Reading Blog: Knowing Christ Today, Chapter 1

(Part 2 on my series on Dallas Willard’s latest book. Previous Entries: Intro)

Can Faith Ever Be Knowledge?

Knowledge, says Dallas Willard is to accurately represent a thing as it actually is. In other words, to use a hotly contested phrase, knowledge is objective truth (Willard is a philosophical realist via the phenomenological work of Edmund Husserl). Moreover, this brings the realm of that truth under reliable control, which is what we call evidence. It will be difficult to track with Willard throughout this book unless we understand that he is very concerned about re-appropriating a place for evidence in the realm of religious knowledge. In fact, I was reminded of a Stanley Hauerwas quote in my friend JR Woodward’s email signature:

Just as scientific theories are partially judged by the fruitfulness of the activities they generate, so narratives can and should be judged by the richness of the moral character and activity they generate.

This is what we expect from other areas of life outside religion. Willard uses the example of auto-repair or brain surgery. We expect teachers and practitioners of these arenas to have actual, provable knowledge – not just opinions, or creative ideas – before we allow them to work on our cars or, especially, our bodies.

But not so in religion, where Western Civilization has relegated spiritual knowledge to the realm of belief, opinion, or perhaps plain commitment. None of these carries the authority of demonstrable knowledge. Actual beliefs regularly functions without knowledge (we call that dysfunction or neuroses), commitment is even less dependent on knowledge (only belief or the will), and mere profession of belief is often totally devoid of knowledge. Yet each becomes most empowered and effective when based upon true knowledge.

Willard briefly touches on some key statements of Jesus and Paul that identify knowing Christ as the essence of the faith: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3) and “I want to know Christ and the power of the resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings” (Phil 3:10). I might add scripture also depicts such “knowledge” cuts both ways. I’ve often been troubled (and corrected!) by Jesus’ statement, “Depart from me, I never knew you” (Matt 7:23). Consequently, Willard takes to task the Kierkegaardian “blind leap of faith,” saying,

We can never understand the life of faith seen in scripture and in serious Christian living unless we drop the idea of faith as a “blind leap” and understand that faith is a commitment to action, often beyond our natural abilities, based upon knowledge of God and God’s ways.

There is a good deal more in this chapter, mostly historical and cultural analysis concerning how knowledge came to be disallowed in the realm of religion – the blame of which, in classic Willard fashion, gets laid at the feet of everyone: liberals, conservatives, and secularists alike (there’s also a helpful dismantling of both “certainty” and “tolerance”).

Moreover there is an excellent section concerning the intrinsically political nature of knowledge and how the Church has been systematically excluded from the political realm by virtue of losing its knowledge status over and against secularism which rules precisely by aligning itself with the true knowledge of science and technology.

But this covers the gist of his remarks about knowledge itself in Chapter 1 and I want to keep these posts as brief as possible. So…what are your thoughts?

Questions:

1. How do you feel about Willard’s insistence upon a religious knowledge that is rational and bears evidence? Is this a step backward toward Modernity or is it a helpful corrective to post-Modernism?
2. Evangelicalism has famously represented the idea of knowing Christ in terms of “having a personal relationship with Jesus,” while more liberal traditions tend to de-emphasize or dismiss that entirely as primitive or “mystical.” What do you understand Jesus to mean by us “knowing God” (John 17:3) and him “knowing” us (Matthew 7:23)?
3. If you track with the Emerging and Missional Church movements, how does Willard’s concern for lack of “evidence” correspond to the concerns of these movements? How does it correspond to the concerns of more traditional churches? Is there common ground here?

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