The Dangers of Confusing Epistemological Knowledge for Revelationary Faith

In the recent issue of Christianity Today, perhaps the sharpest theological argument that I've run across was published. It was written by John D. Caputo, a professor of religion and humanities at Syracuse University, and the author of several books. He presents a post-modern, post-structural theology that is "radical" by mainline standards.

In this particular piece entitled, "On Being Clear About Faith," Caputo draws a distinction between epistemology in the standard form (e.g. systematic and empirical knowledge) and revelationary religious faith. Collapsing the two together, or confusing faith with knowledge, is dangerous. In his words:

Now I do not regard this as bad news for religion and revelation but as a way to keep them honest (clear—about themselves). I argue against confusing religious faith, or revelation, or religious witness (testimony), with knowledge.4 I am furthermore arguing that the slippery slope from religious faith to knowledge in the standard form epistemological sense is dangerous and it will make it difficult to avoid the exclusivism that both Stephen Williams and I reject. When people forget that distinction, when they do not keep uppermost the coefficient of "faith" (seen in part, darkly) that is attached to revelation, they are—on their best days—led to look with a certain benign tolerance or civility upon those who do not share their faith, or to describe them as "anonymous" members of their own faith, or even think to themselves that such people are not inclined to seek the light. My guess would be that we have no good reasons to doubt that the odds for seeking the light and fleeing the light are about the same for religious believers and for people who believe other things, that the distribution of good faith and bad faith among both groups is about the same. But on their very worst days, and this is the side of religious revelation that gets all the headlines, when they forget this distinction, they might be induced to slam an airplane into the side of a tall building, or to torture or imprison people who do not share their faith-now-become-knowledge. So I spend some time in On Religion in trying to talk people off the edge of that slope, in not making that leap from faith to knowledge.

To be sure, Caputo is saying that religious revelation is true.

But we are thinking about their "truth" in the wrong way if we take them as supplying clear knowledge in a representational theory of truth. Their truth—and this is what I think vera religio comes down to—comes in the way of the fruitfulness of the form of life to which they give rise, which they both shape and embody. Their truth comes in the way of a living truth, a truth that we should make happen in our lives, just the way music does not exist in a score but in the playing.

In the sphere of religious truth, it makes perfect sense to say "I am the way, the truth and the life." It would make no sense for Aristotle, Euclid, or Einstein to say that, but it makes perfect sense to have Jesus say it. For the life of Jesus—behold the birds of the air, Father, forgive them, blessed are the peacemakers, and all the rest—is paradigmatic of the way you do things in this form of life, otherwise you are deceiving yourself and others if you say you are a follower of Jesus. Jesus provides a clearly powerful and powerfully clear embodiment of what we mean by God.

Now it is in this sense that these narratives do indeed supply a certain "knowledge," an understanding, not in the standard form epistemological and representational sense of reporting information about conversations with angels and other supernatural events that merely mortal historians of the 1st century could never have uncovered, but in the sense of "knowing-how" and "understanding-as." They provide those who inhabit these narratives with a way to think about and view things, instructing them in a certain art of life, attuning them to the rhythms of birth and death, joy and sorrow, from just that distinctive point of view.5

What does this mean about religious revelation and faith?

For faith is faith just in virtue of the fact that we do not in some deep way know what is what and that we must accordingly put our faith in certain promises, in certain hopes and dreams, praying and weeping that they come true, all the while confessing that there are many ways to dream, many forms of life, many determinate religious traditions.

I bring this here today, because of the commonplace confusion that many religious people make. There is a strong desire to make faith into some kind of knowledge. I think this has a lot to do with the broader context of the dominance of scientific thought in our society. As a result, you get people trying to "scientifically prove" that God is alive or dead, real or fake. You get well meaning Christan's basically propping up their faith with scientific claims (e.g. faith makes you healthier and this can be proven), or you get well meaning Christians trying to make faith into scientific knowledge (e.g. the intelligent design argument). But most ugly, you get Christians that think they have a little secret, a little bit of sacred knowledge that separates us out from the rest of those less fortunate people that lack this knowledge. So, in some sense, by confusing faith and knowledge, many Christians are shooting themselves in the foot and implicitly undermining their own faith.

The point: epistemological knowledge is not faith in revelation and faith is not knowledge.

Faith and science are often represented as contenders in a fight over which reveals Truth. I think that instead of assuming that they are contenders, look at them as shedding light (or truth) on two different aspects of life--one empirical and the other spiritual. They both give us narratives to help organize our lives. And, for those inclined to do the work, a genealogy that explores how science and religion have come to their present relationship would be helpful in breaking down their current configuration.