The question arises
regarding how humans are able to know God, if not on their own. Paul’s answer
is straightforward: ‘No one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit
of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that
is from God, so that we may [know (eidōmen) the things] bestowed on us
by God’ (1 Cor. 2:11–12; cf. 1 Cor. 2:14). Knowing God comes courtesy of God’s
self- revealing Spirit, and not from
self- sufficient human resources. This is one of Paul’s distinctive epistemic
insights, and it goes against the grain of much traditional epistemology. Human
knowledge of God is one of the things ‘bestowed on us by God’, so long as we
are suitably cooperative towards God. We can distinguish knowing that God
exists and knowing God, the latter personal knowledge having
directness relative to God that is unnecessary for the former factual
knowledge. Personal knowledge arises from the kind of person- to- person
knowing where personal acquaintance occurs. We may grant that knowing God
entails knowing that God exists, but it does not follow that God values only
factual knowledge (e.g. knowledge that God exists). The latter is not
necessarily redemptive, or salvific, for humans, because one can have it while
hating God and deliberately opposing God and redemption by God (e.g. in the
Gospels, the demons manifest knowledge that Jesus is the Son of God).
Paul’s epistemology largely
concerns knowledge of God that is redemptively valuable for human salvation by
God. Such knowledge brings one into a filial relation of (deepening) reconciliation
to God, whereby one becomes volitionally cooperative with God. Paul expresses
such knowing in terms of ‘being known by God’, and he links it directly to
‘loving God’ (1 Cor. 8:3; cf. Gal. 4:9). He contrasts such knowing with the
ordinary kind of factual knowing, of which it is true to say: ‘Knowledge (gnōsis)
puffs up, but love (agapē) builds up’ (1 Cor. 8:1). In other words,
knowing God aright does not promote or condone the harmful pride that sometimes
accompanies human factual knowing. Paul expresses a strategic concern of his
ministry to the Corinthian Christians, as follows: ‘My speech and my
proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration
of the Spirit and of power (dunamis), so that your faith might rest not
on human wisdom but on the power of God’ (1 Cor. 2:4– 5). Paul’s idea of human
faith in God ‘resting on the power of God’ is cognitive, or evidential, and not
just psychological, because the latter power is a ‘truth indicator’ of what is
believed. It concerns the kind of evidence or truth indicator that supports the
content of such faith, and this evidence has its source in God’s power. The
latter source is, of course, no mere claim, belief, or argument; it includes
features of God’s moral character, such as divine holy love.
Paul christologically
identifies redemptive knowing as being directed toward ‘the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ’. He writes: ‘it is the God who said, “Let light shine out
of darkness”, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 4:6). Paul has in mind a
creation– re- creation analogy whereby God the Creator re- creates cooperative
persons by shining a life- giving light into their hearts. This lesson fits
with Paul’s following statement about knowing Christ: ‘Even though we once knew
Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if
anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!’ (2 Cor. 5:16– 17). One’s knowing Christ from a
divine point of view includes one’s becoming a ‘new creation’. We might say,
then, that Paul does epistemology from a divine, re- creation point of view
rather than a human point of view. This divine point of view gives a central
evidential role to the unique divine power exemplified in Jesus Christ. It does
not rest with mundane evidence that omits the supernatural power manifested by
God in Christ. Instead, it gives a central role to the kind of supernatural
evidence in divine self- manifestation in Christ.
Paul elaborates on the
relevant kind of ‘knowing Christ’ to the Philippian Christians,
as
follows:
I regard everything as loss
because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I
have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order
that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my
own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness
from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death. (Phil. 3:8–
10)
Paul is not thinking of mere
knowledge that Christ exists; he is concerned instead with knowing Christ as
Lord, even as his Lord, where such knowing bears authoritatively on the
direction and mode of (everything in) one’s life. The latter knowing includes
knowledge of ‘the power’ of Christ’s resurrection. In typical fashion, however,
he refuses to ignore the death of Christ that preceded his resurrection by God.
For the sake of knowing Christ, Paul desires ‘the sharing of his sufferings by
becoming like him in his death’. This is knowing Christ via kenōsis, the
kind of emptying of one’s own desires in order to obey God’s will, after the
example of Christ himself (Phil. 2:6– 8; cf. Mk. 14:36). Filial knowledge of
God is kenotic in just this cruciform, Christ- shaped manner (Gorman 2009). (Paul
K. Moser, "Paul the Apostle," in The Oxford Handbook of The
Epistemology of Theology, ed. William J. Abraham and Frederick D. Aquino
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017], 328-29)
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