Skip to main content

Your Epistemic Crisis Is Showing

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.

Comments

Timothy R. Butler said…
I don't think those conclusions actually follow. You should try building your argument in syllogistic form -- it's actually rather fun, but it is also helpful in determining necessity. One can ground one's theology in God, and even have a certainty about God's presence and yet lack epistemological certainty within the theological process. To me, demanding perfect certainty is buying into the Enlightenment Project's failed plans. Both liberalism and fundamentalism demand a undue level of certainty rooted in an overly high view of human reason post-Fall.

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.)
6:45 PM
Jason said…
You may simply want to make the claim that what I said does not follow, and then show how.

I don't know how you are defining key terms here; feel free.
10:55 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Thoughts On The Harrison Butker Commencement Speech

Update: I read the whole thing. I’m sorry, but what a weirdo. I thought you [Tom Darrow, of Denver, CO] made a trenchant case for why lockdowns are bad, and I definitely appreciated it. But a graduation speech is *not* the place for that. Secondly, this is an august event. It always is. I would never address the President of the United States in this manner. Never. Even the previous president, though he deserves it, if anyone does. Thirdly, the affirmations of Catholic identity should be more general. He has no authority to propound with specificity on all matters of great consequence. It has all the hallmarks of a culture war broadside, and again, a layman shouldn’t speak like this. The respect and reverence due the clergy is *always due,* even if they are weak, and outright wrong. We just don’t brush them aside like corrupt Mafia dons, to make a point. Fourthly, I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that the TLM is how God demands to be worshipped. The Church doesn’t teach that. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Alyse

 Today, you’re 35. Or at least you would be, in this place. You probably know this, but we’re OK. Not great, but OK. We know you wouldn’t want us moping around and weeping all the time. We try not to. Actually, I guess part of the problem is that you didn’t know how much we loved you. And that you didn’t know how to love yourself. I hope you have gotten to Love by now. Not a place, but fills everything in every way. I’m not Him, but he probably said, “Dear daughter/sister, you have been terribly hard on yourself. Rest now, and be at peace.” Anyway, teaching is going well, and I tell the kids all about you. They all say you are pretty. I usually can keep the boys from saying something gross for a few seconds. Mom and I are going to the game tonight. And like 6 more times, before I go back to South Carolina. I have seen Nicky twice, but I myself haven’t seen your younger kids. Bob took pictures of the day we said goodbye, and we did a family picture at the Abbey. I literally almost a...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Friend I Once Had, And The Dogmatic Principle

 I once had a friend, a dear friend, who helped me with personal care needs in college. Reformed Presbyterian to the core. When I was a Reformed Presbyterian, I visited their church many times. We were close. I still consider his siblings my friends. (And siblings in the Lord.) Nevertheless, when I began to consider the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded, he took me out to breakfast. He implied--but never quite stated--that we would not be brothers, if I sought full communion with the Catholic Church. That came true; a couple years later, I called him on his birthday, as I'd done every year for close to ten of them. He didn't recognize my number, and it was the most strained, awkward phone call I have ever had. We haven't spoken since. We were close enough that I attended the rehearsal dinner for his wedding. His wife's uncle is a Catholic priest. I remember reading a blog post of theirs, that early in their relationship, she told him of the p...
Post a Comment
Read more