'Knowing' - Some Thoughts

I was recently asked what I would say to a young (teens-20's) intellectually-oriented Christian regarding how we know what we know, especially with regard to God's Word.  Here's a slightly edited version of my response:

1. There's not much in the Bible about interpretive paradigms (ie, epistemology), at least in the modern / Western sense of 'epistemology'. God's focus is not so much on understanding ("study to show yourself approved" is a rare counter-example), as it is on hearing (or not).
2. If I was *forced* to point to a Western perspective that coheres fairly well with the concepts of knowledge & knowing as found in the Bible, I would point to Reid's Scottish Common Sense Realism  ... but I would hasten to say that this limited & human-centered perspective must be seen through the lenses of such passages as Romans 1-2, 1 Cor. 1-2, Psalms 1, 19, 119, and Job.  As such, it is more applicable to non-Christians than Christians.
3. I've come in a bit of a circle on this topic as an adult ... for perhaps 20-25 years I did a lot of reading/thinking about various philosophical frameworks (pre-modern, modern, post-modern, Eastern, Western, etc) with respect to ontology (being) & epistemology (knowing), but the last 5-10 years I increasingly see those perspectives as primarily useful in an apologetics (ie, defensive) context.  They are *not* the Cross; they do *not* provide a Christian foundation for knowledge.  As I note below, we all struggle to escape a syncretism of our cultural biases with God's Word (our culture may be animist, modern/post-modern, pragmatic, tribal, etc).
4. Although I'm not a presuppositionalist when it comes to apologetics, I do think it's clear from the Bible that there is a law written on the heart ... that there are things that everyone knows (eg, Romans 1-2; God's establishment of govt (Rom 13) and holding it accountable (OT prophets)).  See also, for example, J. Budziszewski's "What We Can't Not Know" (summary).
5. In the West today (Africa & Asia are very different), there are basically two schools of thought: modernism and post-modernism (PM). In very rough terms, modernism is optimistic about the possibility of universal objective knowledge and PM is pessimistic (with late modernism (eg, Kant, Hume) being a bit schizophrenic). Note that both focus primarily on KNOWING, not on DOING (though folks like Merleau-Ponty did emphasize the embodied aspect of knowledge), whereas the Bible focuses on both (with an emphasis on doing-obedience (eg, John 12)), but assumes (as mentioned above) that knowing is *not* primarily an intellectual endeavor. One of the things that Scottish Common Sense Realism gets right is that it does not have the optimism/arrogance of modernism, nor does it have pessimism/skepticism of PM.
6. For Christians (and increasingly, non-Christians), I tend to point to three passages:
•  Genesis 3 - 'did God actually say' - this is NOT God's question, it's Satan's question. Questioning whether God really said something is not necessarily wrong and God is patient with us when we're honestly trying to understand (eg, Gideon), but He has little patience with questioning that is attempting to avoid his clear command (eg, Moses, many of Christ's statements to Jewish leaders) ... and His will is basically clear.
• Rom 1:18-ff - 'suppress the truth in unrighteousness' - again, the dynamic is not intellectual confusion, but the pursuit of evil desires that drives what we 'know'.
• 1 Cor 1-2 - a Christian MUST ground understanding in the Cross and the Word (as informed by the Spirit). Here is where I am sympathetic with the presuppositionalist camp.
7. In terms of books ... I'm not sure I know of just one resource. Boa & Bowman's "Faith Has Its Reasons" is good, but its focus is apologetics. For the serious student of philosophy, Moreland & Craig's "Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview" is perhaps the single best book ... but it's at a college/graduate level. I have a copy, but never got past the first few chapters. Norman Geisler's "Introduction to Philosophy" looks like a possible candidate for a single book treatment.  As discussed below, all these tend to under-emphasize God's place as the ultimate 'knower'.
8. Finally, a warning: as may be inferred from the above comments, there are at least 2 real risks:

• the promotion of 'foolish controversies' - do you really need to know all this to be 'fully equipped'? Maybe so from an apologetics perspective ... but, again, do you really need to know, or ...
• are you implicitly placing yourself in the position of the 'ultimate knower'? This is a fundamental difference between Christianity and naturalism/materialism. Most Western philosophy since Aquinas assumes we are the ultimate knower. Per the passages mentioned above (and many others), that is a dangerous and un-Biblical perspective. God is the ultimate knower. He created us with the ability to know, but our knowledge will always be incomplete, flawed, and easily twisted by Satan's 'did God actually say ...'.  It's a dangerous kind of dualism to assume we can know apart from God's knowledge since 'in Him we live and move and have our very being.'

Bottom line: God makes it clear that we are fairly limited in our ability to understand since He provided a hefty 'special revelation' in the form of His written Word (the Bible) ... and via that Word He offers us the gift of His Spirit, His wisdom, and His power to be 'doers of the Word' that love-obey Him (eg, Romans 1-8, 1 Corinthians 1-2, 1-3 John).  At the same time, He always holds people responsible for that which 'can be clearly seen' (in nature and in His Word) ... which means we are expected to hold tightly to (and live out consistently) what we do know.