Revelational Epistemology: A Brief Sketch

 Revelational Epistemology: A Brief Sketch

I will begin by quoting a passage from Cornelius Van Til’s A Survey of Christian Epistemology:

According to Scripture, God has created the “universe.” God has created time and space. God has created all the “facts” of science. God has created the human mind. In this human mind God has laid the laws of thought according to which it is to operate. In the facts of science God has laid the laws of being according to which they function. In other words, the impress of God’s plan is upon his whole creation. 

We may characterize this whole situation by saying that the creation of God is a revelation of God. God revealed himself in nature and God also revealed himself in the mind of man. Thus it is impossible for the mind of man to function except in an atmosphere of revelation. And every thought of man when it functioned normally in this atmosphere of revelation would express the truth as laid in the creation by God. We may therefore call a Christian epistemology a revelational epistemology.

In the above passage, Van Til lays out in simple terms what his epistemological scheme is all about. There are certain things that are crucial to an understanding of this epistemology.

The God Who Reveals

We cannot talk about revelation without also talking about the One who reveals. I want to clarify that by “revelation” I am referring specifically to Christian or biblical revelation. I am aware that there are other philosophical systems which speak of revelation and may want to claim the label “revelational epistemology”. However, for the sake of clarity, the terms “revelation”, and “God”, should be understood in the Christian-Theistic sense.

With that clarification out of the way, it should be understood that  the Triune God of Scripture is the foundation of revelational epistemology. This view can be described as a kind of epistemic monergism. This is because in Scripture we learn that this God is perfect in every way. He is perfectly wise, perfectly loving, perfectly holy, and without any external limitations. We learn that God is self-sufficient; He is complete in Himself and does not require anything beyond Himself to complete, condition, define, or make Him who He is. He is also transcendent; He is not in any way relative to the universe–His essence is not influenced by it, He completely transcends it.

Here we must bring up the Creator/creature distinction. There is a vast metaphysical distance between God and the created universe. God exists on a completely different metaphysical plane. There are two “levels” of being–Creator and created–and both planes do not come in contact at any point. Vern Poythress puts the point well when he writes:

There are two levels of being, two levels of existence: the self-sufficient, original existence of God the Creator, and the dependent, derivative existence of creatures. By contrast, non-Christian philosophy pretends that there is only one universal level of being… The ontological distinction between Creator and creature has implications for epistemology. God’s knowledge must be differentiated from the knowledge that creatures have. 

The implication this view of God has for epistemology is that knowledge of God can only be gained through divine revelation. This is the monergism that was mentioned earlier. Here we see a parallel between salvation and epistemology. On this view, God alone bridges the metaphysical distance between Him and creatures. He does this through His voluntary self-revelation. Without this condescension, knowledge of God (or anything else) is impossible for man.  Left on his own, man is epistemologically dead. Being finite, man cannot hope to bridge the metaphysical distance between him and God. Man’s epistemological salvation, then, is achieved through God alone.

Creation As Revelation

How does God reveal Himself? Van Til already provided the answer in the quotation above where he affirmed, in accordance with Scripture, that “the creation of God is a revelation of God”. The Psalmist tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1). Paul agrees when he affirms that God has made Himself known through the created order (Rom. 1:20). What we can conclude from this is that every fact is a God-revealing fact. It is God’s creative act that makes the facts what they are and His signature is imprinted on every single fact of the created universe–including man himself. 

God’s act of creation is an act of revelation. By creating man in His image, God reveals Himself to man. Knowledge of God is built into man’s psyche; in a sense, it is part of the factory settings. Man’s cognitive life is designed to present him with unmistakable acquaintance with his Creator. Self-consciousness is God-consciousness.

Hence, the world which man inhabits, and his own consciousness, are revelatory. They fall under what has been commonly understood by theologians as “general” or “natural” revelation.

Knowledge of God

A word about man’s knowledge of God should be said. Over the millennia, one major quest of the philosophical discipline known as epistemology is finding a suitable starting point from which man can begin his knowing. Many proposals have been put forth: incorrigible experiences, a coherent set of beliefs, seemings, some have even denied that a starting point can be found.

In this, revelational epistemology is unique. Contrary to all other forms of epistemology, its answer to the question of what the appropriate starting point of knowledge is is not a belief, proposition, or perceptual experience. Rather, it is knowledge of a Person. 

We can distinguish between various types of knowledge. There is knowledge-that, also called propositional knowledge. This is knowledge that some state of affairs (expressed by a proposition) is the case. For example, one can say that Alice knows that it is raining outside. This is the most common type of knowledge discussed in contemporary epistemology. There is also knowledge-how, or procedural knowledge. This is knowledge of how to do something. For example, one can say that Alice knows how to ride a bike. However, there is also acquaintance knowledge. This is knowledge one has in virtue of familiarity with a person or object; one’s knowledge of a parent or friend, for instance. The various types of knowledge are not reducible to one another. My knowledge of my mother cannot be adequately captured by a set of propositions, although certain aspects of that knowledge can be expressed propositionally (my knowledge that my mom is a great cook, for example).

This personal knowledge is the fundamental type of knowledge man possesses of God, although various aspects of this knowledge can be expressed propositionally. By virtue of being created in His image, man innately possesses a kind of familiarity with God–a familiarity unlike any other. This familiarity is the starting point of knowledge.

Scripture

This segues nicely into the issue of special revelation and Scripture. Scripture serves as another way God voluntarily reveals Himself. In Scripture we have verbal communication from God to man. It is God’s testimony about Himself, about man, and about the world man inhabits. Being God-breathed, it possesses all the perfections of God Himself. It is therefore infallible and authoritative.

One can ask how we know Scripture is from God. The answer is simple: just as familiarity with a friend allows one to immediately recognize their voice, handwriting, or signature, the familiarity all men have with God allows them to immediately recognize the divine authorship of Scripture, provided they do not suppress this knowledge. And by recognizing this divine authorship, all men recognize the authority, credibility, and infallibility of Scripture.

Scripture represents an infallible and authoritative system of truth. As such, it occupies the topmost spot in the epistemological hierarchy. This means that it is not subject to independent verification prior to acceptance of its claims. Like God, Scripture is self-sufficient. Its claims are accepted ultimately on the basis of its intrinsic authority.

The Doctrine of Analogy

No treatment of revelational epistemology would be complete without mention of analogical reasoning. Previously we noted that God’s creative acts make the facts what they are. All facts, then, are created facts. What this implies is that one cannot know any single fact without reference to God. The objects of knowledge do not exist independently of God and man in some abstract realm of factuality. Rather, God’s thinking is constructive of the facts. Hence, in order to know the facts, man must submit himself to God’s revelation and mirror God’s system of knowledge, thinking His thoughts after Him. This is analogical reasoning and it is a necessary consequence of revelational epistemology. 

To reject analogical reasoning is to affirm brute factuality. This is the position of  the epistemic synergist (or autonomous thinker). However, brute factuality entails the impossibility of knowledge. Hence, the vindication of revelational epistemology over all other forms of epistemology is that revelational epistemology is epistemically necessary–without it, knowledge is impossible.