The System and the Facts

Every fact requires a context to be intelligible. Individual words, propositions, objects of experience, and facts about the world require a context in which they can be intelligible and interpreted. 


The proposition "the monkey ate the banana" would not be intelligible without a system of beliefs about monkeys, bananas, eating and a host of other things. Also, our experience of individual objects cannot be made sense of without reference to concepts and categories of interpretation. When we experience an apple, we relate it to the various categories or roundness, sweetness, redness, etc.


The question immediately arises as to where one acquires the system or context to make sense of facts, objects, propositions, etc. 


One possible answer is that we acquire the system from experience. The immediate problem with this is that we have already noted that we require the system to make sense of the facts. Without prior interpretive categories, we cannot make sense of our experience. But even if we grant that we're somehow able to develop a system from our experience of the facts, without exhaustive foreknowledge of what events history will bring about we can never be sure of our interpretive principles. They lose universality. Without searching every corner of the universe, we can never know that there's no fact that contradicts our system and renders it useless. Skepticism results. 


Another possible answer is that we possess the system prior to our experience. The problem with this is that if the whole system is available prior to experience, then it becomes arbitrary. It is completely divorced from the world of experience.  As such, there's no need to go into the world and investigate to learn about the particulars. The system becomes rootless. It is imposed upon experience arbitrarily. Subjectivism results. 


In the Christian view, we do not face such problems. God knows all facts. He also knows exhaustively how the facts relate to one another. Hence, in God's mind lies both the system and the facts; the universals and the particulars. He has revealed some of it to us. Building upon revelation, we can derive a system for knowing other things. We can be sure that our interpretive categories are adequate for the world because they reflect the system in God's mind. So man, in order to know the world, must depend upon revelation.


This is a brief illustration of the epistemic necessity of divine revelation. You can find more detailed treatments of this in The Folly of Unbelief here.


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