Abided Knowing

I am working on an epistemic account of Genesis 1-3 that accounts for our enmeshed perspective, authority, and ethic in knowing.

EDIT: This is now done here.

Karl Rahner in his Theological Investigations (Vol. IV, “The Theology of Symbol”) makes a distinction between signs and symbols. Where “’signs’, ’signals’ and ‘codes’” stand in for something else and symbols represent another reality. The code ‘x’ is a stand-in for our phoneme pronounced,”cks,” under certain contexts. The symbolic value of wine in the sacrament admits to a whole other reality. The Eastern Orthodox view of icons as transcendent symbols fits into this category as well. Whereas many evangelicals like to accuse the Orthodox of image-worship, the Orthodox theology is quick to inform us that the icon is the symbolic portal to a vast reality (I’m to trying to open a can of worms, but point out a simple usage of the term symbol.). Continue reading ‘More on Creation, Code, & Symbol’

I’m not sure if allegory presents a problem for a prescription in knowing. Certainly it can affect the historicity and maybe even experienced depth of a text. Isn’t this why stories based on true events are always branded as such? There is an amount of gravity that tilts the scales of narrative when we presume the historicity of an account. I suspect this has something to do with the enmeshment of social structure in knowing. Continue reading ‘The Problem of Allegory in Genesis’

OK, this will be my official blog for working out some public details on my Th.M. thesis and the requisite tributary works.

I am going with abided knowing for now so I don’t have to rip off Mike Williams and Esther Meek’s term covenant epistemology. I hope that this work will support their work.

abided- We as knowers are bound to our sense of self, to our body, to others, to the world and to God. Abided is past tense because we come to the world already bound to the above, in full fiduciary relationship (ht: Michael Polanyi).

knowing- We are knowers, not containers of knowledge. The enmeshed relationship between the knower and the known (ht: Marjorie Grene) is so often denigrated in modern philosophy that the term ‘epistemology’ no longer speaks to what I call ‘knowing’. In order to forge an exegetical view of knowing from the Judeo-Christian literature, new terms are needed to avoid confusion with the parlance of analytic philosophy.

abided knowing- How do the scriptures portray a way of knowing that is better, if at all? Assuming the epistemic pervasiveness of our sin, is there a persistent and prescriptive way of knowing all the aspects of this world to which we are bound? This is the goal for now. These initial questions will inevitably sharpen and/or change.