Is the Claim to Knowledge a Product of the Fall?

Earlier in 2007, I wrote four blogs on the concept of epistemological certainty (see May and June). The conclusion I came to was that it isn't really possible to have "knowledge" of the existence of God in a modern sense. That kind of knowledge requires an empirical certainty which is not really available to any metaphysical concept. Of course, many of the discussions I had with people who disagreed, or didn't understand exactly what I was saying (due chiefly to my inability to articulate it properly), indicated that the problem this would produce was an inability to believe. They said that if you cannot say "I know God exists" you might as well say "There is no reason to believe." In fact, it has produced the opposite. I no longer feel the need to PROVE God, I am free to believe. The Bible itself has been opened up to me as a self-authenticating system.

Recently, some reading I've done and thoughts I've had in other areas (specifically ethics, the fall, and anthropology) have shed a new light on the discussion which, I think, supports my conclusion on the issue. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure how much of this will stem from my reading and discussions with friends and how much is really from my own mind. And, I'm not really certain how relevant these thoughts are to those topics.


I've begun rethinking this issue by breaking down the sentence "I know God exists." In the sentence, the subject is "I" and the object is, really, "God's existence," or "God." This means that, when someone claims to have knowledge of God's existence they are not really saying anything about God or the certainty of his existence but are chiefly speaking of themselves. In other words, the sentence "I know God exists" speaks chiefly of the knower, not the thing known. It's claim is that "I have God figured out and am beyond the capacity to be wrong about him. I own that knowledge by virture of my own ability to understand, perceive, and prove this." The claim to knowledge of God's existence is a claim to have within oneself the answers.

Recently, much of my preaching has dealt with the concept of the fall and its nature. I've concluded that the real temptation of the fall of man was not about eating a piece of fruit from a tree in the garden but it was a seeking of "knowledge of good and evil" within oneself and not in God. In fact, all sin is really concerned with seeking within oneself what can only be found in God, whether that be life, joy, peace, happiness, fulfillment, whatever.

Prior to the fall, God was the subject and man was the object. The Bible begins with the sentence, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Pronouncements about God and his existence begin, scripturally, with his existence and draw conclusions from there. In fact, the central theme of scripture is that God is always the subject.

It seems to me that the central theme of Christianity has always been to orient Christians away from themselves and toward God. Epistemologically speaking, this means that the goal of Christians is to arrange the sentence so that "I" am not the subject, but "God" is. In other words, it really is a fallen idea to claim that "I know God exists." I was never really created to own the knowledge of God or to have that kind of understanding. I am to begin with God and move from there. As soon as I put myself at the beginning, I am guilty of committing the same sin that Adam did at the beginning of time.

Furthermore, the notions of apologetics or the classical arguments as starting points of theology are also fallen. The attempt to begin with the cosmological argument (the universe exists and has a beginning, therefore we know God exists) is to base belief in God on the existence of the universe and (really) my own existence. It is as if we are changing Genesis 1:1 to say, "Right now our existence necessitates God's existence." It is exactly the opposite statement because the foundation has moved. The foundation for God is the universe, whereas, in scripture, the foundation for the universe is God.

Hence, it really is appropriate to abandon that knowledge or the pursuit of that knowledge and adopt as the starting point for theology God himself. This means that the burden of "proving God" is no longer upon me. Instead, I can start talking about God by looking to revelation.

I guess that this blog isn't really about certainty at all. Of course, it isn't possible to say with certainty, "Yes, I know God exists." That question, from an enlightenment standpoint, is still resolved in my mind. What this blog does say is that the concept of knowledge from an enlightenment viewpoint is not the goal of Christianity at all. Faith in God is exactly that--belief in what we cannot prove. So, my goal is not to prove it but to believe it. That I can do.