I’m new to Open Source theology, so go easy on me! I’m only just beginning to take an interest in Emergent issues, but I’m particularly interested in the emphasis on older forms of spirituality as well as the commitment to practice in the world. My first contribution is about resolving the tension between a spirituality of simply ‘being’ and a need to engage with the world in a concrete manner.
“God creating human beings not human doings!”…
And so went many of the sermons I heard during my teenage years as a Christian. We didn’t please God more by ‘doing’ things for him; we were simply to ‘be’. Confusion would arise however, when a few weeks later another (or sometimes the same) preacher would try and motivate us with a sermon that chastised ‘some of you’ in the church (meaning all of us) for “talking the talk but not walking the walk”. Being a Christian, we were told, means living radically: giving more, praying more, witnessing more, and so on and so on. After all, Jesus said that not everyone who said to him ‘Lord, Lord’ would enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of God. The service would close with dozens going forward for prayer, to make re-commitments and tearfully repenting of not having done enough.
Fortunately for those sincere but distraught souls, sure as anything there would be another sermon a few weeks later that encouraged everyone to get back to a simple faith of simply ‘being’, whether it was simply ‘being’ in our prayer time, or just ‘being’ Jesus to people – we weren’t to burn ourselves out doing things for God, he had already done everything for us. Suffice to say another sermon urging us to ‘do’ would follow again a short time later.
But how are we to balance ‘being’ and ‘doing’? Or choose between meditation and activism? What does a proper relationship between prayer and practice look like? In the post that follows I hope to shed some light on these questions.
An age of pragmatism
The age we live in only esteems that which is of practical value. Theories are only useful insofar as they can be turned into something concrete and practical, and truth is only that which can be practised. There is little or no time in the modern world for that which does not lead to action and practicality is all-conquering at the expense of contemplation and theory. People are ‘doers’ of one form or another, whether as producers, consumers or workers; and activity is esteemed over and against contemplation, adoration, meditation and reflection.
This same mentality exists in the church too. Sermons must be packed-full of application, but devoid of any theoretical or contemplative content they quickly become a Christian ‘to do’ list. Give more, help the poor more, witness more, serve more and so on and so forth. “Skip the theology, just give us the application” is the cry, “who cares about the theory, will it work in practice?” It isn’t my intention to list the many and severe problems this causes for Christians, but one thing it does do is turn Christianity purely into a religion of action and practice. As liberation theologian Gutierrez remarked: “The first thing is the obligation to love and serve. Theology only comes after this.” This is commendable, because it seeks to love first and then reflect on it afterwards, but will ultimately prove problematic.
Time for reflection?
Practice-over-theory is an inadequate viewpoint however, because following Jesus and exhibiting Christian love are not simply motivations to spur us into action, whether personal, social or political. Christians are also to be characterised by prayer, thanksgiving, joy, adoration and wonder. Our lives in Christ involve meditation and prayer as well as concrete practice.
Without the contemplative Christian life, Christian practice soon degenerates into a Christ-less activism and is no different to any other activist group in this society of ours that judges according to performance. Without the contemplation of Christ, we soon lose our saltiness and over time our practice and action loses any particularly Christian aspects that it may have had.
When we engage in action and practice, we stand with God behind us and face out onto the world, but before we can do this we must first turn around and face God with our hearts and minds wide open to him. Yet when Christians talk about ‘God’ they are not talking in generalities about some anonymous transcendent being, Christian prayer and meditation deals with the particularity of Jesus Christ, and as we meditate and pray through his word, we are inevitably drawn towards his cross and resurrection. In this knowing of God, we begin to experience in ourselves the conflict and freedom between the crucifixion of our old self and our new life in the Risen Christ. It is only in this Spirit-filled new life that we are able to mediate to the world the new life of the Kingdom that Christ’s own resurrection anticipates and establishes. Then having faced God in this way, we are equipped to impart his life, hope and forgiveness to a world crushed beneath the weight of sin, despair and death.
By the ‘knowing of God’, I do not mean ‘knowing’ in the modernist Enlightenment sense of dominating and possessing the object we seek to know. Pragmatic thinking says that ‘knowledge is power’ – but this always means dominating something and acquiring power over and possessing the thing known. When we understand something we exclaim “I’ve got it!” - but this is not the way in which we know God. We know God through wonder, adoration and above all by participation. We hear his voice through his Spirit and his Word, we know ourselves to be loved by him and having first been loved, we love him in return. We do not attempt to use or master God, and neither does he purpose to ‘use’ us. In him we have our being, and only in this mutual relationship with him are we then ready to turn from God and face out onto the world, from the place of meditation to the place of mission.
What sort of action?
Our mediation on and knowledge of God does not free us from practice, rather it free us for practice, and the nature of Christian practice is defined by nothing else but the person of Jesus Christ. Following his death and resurrection, the risen Jesus became the firstfruits and guarantor of an age to come, an age that when consummated will mean no more mourning, suffering, pain, sin, or death. As we turn from God and stand with him facing a broken world, the cross stands over the horizon and indicates the direction in which we are to proceed with our practice as we become disciples of Christ, while at the same time it promises the glorious Future to come, which all our thanksgiving, suffering, prayer and action should anticipate.
Christianity is not simply ‘being’, and cannot be solely a life of prayer and contemplation, but neither can it be simply a matter of ‘doing’, of activity and action. First of all it is knowing God as we dwell on him and his word, but this itself gives birth to the great invitation to proclaim and celebrate his Kingdom out in the world. Theology is not a theory of a practice, but it is both theory and practice that unite themselves completely in the discipleship of Jesus.
Ever since Augustine, when Christians have prayed they have bowed their heads, closed their eyes and folded their hands together. The body language of this kind of prayer is focussed on the inner life, and on the realm of the soul, and looks inward. Yet this is not how the earliest Christians prayed. Mosaics of praying Christians found in the Roman catacombs show people praying standing upright, with their arms raised and outstretched and their eyes open. This is the body language of someone who prays expectantly, who stands and faces the world at the same time as seeking the face of God, and it is the stance of someone for whom knowing the crucified and risen Jesus does invites neither withdrawal from the world into serene meditation or a frantic programme of action, but recognises that discipleship is a harmonious relationship between theory and practice, between knowing and action, and between being and doing - it is in both these aspects that Christian discipleship is to be worked out.
Doing, being and questioning
Sven, I enjoyed your article. You capture the tension between doing and being very well. I have a question, though, regarding the way in which you have described the options for ‘knowing’ God. You make a perfectly valid distinction between a modernist knowing that seeks (at least implicitly) power and control over the known object and a more personal way of knowing in which we allow ourselves to love and be loved by the one who is known. One of the unforeseen consequences of the emphasis on personal knowing, however, is that we have come to focus much more on the act of knowing something and have become increasingly aware of how complex and questionable that act is. This is one aspect of the postmodern critique: we are far too confident in our knowing of things, and that includes our personal knowing. This is very much off the top of my head, but isn’t it fair to say that postmodernism is also a critique of romanticism, as an early reaction against modernism, as it is against modernism itself?
Do we not also need, therefore, as we seek to shape an emerging theology, to recognize in our knowing of God not just that it is personal but also that it is difficult - not least because the Christian story about God is being challenged in so many other new ways at the moment? It seems to me that this is why the emerging church and alternative worship movements are so attracted to mysticism as a form of personal knowing that can accommodate some of the uncertainties and which is much more willing to remain silent about the God whom we struggle to know. This also has missional implications because I think that it is the transcendent, hidden, enigmatic God who is encountered outside the covenant community.
I liked your comments on prayer. I’m sure there are other ways in which our outward behaviour fails to reflect adequately either our theology or our inward disposition. That would be worth thinking about.
I intend to write some more o
I intend to write some more on knowing God in the near future, though here are some thoughts for now…
Yes I think postmodernism is a critique of romanticism, although the two are sometimes closer than their proponents would be comfortable with, at least in practice ;)
I think first and foremost anything that wishes to distinguish itself as being Christian has to relate itself to Jesus Christ, and his death and resurrection, (rather than asking is it ‘biblical?’, we must ask ‘is it Christlike?’). So our ‘knowing’ of him will similarly be affirmed or denied according to whether or not it results in Christ-like actions. As Paul says, our knowing and being known by God is reflected in actions that reflect love for him and thus for others by implication (1 Cor 8:3).
You’re right in affirming the importance of mysticism in theology and worship, though I would cautiously state that mysticism alone is far from sufficient. Mystery is important, and decidedly anti-modern, but I would call into question the value of a revelation or experience of God that leaves one none the wiser about him afterwards. Similarly, mystic experience sola as a means of access to God is fraught with problems.
I have much thinking still to do on the matter of course, and your comments have been very helpful :)
Mysticism and being Christ-like
I wasn’t so much affirming the importance of mysticism, not from a personal point of view anyway - I have never been much of a mystic myself and I certainly agree that mysticism alone is insufficient. But I do think that, if nothing else, it introduces some important safeguards into our corporate spirituality, analogous perhaps to the intellectual safeguards that postmodernism has introduced into our theology.
My only problem with your definition of being Christian is that it is likely to reinforce our over-individualized spirituality. I would suggest that we need to recover the idea of Christ’s death and resurrection having corporate significance - a death and resurrection for the sake of Israel, not just for the sake of an individual’s salvation or as a model for personal piety. It is highly significant that the only place the Old Testament speaks of a resurrection on the third day is Hosea 6:2, which describes the resurrection of a people. Presumably Paul’s metaphor of the church as the body of Christ has relevance here.
I wonder, in fact, whether we are not rather careless in the way that we speak of being Christ-like. I would be inclined to argue that to be Christ-like is specifically to suffer for the sake of the people of God - just as Paul was prepared to suffer to the same extent in his own flesh for the sake of the body (Col.1:24). To know Christ was to share in his sufferings, become like him in his death, and experience the power of his resurrection (Phil.3:10). Obviously there are aspects of Jesus’ character and behaviour that we wish to imitate, but in general terms and under normal circumstances we are called to be Godly, to be a holy people of God; we have been given the Spirit of God, which is sometimes also the Spirit of Christ who gave himself for others.
I wasn't intending to affirm
I wasn’t intending to affirm individualism, and of course being like Christ is something that happens corporately - although clearly it also functions at the personal level. The personal is fundamentally not the same as the individual, as the idea of personhood is inseparably bound up with mutuality and relationships.
Although by no means a complete definition, I would say that for the church to be Christlike involves bearing the suffering and reproach of the world so that we may bring about its healing. I *think* this is where Paul is heading with Romans 9-11, though I wouldn’t burn at the stake for it..Is it possible to know Jesus?
In the exchange between Sven and Andrew it is suggested that we can know God and know Christ.
I would propose that, in the ordinary sense of the word ‘know’, it is not possible to know either God or Christ.
The first point that I would make about ‘know’ is that it does not refer to an act or action. By contrast, the word ‘think’ does refer to an action ie something that has a beginning and an end and a duration. “I spent ten minutes thinking about the war in Iraq and then a further ten minutes about Tony Blair’s role in it.” But you cannot say “I knew Tony Blair for ten minutes and then stopped knowing him.” The word ‘know’ does not denote an action but a claim. The claim is about a certain kind of relationship between me and the person I say I know.
Suppose I say to someone, I know John Howard (the Australian Prime Minister). You mean you’ve actually met him? my companion asks. Yes, I say. Where, and when?. I met him at the Sydney Town Hall last Saturday night. Yes, my sceptical companion says, but he probably wouldn’t even remember your name. He would, I assure her, we had a long talk about politics, got on to first name terms and agreed to play golf next Sunday. Look, I say, if you doubt me, this is his mobile number- ring him up and ask him if he knows me. This last step in the verification process is critical because if I ring Howard up and he says “Who? Paul Hartigan? Never heard of him”, then not only does he not know me but I cannot claim to know him.
To substantiate a claim that I know someone I have to be able to demonstrate the following
1. That I have met him or her in person, in the flesh
2. That I can identify that person (know what he looks like, sounds like, where he lives, his personal history etc)
3. That we have mutually acknowledged each other as individual persons ie as persons we could both subsequently pick out in a crowd (I could shake John Howard’s hand, catch his eye, exchange words about the weather and still fail to register with him as an individual person - and hence fail to be able to claim to know him).
4. That the person will on request confirm that he knows me- as long as that has not happened, my claim to know John Howard remains uncertain.
A pre Easter disciple of Jesus could have claimed to know Jesus and satisfied these requirements- but what about a post Easter disciple or a Christian living in 2005? Post Easter disciples meeting the risen Christ may have been able to satisfy criterion 1- though they were not meeting Jesus in the ordinary flesh but a new kind of flesh. Notoriously they had difficulty with criteria 2 and 3: Jesus could appear among them and they could fail to recognize him. And the risen Jesus was not available to confirm that he knew any particular human being so a post Easter disciple claiming to know Jesus would fail to meet criterion 4 also. If post Easter disciples were unable to meet the ordinary criteria for knowing Jesus, it would be even more difficult for a Christian in 2005.
One conclusion from this might be that we cannot know Jesus (or God either, though the argument in the case of God is slightly different). That is, whatever our relationship with Jesus is, it is not one of knowledge.
Alternatively, we could say that the knowledge involved in knowing Jesus or God is different from the ordinary kind of knowledge. Thus according to Meister Eckhart, knowledge of God is “purely spiritual knowledge, therein the soul is rapt away from all objective, bodily things. There we hear without any sound and see without matter: there is neither white nor black nor red.”
Finally, I note something Andrew says in the exchange with Sven:
This strikes me as the most fruitful way of understanding what it is to know Christ. I would be very interested in seeing it spelt out a bit further
In Chapter 2 of the book jointly authored by NT Wright and Marcus Borg, NT Wright draws a distinction between knowledge of Jesus acquired on the basis of history and that acquired by faith.
Knowledge of Jesus acquired from history is knowledge about Jesus. But the knowledge of Jesus acquired by faith is not knowledge about Jesus- it is knowing Jesus.
Knowledge of God
Without having looked too carefully at the preceding posts and comments, I think you have it, Paul, when you say
"Alternatively, we could say that the knowledge involved in knowing Jesus or God is different from the ordinary kind of knowledge. "
How to put this without resorting to the terminology of standard theology is quite difficult. But the major thrust of Karl Barth was against the tendency in theology of his day towards a purely ‘objective’ knowledge of God (influenced by a prevailing mindset which accorded ‘objective’ truth a supremacy over all other kinds of truth). Barth argued for a truth which was communicated from God by revelation, which could not be accessed by other forms of knowledge.
This seems to me to be at the heart of the issue with regard to knowing God. To put it in biblical terms, it is only through the activity of God’s Spirit that we can know Jesus, in the sense of having a relationship with him as a living person. And to put it in an accessible way, it is only when we yield our lives to Jesus (as Lord) that the Spirit of God makes his presence a living reality in our lives. I would add to Andrew’s comment from Philippians 3:10 that this ‘knowing’ of Christ by the Spirit (which is more fully described in Romans 8) precedes being led by the Spirit into sharing the sufferings of Christ, and does also include all that Paul describes of Jesus as the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes in the preceding 9 verses of the chapter.
This, it seems to me, was the ‘light’ which came to George Fox when he was striding the countryside around Fenny Drayton, and which stood out in contrast to the religious formalism of his day. It’s also a ‘light’ which the modern day Quaker movement (Society of Friends) urgently needs to rediscover.
verification
One dispute I would make with your post is the "that the person will on request confirm that he knows me." How would a person’s willingness or unwillingness (or ability or inability) to acknowledge a relationship have any bearing on whether or not said relationship exists?
Who knows?
I thought that this thread could use a little scriptural underpinning.
I’m going to disagree with 1beggar and assert that the confirmation of the known is indeed essential to the validity of the claim to know:
Matthew 7:22-23Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Scripture presents us with a rich picture of knowing God that should be mined in any discussion such as this. For instance, Paul asserts
1 Cor 13:12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
To wit, Paul is known by Christ fully, and yet knows Christ only in part. It does indeed seem that "face-to-face" interaction presents an opportunity to know someone that "long-distance" interaction does not.
Matthew 11:27No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
An odd saying. Taken literally, it seems to say that NO ONE can know the Son except the Father, but some can know the Father if the Son so chooses. I don’t think that’s the intention (see the next verse), but here we affirm that "knowing God" is not a simple matter of familiarity with a His attributes and personality, but in fact a divinely and selectively conferred status.
John 17:2-3…You granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
So we CAN know Christ, and in fact it is the very definition of eternal life — an attribute of those whom God has given to Christ.
The biblical definition of knowing seems often to imply inclusion within a select group — in the case of knowing God, those He would call "His own," those He would claim as His people, the sheep of His pasture — e.g. John 10:3, "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." Those who claim to "know" Christ claim to have their names written in the Book of Life, and their claim will be proven true or false on the day of Judgment:
Revelation 3:5I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels.
It is interesting, then, that the Bible’s own definition of "knowing God" has very, very little to do with any information content or propositional affirmation. On the contrary, the chief marks of knowing God are quite behavioral in nature.
1 John 2:3-4We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
Even acknowledging Jesus’ uniqueness, authority, etc. does not count as "knowing" him.
Mark 1:23-24Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, "What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!"
Also worth mentioning — in John 1:31, John the Baptist claims not to have known Jesus, even though he immediately recognized Jesus when they met, and certainly had a robust faith in his messianic calling.
Unfortunately, the word "know" in Greek is so common that it is used for everything from simple awareness of a fact, to total comprehension, to sexual intimacy. It appears to me that the sexual connotation is applicable, as such an act is seen to create some indissoluble link. This suggests that the relationship between the knower and the known is one of possession or identification.
Such a wide variety of usages of the word is bound to create some confusion, as seen in:
John 7:28Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, "Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him…"
There is a sense in which you can know Jesus but not know the Father — even though John reports seven chapters later than anyone who knows Christ knows the Father. This illustrates that there are at least two accepted yet mutually exclusive definitions of the term that we will need to sort through.
Finally Ephesians 1:17 speaks to those who know Christ, and hopes for them to know him better. So knowing Christ is not merely a status of belonging or non-belonging, but also has a kind of magnitude attributed to it (as Paul again acknowledges in 1 Cor, knowing in part).
I sense a difference in Paul’s use of the term over and against the gospels. This would probably be an interesting study.
Of course, the "knower - known" relationship is the topic of many religious and philosophical treatises, and these are not irrelevant. However, I think our definitions need to remain true to their Biblical usage. That is our starting point, not personal experience or modern philosophical categories.
Sorry, there is no conclusion to this rambling, only a display of the rich diversity of concepts which fall under the umbrella term "knowing God" — and a warning that any definition we attach to it should be faithful to that diversity of biblical usage.
More on knowing Christ
In response to Peter Wilkinson’s post
Peter, I do not quite follow Karl Barth’s distinction between objective and other kinds of knowledge (subjective?).
This seems to elide two different kinds of knowledge- ‘to know someone’ and ‘to know that something is the case’. If Barth is talking about the latter I agree that the methods of science do not provide the only valid propositional knowledge - that is, not all knowledge is objective in the sense that not all the verifying conditions of knowledge are based on empirical or cause-effect explanations. For example, a claim to know that a Rembrandt self portrait is a good painting would be based on other than scientific verification criteria.But the distinction does not seem to apply to ‘know someone.’ I suggested in my previous post that any claim to know somebody must satisfy 4 criteria. These criteria could be described as objective in the sense that they require confirmation of empirical facts. If the Barth distinction is to apply to a claim to know somebody, then it would be necessary to indicate the ways in which these criteria should be altered to justify non-objective (=subjective??) knowledge of somebody. I find it very difficult to see how this could be done.
In response to Erlenmeyer’s postI found Erlenmeyer’s survey of the scriptural sources to be very useful; and I have sought below to summarise what they say
1. God does not necessarily know us but if we love him we are known by him
1 Cor 8.3 “anyone who loves God is known by him".
2. The scriptures seem to have different views about whether human beings can know God.The following texts suggest such knowledge is not possible
Galatians 4.9 “now however that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God…..
1Cor 13.12 “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
However, according to John 17:2-3 it is possible for people to know both God and Jesus Christ “You granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Matthew 11:27 makes knowledge of the Father dependent on revelation by the Son: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
3. The scriptures also seem to have different views about whether human beings can know Jesus Christ
Matthew 11:27 quoted above asserts that it is possible to know the Father but not possible to know the Son: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
But John 17:2-3, also quoted above, says you can know both the Father and the Son “You granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
I John 2.3ff says we can know Christ provided we obey his commandments: “Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments…..”
Ephesians 1. 17 seems to envisage coming to know Christ as being part of a Christian’s progress in the life of faith: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him…
Phil 3.8 ff: suggests that we know Christ by sharing in his sufferings :“…I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord….I want to know Christ and the power of the resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”
My original post about what it means to know someone was an examination of our actual usage and pointed out that we could not apply “know someone” in its usual sense to either the risen Christ or to God. Perhaps the key point of ordinary usage is that for X to know Y, both X and Y must agree that X knows Y. If I claim that I know John Howard and he says that he does not know me, then my claim is rejected and neither of us can be said to know the other (this in response to 1beggar). Also to know someone is to recognise him as another person and this seems to rest on consent of the two persons. In other words you could refuse to know another person as in the expression of a father disappointed that his son has turned out gay:”I no longer know him”
If this understanding is correct, it would make sense of the idea that God does not necessarily know any person but only those who love him(1 Cor 8.3 )- that is, if a person does not consent even God is not able to know him.
I am quite puzzled by some of the other scriptural quotes. In particular, how does sharing in Christ’s suffering establish a claim that a person knows him.
Knowing, or being known by, God
Paul - thank you for starting this discussion - which keys into an interest I’ve had for a long time. How can we say ‘we know God?’ What does ‘know’ mean in a relationship with another person? How does that apply to God?
Just in passing, on the use of scriptural quotations to illustrate the theme, (or raise further questions), maybe we need to be sensitive to the particular ways in which ‘know’ is being used in specific biblical contexts. When Paul says in Galatians ‘Now that you know, or rather are known by God’, I suggest that he is not speaking in a philosophical sense, but in the sense that God’s ‘knowledge’ of us is his ‘acknowledgement’ that we belong to him - through our response to Christ, and the gift of the Spirit.
The same would be true of the word when Jesus uses it - (‘I never knew you’ … etc) which in the first place probably means something like ‘you were never mine’ - but could possibly be extended to mean that there had been presumption of relationship on the part of the subject, which never actually existed from the point of view of the object (Jesus).
In each case, ‘knowing’ is to do with the basis on which God takes a person or a people and makes them his own, or provides the conditions by which they can belong to him.
But to revert to your questions - I do accept that the issue goes further than this - in the scriptures, as well as philosophically.
An abiding biblical theme of the accommodation of God to his people is ‘presence’. Since we are not physically able to see or touch God, it’s easy to see why this should be a significant word to describe the relationship. And there’s something in that word that delves deep into the heart of all significant relationships - that we desire to experience ‘presence’ in a relationship.
God’s impartation of his ‘felt’ presence was his communicated acknowledgement of relationship - affirming his ‘knowing’ (through relationship) of the people to whom it was imparted, and the way in which they could ‘know’ him. This was true of Adam & Eve’s experience in the garden, and was also the continuing experience of the people of Israel through the desert wanderings to the building of the 1st and 2nd temples.
This ‘knowing’ through presence was the reverse side of the coin to God’s commitment to his people through covenant. So it wasn’t an arbitrary ‘presence’ - it was based on clearly understood conditions and commitments: but behind that is something unconditional: God’s characteristic of unconditional love - ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful’.
This leads into a rich spectrum of scriptural themes, such as the requirement of holiness for this kind of intimate ‘knowing’ to be initiated and maintained.
This probably takes me away from the precise thrust of your questions, but it seems to me that in the first place, with God we are dealing with a person, who, to use Karl Barth’s words, is very ‘other’ than human beings (despite their being made ‘in his image’), and that he accommodates himself to us to make himself known.
And essentially, I would come back to Barth’s insistence on revelation (from God) as the basis of knowing him. In the previous comment, you summarised what I meant by ‘objective’ knowledge - but I was also relating it to the broader issue of modernism’s fixation with the possibility of direct, objective perception and understanding of ‘reality’ - which I see somewhat in your own philosophical method. Barth challenged this (and the challenge still stands today) by saying that God’s ‘revelation’ is a type of knowledge just as valid as modernism’s ‘objective’ knowledge. Actually, much more valid - and much more reliable!
Christ also gave us his own criteria for ‘knowing’ him (or at least ‘entering the kingdom of God’ - in which ‘knowing’ Christ is the primary necessity), such as becoming like a little child. I take this to mean something like the spontaneous, unaffected trust which a child exhibits. Trust is clearly crucial to any relationship.
I think too of the (apocryphal) story of the elderly labourer who was seen spending time sitting alone in the village church, smiling - apparently - at nothing. When questioned about this, he said he was spending time with God. When questioned further about how he could claim to be spending the time with God, he simply said: ‘I love him, and he loves me.’ I doubt if the story is true, but it seems to me to capture the heart and simplicity of a relationship with God - both subject and object ‘knowing’ each other.
Just in conclusion, I suspect your field of enquiry has particular applications to people who frequent this site - and is certainly true of myself - in that I find a complex inter-twining of wanting to engage with arguments and ideas (and often to prove my own point!) with a profounder desire in some way to ‘know’ the people I am batting ideas around with, and also ‘to be known’ by them. I do suspect that something like this emerges over a period of time, when people frequent a website discussion forum. (I’m anxious for the return of Ivan to the on-going discussions). Hence too my interest in biographical summaries on the site - and meeting Eric and Andrew (and anyone else?) in a couple of weeks’ time!
Knowing: historical vs. present?
I’m fairly new to this site, so forgive me if these issues have been discussed elsewhere, but this comment thread has brought to mind a practical issue I’ve been thinking about for a few months.
In speaking of "knowing" Christ, what is the interaction between understanding the historical Jesus (ala N.T. Wright more than the Jesus Seminar), and understanding what Jesus meant when he said "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matt 28:20). I have recently had many of my standard evangelical assumptions overturned when I have examined the Gospels in the light of the historical/political context of the day, and seeing how Jesus fit into that context. This, of course, at first makes Jesus quite strange. "And all this time I thought he was talking to me!" so to speak. I come from a midwest-America-evangelical-charismatic context, and I’ve been frustrated with my tradition’s exclusively individualistic interpretation of the Bible. So I think this kind of historical scholarship is, I think, quite important for the church to understand and embrace (even though it has been feared and shunned in the past)
But I do value my tradition’s emphasis on the real presence of Jesus in our midst through the Holy Spirit. If we only talk about the historical Jesus, I think we can end up with a kind of Deism that denies the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church today. It leaves it all up to us and our intelligence to make the kingdom happen. A question I read recently sums up my dilemma quite well, I think: "How do we recognize the continuing presence of the resurrected Jesus in our midst?" And how do we do that while maintaining he is a real person, and not some "mythological" Christ, some projected idea we have put upon him.
Surely if he told his disciples (and if the Gospels are to be believed, which I think they are) that he would be "with" them always, then it is possible to be "with" him today, yes? Whether you call it "mysticism" or whatever, has anyone thought about how we think and talk about the dual "knowings" of studying the Jesus of history and knowing the "with-us" Jesus as a person who continues to speak and work today? Are these necessarily exclusive concepts, or is there some way to intelligently speak about and live a life based on both of these "knowings"? (I’m a pastor, and thus I guess I’m concerned about how things work out practically)
Knowing - a historical continuum
Apologies for cluttering up the comment box with two offerings on one day (and a UK bank holiday Monday at that) - but I think Wright’s historical appraisal of Jesus contributes greatly to how we can know him today. Not as a middle-eastern leader of a minor Jewish sect - but as a messiah who came to challenge and, in his own way, subvert and overthrow all the known power systems with his own, radically different system - in which the historical attributes of the kingdom of God, as envisaged in portions of Isaiah, but totally misunderstood in his day, were made a reality in the lives of those who came to prominence in this kingdom. And these were the socially, religiously and morally excluded - in God’s upside-down kingdom.
There is radical continuity in the Jesus of then and the Jesus of now - which, of course, it was God’s intention that the church should continue to reflect today - and so it does. albeit imperfectly, and in a fragmented way.
But the Jesus of now is in a historical continuum in which the death, resurrection, and ascension of the 1st century earthly Jesus of Palestine have clothed him with an irreversible, augmented significance. This is where, incidentally, I wonder at what point a ‘stripped back’ emergent theology kicks in. I suspect what I have just said would not be very acceptable to emergent theologians, who, I also suspect, would like to keep Jesus in the mould of the leader of a minor Jewish sect in 1st century Palestine, but translated into today’s culture and times. But we cannot reverse biblical history - the history of Jesus himself. This is not what later theologians have added - it is the bible’s own testimony.
Nevertheless, the character of the people of God today should, I believe, bear some resemblance to the disciples of Jesus’s day, albeit in a post-Pentecost time frame and mould.
Knowing, experiencing, being aware of God
Peter, I acknowledge your point about the use of scriptural quotations ie that we need to be sensitive to the particular ways in which ‘know’ is being used in specific biblical contexts. Indeed, the texts need to be given proper exegetical scrutiny taking into account context etc before we draw conclusions from them.
I do not see the points I have been making as philosophical. Rather they are based simply on the way we in fact use the expression ‘know someone’ -that is, I have argued that an examination of our actual usage shows that we could not apply “know someone” in its usual sense to either the risen Christ or to God. However, I would suggest that if we want to depart from that usage (and the rules that govern it) in the case of God or Jesus then we have to show exactly how and with what rationale. In other words, it is not in my opinion good enough to say, ‘we know Christ or God in a different way’, as though that settles the matter.
I think your points about feeling the presence of God are important. Instead of saying we know God we could opt to say
However- and here I think we disagree- to say that either of these expressions describes our relationship with God is to say less than that we know God- that is, we could be aware of God or experience God but not know God. This, I know, sounds like logic chopping but it is not. In my own case for example, I would say that I am aware of God but I would not say that I have had an experience of God or that I know God.
As you say, cyberspace contact is curious. The exchange of ideas is important (and not available to me on these subjects elsewhere) but one feels a vague unease about purely rational contact. Hard-headed discussion is (modestly?) important but poses the danger of substituting for what is much more important and that is engaging with each other as disciples of Christ. I also would like to see Ivan come back to this forum.another view on knowing
Paul,
You guys have a good discussion going here. This is a concept I have been pondering for some time. 10 years ago I was sure of what I thought I knew. When that facade came crashing down, I went through a period when I didn’t believe it possible to know anything for sure. I am still skeptical of our ability to know anything fully, but a few authors and a lot of personal reflection have helped to restore my trust in the epistemic process.
One of those authors is a philosophy professor from St. Louis named Esther Meeks who wrote a pretty good book on this topic…it’s based on Polyani’s philosophy. It’s entitled Longing to Know if you’re interested.
I think we can say with full confidence that we can know God - beyond simply being aware of him or experiencing him. In fact, if we say we can be aware of and experience his presence, we’re only one step removed from knowing him. It’s inherently human to create patterns of knowing from experiences, thoughts, etc. as we encounter them. In the modern understanding of the word "know" - these patterned constructs don’t hold up to scrutiny. However, upon a closer look, we may find that our scrutiny overstates our ability to know anything for sure…while underestimating our ability to meaningfully know life, our spouses, or God.
Network theory suggests that nodes linked by many weak links forms a stronger network than nodes connected with a few very strong links. Might knowing God be more similar to this type of model than the foundationalist principles often imposed on the epistemic process by more modern minded folks?
Another concept that I recently stumbled upon is the effect that our noun-centric English language has on our reading of scripture. Verb-centric languages often maintain a sense of movement - whereas noun-centric languages tend to be rigid, bound by principles and propositions. A professor suggested that Hebrew and Greek are both verb-centered languages, but we read the text from a noun-centric perspective. Might words like "know" be more fluid than we read them? How might our conceptions of knowing change if we viewed knowing as something that moved and changed over time?
I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Andy
Jesus in Revelation
I really like that phrase: "a radical continuity in the Jesus of then and the Jesus of now." Reminds us that Jesus was, and still is, a person, rather than an idea or ideal.
It strikes me that perhaps John’s Revelation helps us see Jesus as more than simply the leader of a 1st century Jewish sect. If it is to be believed, he left little doubt that he was quite a bit more than just the 1st century prophet. Perhaps Revelation is the book that traces the continuity between the 1st-century Jesus and the cosmic, messiah-for-all-peoples Jesus.
I found it interesting that you said most emergent theologians would want to keep Jesus in his 1st century mold. What is the reasoning for that? And how would they interpret Revelation?
paul, thank you for the "
paul, thank you for the "x/y" illustration. i was thinking in terms of a "z" perspective. That is, just b/c "x" will not/cannot confirm to "z" that "x" does indeed know "y" does not necessarily mean that it the case. though "z" could certainly observe the pattern of relationship btwn x & y and get a pretty good idea. but the point i was getting at was that is risky for an outside observer to state with any certainty about whether another christian has or does not have a relationship with God.
as for the levels of "knowing," perhaps i am being simple here (it would not be the first time), but it seems that this is much less deep than it appears. example: i knew my wife for several years before we were married. after we were married, however, i was stunned at how little i really understood her. and even after 16 yrs together, she still surprises me. does that mean i didn’t know her before? not really. just that i know her better now. and if our relationships with other flesh-and-blood finite human beings are like that, how much more will our relationship with an infinite God be so?
sorry for the multiple posts which follow. my computer is misbehaving today.