Tag: Knowledge

I put together the following some time ago, and only had it saved as a draft here on the blog. I thought I would publish it now. I actually don’t even recall who my interlocutor is anymore; maybe he’ll see this and remind me. I shared the following passage on Facebook and X, from John Baillie, as cited by TF Torrance in his book: Theological Science. The fact is that no true knowledge, no valid act of perceiving or thinking, can be explained by beginning from the human end—whether it be my perception of the number of peas in a…

for we walk by faith, not by sight . . .[1] It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the »invisible« things of God as though they were clearly »perceptible in those things which have actually happened« (Rom. 1:20; cf. 1 Cor 1:21-25), he deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. A theology of glory calls evil good and good…

Is God really knowable, secularly, in the vestiges of the created order? In other words, does God repose in the fallen order to the point that vain and profane people can come to have some type of vestigial knowledge of the living God? According to Thomas Aquinas, and other scholastics of similar ilk, the answer is a resounding: yes. Here is Thomas himself: as we have shown [q. 32, a. 1], the Trinity of persons cannot be demonstratively proven. But it is still congruous to place it in the light of some things which are more manifest to us. And…

Herbert McCabe on the certainty of the Christian reality (contra wishful thinking, so on and so forth): Now there are some people who will admit even this. They will admit that Christianity is reasonable even in this sense, that it is not merely logically coherent, but also a pretty reasonable hypothesis. They will admit that there is a lot of evidence of one kind and another to suggest that Christian beliefs are true, just as there is a lot of evidence of one kind and another to suggest that telepathy is quite common or that Queen Elizabeth I was in…

Εἰρήνην διώκετε μετὰ πάντων, καὶ τὸν ἁγιασμόν, οὗ χωρὶς οὐδεὶς ὄψεται τὸν κύριον, Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord . . . Hebrews 12:14   ὄψεται (lexeme: ὁράω), translated in the NKJV above as ‘will see’ is in the future tense third person middle indicative. I have a theological-exegetical theory: P1. Divine holiness and peace are required in order to have vision and knowledge of God. P2. Knowledge and vision of God are eschatological realities available now and for eternity to come. P3. Only Jesus Christ for us has divine holiness and peace to…

Either something is, or it isn’t. Surely, there are nuances on a continuum, and we should all be aware of that as we approach any system or maybe better, organism of thought. Nonetheless, in the end, either a framework of thought is sound and corresponds to reality or it doesn’t. This seems like a good working definition of critical realism. If we apply this to a theological prolegomenon, what, in the end, will obtain, is that we will use various criteria to determine whether or not some belief structure, that we may or may not adhere to, is actually true…

John Webster offers too good of a sketch on a theory of revelation for me to simply pass it by without sharing it for you (and I’ll be using it in my doctoral study as well—which my topic has changed already, I’ll share what it is in an addendum at the end of this post). He synopsizes what I have often been after in many of my posts on the same locus. Let’s read along with him, and then I’ll close with some concluding reflections (and that addendum). The broadest outline of a diagnosis would be something like this: For…

I think sometimes folks aren’t appreciating the rub between what Barth (Torrance et al.) are doing when they offer an alternative—to classical theism—theory knowledge of God. It orbits around a question; a question Keith Johnson articulates with great clarity: Romans I Barth began concentrated study on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans a few months after delivering ‘The Righteousness of God’. The experience was slow-going, at least by the standards of his later output. The extra time spent on the manuscript, however, meant that Barth’s understanding of the distinctions and categories that had been working subtly throughout ‘The Righteousness of God’ had time…