He Is There and He Is Not Silent
By Francis A. Schaeffer
Part IV: The Christian Answer in the Area of Epistemology
From Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 129, January-March 1972, pp. 3-19
The dilemma of twentieth century philosophy began with the problem of nature and grace as it was brought forth in the high renaissance. Rationalistic and humanistic men, as brilliant as they were, could never find a way to bind nature and grace together in a unified view of the world. Nature in their discussion involved man and the natural cause-and-effect world. Grace involved the heavenly forces and how these unseen forces affected the world. Nature involved the body; grace involved the soul. Eventually the nature-and-grace discussion came to the problem of particulars which were in the area of nature and universals which were in the area of grace. Reality was divided into an upper and lower story situation.
The Reformation was very different from the high renaissance because the Reformation never had a problem of nature and grace. This is really a tremendous distinction. The conflict between nature and grace arose as a problem out of the rationalistic, humanistic renaissance, and it has never been solved. Christianity did not have a problem at the Reformation which the Reformers wrestled with and solved. No, it was not this. There just was no problem of nature and grace in the Reformation because the Reformation had revelation. The Reformation had verbal, propositional revelation, which would not allow a dichotomy between nature and grace.
In the Reformation and the Judaistic-Christian position in general, we find that God is there and that He has spoken. He has spoken first about Himself, not exhaustively but truly. Secondly, He has spoken about history and the cosmos, not exhaustively but truly in propositional, verbalized revelation. The Reformers had no nature and grace problem on the basis of what God said. They could view the world as a unity. Rationalism could not find an answer, but God has spoken and this gives the unity needed for the nature and grace dilemma.
The Biblical View of Revelation versus the Uniformity of Natural Causes
This brings us immediately to a very basic question¾is the biblical position of a verbalized, propositional revelation intellectually possible? First, it is not possible to hold the biblical view of revelation if you hold the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. For those who hold the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, any idea of revelation immediately becomes nonsense. It is not only that there are problems, but it is absolute nonsense. It makes no difference whether you begin with a naturalistic view in philosophy or a naturalistic view in theology. It does not change anything. For the liberal theologian, it is impossible to think of real propositional revelation. No amount of discussion is going to solve the problem for the big thing has to be faced¾the question of the presuppositions.
If anyone is committed without questioning the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, then whether he expresses himself in philosophical or religious terms in the area of modern liberal theology, it is totally unthinkable that there would be propositional, verbalized revelation, knowledge that man has from the outside, from God. This possibility is eliminated by definition¾everything is a machine so naturally there is no knowledge of God from the outside. The naturalistic world view leads to the dehumanization of man and denies what man knows about man. But the monolithic consensus in the intellectual world today is to insist upon holding the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, even though it dehumanizes man, even though it is opposed to man’s knowledge of himself. It must be clearly understood that this position leaves no place for revelation.
When one holds the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system against all the evidence (and I insist it is against all the evidence), then he will never, never be able to consider the other presupposition that began modern science in the first place, that is, the uniformity of natural causes in a limited system that was open to reordering by God and by man. If you insist on holding the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system (which is almost the monolithic consensus today), then you have no place for revelation.
An interesting point here is that in modern, secular anthropology the distinction of man against non-man is made in the area of language. In the past man was considered to be the tool maker, and wherever you found the tool maker it was man in contrast to non-man. This is no longer true. It is now language. The secular anthropologists agree that if we are to determine what is man in contrast to what is non-man, it is not in the area of tool making but in the area of the verbalizer. Today when the anthropologist decides this is man as opposed to that which is non-man, the whole question is whether or not there is verbal communication. If there is verbalization, he is man; if there is no verbalization, he is not man.
We communicate propositional communication to each other in spoken or written form in language. As a matter of fact, there can be no culture and no civilization without language. Indeed, it is deeper than this because the only way we think inside of our own heads is in language. We can have other things in our heads beside language, but they must always be linked to language. A book can be written with many figures of speech, but they must have a continuity with the normal use of syntax and a defined use of terms or nobody knows what the book is about. Whether we are talking about communication outside or about thinking in our heads, man is a verbalizer.
Let us look at this argument from the non-Christian man’s view of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. Here all concepts of propositional revelation, and especially verbalized, propositional revelation, are totally nonsense. It is obvious that propositional, verbalized revelation is not possible for the modern man who continues to cling to the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. The point I tried to make in the first articles and in my books is that the central questions revolve around this presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. Is this presupposition viable in the light of what we know? I would insist it is not. It fails to explain man, it fails to explain the universe and its present form, and it fails to stand up in the area of epistemology.
Christianity offers an entirely different set of presuppositions. The other presuppositions simply do not meet the need. What I urge people to do is to consider the two great presuppositions¾the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system and the uniformity of natural causes in an open system, in a limited time span¾and to decide which of these fits the facts. I think we are talking about empirical things here and not just leaps in the dark. Christianity offers a different set of presuppositions. Christianity begins with a God who is there, who is the infinite-personal God, who has made man in His image. He has made man to be the verbalizer in the area of propositional communication with other men. Even secular anthropologists say somehow or other (they do not know why) man is the verbalizer. Man is something different. The Bible says I can tell you why; God is a personal-infinite God and in the Trinity there has always been communication before the creation of all the universe. God has made man in His own image, and a part of making man in His own image is that man is the verbalizer. This is the unity of the Christian structure.
Now let us ask ourselves a question. In the Christian structure a personal God is there and has made man in His own image¾a verbalizer who can communicate horizontally to other men on the basis of propositions and language. Is it unthinkable or surprising that God can communicate to man on the basis of propositions? Within the Christian system is this unthinkable or surprising? The answer is no.
I have put this question to some of the sharpest atheists I have met through the years, and the sharper they are the quicker they tend to respond. I have never met an atheist who said that this is surprising. Within the Christian structure it is just what you would expect. If God has made us to be communicators on the basis of verbalization and given propositional communication with each other, why should we think He would not communicate to us on the basis of verbalization and propositions?
The personal God has made us to speak to each other in language. Why then would it be a surprise to think of Him speaking to Paul in Hebrew on the Damascus Road? Why would it be a surprise? Do we think God does not know Hebrew?
Further, if a personal God is a good God, in communicating to man in a verbalized, propositional way, why would it be surprising that He would tell us the truth? It is only surprising if you have been infiltrated by the presuppositions of uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. But as I have said, it is a question of which of these two sets of presuppositions really and empirically meets the facts as we look about us in the world.
The Biblical View of Revelation Gives a Unified View of the World
What we now find is that the biblical answer rests upon language in revelation. Christianity has no nature-and-grace problem because God has spoken in propositional revelation. Heidegger and Wittgenstein, two of the great names in the area of modern epistemology, both understand that the answer must be in the area of language, but they have no one there to speak. Christianity calls us to begin by asking, "What if there is somebody there to speak?" Then it says that God has told us about Himself and the cosmos ¾ not exhaustively, but truly. God has spoken to all areas of life both in what I call the upper and lower stories. Consequently, Reformation Christianity never had a nature-and-grace problem. It did not have anything to solve¾the problem just was not there.
Christianity has no problem of nature and grace, and let me say very gently¾Christianity has no problem of epistemology either. Those of you who have read my other articles saw the absolute agony of modern man in the area of knowledge, in epistemology. Here suddenly we turn to Christianity and we say, "What is the answer?" There is no problem in the area of epistemology to the Christian, just as there is no problem in the area of nature and grace. It is not that we happen to have an answer, but rather that there is no problem in the Christian structure.
Let us be clear as to why there is no problem of epistemology in the Christian structure. From the Christian viewpoint, we must return again and grasp really deeply what Oppenheimer and Whitehead have said about the birth of modern science. They have said that modern science could not have been born except within the milieu of Christianity. Why? There are two big reasons. The originators of modern science acquired their view of the universe from the Christian presuppositions. First of all, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler¾up through Newton himself¾all believed the universe existed because God had made it. They also believed as Whitehead has so beautifully said that because God was a reasonable God, man could discover the truth of the universe by reason. On this basis, modern science was born.
As I have stressed over and over again, I do not believe for a moment that if the men back there had had the presuppositions and epistemology of modern man there would ever have been science as such. I really do not. Today we are faced with a situation in which I think science is going to die. I think science is going to be merely two things¾it is going to be only technology, and it is going to be another form of sociological manipulation as I have discussed in The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century. Science cannot continue with its objectivity once the base that brought forth science has been totally destroyed. I do not see how it is going to hold on. But one thing I am sure of¾science could never have begun in the midst of the uncertainty that modern man has in the area of epistemology.
The same God who is the infinite-personal God and not just an abstraction made things together, so the early scientists had courage to step out. They could expect to understand the universe (truly but not exhaustively) by reason because it had been made by a reasonable God. This God who is there made an orderly universe with things together, not only that things may be found out by reason but so that things existed in orderly relationship to each other. This is the way He made the world. The whole area of science turned upon the fact that He had made a world in which things were made to stand together¾there are relationships between things. He made the external universe which makes true science possible, but He also made man to live in this universe. So we have three things coming together: the infinite-personal God has made the universe and He has made man to live in that universe. Then God has given the Bible to tell us about that universe. Are we surprised there is a unity between them?
God made the universe, He made man to live in that universe, and He gives us the Bible¾the verbalized, propositional revelation¾to tell us what we need to know. In the Bible He does not only tell us about morals which make possible real morals instead of merely sociological averages, but He gives us comprehension to correlate our knowledge. The same God made the object and the subject, the knower and the known, and He put them together. So it is not surprising if there is a correlation between these things. Is that not what you would expect?
In the previous articles we saw that this is the basic dilemma of modern man¾that he cannot have any certainty of the relationship of the subject and the object. But here we come to the Christian position starting with another set of presuppositions. Now there is a reasonable correlation between the subject and the object. This is not against human experience. If this were against human experience, it would indeed be just one more piece of pie in the sky. It is not some mystical religious thing that somebody gives you as a leap completely out of reality with no way to test it. No matter what a man’s philosophy is, in reality he lives as though there is correlation between the subject and the object.
The fact is that if you are going to live in this world at all, you act on the correlation of yourself and the thing that is there, even if you have a philosophy that there is no correlation. There is no other way to live in this world. Everybody lives in this world on the basis of the common experience that there is a correlation between the subject and the object. That is the way the world is made. So as all men love even if they say love does not exist, and all men have moral motions even though they say moral motions do not exist, so all men act as though there is a correlation between the external and the internal world even if their philosophy gives them no basis for that correlation.
What I am saying is that the Christian view is exactly in line with the experience of every man. No other system except Judeo-Christianity tells us why there is a subject-object correlation that you do and must act on. Everybody acts on it, everybody must act on it, but no other system tells you why there is a correlation between the subject and the object. In other words, all men constantly and consistently act as though Christianity is true. Everybody in the world acts that way.
In epistemology we know the thing is there because God made it to be there. It is not an extension of His essence; it is not a dream of God as much Eastern thinking says things are; it is really there. It has a true objective reality, so it is there and we are not surprised to find that there is a correlation between the observer and what is observed because God made them to go together. They are made by the same God in the same frame of reference. The Christian simply does not have a problem with epistemology. This thing which is the basis of the generation gap, which is the very heart of modern man’s damnation, does not exist in truly biblical Christianity.
Everyone has to face this truth whether it is the very intellectual man who would hate the Christian view or the very simple man who lives as though the Christian view is true simply because he acts that way without asking any questions. To both of these the Christian says, "Of course, what do you expect? Naturally this is the way it is because the reasonable God made the subject and the object and He gives us the Bible to give us knowledge." If He is the reasonable God that the early scientists really thought was there when they launched modern science, why are we surprised that the subject can know the object?
A question is raised that we must deal with at this point. That is, how should we consider the problem of the accuracy of knowledge? As soon as we come to this we must also move from the subject-object relationship to the problem of language because they are related in a very real way. As we do this, we must realize there are three possible views of language.
The first view of language is that we cannot communicate at all because we bring our own backgrounds to every word we use. Our own backgrounds so mark our words and our phrases that they just do not touch. A second or opposite view is that as soon as we use any term in a symbol-system of language, everyone has an exhaustive, absolute, and common meaning of that term. Obviously, neither of these two extreme views is adequate to explain what really happens in language. In reality, how do we find that language operates? Surely we find it is like this: though we do bring our own backgrounds to language, there is also enough overlapping on the basis of the external world and human experience to insure that we have a sufficient meaning for communication. There is communication even though we fall short of an exhaustive meaning of the same word. In other words, our words overlap, though they do not fit completely.
This is true with language, but we must also realize it is true with knowing. We do not have to choose between these two extremes either in language or epistemology. We can know truly without knowing exhaustively. As long as the thing is there, and I am there in correlation with the other thing, I do not have to know it exhaustively. After all, we come down to the factor that nobody knows anything exhaustively, even the smallest thing, except God.
Just as in language there is enough overlap in order to communicate with each other, so we do not need to say that we have to have exhaustive knowledge of a thing in order to know truly as long as there is sufficient correlation. In the Christian background, we are all creatures of God and we live in His world. When we use words we do not exhaust them, even words like "God" or "salvation." These are not exhausted between one person and another, yet although they have personal overtones we can communicate in an accurate way.
On a Christian basis, therefore, there is just no problem of epistemology. The Christian is in an entirely different situation from modern man because he begins with different presuppositions. He is not like the man who has nowhere to begin, who is not sure that anything is there. The dilemma of positivism was that in the terms of their own system they must start without any knowledge that there is anything there. The Christian is not like this. He knows something is going to be there because God has made it there. The reason why the East never produced a science on its own is that the Eastern thinking never has had a certainty of the objective existence of reality. Without an external world there is no subject, even for scientific study, but the Christian can be sure of the reality of the external world as a basis for true knowledge. The Christian acknowledges that we live in a fallen world and there are abnormalities, such as the man who is schizophrenic, yet the Christian is not sucked into the position of complete uncertainty where fantasy and reality are inseparable by the borderline case.
Christian Epistemology and the Problem of Me Looking Out
The Christian has no epistemological problem in the dilemma of me looking out. The Christian can live in the world that God has made. A reasonable God created the universe and put me in it, and it is not surprising that He should provide mental categories in my mind to fit the world in which I have to live.
A lot of work is presently being done on the fact that there are uniform categories in the human mind. You can think of the work of Levi Strauss, for example, or Chomsky with his concept of Basic Grammar. In all these areas men are finding that somehow or other there are uniform categories in the human mind. But the Christian says, "Of course, what do you expect? The same God who made the world, who put me into the world, is going to make the categories of human mind to fit the world in which I live."
Consider this in relation to the physical world. Here I am and I have a lung system. The lung system fits the world in which I live. It would not fit Venus, Mars, or even the moon. It is not surprising that my lung system is in correlation to the world’s atmosphere for the same reasonable God made both my lung system and the atmosphere and put me in this world. It is not surprising at all that there is a correlation between my lung system and the atmosphere in which I live. Going back to the area of epistemology, there is no surprise that He has given me a correlation between the categories of my mind and the world in which I live. Thus in knowledge; if a reasonable God made the world, and He has made me, we are not to be surprised if He made the categories of the human mind to fit into the categories of the external world. There are categories in the external world and there are categories of the mind. Should we be surprised if they fit?
Secondly, let us notice that God has given specific, propositional revelation about the world. When I read the Bible it teaches me certain didactic things in words, in verbalizations, in propositions. But the Bible not only gives didactic statements, the Bible shows me something else. As I read the Bible I see how God works in the world that He has made. Reading the Bible every day of your life gives you a different mentality. Even if you are surrounded with a mentality of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, as you read the Bible you have a different mentality. I have come to the conclusion that the reading of the Bible every day to understand this different mentality against this tremendous rushing wall of modern thinking is perhaps one of the most important things you can get out of reading the Bible. While reading the Bible you are living in a mentality which is the right mentality against the great wall of this other thinking which is forced upon us on every side. The Bible reveals the infinite-personal God Himself working in history. He works in a way that gives us complete confidence in what He has said about the external world. He does not work against what He tells us.
When I read in the Bible what God has done within the flow of history, what He does in the external world does not violate what He says the external world is. When the infinite-personal God works in history, we find that He works exactly in line with what He has told us about the external world. The Bible gives us two things¾we have the didactic teaching of the Scripture and we look and say, "Yes, God works that way." This is a very profound concept indeed. There are miracles in the Bible, but the great stretch of the Bible is not made up of miracles in this sense. The miracles are unusual happenings, and that is why we call them miracles. Normally when God works in the world, He is not working in this way. We find Him working in the world on the basis of the way He has made the world. The Red Sea was pushed back and He used the east wind. After His resurrection Jesus cooked a fish and He used a fire to cook the fish. Here and there are indeed miracles, but in between and for the most part God acts in the world in a way that confirms both my experience of the world and the way God says it is in the didactic portions of the Bible.
The Bible gives us two eyes to look through. There is the didactic eye and there is also the eye of God working in history and in the cosmos, and the two agree perfectly. It is parallel, for example, to that profound statement in the Westminster Confession of Faith that says when God reveals His attributes to man they are true not only to man but to God. God is not just telling a story. God is really telling us what is true to Himself. What He tells us is not exhaustive because we are finite and we know nothing in an exhaustive way. We cannot even explain anything to each other exhaustively because we are finite. But He tells us truly, even the great truths about Himself. God is not playing games with us¾He tells us the truth about Himself and our world.
The universals and the particulars of our experience fit together not only as a theory, but God actually deals with the universe this way. On this basis when we begin to work out from the Bible just as the early scientists did, we can open our Bibles in an epistemological confidence and move out into the world of objects. They are there and I know them. There are not uncertainties or upsetting surprises¾the Christian need no longer be afraid.
On this basis we find that true science is not a game. Science today is becoming a game; science is changing. As I have said, I do not believe for a moment that science which has given up the presuppositions on which it was founded can continue indefinitely in a really objective way. I think we are going to see it pass if Christ does not come back or if we do not have real reformation in our own lifetime. Science becomes a game in two different ways. The reason it becomes a game is deep within the epistemological problems of science. Scientists have no real certainty that they are really working with objects and know anything about them with certainty. The objectivity of science becomes lost. So you find many scientists working today, and the public thinks these are great people, that they are very objective. When you get to know them, you will find that many of them are just bourgeois people in white coats playing with little facts so they never have to ask the big questions. This is the way many scientists operate today. They are doing nothing more than the "ski bum" who gives his whole life to skiing down hill just to knock off one-tenth of a second from his time. He does it so that he will not have time to think of anything outside of the game plan he has set up. It is exactly the same with many modern scientists.
The second and more terrifying thing, I think, is that with the loss of the objectivity of science more and more we are going to see men coming to sociological science. More and more I think we are going to find men manipulating science according to their own desires rather than standing upon objective, concrete objectivity. More and more in sociological science men will be manipulating the scientific facts because they do not have any certainty of epistemology and objectivity. The loss of the certainty of objectivity is a serious thing to the scientist just as it is for the hip person. The hip person often has lost the distinction between reality and fantasy. With or without drugs, the objectivity is gone. We should be crying for these people. But the scientist who has no basis for objectivity is in the same place. If he loses the epistemological base he, too, is in a serious position. Horribly serious. What does the whole thing of science mean anymore? No one can be sure of the objectivity of anything, for without the biblical epistemological base there is no basis for a correlation between the subject and the object¾the knower and the known.
The Christian can expect to touch the real, to find out about it, and to distinguish the real from the non-real just as the early scientist did. This is where we stand. Christians can step out from what the Bible says and are able to touch the world and know it with certainty. When the Christian does reach out, he is without cynicism in the area of knowing, for the external world really is there. Why? Because God made it to be there. He made a correlation between the subject and the object. That is me looking outward.
Christian Epistemology and the Problem of Others Looking at Me
Let us consider a second result of applying the Christian view of epistemology, this time in the area of others looking at me. What I am, the inward reality of my thought world in contrast to the outward appearance of what I seem to be from the viewpoint of others. This is a serious problem for modern young people. They are always trying to know each other, and all they find is a facade. How do you get behind this? How do you get behind the facade to the real person?
The Christian does not have to choose between knowing the external or inward worlds totally, or not knowing them at all. The Christian accepts the fact that he can know without knowing exhaustively. I must not expect to know another person perfectly because I am finite, but I might expect all persons to fit together because after all the same One has made them all. The strength of the Christian system, the acid test, is that everything fits under the apex of the system of the existent, infinite-personal God, and it is the only system in the world where this is true. What is the apex of the Christian system? Everything is under the apex of the existence of the infinite-personal God. No other system has an apex under which everything fits. In all the other systems something sticks out, something cannot be included. Something has to be mutilated or ignored. But without losing his integrity, the Christian can see everything fitting into place beneath the Christian apex of the existence of the infinite-personal God who is there.
This is not only true when I am looking out at the world; it is also true when I am looking inward to other people. This is a desperately important area in the thinking of young people. How can they know other people? How are they going to get beyond this wooden facade? How do you know there is anything back there? How can I know anyone else?
Coming to the biblical position, the biblical revelation according to God’s teaching binds not only the outward man but the inward man as well. The revelation of God is not just for the outward man; it is for the inward man. In the Old Testament, what is the last commandment? It is not to covet; it is internal¾you shall not covet! This concerns the inward man. Without this all the rest falls to the ground. God’s Ten Commandments bind not only the outward man; they bind the inward man. God’s giving of knowledge concerning history and the cosmos involves the outward man and the inward man in a unity. So we find that the Bible gives a propositional revelation of God in norms for both the inward and the outward man. According to the Bible, the inward man is not autonomous any more than the outward man is autonomous. Every time the inward man becomes autonomous, it is just as much revolution as when the outward man becomes autonomous. Every human problem as I have stressed in Escape From Reason arises from man’s trying to make something autonomous from God, and as soon as anything is made autonomous then nature eats up or destroys grace. The same thing is true in the area of knowing other people¾nothing is to be autonomous from God. The inward areas of knowledge and meaning, and the inward areas of morals are bound by God as much as the outward world. As he grows spiritually, the Christian should be a man who consciously brings his thought world as well as his outward world more and more under the norms of the Bible.
But what about the non-Christian? As a Christian approaches the non-Christian, he has a way to know the person in a way that the non-Christian does not have because he knows who the person is. I know who the non-Christian man is who faces me.
One of the most brilliant men I have ever worked with sat in my room crying. He had gone from South America to Paris because this was the center of all the great humanistic thought. He found it was so ugly. The professors cared nothing, and everything was so inhuman in this humanism that he was ready to commit suicide as he came to us. He said, "How do you love me; how do you start? Nobody can start." I said, "I can start. I know who you are because you are made in the image of God."
Even with a non-Christian, the Christian has some way to begin. It is possible to go from the facade of the outward to the reality of the inward because no matter what a man says, we know what he really is. He is made in the image of God. Down there somewhere, no matter how wooden he is on the outside, no matter how much he has died on the outside and is scarred, no matter what he says about believing that he is only a machine, we know that beyond that facade somewhere down inside of that non-Christian there is the person who loves and wants to be loved. We know that down inside there is a person who, no matter how much he says he is amoral, in reality has moral motions. We know these things because we know he has been made in the image of God. Hence, even with a non-Christian the Christian has a way to start from the outside to the inside with a certainty that non-Christians simply do not have.
Let us say as Christians we want to have communication and we are sick of this horrible inhumanity that we find around us, this technical, mechanical world that we are facing. We are sick of being the IBM cards. The boy and girl want to be open with each other, the Christian husband and wife want to be open with each other, and the pastor and the people want to be open with each other. As Christians, how can we really do it, moving from the outside inward?
To the extent in which people accept biblical teaching for the inward man as well as the outward man, inasmuch as they realize the inward man as well as the outward man is going to be under the judgment of God, increasingly there is a bringing together of the inward and the outward man because both are under the unity of the same norms. The inward man cannot be seen as autonomous. Whether in the area of epistemology or of morals, both the outward and inward man are bound by the same universals of the Scripture. Evangelical Christians ought to really know each other. Here is beauty; here is the way to produce beautiful marriages. Many of the young people who come to our place, hundreds of them, have never personally seen one good marriage. Christians should be able to know each other as the outward norms are applied to the inward as well as the outward man. For those who are walking through the swamps of this present generation, this is beauty. The inward man and the outward man are under the norms of God’s revelation, and God is going to judge the inward man as well as the outward man. The inward man is no longer autonomous, and there is a bringing together the particulars about the inward man and the outward man under the same universal. With this unity, thank God we can begin to get inside of each other.
This, too, ought to be a part of salvation, the continuing work of Christ. It is the loss of this that has deprived this poor generation of any real human communication. Men and women who have lived together for years are completely alienated. They are alienated because there is no universal that binds the inward particulars and the outward particulars, but to the Christian there is. Both are going to be under the judgment of God. As I grow spiritually and bring the inward particulars of the thought world (meaning, values, and morals) under the norms of God, to that extent what I seem to be outwardly increasingly conforms to what I am inwardly. On this basis Christians more than anyone else can really know each other.
Christian Epistemology and the Problem of Reality and Imagination
The third important result of the Christian epistemology involves reality and imagination. In a way, this is the most important thing today. We have been thinking of having true knowledge of someone else, but it is also true for me as a person. There are a lot of people wrestling with this problem.
In a previous article we observed that in epistemology modern man ultimately has no distinction between reality and fantasy. Now I am talking about the reverse side of that for the Christian. I live in a thought world which is filled with creativity; inside of my head there is creativity. Why? Because God who is the Creator has made me in His own image and that carries with it creativity. In my head there is much creativity, there is imagination, because I am made in the image of God. Being made in the image of God, I can go out in imagination beyond the stars. This is not only the Christian, but every man. Every man is made in the image of God and, therefore, every man in his imagination is not confined to his own body. He can go out beyond the stars in his imagination, and can change something of the form of the universe starting with his thought world as an artist, poet, engineer, or gardener. Moving from our thought world in our imaginations, we can change the form of the outward world. Is not that wonderful? I am here and I am able to impose the results of my imagination on the external world.
But notice, being a Christian and knowing that God has made the external world, there is no confusion between that which is imaginary and that which is real. The awfulness of the modern man with or without drugs is that he can no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy, but the Christian can. The Christian is free, free to fly, because he is not confused between his imagination and reality which God has made. So inwardly we are not confused. There is a base to give us a reason for saying this is imagination. Is it not marvelous to be a painter and make things a little different than nature? Is it not wonderful, in other areas of creativity as well, to be made in the image of God and to be able to make things a little different? But although this is true (that I have the freedom in my imagination being made in the image of God to make things a little different), I also have the epistemology that enables me not to get confused between the distinctions of what I think and what is objectively real. The poor modern generation does not have this. Youngsters are all torn up in these areas, but the Christian should not be torn up here.
Thus the Christian may have fantasy and imagination without being threatened. The modern man cannot have day dreams and fantasy without being threatened. C. S. Lewis was never threatened when he wrote his Trilogy. Why? Because he had a distinction between the real world, the objective world that God had made, and his own imagination. The secular world is immediately threatened with its modern epistemology or lack of epistemology. The Christian never should be threatened. The Christian should be the person who is alive, whose imagination absolutely boils, who dares to produce something a little different than God’s world because God made man to be creative.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are three interrelations of the Christian’s view of epistemology¾not separate but interwoven. First of all, as I look out to the external world, to the world of relationships, Christianity provides a unity for the subject-object relationship. Secondly, as other people look to me and I look to other people, Christianity provides a basis from which to know and understand another person. Thirdly, in the internal world of my thoughts, the distinction between fantasies and imaginations can be clear. I look outward and I understand why there is a subject-object relationship. I look at another man, a non-Christian, and I know he is made in the image of God. More and more as Christians allow the norms of Scripture to bring together the inward and outward man, they can know each other in greater beauty and greater depth. Because a Christian needs not be threatened in differentiating between reality and fantasy, he should be the man with the flaming imagination and the beauty of creativity. Biblical Christianity is the basis for all of this. The modern alienation in the area of epistemology can make each of these three areas into a damnation, and I do not use the word carelessly. The loss of the certainty of the subject-object relationship, the impossibility of people getting to know each other, and the absolute awful, awful nightmare of having reality and fantasy confused¾modern epistemology makes each of these three things into an awful thing; but under the unity of the apex of the infinite-personal God who has spoken each of these three areas has meaning, reality, and beauty.
I want to leave you with the word beauty; not only truth, but beauty. From a Christian viewpoint, because man revolted against God and tried to stand autonomous, the great alienation is in the area of man’s separation from God. When that happened, everything else went. This attempt to be autonomous is continued over into the very basic area of epistemology. The result is that man is not only divided from other men in the area of knowing, but he is also alienated from himself. He has this tension of internal fantasy and the reality of the external world. He has no universals to cover the particulars in his own life. He is one thing inside and another thing outside. Then he begins to scream, "Who am I?" Does that sound familiar to any of you who do Christian work today?
We have youngsters come from the ends of the earth who say, "I have come to try to find out who I am." It is not just some psychological thing as we usually think of psychology. It is basically epistemological. Even though man screams for identity, his attempted autonomy has robbed him of any certain reality. Modern man has nothing to be sure of when his imagination soars beyond the stars for there is nothing to make a distinction between reality and fantasy. But on the basis of Christian epistemology, this confusion is ended; the alienation is healed. This is the heart of the problem of knowing, and it is not solved until our knowledge fits under the apex of the infinite-personal God who is not silent.