Part Five: The Christ Bearers Knowledge
Part FiveThe Knowledge of the Christ Bearer
Where does the Christ bearer start? To be wholly committed to Christ, is to fulfill the prayer of Paul, revealed to his daughter churches. He does not cease to mention in his prayers, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom, and revelation, and the knowledge of Him” (Eph. 1:18). This is the path to unity, as he prays, “that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and al discernment” (Phil. 1:9). The Christ bearer is to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph. 4:23). We are to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2). Salvation, and the bearing of Christ is synonymous with the embracing of knowledge, God our Saviour wishes, “all men to be saved, even to come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Ti. 2:4).
Now many seek knowledge in the path to spiritual enlightenment. There are many truth claims from Eastern mysticism to rationalist atheists. And so the Christ bearer must first answer the question of knowledge. Representative of the thinking of many today, is the question:
[quote]
Is there a difference between secular knowledge and God knowledge? Didn't God create it all?[/quote]
Pilate asked, “What is truth?”, and all the philosophers of the history of the world have made this same inquiry. What is it and can it be known? What is its source? The question of knowledge is at once simple and at the same time complex.
How do we know that we know what we know?
Our wisdom, our knowledge of truth comes from two foundations; knowledge of self and knowledge of God. Which comes first in concept is self. Which comes first in necessity is God. What comes first in time, is likely self. What comes first in precedence must be God. But without the knowledge of self, there can be no knowledge of God. In our self we begin to recognize consciousness and categories concepts, creating and understanding and framing an interpretation of the world around us. As God has implanted the innate knowledge of himself irrevocably in the heart of every person, in the very nature of our being, as image bearers and in the law of our conscience, it follows that in knowing ourselves we are immediately confronted by God.
As that self begins to explore and to reach out, all of our observations point us to God, whether it be the revelations of nature, which we interpret in light of our innate knowledge of the creator, or the testimony of our conscience, we are constantly confronted with the fact of God’s existence. Even the suffering and woe around us drive us to this conclusion. For as we see suffering and are hurt and wounded and scarred, we begin to see that we ourselves are part of the dilemma and see that there is a need for something beyond ourselves and what we see. Only when we come to realize the wretchedness of ourselves do we truly look to God.
True Knowledge
Epistemologically, that is as far as actual knowledge is concerned, “the facts ma’am, just the facts”, are always true. All truth is God’s truth. Whether we find truth in self contemplation, the revelation of nature, or in the meditation of Scripture, whatever is true is truth. For the purposes of definition, I would say: That knowledge of a thing is true, which corresponds to God’s knowledge of the thing.
To illustrate this, I would say that God knows everything exhaustively. That is He knows everything about everything. For our knowledge to be true, it does not need to reach this extent, but it must be true as far as it goes. That is, a mathematician’s definition of a triangle may be much more comprehensive then an elementary school student’s knowledge, but both can truthfully describe a triangle, as far as they describe it.
Ethical Truth
But there is a problem. The above is true, according to Scripture (cf. Rom. 1) and reason from the good and necessary consequences of Scripture (eg. Ge. 1:27). But experience does not show that we always find truth. As creatures, created by God, we are finite, and so we can never know exhaustively. But we should be able to know truthfully, as image bearers of He who is Truth. So why is their error?
The problem is ethical, the problem is sin. Because of sin, it is the inclination of every person to seek to deny God his right as Creator. It is the inclination of every being to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Ro. 1:21). Because of this ethical dilemma, we cannot truly know ourselves, or our categories of observation aright. We skew our thoughts of ourselves. We skew our knowledge of all external things in order to fit, or to justify our perspective of ourselves.
But no man will accept this of himself. No one will admit that they are unable to know themselves or their environment aright, or how vile and ethically corrupt they are without seeing the comparison of their weakness, against God’s strength. The knowledge of God humbles, it caves in our self constructs and destroys the facades we have erected. This was the experience of young Jeremiah in the woods, to Moses at the bush, to Isaiah at the temple, who cried, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” that is dying, “I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in a people of unclean lips” (Is. 6:5).
Knowledge of God
Thus knowledge of God is necessary for a true knowledge of self. By knowledge of God here, I do not mean some mere profession of the existence of God, but rather the experiential knowledge of the Divine. The experience of the Holy Spirit and that grasp of the relationship with God the Bible calls the new birth, or regeneration. This confrontation does not lead all to Salvation. “Many are called but few are chosen”, Jesus said. This should, however, lead one to repentance and thus Salvation. That is why the gospel is a command, not an invitation, “Repent” an imperative, “And believe”. At this point we find ourselves “renewed in the spirit of the mind” (Eph. 23), and in “knowledge according to the image” (Col. 3:10). We have cast of the old man, which suppresses the truth and put on the new man which comprehends the truth.
Covenant Knowledge
Thus true knowledge is covenant knowledge. It is the choice of every person, to be a covenant keeper, or a covenant breaker in regard to the truth. Strictly speaking then, only God knowledge leads to true knowledge of anything. Secular knowledge is merely the knowledge of God in Creation (Science), the knowledge of God in Ethics and Relationships (Sociology) and the knowledge of God in Self (Psychology) etc. There really is no secular knowledge. Knowledge is either God knowledge or no knowledge at all. Knowledge is an ethical question of obedience to God’s interpretation of a thing.
Strictly speaking, this would leave the unsaved man without any hope of knowledge secular or sacred truth. And it is the common Grace of God that this is not so.
The Two Natures of People
Christians, although redeemed and made new men and woman in Christ, may err, because they are fighting the old nature, still present as a principle within the reality of the new creation. We do not sin and err because of the new nature, but despite it (Ro. 7:14-23). But the unbeliever is in a similar state, he can know truth, when he castes himself on the foundation of the believer. He too has an old man. The man originally created I the image of God. Although corrupted, it is irrevocably implanted in him. So when he acts as if there were a God and acts on the principles contained in my fist few points he or she has true knowledge as far as they keep in this line. So the unbeliever can do math, and science and politics, but not on the foundation of their nature and view of self but despite it.
The Answer
I deny the distinction between secular knowledge and God knowledge, each kind of knowledge is implicit in the other and knowledge, truth is a matter of covenant faithfulness. It is a confrontation of obedience, when confronted with God in every fact, whether to acknowledge Him explicitly, or implicitly, and thus have truth, or true knowledge, or whether to sin and deny him and thus have no knowledge or truth of any kind. This latter is possible only in part, because of the old nature which is constantly floating up, necessitating the constant struggle of repression, spoken of in Romans one. All Truth is God’s Truth indeed, but not in the way most would describe it today.
Knowledge may still be classified as natural, spiritual, anthropological, theological even secular, if it is understood to mean categories of God knowledge. The knowledge of Daniel 12 for instance, is eschatological knowledge. But despite these definitions, there is only one source of knowledge and only the redeemed, or the man standing on the foundation of the believer however conscious he may be of it, can know truth.
posted by Chad @ 2:57 AM
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