Toward a Christian Epistemology

Nobody should mistake this post as anything other than a brief broad brushstroke of a topic that very long books have been written about. But it may be worthwhile to describe in condensed summary form what a Christian view of knowledge looks like. Given the Reformed bent I operate with, it will be little surprise that my views on epistemology will draw heavily from Calvin and Frame.

Category-wise, there are essentially three different means of acquiring knowledge, which Frame would classify as 3 perspectives - the normative, situational, and existential. All 3 are completely valid and all 3 are essential where both God and man is concerned. On page 1 of the Institutes, Calvin said if we wanted to know more about God, we need to know more about ourselves, and if we want to know more about ourselves, we need to understand God. Calvin was noncommittal on where someone ought to start on that loop, and to some degree, it's the wrong question to ask. His point is that knowledge of God is linked to knowledge of ourselves, since we are made in God's image. He's right. Therefore (here's my own little syllogism), understanding God better means that each way we've been given to acquire knowledge is valid to acquire knowledge about God. All 3 perspectives are completely essential to gaining knowledge of God, because they are all essential in gaining knowledge about ourselves.

Quick example: How do I know that the people posting on online forums all have brains? I can't empirically see that, and while I sort of sense it, it's not the best way to prove it. In this case, the best way to know this is through logical deduction/syllogism. But what if I want to know the color of the sky? I can't really feel color, and color is not easy to prove logically. Here, the best way to know this is through empirical observation. But lastly, how do I know that I love my wife? I suppose I could prove it logically, but this would hardly be compellling. I suppose there are ways to verify love empirically, but such proofs wouldn't be absolute and can be very arbitrary. Here, the best way to know this is because I know what love feels like, and that's how I feel about my wife. All 3 ways of acquiring knowledge are essential to what makes us human. To discount any of these categories is to reduce humans to something less than they are. And if Calvin is correct in saying that knowledge of God is gained in part through knowledge of ourselves as humans, a distorted or deminimus view of humanity will inevitably compromise an accurate understanding of God.

The folly of secular philosophy (and the Christian philosophies that have followed them without major modification) is that it has attempted to absolutize one of these areas at the expense of the other two. For Hume, rationalism and experience had to bend the knee to empiricism. For Descartes, empiricism and experience had to bend the knee to rationalism. For Sartre, rationalism and empiricism had to bend the knee to experience. Kant, like Plato, got fairly close to a synthesis between all 3, but even Kantian philosophy greatly discounted the existential while trying to forge a synthesis between rationalism and empiricism. Christian philosophies have followed this secular imbalance, particularly Kant's. Ritschl, Schleiermacher, Schweitzer, and even folks like Gordon Clark, Kierkegaard, and Machen all forced legitimate expressions of knowledge to bend the knee to their respective preferred aspects.

The Bible strongly affirms all 3 aspects. Scripture often uses logical argumentation positively (in particular, I love Jesus' logical argumentation in Mt. 22:41-46). Scripture also positively affirms the legitimacy of gaining knowledge through empirical observation and testimony (the Doubting Thomas story of John 20 for example). And lastly, much of Paul's writings are based on theologizing from an existential change brought about by conversion. A lot of what Paul says about the old nature/new nature (such as in Rom. 7) is rooted not in logic or empirical observation, but existential realities of the Christian life.

As Christians, we need to embrace the doctrine of imago dei fully. This means that all 3 aspects of knowledge are necessary and legitimate. The key to a Christian epistemology is to realize that all 3 aspects fully and completely reconcile in God (this, of course, is the unifying factor in epistemology that is missing from secular philosophy and forces the imbalances we see), so the extent to which we are discounting any of them only compounds our inability to understand God better. The Reformed doctrine of general revelation means that secular philosophies may offer something of value to us as Christians - God works through pagans all the time (Cyrus anyone?). But under no circumstances are we to embrace secular philosophy uncritically, or attempt, as Schleiermacher and Ritschl did, to try and fit Christianity within a secular philosophical system that is not based on Scriptural principles of knowledge.

What Christians need to do with people like Kant, Sartre, Rorty, and Derrida is to rethink them within a Christian lens, rather than rethinking Christianity within a secular lens. Derrida in particular has much to offer and he should not be dismissed out of hand. But Derrida's views, while quite insightful, are also dangerous a fair amount of the time (his views on hospitality are particularly provocative). Christians who have a biblically informed epistemology will, by definition, be able to see the imbalances inherent in secular philosophy (as well as philosophies regrettably adhered to by other Christians) and be able to thoughtfully critique them intelligently. It will also help us to see the imbalances in our own ways of thinking as well, since Christians tend to be as inclined toward imbalance as everyone else.