Blogging "A Clear View": Truth and Knowing, Part I

This post is the second installment in the blogging of Keith Ogorek's "A Clear View."

how do we know anything?
It's the question that mankind has attempted to answer for millennia. Do we learn things from experience? Have we always "known" things, and then experience simply makes us realize that we know them? 

According to Ogorek, as Christians, we believe that we know things by three different ways...

the upper story (the unseen world)

revelational // revealed to us by God

{example: God reveals himself to us}

the lower story (the seen world)

cognitive // we know intuitively; what's already in the mind

{example: we know how to cry}

empirical // we've learned through experience and observation; what we learn

{example: we learn how to read and write and dress ourselves}

what can we know?
Once again, man has come up with many different answers. 

Herodotus said that we can never know "the true nature of the universe," because the universe is constantly changing -- and therefore truth is constantly changing as well. 

Parmenides said that the world is unchanging and fixed, but we can't know it through our senses; we can only know it through reason. 

Plato said that there are two layers to the world -- one layer that we can know through our senses, and another that is constantly changing and has no real truth. 

Aristotle thought much like Plato and also believed that there are some things that cannot change. Unlike Plato, however, Aristotle said that the unchanging "universals" are present in material, physical "particulars," and that by studying particulars, we can understand the universals. Therefore, we can know and understand this objective world of universals.

Thomas Aquinas drew from Plato's and Aristotle's ideas and said that the world has two stories: an upper story that cannot be seen, the world of God and grace, understood by faith and revelation; and a lower story that can be seen, the material world of man and nature, understood by reason, interaction, and observation. These two stories are separated by the "line of dispair."

During the Aristotelian Revolution (commonly known as the Renaissance), the material world -- nature -- began to overshadow the unseen world -- the world of grace. This heavily influenced the arts and sciences, and Michelangelo, da Vinci, and others rose up. The Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa were painted. Da Vinci began his work in the field of aviation (and about a billion other areas, too). 

However, it wasn't all good; while things were getting done on earth, the important questions weren't be answered. The world of nature was celebrated, and the world of grace was shunned.  By looking at the time period's works, we can clearly see that the upper story was ignored: philosophy attempted to explain all the big questions, such as those about God, but completely ignored revealed truth like Scripture. Artwork portrayed biblical figures with mythological creatures -- a clashing of worlds. Humanism became the prevalent worldview.

Sadly, mankind sought real truth, but they were looking in the wrong places -- the places they could see and touch physically instead of the world of grace revealed by God -- and thus found it impossible to reach.

Then, in response to the Renaissance, along came the Reformation. 

Reformation = "an attempt to restore a proper relationship between nature and grace -- between the upper and lower stories" (Keith Ogorek)

The Reformers, including Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, dealt with the issue of "nature vs. grace" by reaffirming doctrine -- by rejecting humanism (which had trickled into the church), emphasizing the authority of Scripture above all else, and denouncing human "works" as necessary for salvation. 

sola scriptura // scripture alone

sola Christus // Christ alone

Like the Renaissance before it, the Reformation hugely impacted culture. This cultural "re-birth" is evidenced by the blossoming of education, learning, economics, civil government, just laws, creativity in arts and music, etc. The Reformers realized that reason needed to be balanced by revelation, and nature needed to be balanced by grace -- and the world flourished because of it. 

"If you read all the annals of the past, you will find no century like this since the birth of Christ. Such building and planting, such good living and dressing, such enterprise in commerce, such a stir in the arts, has not been since Christ came into the world. And how numerous are the sharp and intelligent people who leave nothing hidden and unturned: even a boy of twenty years knows more nowadays than was known formerly by twenty doctors of divinity." 

-Martin Luther on the Reformation