How Do We Know?

There is a sense in which if our epistemology is faulty that our theology will be faulty. If our epistemology is if off-course, our understanding will be off-course.

If Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is correct, then the natural man cannot receive the things of God (see 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2). Yet, does our Christian pedagogy assume the opposite? Do we pay but lip-service to the idea that we need the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and hearts, the “eyes of our understanding”? Do we functionally assume that in and of ourselves, through rational processes unaided by the Holy Spirit and untethered to a life of obedience to God’s Word in Christ, that we can understand Scripture? Teach and preach the Bible?

Is not communion (koinonia) with Christ, and in Christ with one another, a prerequisite to communion with His Word? Or, certainly it is concomitant and the two cannot be separated because they are One and the Same.

How then have we come to teach theology and the Bible outside the context of koinonia with Christ and obedience to His word? Why do we not have warnings on the first page of our theology and Biblical-studies books, “Let no one turn these pages without first seeking the face of Christ, in obedience to Christ, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit”?

To “see” the Scriptures is to “see” Christ and no one can “see” Christ without the Holy Spirit.

To treat theology and Bible study as primarily an academic endeavor, to teach Sunday school or facilitate small groups the way we would any other class or group – is hardly approaching Sacred Scripture as if we were approaching the Face of God in Christ.

This is not to suggest that we “check our minds at the door”, but it is to say that we present ourselves as living and holy sacrifices acceptable to God – and that we not be conformed to the world, including the world’s pedagogical thinking, but that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1 – 2; Ephesians 4:20 – 24).

The City of God is not the city of man, nor should the “academy” of God be thought to be the academy of man…meaning that the pedagogy of God is not the pedagogy of man; the epistemology of God is not the epistemology of man.