The End of Knowledge

When I suggested what we see can play us false, I wasn't suggesting we shouldn't look.

God gave mankind rational faculties to be used, the powers of thought and observation in order to expand our minds and our understanding, imaginations to make inferences and to create and foster ideas. Knowledge is a good thing, and it is a God-sanctioned thing.

There are two essential kinds of knowledge: that obtained through study and observation, and that transmitted by God through Scripture. The former must be subordinated to the latter if we're to take the latter seriously to any extent. If the Bible is God's revelation to us, it is the highest and best knowledge we can have (and confessional Christians assert that this is in fact the case).

That doesn't mean knowledge external to the Bible is useless. As God has created all things, all things are worthy of our study. We study history, science, philosophy, art, mathematics, etc., in an effort to better understand people and the world around us; but as Christians, we study theology first, and compare everything else we learn to what we know about God. There is little value in studying anything but God Himself for its own sake, however; instead, we seek to understand in order to glorify and serve Him better.

If the Bible says one thing, why do we assume it means another? Or that "science" (as though it's an entity with independent intelligence and will) can show us where the written revelation of Almighty God is wrong or insufficient or naive? This is the worst kind of assumption, one that threatens the validity of any message we claim to preach from biblical precepts.

Human knowledge that is not subordinated to divine revelation and knowledge is simply rebellion. Of course, non-Christians are able to say true things, but their approach to study tarnishes their ability to study truthfully. God is truth; human knowledge not subjected to God is either untruth, partial truth, or anti-truth. We do not study merely to know (except in the case of God Himself), we study to serve and to obey and to love.

The Medieval thinkers understood this. For men like Thomas Aquinas, the end of knowledge is not knowledge, but love. And this love is not directionless and vague: it is the love of God Himself, who grants us knowledge by His own grace and power. Christians who eschew knowledge and study are faithless to the principles of Scripture; but so too are those who study merely to accrue knowledge for its own sake.

To ignore the world around us is to ignore what God has made, and that is rebellion of a different kind. Yet, all our looking is blindness if we aren't animated by love of the Creator and a desire to subject all things in our various spheres to Him and Him alone.