Knowledge

I heard an excellent sermon the other week in which the speaker introduced the concept of “double knowledge” found in Calvin and Augustine. Calvin wrote in the institutes that in the act of knowing God, we also know ourselves and in the act of knowing ourselves, we also know God. These are the two sides of knowledge, hence “double knowledge”.

True? False? I would add a third category of knowledge “the world”, so that in every act of knowing the world around us we also know God and ourselves, and so forth. This is called multi-perspectivalism, and it basically regards “the entire body of knowledge” as consisting of three perspectives: knowledge of God, knowledge of ourselves, and knowledge of the world. In knowing one of these perspectives, we know the other two. Multi-perspectivalism, like double knowledge, is a statement about the nature of knowledge.

I imagine at this point that this post is sounding like a perfect example of why so many people despise philosophy and theology. I do have a practical point, and I hope in this post I can explain the relevance and importance of these ideas. I believe it to be of great practical import not just to Christians, but anyone interested in anything to do with knowledge, be it scientific, psychological, personal, practical, or theological.

Let’s start with the two “perspectives” Calvin has pointed out to us: that to know God, we must know ourselves, and to know ourselves we must know God.

The Angst which needed Relief

The force of this idea was one of the central reasons why I found a need to accept the existence of God. My “starting point” for this was at the height of a crisis over anxiety and my personal identity: my high school years. In the midst of stoners, metalheads, homeys and immigrants, the question “who am I?” naturally weighed upon me. Not having a stable home life (my parents being in the midst of a painful separation) directed my attention to this question all the more poignantly. Like many teens, my inner thought-life was regularly characterized by a sense of loneliness and a need for personal stability and identity. In a nutshell, I needed to know myself.

Numerous options were presented to me, directly or indirectly. I could find my identity through social conformity. This was very unappealing and smacked of rank shallowness. Of course, I was a shallow person, but relieving my anxieties by wearing the latest name brands and going with whatever the majority did struck me as a whole new level of shallowness I wasn’t willing to go to. (or so I reasoned in my teenage hubris)

So if a solid sense of personal identity wasn’t to be found in conformity to the majority, where was it? Band geeks? Jocks? Some other minority? Socially, this is the direction I went in (I wisely chose to be a quasi-metalhead D&D geek) but of course, this was no real solution, for it did not lend any clarity to the mystery of the value of an individual in a group. I merely identified myself with a particular group, and my individuality seemed to just dissolve into the morass of the social mores of that one group. What made me different, or what made me, me? I still found a stark lack of understanding about myself, other than an obvious felt need to belong.

What I found necessary for any kind of certainty in knowledge of myself was to find some sort of a measuring line that did not shift and change depending on my moods, my friends, or what anyone else, including myself, thought of me. I could compare and contrast myself with my surroundings: “Who am I compared to Joe? To a foreigner?” You get the idea. Exercises in “compare and contrast” are limitless, but none of my immediate surroundings provided an answer to what my heart craved: identity. Some solid standard of measuring me, which could not be found anywhere in the world, which consisted entirely of relativity.

Does Anyone Have a Ruler I could Borrow?

What I discovered was that I could not know myself truly without God. Until God entered the picture, there was no way to attain knowledge of me other than by comparing and contrasting myself with other relative objects and people in the universe. What could not be answered were crucial things like: “Am I a good person?” “What ought I to do with my time, talents, and energies?”

You can see how inevitable shallow answers are to these questions in a world without God. Q: Am I good? A: I am better than Bob and Suzie, but worse than Douglas. Q: What ought I to do? A1: What you decide for yourself you ought to. A2: What the majority says you ought to. A3: What a certain individual (parents, a professional, a cherished friend) says you ought to.

Briefly, let me break down the unsatisfactory nature of Answers 1-3 above.

1. This results in using yourself as a measuring stick to form an opinion of yourself. The problem is, in going on the search for meaning and identity in the first place, you have confessed from the outset that “yourself” is in need. The very cause of anxiety is the lack of solidness within the individual.

2. With the “ought” found in the majority, we are left with the question “which majority?” At that time in my life, this was the majority of high school students. Even if one finds a majority that’s a little more mature, the question then arises “Why ought I to conform to this majority?” Simply put, there is nothing in the nature of “a majority” that makes a majority obligatory to follow. This is similar to Answer 1, where I found there is nothing in the nature of an individual that commands obligations. There is nothing in the nature of majorities that commands obligations.

3. This answer (some other individual) bears the same problems as 1 and 2.

The only answer that rings plausible for coming to some sort of knowledge about yourself is in God, for God is not relative and changing in nature. When God speaks his evaluation of a person’s goodness, he speaks with authority. Unlike any human or worldly measuring tool, it is within God’s nature to be self-sufficient. The need I experienced (and I think we all experience and need) was for something without the quality of relativity. Only God fits this description.

If Rulers are Imaginary, Why do I Want one so Badly?

To be the philosophical irritant, we may throw the entire inquiry back further: why do I even care enough to seek an answer to these feelings and thoughts? Why seek such a thing as an identity, a solid ground to form some sort of knowledge about myself? If God does not exist, if there is nothing but matter and the shifting sands of relative existence, then how could relative matter possibly give rise to a being which seeks absolutes? Again, the very nature of the quest and inquiry can only be explained by the existence of a God who seeks us, and puts such quests in our hearts that we may find Him. Without knowing God, I find it is quite impossible to form a coherent picture of ourselves and so I agree with Calvin, that in knowing ourselves we know God, and in knowing God, we know ourselves.