Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard. Harper Collins (ISBN: 9780062311795) 2014 (first published in 2009).
Summary: Why the knowledge of Christ is real knowledge of true things on which one may base one’s life and confidently speak.
I’ve encountered it. Statements like “God exists,” Christ died to save us,” Christ is risen” and many others are treated quite differently from E=MC2. We treat the former as opinions or sentiments whereas we treat the latter as a statement of fact. We relegate the former to the category of “faith” whereas the latter is “knowledge.”
In this book Dallas Willard argues to the contrary, that Christian belief is equally a form of knowledge, accurately representing reality, based upon evidence. We may act upon this knowledge. Faith is not “blind” but acting upon the known. Not only that, Willard goes on to argue that this is indispensable knowledge, without which we perish into some form of idolatry, as Willard points out in contrasting other worldviews to Christian belief. Furthermore, Willard goes on to argue that the rejection of Christian knowledge has been accompanied by the disappearance of moral knowledge
But how does Willard make the case for Christian belief as true knowledge? In chapter four, he puts forth a form of the cosmological argument for the existence of a creator. He then puts forth a case for God’s activity in the world, including his active intervention in miracles culminating in the resurrection of Jesus.
But how does one live out the knowledge of Christ? Chapter 6 pulls together strands from other works on entering the kingdom with humble obedience and the practice of spiritual disciplines in community. The concluding chapter 8 discusses the role of preachers, calling them to base their preaching upon this knowledge.
However, Christians have often come off as arrogant know-it-alls? How is the assertion of Christian faith as true knowledge to avoid this in a religiously pluralistic world? First of all, he asks whether believing oneself right about something and others wrong is inherently arrogant? Or is it possible to be humble and loving about our disagreements? Then he recognizes the value of a “weak” pluralism that affirms the good wherever we find it. Yet no true believer would say it makes no difference what one believes. However, there is the troubling question of the fate of those who never hear the gospel. While affirming that salvation is always by grace and through Christ, he joins Billy Graham in affirming that these are decisions only God will make.
This work is important for Christians who feel faith is relegated to the personal and private. It helps them understand both how this has come about and why its wrong. Without extensive excursions into epistemology or apologetics, it outlines why Christian belief is real knowledge. However this reveals a shortcoming of the work. It makes arguments without dealing with why many have challenged them. But that would require a much longer book. That said, this work helps restore a humble confidence in believing and proclaiming Christ.
Summary: A proposal for covenant epistemology, bridging the subject-object divide with the idea that knowing is a personal, loving act.
Esther Lightcap Meek believes we are in desperate need of “epistemological therapy.” Since Descartes, knowledge has been focused on objective facts and a sharp disjunct exists between the knowing subject and the thing known. It leads to all kinds of binaries: facts versus beliefs, science versus imagination and art, the public versus the private to name a few. More recently, the post-modern turn has challenged all this, proposing that our “objective” knowledge is socially constructed. Hence, truth is relative to the observer. We can all have our own truths. This explains the epistemic crisis of our age, one that has been called “post-truth.”
Esther Lightcap Meek offers an alternative epistemology which she frames for us in Loving to Know. The title offers a clue. Drawing foundationally on Michael Polanyi, she argues that true knowing is a personal loving act in relation to what is being known. She calls this “covenant epistemology,” signifying a committed personal relationship, an “interpersoned” character between knower and the known in the knowing.
Part One of her book explains why we need epistemological therapy and lays out the basic contours of her proposal, as discussed above. Most of the remainder of the book consists of “conversations” with thinkers who were influential for Meek. Essentially, she retraces her process in developing covenant epistemology.
Then Part Two consists of her interaction with Michael Polanyi and James Loader. Polanyi contributes the idea of knowing as subsidiary focal integration. We move between something focused upon and intuitive clues as to its nature, and knowing is the integration of the two, a transformative moment. Her conversation with James Loader further unpacks the transformative aspect.
But where does the covenantal aspect arise? Part three develops this in conversation with John Frame and Mike Williams. Frame sees human knowing as stewardship in response to God’s disclosed relationship of covenant relationship as sovereign Creator and Lord. Our knowing imitates God’s covenant relationship with the created order in understanding, preserving and developing that world. Williams likens covenant relationship to our marriage covenant, a pledge of care for that which we are knowing. We commit to love in order to know.
So, this all sounds very personal rather than the detached knowing that characterizes our “science.” Rather than back off this idea, Meek doubles down in part four. She draws on John MacMurray to support the interpersonal character of human knowing. Martin Buber’s shift from I-It” to “I-Thou” relationships further supports the interpersonal encounter in knowing. Meek includes one of several “Texture” sidebars at this point to discuss the nature of friendship as “knowing with” another. I thought this worth the price of admission! Following this, James Loader talks about knowing before the Holy, that all of our knowing is before, and part of, knowing God. In addition, there are chapters in this part on healthy interpersonhood, knowing as dance (Colin Gunton on perichoresis), and on reality as gift.
Finally, in part five, Meek draws all the threads of this 500 page work together in “Contours of Covenant Epistemology.” She then addresses how we might respond to all this in “inviting the real.” She describes this as an “etiquette” of knowing and offers specific practices for the well-mannered knower. For example, under comportment she discusses our pledge or covenant, trust, obedience, humility, patience, saying “you” and listening. She concludes by discussing “knowing for shalom,” her hope that covenant epistemology will indeed be transformative for her readers.
I believe Meek offers an effective epistemological therapy if we will receive it. For Meek, all knowing is an interpersonal loving act in the presence of our loving Creator and Lord. To love that which we seek to know is to treat it with personal care, allowing the beloved to disclose itself rather than imposing our understanding upon it. Covenantal knowing means a “knowing with” both the ultimate source of all knowledge but also with other knowers. All this undercuts the privatized assertion of “my truth.” Such knowing, as was the case with Polanyi, reconciles exacting processes and creative imagination, science and art. Above all, this proposal invites epistemological humility as we recognize that all our knowing is a gift from a good Creator.
Untrustworthy, Bonnie Kristian, Foreword by David French. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2022.
Summary: A discussion of the epistemic crisis that has swept our society, riven our politics, and undermined our Christian community, and steps one may take to cultivate epistemic virtue and live discerningly.
We’ve all lived through it the last number of years. The “fake news” we encountered on social media and the resistance to fact-checkers, equally accused of being “fake” or biased or wrong. We’ve watched friends go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, of the left or the right. We’ve watched or even participated in the arguments about who do you trust for pandemic information. We’ve watched a sizable part of the country believe in a “stolen election” even though no actionable evidence has met the standards of proof required by a court of law (and recently learned of admissions that even news outlets who promoted these ideas didn’t actually believe them). We’ve watched conflicts over matters like masking policies rip apart churches, places where we are taught to love and submit to one another.
In short, we are faced with what many have called an “epistemic crisis.” We are not longer sure how we know, and how we may know the truth and left in little tribal groups and echo chambers where all we can say is “you have your truth and I have mine” and agree to a world of “alternate facts” and “alternate truths.” Bonnie Kristian is a seasoned journalist who grew up in a conservative Christian, LateGreat Planet Earth community. In Untrustworthy, she explores how we have gotten to this place, and what we may do, particularly in the Christian community, to live with epistemic virtue and discernment, even if we are unable to change the broader landscape.
She begins with looking at what’s wrong with the news from the bias of mainstream media to the profit and entertainment bias that has come to dominate many news outlets. She argues for the effort to do unbiased reporting along older models with a high commitment to admitting errors and publishing corrections. She also notes the deleterious effects of online media, underscored by Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic critique: that it encourages distraction rather than focus, it’s tailored to our taste my algorithms, it modifies our real-world interactions, and serves to solidify our views making us less likely to consider other evidence. From this, she moves to one of the most disturbing phenomena of the online world, the punishing of views that transgress by cancellation, threatening both the personal and job security of the cancelled, with no place for forgiveness or restoration. From “mobs” we move to “schemes” and how our online media feed conspiracy thinking. Addressing Christians she makes three modest proposals: “(1) don’t argue; (2) look at the fruit the mindset is bearing; and (3) don’t seek a false sense of security that doesn’t come from God.” Finally, she discusses skepticism and the death of expertise, where a Google search is as valid as years of training and research in a specific field. She’s candid about the ways experts undermine trust while recognizing how dependent we are on expertise in so many dimensions of our modern life. She notes that even experts are constantly learning and that revised expert advice can be a good thing because it reflects that learning.
She turns, then to how people change their views, and it is not through argument. She cites Jonathan Haidt’s analogy of the rider (reason) and the elephant (emotion), and that the rider is going to go where the elephant wants to go. The issue is redeemed emotion, where love supplants fear. She also discusses identitarian deference which means when discussing matters of race, class, disability, and gender and sexuality, we must defer to those with the particular status in question. This can lead to a highly Balkanized society and denies that we can understand another whose lived experience is different and forecloses discussion. She calls for a middle ground, still allowing for someone to “speak as an X” upholding the example of Esau McCaulley, among others, who does speak as a Black scholar, humbly and with integrity, but wishes to be taken seriously for good scholarship from a Black perspective, not just because he is Black.
Chapters 8 and 9 on developing epistemic virtue and making a plan are worth the price of the book. She asserts that truth is knowable, that we can know it, but not all of it, and that humility is a requisite virtue. She asserts that epistemic virtue requires one to be studious while limiting our focus (we can’t know everything), intellectually honest, wise in our use of that knowledge, cultivating an epistemology of love and a hermeneutic of obedience. Practically, she calls for a look at our habits: our devices and desires, our space and our subscriptions, our social media use, and our news consumption. She suggests how we may both strengthen the rider and become aware of the elephant. She concludes with inviting us to choose better things and holds up 1 Peter as an example of doing so.
While discussing the landscape of media in society and larger social trends, the book focuses not on finger-pointing but self-assessment, asking us how we have been affected by the ways we engage with various forms of news and online media, how we have allowed the epistemic crisis to corrode our own epistemic virtue. She recognizes that people are going to keep doing all the things that have led to this crisis but that the challenge for us, particularly in the Christian community, is the development of virtues that make us, if not immune, then certainly more discerning. Setting boundaries on media consumption and choosing real social engagements with our families and Christian community also acts as a check on the extremes.
Two things I would like to see her address in the future. One is steps toward restoring a commitment to reporting that is closer to the objective standard once set by journalism, perhaps more self-aware given our understandings of bias. The other is the steps one may take to address Carr’s analysis of how the internet has broken our minds, and in what ways we might grow in our capacity for extended discussions, focused inquiry, and long form journalism and reading. That’s for another book, perhaps, and her practical advice in this one points in those directions. This is a worthy book to consider for those engaged in adult education and Christian formation, where one would hope the virtues basic to epistemic virtue might be developed. Educators also might give attention to this in understanding more of the challenges they face in forming virtuous learners. Clearly, an important book.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Summary: Addressing an evangelical context that seemingly has lost a sense of its identity, core convictions, and model for cultural engagement, the author commends a re-appraisal of the work of Carl F. H. Henry as a source of wisdom for the future.
It seems there are numerous books being published at present addressing what is perceived the parlous state of the contemporary church in America. They seem to fall into two camps. Either they recommend innovation, or they call for a return or recovery of some lost tradition, whether the church fathers, Benedict, or the Reformers.
This book, written particularly for that part of the church that would identify as “evangelical” proposes that the way forward is to recover the philosophical, theological, and cultural vision of the movement birthed in the post-World War II years. This was the time of the founding of Christianity Today as a periodical of both evangelical conviction and theological and intellectual heft, befitting the concerns of two of its’ founders, Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry. This work focuses on the work of Henry, who was evangelicalism’s leading theologian, probably until his death in 2003.
Thornbury hardly consider’s Henry to be perfect, and in the first chapter enumerates some of the flaws in both his personality and work. He also chronicles the “drubbing” Henry has faced from scholars criticizing his commitments to inerrancy, his epistemology, and more. Furthermore, what may be his most significant work, his six-volume systematic theology, God, Revelation, and Authority is also largely unread and unknown, particularly because few got beyond its first, densely written volume. Yet Thornbury commends Henry as a model of someone who brought a Christian mind to bear on both the theological and cultural questions facing evangelicalism, and as one whose example and advocacy paved the way for renewed efforts to bring Christian thought to bear in the academy and the culture.
The focus of Thornbury’s discussion is volumes two and four of God, Revelation, and Authority (hereafter GRA) and Henry’s much more approachable The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. He focuses on four significant contributions of Henry that he believes deserve renewed attention. First was his rooting epistemology in a God who reveals God’s self and does so in language and propositions. Second was that theology matters, and here, he focuses his discussion around the fifteen theses found in volume two of GRA. He engages the theology of speech-act theory and the work of Hans Frei and Kevin Van Hoozer, and still comes back to the idea that while language may do more than what Henry allowed, it does no less–that we may find more than just theological propositions arising from the scripture, but for a God who reveals God’s self effectively, we will find no less.
For Henry, the inerrancy of scripture, so much under fire even in evangelical circles today, was of utmost concern because of its connection to the authority. His concerns were not merely liberal criticism, but the hermeneutical relativism of Continental philosophy. It was not that Henry was unmindful of both problem texts in scripture and the fallibility of interpreters. Rather, he was convinced that concessions here would cast a shadow over the whole of scripture and the Church’s proclamation.
Finally, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism was a kind of manifesto that brought to bear biblical thought on the social, political, and economic issues of the day. It lead to the recovery of a social conscience that had been lost in the fundamentalist retreat from society. It provided an argument that culture, and cultural engagement that was not culture war mattered deeply.
Thornbury concludes by arguing that our evangelical roots matter. To unthinking shift from these or to live cut off from our roots can be fatal. To re-examine these roots, in this case the roots provided by the work of Carl F. H. Henry, is not necessarily to affirm that these roots are adequate, but rather important and not to be neglected. It strikes me that in growing things, roots continue to grow as well as the plant above ground, and the plant draws nourishment from an growing root system, both new roots and old.
I have to admit that I have not paid attention to Henry in recent years, paying more heed to newer thinkers. Yet this book reminds me of the personal debt I owe him, and those like him. As a young Christian working in the university context, Christianity Today, which in the seventies still reflected Henry’s intellectual influence and heft, was a great encouragement that I could both believe and think, that I could root my thought in a trustworthy and authoritative revelation that provided the foundation to wrestles with the deepest questions being asked in the university world. I could root a commitment to justice and compassion in the care and standards God established for human societies, and the words of the prophets who called a straying people back to such things. Reading Thornbury, I realized that I have often heard but never read Uneasy Conscience. It now sits on my TBR pile. Look for a review.
