Modern Standards Have Made Knowing The Bible Impossible

You drank the kool-aid and whether you realize it or not, you need therapy. And if you want a robust Christian faith you need this therapy worse than you realize. The modern world has given you a dose of toxic epistemological (i.e. how and what you can know) medicine. The kool-aid you’ve drank says you can only know things that have been proven scientifically or built upon reason and sense experience.

A recent chocolate milk commercial illustrates my point. The commercial, featuring basketball superstar Klay Thompson, says the following: “Chocolate milk has the nutrients to refuel, natural protein to rebuild…backed by science.” That literally is all the words of the commercial. But notice the final sentence. Validation of the product, and hence your reason to buy it, is that it is “backed by science” (never mind what that even means).

The dairy company understands that society writ large believes the most reliable forms of knowing are science and empirical evidence. Moral and spiritual knowledge are inferior and often reduced to personal opinion. Not only has scientific knowledge been placed on a pedestal, but other forms of knowledge are suspect. To claim to know, for instance, that the Bible is true, is considered anathema in our culture.

For the Christian, this has led to three specific problems

Lack of confidence in the Bible

While the Bible certainly can be confirmed at many points through science (e.g. big bang cosmology and creation ex nihilo) and archaeology, this does’t prove in the scientific sense the theological truth claims the Bible makes. So if Christians adopt the modern way of knowing as their paradigm, their confidence in the truth of the Bible will be weakened. They may have faith but they will lack confidence in the truthfulness of that faith.

Misuse of the word faith

Mark Twain once said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Because society at large, and many Christians in particular, have adopted this hyper-restrictive, modern version of knowing, we now speak of faith in a very unbiblical way. According to the Bible, faith is equal to trust in God and what he says. The reformers spoke of faith has having three components: knowledge, assent, and trust. Faith is not a leap in the dark, but knowing something to be true and placing your faith in that thing. Faith may include doubts and uncertainties, but it nonetheless starts with knowledge. However, the modern version of knowing makes us view faith as nothing more than hope or wishful thinking.

Lack of boldness in sharing the gospel

When we lack confidence in our knowledge of the gospel as actual truth (for all times and for all people), we will be less than confident in sharing that faith with others. But when we can understand that what we believe is in fact true, and we can know its true, we will be more bold in our gospel proclamation.

Killing the bad idea of modern epistemology

My question for you is this. Why adopt the modern form of knowing? Why in the world should we accept this extremely limited and atheistic form of knowing that goes by names such as logical positivism and scientism? In fact, we know so many things that we can’t really prove at all. For instance, you know that your memory is reliable, but you can’t prove it without using your memory. You trust your senses but can’t prove it without using your senses. You know that your spouse loves you (if in fact they do) and yet you’d be hard pressed to prove that in the sense spoken of above. The truth is, if we reduce knowledge to the modern notion, and we apply all knowledge to those standards, we are reduced to a radical skepticism about everything, including all knowledge itself.

For the Christian who has seen and tasted the power and divine nature of Christ and his Gospel, we know God has created us in his image. We have faculties that are designed to know, perceive, and experience him and this is in fact our experience. For those who are truly Christians, you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. You have seen his divine nature in the world around; you felt the weight of his holiness in your conscience. As the glory of God has been revealed through the preaching of the Word, you testify to his reality, to the reality of divinity in the pages of Scripture. Then, when you encounter Christ, and the Holy Spirit gives you eyes to see and ears to hear, you encounter the most real of all reality. As Augustine noted, your heart is restless until it finds the reality it was seeking (i.e. God). You need no external proof, for the proof is in the tasting and seeing. Surely proofs can be given, and without question the Christian worldview is the most defensible of all. But for the Christian who has tasted and seen, external proof isn’t necessary to know.

As John Calvin said, “Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste…those for whom the Bible is tasteless ought to be thought of as lacking taste buds.”