When someone is searching for the answers to life, they come
across questions that when answered, will set the foundations for everything
else. In the book, The Clear View, by
Keith Ogorek, he says these two questions are, “how do we know what we know?”
and “what can we know?” Philosophers call the studying of the answers to these
questions epistemology or “the branch philosophy that studies the nature of
knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity.” (A Clear View, Keith Ogorek, pg. 13)
The first question the book talked about was “how do we know
what we know?” This is a difficult question if you do not have a strong
Christian faith in God and his word. As Christians, we believe we know things
by three means; cognitively, empirical, and by revelation. The first mean,
cognitively, refers to things we know without any help or outside resources,
something we knew when we were born. The example from the book is of a baby
knowing how to cry and when it is hungry. It wasn’t taught this, it was already
instilled in the baby’s mind. The second mean is empirical or knowledge we have
learned from experiences and observations. The example in the book is that a
baby doesn’t need to learn hunger, but it needs to learn how to feed itself.
Empirical knowledge usually comes from trial and error and experimentation and
repetition. The third and final means of knowing what we believe is by
revelation. The example Ogorek uses in the book is if we want to know about
God, he has to revel truth to us.
The second question addressed in this book is “what can we
know?” For centuries this question has been debated by many famous philosophers.
Some of the most famous were Herodotus, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle. Each
one of these men came up with their own view on what we as humans can know.
Because of these views, the culture and arts of the time changed with the views
of the different philosophers.
In the fifth and sixth century, Herodotus and Parmenides possessed
complete opposite views on what we can know. Herodotus believed the world is in
constant change or a “flux” and because of this we can never have true
knowledge of it. This constant flux kept us from understanding the “real” world
around us. Parmenides on the other hand believed the world was unchanging and because
of that we could understand the world. Because we could understand the world,
we as humans couldn’t get that knowledge through our senses but through reason.
For years the question was senses or reason? No one could figure out.
Hundreds of years before, around 430 B.C, Plato came up with a theory that influenced
these two philosophers. He believed that the world was divided into two layers.
One of these layers was revealed to humans by their senses and the other world
was constantly changing. In the world where humans use their senses, Plato
believed that that world showed what was real, while the other world was fake
and was only an illusion. One of his students, Aristotle (384-322 B.C) agreed
with Plato about the different worlds or “forms” where things did not change.
He disagreed with Plato when it came to being able to know something, though. Aristotle
believed that through the particulars, there were things we could know.
Because of his great influence in philosophy, Plato’s ideas
stuck for seven hundred years, 500 to 1200 A.D. This time is now known as the “Platonic
Period.” With the help of Thomas Aquinas, Plato’s way of thinking faded and
Aristotle’s views rose to the top for about three hundred years (1200-1500
A.D). Aquinas helped people start to think more about “Grace” and “Nature.” This
relationship is centered on what is seen and unseen in the world around us. He
argued that the world had an upper story and a lower story. The Upper Story
contained Heaven, God, Grace, and the Unseen while the Lower Story contained
Man, Earth, the Seen, and Nature. He said that what separated these two stories
was a line known as the “Line of Despair.” This theory started many worldviews based
on where a person’s beliefs are on the diagram.
During the Platonic Period, the Upper Story was given
superiority and the Lower Story was forgotten. As a result, art and architecture
reflected more on heavenly things not God’s creation. Humans were looked at as
flat and meaningless. With the turning of ideas from Plato to Aristotle, a new
century formed called the Aristotelian Revolution or the Renaissance. During
this time, people started to merge the Upper and Lower “stories” together and
everything changed. Art, music, and literature blossomed and people began to
see things differently. With the intentions originally good, the change of “stories”
went a little too far. People started to base their views more on the Lower
story and not both. They thought that man was Truth and not God as they had
before. This change is still present in our world today.
Now with all of this history, you might be getting a little
confused. While I was reading these ideas from Ogorek’s book, I had to stop and
wonder what as Christians we should believe. In his book, Ogorek says that
Christians want a happy median of both. Even though man is not equal with God,
God’s creation is important too. God and his grace are the most important but
without his creation, we wouldn’t be here. This is what the Reformers during
the Reformation did to restore grace to its proper place. In 1500 A.D, men like
Luther and Calvin, helped bring the world back to a good balance of the “stories.”
They brought back harmony to nature and grace. During this time, learning,
education, art, music, and the government flourished. Everyone felt the new
wave of ideas during the Reformation.
It
was clear to Reformation thinkers that answering the questions “how do we know?”
and “what can we know?” must be informed by both grace and nature as well as
revelation and reason. The material and immaterial worlds were knowable and
objective truth did exist. However, it wouldn’t be long before the answers to
those questions changed and once again all of culture would be impacted....
-Keith Ogorek, A Clear View
-Keith Ogorek, A Clear View
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