Actually, with profuse apologies, knowing God is not like knowing your auto mechanic in an important way. I absolutely agree that natural knowledge, having been forced to acquire a level of certitude well beyond what is required for living and acting, caused a severe curtailing of
what humans thought they could know. We moved from epistemic realism to idealism and nominalism, and now, a rigid empiricism rules the day. We cannot simply say that natural knowledge has been limited by bad philosophy, though it has. We must also preserve the truth that theology requires a higher certainty still. If theology--even after all caveats, qualifications, and disagreements about sources of revelation are laid aside--does not ultimately ground its conclusions in God, who cannot deceive or be deceived, it serves no purpose. In other words, we need absolute certainty in theology, unlike in other fields. For one to say, "I do not need intellectual certainty," one is first failing to distinguish nature and grace, (and the fact that grace perfects it, but does not destroy nature) and that communion with God--and the doctrine of God--cannot be subject to the vagaries of empirical consensus. And that still applies even had we not limited science, properly speaking, by unwarranted philosophical commitments.
what humans thought they could know. We moved from epistemic realism to idealism and nominalism, and now, a rigid empiricism rules the day. We cannot simply say that natural knowledge has been limited by bad philosophy, though it has. We must also preserve the truth that theology requires a higher certainty still. If theology--even after all caveats, qualifications, and disagreements about sources of revelation are laid aside--does not ultimately ground its conclusions in God, who cannot deceive or be deceived, it serves no purpose. In other words, we need absolute certainty in theology, unlike in other fields. For one to say, "I do not need intellectual certainty," one is first failing to distinguish nature and grace, (and the fact that grace perfects it, but does not destroy nature) and that communion with God--and the doctrine of God--cannot be subject to the vagaries of empirical consensus. And that still applies even had we not limited science, properly speaking, by unwarranted philosophical commitments.
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Put another way, one could buy Derrida's core assertions about our ability to know and also adhere to a realist perspective. Just because there is a center doesn't mean we must be able to access the center. Nor does God necessarily need to grant it to us. To possess the center may just as well be the fruit of the tree.
We only need to know enough to know what God wants us to do with operational certainty. One doesn't need to know that gravity will always hold one to the ground, only have enough confidence that it usually will so as to operate with a proper expectation of how terrestrial physics enable and restrain one's acts.
(Yes, I've been spending too much time reading ridiculously long sentences from German theologians -- not just Barth.)
I don't know how you are defining key terms here; feel free.