology involves the study of the concept of human knowledge. We all have the psychological experience of knowing, but how do we verify the validity of the experience? How do we know that there is any objective relationship between our subjective experience of knowing and something real and objective out there in the outside world? How do we know that what we are experiencing is not some sort of dream experience? We touch and see and hear things in our dreams that have no objective existence.
We can have epistemological autonomy only if we can obtain or achieve intellectual self-sufficiency. And intellectual self-sufficiency is impossible for finite creatures. For example, even if we do have an objective but partial knowledge of some things, how do we know that we understand those things rightly? The one fact we don't know about them may be the fact that changes their meaning completely.
A wealthy woman who was traveling overseas saw a bracelet she wanted to buy, so she sent her husband this cable: "Have found wonderful bracelet. Price $75,000. May I buy it?" Her husband promptly wired back this response: "No, price too high." But the cable operator omitted the comma, so the woman received this message: "No price too high." Elated, she purchased the bracelet. It was just a comma, but what a difference it made!1
How do we know that our sense perceptions are reliable? How can we know that we have a real knowledge of anything? Even if we can know anything, the knowledge we have is so fragmentary. Some things are too deep for us to ever know, and we are ignorant of most of the facts we could understand. The question is not merely, "How do we know?" The question is, "How do we know that we know?"
The answer to these questions is very simple but very profound (2 Corinthians 11:3). We know that we know because God has told us so. Ecclesiastes 7:24 asks, "As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out?" The answer is, God can. God knows all things (Hebrews 4:13). The measure of God's knowledge is that He is the One who created the universe and upholds it moment by moment. His understanding is infinite (Psalm 147:5). We know our sense perceptions are reliable because God gave them to us (Proverbs 20:12).
Our epistemological confidence is founded on faith in the Lord (Proverbs 3:5-8). The epistemologies of the world tend to be complex, but they are also foolish (1 Corinthians 3:18-20). They try to show how finite man can have certain knowledge without the help of the infinite, all-knowing Creator. They assume a finite human can somehow attain his own epistemological self-sufficiency.
The key to our epistemology is our knowledge of God. We must now explain how God is knowable but at the same time incomprehensible. How can God enable us to know that we know if God is beyond our comprehension?
GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE
I once spoke on the trinity to a group of pastors in Uganda. Although they all spoke English, they wanted my lectures translated into their tribal tongue. Suddenly the translator came to me for advice. I had repeatedly referred to the three Persons in the Godhead, and his native language had no word for person. He had been translating this as "the three human beings in God," and he knew that was not right. I suggested instead "the three Faces of God." The difficulty we had in finding words to describe the trinity is not surprising. The living and true God is beyond our full comprehension.
It is said that St. Augustine once walked along the seashore meditating on the mystery of the trinity. He saw a boy repeatedly pouring seawater into a hole dug in the sand. When asked what he was doing, the boy replied that he was pouring the ocean into that little hole. The great theologian responded, "That is what I have been trying to do also." He had been pondering the eternal with his finite mind.2
God created this world from nothing. God is in control of everything without being to blame for anything. Each Person of the Godhead is a distinct Person, and yet all of God is in each Person. All of God is wherever God is, and God is everywhere. God sincerely desires obedience even when He has decreed disobedience. I believe the Bible teaches all of these, even though I cannot fully comprehend any of these. I don't believe I ever will comprehend these things, not even in eternity.
Suppose you lived in a flat, two dimensional world, a world with no three dimensional depth.3 Suppose someone came from the world of 3-D to tell you about pyramids and cubes and spheres. In your limited 2-D world, you could learn many truths about these mysterious solid figures from another dimension, but you could never fully understand them. Although you could know things about them, they would always remain incomprehensible to you as solid figures. That is also the way it is when the eternal Creator tells us about Himself. God has revealed many truths about Himself in the Bible, but we should never expect to have God all figured out. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God's ways above our ways, and God's thoughts above our thoughts.
GOD IS KNOWABLE
Some argue that if God is incomprehensible, then it must be impossible to know Him in any intelligible manner. According to neo-orthodoxy, we can't know God with our minds. We can know him only through a religious experience. We can know God only in a non-cognitive, irrational sense. The Bible does not contain propositional truth, the actual verbal words are not inspired and thus inerrant and infallible. The Bible is a human book filled with factual errors, but it is a divine book in that through its message we can have a religious experience.
The response to this is simple. God may be incomprehensible, but He is also knowable not directly but by creaturely analogies. We are finite creatures, but God also made us in His image. God also created the universe to reflect His glory. So God filled this world with true creaturely reflections of His glory so that He can reveal Himself to us.
No man can look upon God directly and live. The Bible speaks of God as clothed in impenetrable light. God, however, created a world which reflects His glory, a world filled with analogies, reflections and images of the eternal, which God can use to reveal to us truth about Himself.
AGAIN, GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE
The opposite error is a denial of God's incomprehensibility. Some argue that because they can truly know some things about God, then they must be able to comprehend all truth about God. This is religious rationalism. In this system, human understanding becomes the final measure of truth about God.
We see this more commonly today in cultists such as the Jehovah's Witnesses who teach that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity can't be true because it is not reasonable. I agree that no human can fully understand how God is One and Three. Using the term Being to refer to the oneness and the word Person to refer to the threeness states the position but does not answer all the questions. There are personal distinctions between the Father, the Son and the Spirit such that they have had a genuine love relationship from eternity past. The God who is love is no solitary deity lonely for fellowship with a peer. And yet there is but one God with each Person of the Godhead so fully God that all of God is present in each Person. This is beyond my comprehension. Does that mean it cannot be true?
The answer to this is simple. God is knowable because He has revealed Himself. God is incomprehensible in that we can't directly know and experience the eternal. We can know God only as He reveals Himself in terms of our creaturely limitations. These creaturely limitations and the folly of rationalism are well illustrated in the parable of the fisherman.
THE PARABLE OF THE FISHERMAN
A fisherman said that he had a net that could catch all the fish in the sea. He sailed around the world catching fish. When he returned, he proclaimed, There are no more fish left in the sea because my net has caught them all. But some asked him about the tiny fish that could swim through the mesh of his net, and about the large fish that were bigger than his net. He replied, "Oh, those aren't fish. My net has caught all the fish in the sea. If my net didn't catch them, they are not fish."
The fisherman is a rationalist. The net is his mind. The rationalist says his net catches all fish. If his net cannot catch it, then it's not a fish.
I am a supernatural rationalist. The God who simultaneously knows all knowledge at once, the God whose mental process establishes the laws of logic and whose providential upholding of the creation establishes the law of causation, the God whose orderliness is the basis for inductive science, the God who made our senses to be accurate but limited probes of objective reality, He alone is the fisherman with the net that catches all fish. He has gifted me with a creaturely imitation of His net, a net that will catch many fish. There are, however, fish too small for its mesh and fish too large for its reach. He has told me which fish these are so I will know where it is presumptuous for me to fish. These are fish such as the Trinity and the will of God.
There are no fish too large or too small for God's net. My net is made in the image of God's net, but it is also a creaturely net with finite limitations. My net really does catch fish. The fish my net cannot catch are still real fish, and the fish which only God's net can catch are not absurdities.
THE QUESTION OF SQUARE CIRCLES
Someone once asked me how I know that there are not "square circles" and other logical absurdities in the mind of God if God is incomprehensible. By definition, there are no absurdities in the mind of God, because the mind of God is the final measure of what is rational and what is absurd. God has given us His sufficient and inerrant revelation of His mind in the Bible. The Bible is the key to both our inerrant knowledge and our "learned ignorance." "Learned ignorance" is a concept discussed by John Calvin.4 It refers to our learning from our study of Scripture that there are truths we simply cannot fully comprehend and our learning from Scripture what they are. There is nothing in Scripture to indicate that either "square circles" or the paradoxes of neo-orthodoxy are eternal truths in the mind of God. They are, therefore, indeed absurdities. There are other truths, such as the relationship of the oneness and threeness of the Trinity or the relationship of the revealed and the decretive aspects of God's will, which Scripture reveals to be genuine truths even though they are beyond our full mental grasp. These truths are beyond creaturely comprehension but nevertheless are absolutely rational because God's mind is the final definition of rationality.
THE PILL ILLUSTRATION
The Puritan Thomas Manton said the following:
"We should not expect to see a reason for everything which we believe, for many doctrines are mysteries, and we must receive them as we do pills. We do not chew pills, but swallow them; and so we must take these truths into our souls upon the credit of the revealer."
Spurgeon makes the following comment on this:
"Many a truth when taken into the soul as a whole has proved to be very sweet to the heart. We could not understand it, but no sooner had we believed it than we were conscious of its delightful influence upon the inner nature. Who can understand the twofold nature of our Lord's person, or the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, or the predestination which does not violate free agency? And yet what a delight these truths create in minds which cheerfully accept them."5
Of course, it is foolish to chew most pills designed for swallowing. Some can be very bitter. Since the time of Manton and Spurgeon, we have developed the chewable pill. With this in mind, I believe we can expand our illustratrion. A religious rationalist is someone who says to God,
"I will accept only chewable pills. I want to taste doctrines with my mind to see for myself if they are good for the soul. If I can't chew them, then I won't swallow them.
Some divinely revealed truths are like chewable pills, and some others are like pills designed only for swallowing. We had best follow the instructions given by the Great Physician in His Word and not insist on trying to swallow whole what He said to chew, or on trying to chew what He said to swallow whole.
THE HUMAN MIND
Related to this whole issue of knowing and comprehending God is our understanding of the human mind. In what sense is the human mind an image of the divine Mind? Is the human mind a little piece of the divine Mind, a down-sized reproduction of the divine Mind? Or is the human mind a creaturely reflection of the divine Mind, a bounded and limited analogy to the divine Mind? I believe the latter, which is my understanding of Van Til's position. The human mind cannot transcend its creatureliness and its finitude. The reflection is true even though the human mind operates in a different plane of existence from the divine mind it reflects.
We are like God in that we reflect His communicable attributes. We possess creaturely versions of "being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth" We are also unlike God, who alone is "infinite, eternal and unchangeable." His incommunicable attributes permeate His "being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." In contrast, our creatureliness permeates our being and experience. Consistent with this contrast, the human mind is a creaturely analogy to the divine Mind, not a down-sized reproduction of the divine Mind.
This explains why human logic is valid, why we can know truth and even understand God's revelation about Himself. Human logic is analogous on a creaturely plane to the eternal logic of the divine Mind, which is Truth itself. This also explains the limits of our knowledge, why we can never directly comprehend the Eternal. The human mind is creaturely. It is a part and parcel of creation which is bounded by the limits of space and time.
God did make this world to reflect His glory. Thus, the world of space and time is filled with divinely planned and planted analogies to the eternal Creator. Because of the divinely given capabilities of our creaturely minds and because of the objective analogies to the Eternal with which God has filled this world, the eternal God can reveal truth about Himself to finite humanity. Truth about God is knowable.
Because of our creatureliness, we reach limits in our understanding. Our world is bounded. We explore the vast garden of God's good creation and we eventually discover that it is walled. There is much in this vast garden which we have not yet fully explored and much we have not yet even begun to explore. There are also truths outside the garden which we will never be able to explore. There are truths we will never totally comprehend because we will never transcend our creatureliness. Thus, we get to a point in our understanding where we reach apparent contradictions. Some of these will always appear to be contradictions to us, even after we are glorified. By faith we know they are not contradictions to God. We know that these truths are perfectly consistent, perfectly understood, perfectly explainable within the Eternal Mind, which is not bounded by finite limits.
Thus God will always remain incomprehensible to us to some degree, not because God is irrational or unknowable but because we are creaturely. Some apparent contractions will one day become clear to us because they are due to the dimming effects of sin upon the mind. Some will one day become clear to us because the resurrection body will exist on a higher, more spiritual plane of creaturely existence. Others we will have to accept on faith even in eternity because we will always be creatures.
I understand irrationalism to be a denial of the ultimate rationality of the divine Mind. We project our mental limitations upon God and assume that our apparent contradictions are real contradictions rooted in the Creator Himself. I understand rationalism to be a denial of the qualitative limitations of our creaturely rationality. We assume there would be no apparent contradictions if only we had enough additional facts revealed to us. We fail to appreciate the qualitative difference between the Creator and the creature.
We explore the vast garden of creation and eventually discover it is walled long before we have explored everything within the walls. The irrationalist says that even God is limited by these walls. The rationalist says the walls aren't really that high and he can peek over them. I say the walls are infinitely high to me but nothing to God. I have learned to be content in my state as a redeemed creature.
THE MIND OF CHRIST
1 Corinthians 2:16 says that we have the mind of Christ. This teaching provides another way to consider God's being both knowable and incomprehensible. To understand what it means to have the mind of Christ, we must understand the incarnation. Christ is one person with two natures that are not separated, divided, mixed or confused.
According to Nestorianism, the two natures are separated and divided. This would be consistent with the Neo-orthodox position: God is not knowable. If there is a chasm between Christ's human and divine natures, then Jesus in His humanity cannot reveal to us any true knowledge of the divine. According to Eutychianism, the two natures are mixed and confused. This would be consistent with the religious rationalism position: God is not incomprehensible. If the human nature of Christ can mix directly with His divine nature, then the human has a bridge to direct comprehension of the divine. I am not here trying to comment on the actual positions of Nestorius and Eutychius on revelation, but I am using their erroneous views of the incarnation to illustrate some erroneous views of revelation
Orthodoxy says that Christ is one person with two natures that are not separated, divided, mixed or confused. The knowledge of God which Christ gives is both true knowledge and knowledge communicated on the human level. Christ is both Creator and creature, both human and divine. One reason the incarnation is necessary for God's highest revelation of Himself is because the human mind cannot think God's thoughts directly on the eternal level as God thinks them. We need a Mediator who is fully human as well as fully divine. We have access to the divine Mind not directly but through the hypostatic union. Jesus in His humanity is like the filter which enables astronomers to look at the sun through a telescope without blinding their eyes. A sun telescope magnifies and reveals but in a way adapted to the limitations of our eyes. Jesus' humanity both veils and reveals so that we can see God and live. Contrary to neo-orthodoxy, we can see God. Contrary to religious rationalists, we cannot look directly at the brightness of God's glory.
FAITH AND REASON
Let's look at one final way to consider our knowledge of God's revelation. What is the relationship of faith and reason? There are three views. One view is associated with Tertullian (160-220). He was an African lawyer who became one of the first Latin theologians; he wrote in Latin and not in Greek. His work was key in developing the theological language used in the development of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation. In later life, he joined the Montanists. He is famous for the statement "What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?"
Tertullian is associated with the position "Credo quia absurdum" (I believe because it is absurd). Carl Henry says the following about this:6
"Tertullian's dominant emphasis falls not simply on the priority of faith, but rather on the disjunction of faith and reason: Christianity requires belief in what to the unregenerate mind appears absurd."
Now there is truth here. There are doctrines beyond our comprehension: the trinity, the incarnation, creatio ex nihilo, a divine sovereignty which allows for creaturely free agency. Tertullian also recognized that you can't mix Christianity with pagan thinking. They are oil and water. Now if that is all Tertullian is saying, then he is correct, but some believe Tertullian went beyond that. Again, Carl Henry says,
"... Tertullian's view [was not] simply an accident of the fact that he lived in an age when philosophy was shaped by Greek and Roman thinkers outside the orbit of Judeo-Christian revelation. For he objects in principle to the idea and possibility of Christian philosophy."7
So, rightly or wrongly, Tertullian has become associated with the position, "Credo quia absurdum" (I believe because it is absurd).
The position associated with Thomas Aquinas is "Intelligo ut credam" (I understand in order to believe). This is the position of religious rationalists. Philosophy is prior to theology, reason is prior to faith.
I agree with the position associated with Augustine and Anselm: "Credo ut intelligam" (I believe in order to understand). In his sermon on John 29.9, Augustine said, "Understanding is the reward of faith; therefore, do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand."8 Carl Henry says the following:
"'Believe in order to understand,' is the emphasis; without belief one will not understand. Reason still has its task, but on a new foundation and within a new climate. The revelation of the living God is the precondition and starting point for human understanding... ... divine revelation and authority are for [Augustine] the starting point of 'Christian philosophy'; not philosophical speculation but inspired Scripture constitutes the gateway to truth."9
APPENDIX
THE PARABLE OF THE 3D CUBE
The 3D Cube, an all sufficient, sovereign and unique geometric figure of three dimensions, decided to create a limited world of two dimensions to reflect its glory. The Cube filled this two dimensional world with points, lines, triangles and other two dimensional figures. The epitome of this two dimensional creation was the square. The squares were genuine images of the Cube, sharing its parallel lines of equal length and its 90 degree intersections, but the squares had no ontological continuity with the Cube. The squares were not 3D figures but 2D images of the Cube, the one and only 3D figure. Their lines and angles lacked the three dimensional depth and solidity which permeated and characterized the Cube.
The squares were able to observe their own two dimensional world only through the narrow slit of 2D vision, which limited their perception to points and lines. Even with this limitation, the glory of the creator was evident in its creation. The Cube raised up certain squares called prophets and enabled them to view their world from above, giving them a three dimensional perspective on their two dimensional world. Thus, they were able to see squares and other 2D figures in a way that revealed even more the glory of the Cube.
The greatest revelation of all was the Drawing. The Drawing was two intersecting squares with the corresponding corners connected by four parallel lines. The Drawing, an accurate two dimensional reflection of the Cube, revealed to the 2D world genuine truth about the Cube. This revelation was a 2D replica and not a 3D reproduction of the Cube because no square could experience or understand three dimensional depth.
Although the squares now had true knowledge about the Cube, the Cube in its three dimensional existence remained incomprehensible to the squares. The only way a square could directly comprehend the tri-plane existence and the solidity of the Cube was for the square to become three dimensional itself. That simply was not possible. For a square to become three dimensional would be divinization, a blurring of the vital ontological distinction between the 3D creator and the 2D creature. The squares had to trust that what appeared to be inconsistent about the Cube when revealed in a 2D world was perfectly consistent in terms of the creator's 3D mind. Concepts such as depth and solidity were not ultimately irrational; they were merely beyond two dimensional thought and experience.
There arose division among the squares as to the nature of the 2D revelation called the Drawing. Some argued that the Drawing was not a 2D image-reflection but a 3D reproduction of the Cube. The Drawing, they argued, is either a 3D revelation or no revelation; there is no other option. For these squares, their 2D minds became their ultimate measure of all truth, including revealed truth about the Cube. They viewed 2D logic as a downsized version of 3D logic, less powerful but essentially the same. These squares were the 2D rationalists.
The more radical of the 2D rationalists claimed that the Cube was really a great square. They said that a three dimensional figure was a logical absurdity, that a tri-plane figure was a three headed monster. This group became known as the Geometric Witnesses.
Other much less radical 2D rationalists continued to accept the tri-plane nature of the Cube. Yet they said that there is basically nothing in 3D existence that the 2D mind cannot comprehend. The Cube is incomprehensible only to the extent that it has not revealed everything about itself. They claimed that squares could essentially understand tri-plane existence and 3D solidity. There was no fundamental 3D mystery beyond the 2D mind. To teach otherwise, they claimed, was to open up the possibility that the Cube was a square circle or some other logical absurdity. They also claimed that both two squared and two cubed equal four.
There was another school of thought called neo-geometry or crisis geometry. These squares also believed that the Drawing was either a 3D revelation or no revelation, and they championed the no revelation option. The world of 3D is incomprehensible to the 2D mind and beyond 2D experience; therefore, nothing can be known about it. There is no propositional truth to be found in the Drawing. All a square can do is to meditate upon the Drawing and hope that the aroused feelings of a crisis experience will somehow put the square in touch with the wholly other Cube in a mystical and irrational communion.
A third view was championed by a square named Van Cube. He taught that the Drawing was a true 2D revelation of the 3D Cube, and that the Cube was both truly knowable and truly incomprehensible to the 2D mind. On the one hand, the 2D rationalists charged that Van Cube's teaching was really a form of neo-geometry that denied the possibility of true revelation. On the other hand, the followers of neo-geometry charged that Van Cube was really a 2D rationalist who put the Cube in a 2D box. Of course, the critics on both sides of Van Cube misrepresented his teaching, and the controversy continued through the years.
FOOTNOTES
| 1 | taken from the INFOsearch illustration collection, P.O. Box 11749, Arlington, TX 76003, 817-468-0074. |
| 2 | taken from the INFOsearch illustration collection. |
| 3 | Hebrews 8:5 refers to an earthly copy of a heavenly realty as a shadow; a shadow is a two-dimensional representation of the three dimensional. |
| 4 | "For, of those things which it is neither given nor lawful to know, ignorance is learned; the craving to know, a kind of madness." John Calvin; Ford Lewis Battles, Translator, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977), 957 (III.XXIII.8.). |
| "And let us not be ashamed to be ignorant of something in this matter, wherein there is a certain learned ignorance. Rather, let us willingly refrain from inquiring into a kind of knowledge, the ardent desire for which is both foolish and dangerous, nay, even deadly." Ibid., 923 (III.XXI.2.) | |
| "Let us, I say, permit the Christian man to open his mind and ears to every utterance of God directed to him, provided it be with such restraint that when the Lord closes his holy lips, he also shall at once close the way to inquiry. The best limit of sobriety for us will be not only to follow God's lead always in learning but, when he sets an end to teaching, to stop trying to be wise." Ibid., 924 (III.XXI.3.) | |
| 5 | C.H. Spurgeon, Flowers from a Puritan's Garden (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1976), 42. |
| 6 | Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority; Volume I: God Who Speaks and Shows: Preliminary Considerations (Waco, Texas: Word Book, Publisher, 1976), 182. |
| 7 | Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority; Volume I: God Who Speaks and Shows: Preliminary Considerations, 183. |
| 8 | Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready (Atlanta, Georgia: American Vision and Texarkana, Arkansas: Covenant Media Foundation, 1996), 88. |
| 9 | Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority; Volume I: God Who Speaks and Shows: Preliminary Considerations, 183-184. |
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