It’s epistemology, Jim, but not as we know it*

‘How do I know..?’ is one of those phrases that can mean very different things depending on where you place the emphasis. Perhaps you’ve used it, with the emphasis on the I, as an opt-out, in the sense of ‘why are you asking me?’ Or maybe you’ve used it to express scepticism, with the emphasis on know – as in, ‘I need evidence to convince me.’

The past week or so I’ve been revisiting and reflecting on that question in the philosophical, epistemological sense. How is it that we can know anything at all? What even is ‘knowing? How do we come to know? We all have assumptions about the answers to these questions running in the background, often unexamined, and those assumptions shape the way we go about learning anything and everything. But from time to time it’s worth bringing such questions into focus, paying attention to how we approach knowledge and knowing. And all the more so if, like me, you’re just embarking on a new learning venture.

A little light epistemology first thing in the morning for a few days turns out to be quite the workout, and I’m feeling nicely stretched and all the better for it. A surprising little book, ‘A Little Manual for Knowing’ (LMK) by Esther Lightcap Meek (Cascade Books, 2014), was my personal trainer. LMK is a short but intense book, a distillation of some of Meek’s longer works including Longing to Know (2003) and Loving to Know (2011). In LMK she curates a vast body of thought and some wonderful reflective activities into just a hundred pages, which means you get a lot for your page count (though it also means there are some inevitable gaps, which I won’t focus on here). In doing so she sets out a theologically derived and therefore transformative perspective on the art and practice of coming-to-know.

So, just like someone telling their friends about the transformative effects of a particular gym routine, I wanted to share a few of the insights from LMK that are already having an impact on my head, heart and hands as I set out on a new course of study.

Although this is only addressed tacitly in LMK, the entire basis of Meek’s epistemology is Christian doctrine, starting with the very nature of God himself: the triune God, both one being and three persons, united in love and intimately involved in all of creation. Hence God is personal, not distant. His posture towards His creation is one of love. He chooses to make himself known. And we are His creatures: uniquely called, as His image bearers, to steward His creation but made with finitude, and profoundly affected by the fall, in need of His redeeming and sustaining grace. These familiar but eternal truths have enormous implications for our epistemology: for why we can know, for how we come to know, and for our posture towards what we seek to know.

For our purposes here, let’s focus primarily on what we seek to know. Modernity (in the Western tradition) has treated the objects of our knowing as, well, objects – things to be studied, mastered and exploited. This approach to knowing – as the acquisition of verifiable, rationally stated information – is the underlying assumption that has shaped most of my formal education and that of many generations.

But what if we slow down and consider that reality – which includes any given set of things we might seek to know – is the beloved creation of a personal, loving Creator? This changes my posture completely! It means that knowledge is not ‘out there’ to be mined as an exploitable resource for my own gain and purposes. Instead, everything in all creation that is available to be known by any of us is already the prized (albeit fallen) possession of the Lord God, for which He has gone – and continues to go – to extraordinary lengths to redeem for himself. All creation, all of reality, belongs therefore to the Lord and it is only possible for me to come to know it because He chooses for His image bearers to be able to know. What a privilege!

How then might this perspective shape our efforts at learning, or our posture in coming-to-know? Here are just a few of the many implications that Meek sets out and invites us to reflect upon:

• It calls for a posture of love and hospitality, not exploitation, towards the very thing(s) that we hope to come to know. Whether it’s another person, a field of science, or a practical skill that I want to learn, a posture of love and generosity toward the yet-to-be-known will transform the way I come to know it. My posture will even profoundly shape what I’m able to come to know about it.
• It calls for an attitude of stewardship, not arrogant ownership, towards whatever knowledge we come to have. We can take delight in what we are learning, yet we will seek to be wise and generous in how we hold that knowledge, how we use it and how we share it.
• It calls for sustained humility and a lifetime of learning. We recognise that our knowledge can never be complete since we are finite creatures, and our hearts and minds are distorted by sin. As our knowledge increases, so will our awareness of its limitations grow, and so we remain hungry to keep learning and open to correction. For this we need God’s sustaining Spirit, and in this we value the brothers and sisters with whom he has placed us in community.

There’s a great deal more in this little book. For example, Meek’s summary of Polanyi’s well-documented work on subsidiary-focal integration (SFI) is a good introduction to the dynamics of how we come to know things. But the really transformational ideas in LMK are those that she draws from deep theological foundations. After all, there is nothing so practical as good theology.

Whether you, like me, are embarking on a significant new learning venture this term, or just continuing to be a leader who learns, it’s worth paying a little attention to your epistemology. It will be shaping what you learn, how you come to learn it, and what you do with what you learn – whether you’re aware of it or not. Recognising all knowledge and knowing as a gift that flows from the power, will and love of our triune God is an extraordinary and beautiful place to start. May we be good stewards of that gift!
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*This misquote of a famously misattributed quote is a nod to the fact that all human knowledge is subject to the corrupting effects of the fall – something I’d have loved to see addressed in LMK, but that’s probably for a longer book!