No Christian would oppose the claim, “Christ is king.” The question is more about the breadth and depth of his dominion. I believe Christ is king over all. He’s the Lord of the leaves and the sovereign of the stars. His royalty runs over rivers and sings over souls. He is the still point of all things turning in the comprehensive cosmos, the epicenter of every spider thread of human activity. All goes back to him—for “he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). He is king over what we are (ontology), what we do (morality), and what we think (epistemology). It’s that last bit I want to talk about. For Christ to be king over our epistemology means that he reigns over not only what we know, but how we know. All things knowable are tethered to the Word of truth, who lived, died, rose, and ascended as Jesus Christ. Every fact we see must bow the knee. No exceptions.
I write this in response to a growing trend in Reformed theology that embraces an approach to epistemology reliant on Thomas Aquinas, presupposing the authority of Plato, Aristotle, and the metaphysical categories of ancient Greek philosophy. Following Aquinas, this Thomistic trend assumes our reasoning faculty was left mostly intact after the fall. And because this is the case, as the argument goes, we are free to develop and affirm secular teachings in philosophy and metaphysics, since such disciplines are, by and large, unvarnished by what we call the noetic effects of sin—the effects of sin upon our ability to reason correctly.
In contrast, I want to defend what we call revelational epistemology—the biblical teaching that our knowledge of the truth, both in the natural world and in redemption, comes through God’s revelation. More particularly, I want to affirm the biblical teaching that we need God’s special revelation (his word) to interpret general revelation (nature) correctly. And perhaps I can clarify something here. It is true that general revelation enables us to understand special revelation. For example, God created trees as part of general revelation. I rely on that general revelation to understand at least part of what God means in his special revelation (the Bible) when he says there is a “tree of life” (Gen. 2:9; Rev. 22:2). So, both kinds of revelation are necessary and presuppose each other. But I believe special revelation gives us the deepest, and in that sense the truest, understanding of things in the world because it overpowers the ways in which sin has affected our thinking. I’ll explain more on this later based on 1 Corinthians 2:6–16.
The Mark of the Reformation
Let me start by offering the words of Richard Muller in his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. The Reformers made many statements about epistemology and its corruption by human sin. Muller rightly notes,
These early Reformed statements concerning theological presuppositions focus, virtually without exception, on the problem of the knowledge of God given the fact not only of human finitude but also of human sin. The critique leveled by the Reformation at medieval theological presuppositions added a soteriological [salvation] dimension to the epistemological problem. Whereas the medieval doctors [such as Thomas Aquinas] had assumed that the fall affected primarily the will and its affections and not the reason, the Reformers assumed also the fallenness of the rational faculty: a generalized or “pagan” natural theology, according to the Reformers, was not merely limited to nonsaving knowledge of God—it was also bound in idolatry. This view of the problem of knowledge is the single most important contribution of the early Reformed writers to the theological prolegomena of orthodox Protestantism.[1]
1. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987), 108.
Don’t miss Muller’s emphasis. The claim that sin has corrupted not just our will but our reasoning is “the single most important contribution of the early Reformed writers to the theological prolegomena of orthodox Protestantism.” In other words, it’s an irremovable earmark of the Reformation. This has rightly prompted some to say that to move closer towards Aquinas and medieval epistemology is to move further from the historical Reformed tradition.
A Critique of Revelational Epistemology
In a recent podcast episode for “Coffee House Sessions,” James Dolezal, an author and professor, critiqued revelational epistemology. What did he say and why does it matter? For those interested, I encourage you to listen to the whole episode yourself, but here are the main threads of the discussion, in bullet points.
- Dolezal advocates for a “realist” epistemology—one that begins with the common sense nature of objective reality. He wants to say we have true knowledge of God from natural revelation (based on Romans 1), and that such knowledge is not mediated through special revelation, including Scripture or what he calls “an implanted knowledge of the Trinity.”
- For him, the broader theological question is about the relationship between special and general revelation: Which comes “first” cognitively and gives “right” access to the other?
- Revelational epistemologists claim we must start with supernatural special revelation to know God rightly, and to know things in the natural world. Even to know general truths about created reality we have to be illumined by some kind of light from God himself. Our natural minds, on their own, are not sufficient to know nature because they are corrupted. We need supernatural revelation to know anything rightly, a supernatural light that shines on nature.
- Dolezal disagrees. He argues, for instance, that supernatural special revelation is not required for us to know about a kangaroo. And, we can infer, a “Christian” knowledge of a kangaroo has no marked difference from a “non-Christian” knowledge of a kangaroo. Kangaroos are just kangaroos.
- The discussion then turns to the relationship between grace (God’s liberation of mankind and the natural world from sin and its consequences) and nature (created things like trees, humans, and kangaroos). Is creation itself considered under the category of “grace” (something that needs to be purged of the effects of sin), or should it be thought of primarily and exclusively as “nature” (something created that is essentially unaffected by sin and is “just there”)? For Dolezal and his discussion partners, creation belongs under the category of “nature” because classifying creation as a subcategory of “grace” evaporates the nature/grace distinction, which nobody in this debate wants to do.[2]
- Dolezal argues that we skip over natural revelation if we’re pushing so hard on grace (i.e., by emphasizing the need for the supernatural). In this sense, he believes natural knowledge isn’t given proper attention or weight. What “concerns him most” is that nature is being made “chapter 1 in the book of grace.”
- This epistemological discussion about nature and grace then goes deeper into metaphysics (the nature of what exists). This is key if we want to claim knowledge about what exists. Rather than developing an approach to metaphysics that prioritizes grace and supernatural revelation, Dolezal pushes against “evangelical” or “biblical metaphysics,” claiming that a revelational epistemology would dissolve the discipline of metaphysics as established by philosophers such as Aristotle. His understanding of metaphysics presupposes that nature can be known apart from special revelation, since the latter deals with redemption and grace, not nature.
- According to Dolezal, if we presuppose a supernatural starting point for knowledge (revelational epistemology), then we have essentially done away with the discipline of metaphysics and made it part of “sacred doctrine.”
- Dolezal wants to retain metaphysics as a servant of theology and not make it a part of theology itself (sacred doctrine). He says he agrees with Aquinas that metaphysics deals with what we can know about what exists apart from special revelation. Metaphysics, in other words, is about nature, not grace.
- In drawing the discussion to a close, Dolezal and his guests assume that a revelational epistemology would mean that we cannot do what is called “natural theology”—that is, theology based on the naturally created world. We could not do this, he suggests, because we would be claiming that we have no true access to natural theology apart from God’s grace in special revelation. For Dolezal, this would do away with natural theology and mean that non-believers have no true knowledge of anything apart from grace and special revelation.
- For Dolezal and his fellow adherents, some things can be known truly—things in the natural world—apart from special revelation. As Dolezal put it at the end of the discussion, special revelation and salvation won’t make you a better baseball coach or chef. Special revelation and salvation are in one realm, while the rest of life is in another.
2. For readers who wonder if this whole debate sounds too pedantic to be relevant, think of it this way. Sin has introduced ethical hostility into God’s originally good created order. The guilt and corruption of sin have permeated all of creation, creating a giant ethical problem (all things are either in ethical rebellion against God or are affected by that rebellion). And so grace comes not to transform or replace the natural world, as if it were not created the way it should have been, but to purge it of the effects of sin. This historically Reformed position treats nature as originally good in and of itself. The problem is the ethical hostility that sin introduced. That’s what grace comes to address. This is different from the Roman Catholic position, which treated the natural world as inherently “lowly” (fleshly) and in need of grace to be lifted up to the realm of supernatural significance. For them, the problem with nature, in other words, is that it needed God’s grace from the beginning, what Catholics call God’s “super-added gift.” This removes the ethical problem from the created order and treats God’s creation as fundamentally in need of transformation, even before sin entered the scene. See the helpful little article by Daniel Ragusa, “Far As the Curse Is Found.”
Now, I believe godly theological disagreement requires two things: confidence and compassion. Confidence stands behind our convictions, and compassion (Ephesians 4:12) is the mannerism behind our interaction. It’s in that spirit that I felt compelled to respond at all.[3] In what follows, I’ll briefly provide a critique and assessment of Dolezal’s position before I defend a revelational epistemology and suggest why it’s of great practical importance.
Critiquing with Biblical Conviction
As in any discussion, the things directing the speech of those involved are invisible. They are deeper assumptions we can’t see, the wind behind the willows. Some of those assumptions are positive (claims as to what is the case), some are negative (claims as to what isn’t the case or why a theologian is wrong), and some are categorical (claims that certain categories must be held in a certain way). Here are some points I think Reformed listeners should keep in mind.
1. Nature and Grace. Throughout the discussion, Dolezal and company cling to a theological distinction between nature and grace. This is an important distinction to maintain, and the distinction is prevalent in the theology of Thomas Aquinas and medieval scholasticism as well as in the Reformed tradition. Geerhardus Vos, the father of reformed biblical theology, even says it’s “absolutely necessary to maintain the sharpest contrast between nature and grace.”[4]
3. Compassion and brotherly love are the fitting starting points for any theological discussion. Though I differ from Dolezal on many points, I don’t see him as an enemy; the body of Christ is no place to turn discourse partners into enemies. I’m avoiding the popular pitfall of demonizing those whom we disagree with, since no good comes from that. Civil discourse, when done in the Spirit of Christ, should always seek to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). There are plenty of Christians and theologians who speak the truth in disgust, in judgment, and in haste. And that’s a shame. Paul was clear in Ephesians 4:15 that the manner is the matter.
4. Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Theology, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2020), 622.
So, there is no problem with the nature/grace distinction itself, when rightly defined. What is troubling is a wrong definition and application. Nature and grace, while distinct, work together in the providence of God, according to his divine purposes. In other words, the meanings of “nature” and “grace” are found not independently of God’s purposes but within them. Because God is all-knowing and all-powerful, “nature” can have no meaning apart from his divine control and will. Nature is what it is because of God’s voluntary, unmerited (by us) decision to create the world. It’s for that reason that we can rightly say even nature is an act of grace on God’s part—a freely offered gift. What determines grace and nature is the will and purpose of God.
This helps us see why some elements in the world could fit in both categories. As Vos put it, “If now something that falls within the sphere of nature is called grace, then it is because the gracious purpose of God adheres to it. One and the same act can occur with respect to two persons and be grace in this sense for the one but not for the other.”[5] Again, this means that the nature/grace distinction is ultimately based on the purposes of God, not on an impersonal set of properties or laws. We can’t, for instance, say that an apple is part of nature, only nature, and exclusively nature. What are God’s purposes for that particular apple? It may be more clearly “nature” if it simply falls to the ground, disperses its seeds, and germinates more apple trees.[6]
5. Vos, Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Theology, 622; emphasis mine.
6. Even here, however, in the natural occurrence of the apple I interpret this act of God as reflective of his love (cf. Job 37:13).
At the same time, the fall of the apple may be grace if God ordains it to fall from a branch right before a hungry child comes walking by. This would not be considered “special grace” or “saving grace” because the apple does not redeem the child’s soul. But we could call it “gracious” in a broader sense, in what is traditionally labeled “common grace.” And properly understanding that apple involves understanding its God-given purpose in history, not only its physical properties.
Some, I expect, would argue that the apple is a part of nature, simply put to a gracious end. And I understand that distinction. The question is whether that gracious end has anything to do with what that apple is. In other words, do God’s redemptive purposes have ultimate power to define reality? Do they have lordship over metaphysics? They do. I have followed Cornelius Van Til in this, who wrote, “According to any consistently Christian position, God, and God only, has ultimate definitory power. God’s description or plan of the fact makes the fact what it is.”[7]
7. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 2nd ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2015), 8–9.
The theological distinctions that we use (nature and grace) must always be subservient to the nature and workings of God as he has revealed himself and his purposes. Some people would say that we can have true knowledge of an apple regardless of whether it falls into the hand of a hungry bystander. “An apple is just an apple.” I would say that God’s purposes for that particular apple, situated in his personal plan to redeem human souls, can’t be left as peripheral to the discussion of epistemology or even of metaphysics. God’s purposes take priority over secular categories in metaphysics.
When Vern Poythress analyzed the metaphysics of an apple, he concluded, “My apple is what it is within the context of God’s plan. To understand my apple is to understand it in relation to God’s plan. God’s plan in a sense is the ultimate ‘metaphysics’ of the apple.”[8] I agree. I interpret what things are in the context of God’s ever-controlling speech, by which he reveals his plan—not exhaustively, but sufficiently for us as creatures of faith.
8. Vern S. Poythress, Redeeming Philosophy: A God-Centered Approach to the Big Questions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 140–141.
So, with Vos, I affirm that nature and grace must be sharply distinguished, but I recognize also that the basis for that distinction is not an impersonal set of properties to which things must adhere—a set of categorical “substances” with adjoining “accidents,” for instance.[9] It is instead the purposes of God, many of which are known and revealed in Scripture, but many of which are not. There must be room for mystery in metaphysics and epistemology.
9. In Aristotle’s thought, a substance is an individual thing that contains both form and matter. Matter is stuff of which a thing is made that helps us distinguish one thing from another. One piece of bread might have a chunk missing in the top, whereas another piece doesn’t. The matter is different in these cases. Form comprises the qualities that make a thing what it is—qualities that help us distinguish a piece of bread from a rock or a toad. Form includes the purpose of a thing. An accident is a property that can change without altering the substance of a thing. So, the darkness of the crust on a piece of bread would be an accident. The crust could be darker or lighter without making the piece of toast something altogether different.
Thomas Aquinas, and the Thomists who followed his way of thinking, did not seem to leave much room for that mystery. He linked “nature” with “philosophy” and “grace” with “sacred doctrine.” Nature dealt with reason (philosophy), Aristotelian metaphysics, the natural world, and the political state. Grace dealt with revelation, faith, Scripture, salvation, and the church. The distinction was fairly rigid, in part because Aquinas had an unbiblical assumption that sin did not have an impact on reason. So for him, humans could clearly see the barrier between nature and grace at all times, without mystery, and God’s purposes did not have to be factored in.
This is precisely where the Reformers pushed back. In Genesis 3, sin changed everything—not just the mechanics and strivings of the heart and will, but also the workings of the mind. They believed we need God’s special revelation for all of life, not just for “sacred doctrine” and the reception of grace. God’s special revelation tells us how to understand the natural world and makes our minds subservient to Christ’s lordship: he knows all; we do not. God’s special revelation after the fall has momentous implications for our epistemology because it rights our vision not just of grace and salvation, but of all nature. As John Frame put it,
According to Scripture, God’s revelation is not needed for only one area of human life and knowledge. It is, rather, needed for all areas of life. God’s revelation in Scripture itself does not tell us only how to obtain eternal life. It also instructs us about marriage, finances, society, music, art, scholarship—about everything human. Indeed, matters of this life cannot be strictly separated from matters of the next. For the Bible calls on us to live in this world with an eye on eternity. Everything we do should be done to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).[10]
10. John M. Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2015), 146.
What’s more, we have always needed special, gracious revelation, even before sin entered the picture. In Genesis 2, God’s speech was required to tell Adam and Eve their purpose in the garden. How much more do we need God’s illuminating speech after the fall? To move towards Aquinas on this matter is to move away from the Reformers. But, more importantly, it’s also to move away from biblical revelation.
2. Cornelius Van Til and Karl Barth. Throughout Dolezal’s podcast, there is a frequent conceptual pairing of Cornelius Van Til and Karl Barth. To be frank, anyone who has studied Van Til would find this pairing ridiculous. Van Til was perhaps the most outspoken critic of Barth, even writing a full-length book against him: Christianity and Barthianism. I listened to a thirty-lecture course from Van Til himself, and I would struggle to express how severe and how frequent Van Til’s critiques of Barth were. But even if one wanted to show conceptual overlap between the two despite this, it would require misrepresentation of Van Til’s view of natural revelation (and natural theology) and his affirmation of the sufficiency, necessity, authority, and clarity of Scripture. For Barth, the “Christ-event” and God’s “yes” to all men in Christ precludes even the possibility of natural theology. Dolezal was clear on this point, too. Van Til would agree that autonomous natural theology unaided by special revelation is a lost cause.[11] But in marked contrast to Barth, Van Til had a very high view of natural revelation. He gives it the same attributes that he gives to special revelation, in fact: it is sufficient, necessary, authoritative, and perspicuous. It differs from special revelation in its purpose, not in its potency.
11. See his article “Nature and Scripture,” where he advocates for a natural theology guided and informed by Scripture.
Van Til was clear that special revelation is needed in order to interpret general or natural revelation correctly. And this is because, following the Reformers, he recognized the noetic effect of sin—i.e., the way sin distorts our thinking and wreaks havoc on our attempts to know things. He wrote, “the Bible must be presented to men as the principle in terms of which the whole of human life is to be explained.”[12]
12. Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge, ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2023), 225.
We need God’s saving revelation in Scripture in order to correctly interpret non-saving revelation in the natural world. This is in no way analogous to what Barth advocated with the centrality of “the Christ event” as some existential encounter in the supra-historical realm. Barth had a very dangerous view of Scripture, one that assumed not the inerrant and infallible words of God but the fallible and errant words of men that had the ability to testify to the ever-active Christ, who might peek through the words of Scripture as a mouse peeks through slits in a thicket. This is a low view of Scripture, while Van Til had an incredibly high view of it. Dolezal is misleading at best to say that both men are on the same page in claiming that we need special revelation to interpret general revelation.
3. Implanted knowledge of the Trinity. At several points, Dolezal says Van Til argued we all have “implanted knowledge of the Trinity,” which Dolezal disagrees with, citing that the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine, not implanted. This is perhaps the biggest misreading of Van Til that I noticed. Van Til not only never says this, but he actually argues for the contrary, along with all orthodox theologians.
Van Til, of course, often wrote that we must presuppose the ontological Trinity for the acquisition of knowledge, in statements like this one: “Human knowledge ultimately rests upon the internal coherence within the Godhead; our knowledge rests upon the ontological Trinity as its presupposition.”[13] But this means that the true God is our logical foundation for all reasoning. And the true God is triune. This does not mean that God has implanted a knowledge of the Trinity inside men. It simply means that the Trinity stands beneath all men whenever their brain waves are moving, for example, when they notice the laws of gravity undergirding every apple that falls off a tree. They may reject him. They may have no idea that he is trinitarian (since this is only a revealed doctrine). But he’s there nonetheless. He must be the logical foundation for any coherence or reasoning to happen at all.
13. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God, 2nd ed., ed. William Edgar (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2007), 59.
Van Til also says that “Scripture teaches the doctrine of the triunity of God,” and “the doctrine of God is not taken from a natural theology worked up from ‘experience’ or ‘reason’ apart from Scripture.”[14] I’m not aware of any place in his corpus where Van Til says we have “an implanted knowledge of the Trinity.” An implanted knowledge of God? Certainly, as Calvin teaches, not to mention Paul (Rom. 1:18–23). But not an implanted knowledge of “the Trinity.”
14. An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 349; Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2008), 43; cf. 227–228.
Responding
I think Aristotle (and the appropriation of him by Aquinas) is not completely useless. What Aristotle notices in his metaphysical categories, for instance, is nothing but the consistent character of God displayed in the created world. Even the terms “substance” and “accident” can be understood more broadly as clear elements of general revelation—a revelation of God’s faithful character. Aristotle’s interest in basic biology drew him to identify groups and categories, and these groups and categories are in place in our world as a reflection of God’s character. Noticing distinctions and properties can certainly be useful in understanding the world and how it fits together.
However, I don’t buy into the idea that this understanding is exclusive to Aristotle or that it gets to the “deep structure” of the universe. Any human in history could pick up two rocks and notice that they are the same in some basic ways (their form and matter) and yet different in other distinct ways (shape and size). To notice things like this can become a pathway to a deeper understanding and worship of the God who made the rocks. But Aristotle was not interested in that. And that’s where the problem emerges in his metaphysics—no matter how much his metaphysical categories have been appropriated through church history.
What is “ontologically basic” to the world is not a set of perfect forms (Plato) or form-matter composites (Aristotle) or different sorts of earthly substances with varying combinations of accidents. Following Van Til, we need to begin with the fact that the Trinity, the God of the Bible, is ontologically basic. God is the ground of all being. But since God is ultimately incomprehensible to creatures, there will be mystery in metaphysics. In fact, when there isn’t, when all questions about what and how and why things exist are allegedly “answered,” it’s no longer true metaphysics that’s being discussed. It’s a reduced illusion. Why? Consider this helpful explanation from Vern Poythress:
God is mysterious. He is incomprehensible. The Trinity is mysterious. Precisely. We have mystery when we think about God. And so there will be mystery in all the other thoughts when we focus on the world. There will be mystery because God structures the world, by the eternal Word, who is the eternal Image, in the context of eternal love in the Spirit.[15]
15. Vern S. Poythress, The Mystery of the Trinity: A Trinitarian Approach to the Attributes of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2020), 238.
Passages such as Hebrews 11:3, Psalm 33:6, and John 1:1 reveal that the “word of the Lord”—the Father speaking the Son in the power of the Spirit—is ontologically basic.[16] And Aristotle did not know or believe that. He had no belief in a personal God that ordered all things according to his immutable will and mysterious purposes. And that is a big deal. It offers us a skewed approach to reality at the outset.
16. Poythress, The Mystery of the Trinity, 204.
That is why I have always been uncomfortable when people take their metaphysical starting point with Aristotle. This is a person who thought the world was not governed by a personal being with a plan for all things and with whom we could have communion, but by a conglomeration of impersonal “substances” that he believed were eternal.[17] And as Poythress points out, “if substance becomes an ultimate category, it suggests that the world is ultimately impersonal. And then that impersonalistic atmosphere continues with everything else that is to be built up on top of the idea of substance. The danger of impersonalism is real and pressing.”[18] Aristotle’s world is eternal, yes; but also impersonal and void of any God-to-man relationship that mirrors the revelation of Scripture. Therefore, for all the “true” things it may appear to say, it is a false world.
17. Physics I.7; Nicomachean Ethics VIII.7.
18. Poythress, The Mystery of the Trinity, 210.
On this basis, I’d rather take my starting point for metaphysics and epistemology with the speech of God. And that’s also why I believe it’s not a ridiculous thing to imagine a “biblical metaphysic.” In fact, I think that’s exactly what we’re called to do.[19]
19. That’s why I wrote an article in Westminster Theological Journal called “World through Word: Towards a Linguistic Ontology.” It was also partly behind the book The Speaking Trinity & His Worded World.
All of this doesn’t mean Christians can’t possibly appropriate Aristotle (or Aquinas in various ways). Obviously, they have. But it does mean there are underlying dangers that must be ignored in order to do so. And in my experience, those dangers end up affecting other branches of a person’s theology.
Now that I’ve expressed my convictions and compassion, let me set out why I hold to a revelational epistemology.
Why a Revelational Epistemology?
Let me restate what a revelational epistemology is, and then tell you why I think it’s so important for everyday life.
In the simplest terms, a revelational epistemology simply means we know the truth only by God’s revelation—both his special revelation and his general revelation. Yet, and here is where the Reformation is critical, special revelation (God’s word) is the necessary lens through which general revelation (the created world) must be understood. And special revelation climaxes in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. In that sense, all things that we claim to know must, in some sense, have reference to Christ and Scripture (which is all about Christ).
This isn’t so strange when you think about it. All facts have meaning in reference to a context. If the deepest context for wisdom and knowledge is Christ (1 Cor. 1:24), then we cannot say we know something truly if we exclude that reference to what God has done, is doing, and will do through Christ and by the power of his Spirit.
Dolezal said, in jest, that we don’t need to have Christ-interpreted knowledge of kangaroos. I respectfully disagree—not because I plan to relate each facet of a kangaroo’s life to an element of Jesus’s character or ministry, but because I cannot truly or deeply understand a kangaroo if I ignore its divinely governed context in God’s plan of redemption, a context in which Christ is central. So, all we’re really doing here is making the (biblical) distinction between Dolezal’s kangaroo-facts-without-a-divinely-revealed-context (which is false) vs. kangaroo-facts-with-a-divinely-revealed-context (the truth). With Cornelius Van Til, I affirm that there are no such things as “brute kangaroos.” To know anything truly about a kangaroo, I have to start with the claim that a kangaroo is a creature of God (Gen. 1:24–25). These beasts have a certain dignity, albeit below the dignity of image-bearing humans (Gen. 1:26–28). As with everything in creation, they were created for the Lord’s sake (Col. 1:16), they look to him for their daily food (Ps. 104:24, 27–28), and he is the one who determines their passing (Ps. 104: 29–30). Along with the rest of creation, Kangaroos groan in birth pangs for renewal according to the revealing of the sons of God through Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:19–22). We could go on, but that is its context. To claim to know anything about that kangaroo without holding these biblical assumptions already puts us on a path towards an impersonal worldview without purpose—which is precisely the way secular thought would have us think. We have to keep Christ as king of all facts.
The Apostle Paul sums up this discussion in 1 Corinthians 2:6–16. Have a look at this text, note the places I’ve emphasized in italics, and think about its implications for epistemology.
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
In his excellent article “Epistemological Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:6–16,” Richard B. Gaffin calls the Apostle Paul’s approach in this passage—which is following Jesus’s approach—a kingdom epistemology. Why? Because “the kingdom is a matter of the eschatological lordship of God in Jesus, the Christ, presently being realized in his arrival and to be consummated fully at his return.”[20]
20. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Word & Spirit: Selected Writings in Biblical and Systematic Theology, ed. David B. Garner and Guy Prentiss Waters (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2023), 313.
This kingdom is a revealed kingdom, appearing foolish to the world and its rulers and yet is accessible by faith to those who approach with childlike wonder and humble receptivity—a wonder and receptivity given by the Spirit of God, who searches the depths of God himself.
But here’s the thing: knowledge of that revealed kingdom of Christ doesn’t just include spiritual matters. “According to the New Testament, there is nothing in the entire creation that is irrelevant to the kingdom. Absolutely nothing falls outside the eschatological rule of Christ.”[21] Both general revelation in the natural world and special revelation of redemption in Christ are encompassed in the rule of Christ, the climax of God’s special revelation. And so Gaffin writes, “Any epistemological endeavor true to these verses recognizes its absolute, exclusive dependence on such revelation. To be truly ‘wise and learned’ in the creation, one must become a ‘little child’ and receive the revelation of God in Christ.”[22]
21. Gaffin, Word & Spirit, 313.
22. Gaffin, Word & Spirit, 313–314.
To put it another way, “Christ, in his death and resurrection, is Paul’s ultimate epistemic commitment.”[23] Does that baffle you? It should. Does it fly in the face of all worldly attempts to do epistemology (and even metaphysics)? Yes, it does. Is it beautifully and jaw-droppingly Christ-centered? Yes. And I love that. I love being able to affirm with biblical confidence, that “the saving revelation of God in Christ, taught by the Holy Spirit, is the indispensable key to rightly understanding God himself and, with that understanding, literally everything (panta) in his creation.”[24] It’s beautiful because it’s true.
23. Gaffin, Word & Spirit, 315.
24. Gaffin, Word & Spirit, 323.
Practical Relevance
But why should you even care? If any theological debate sounded too abstract to be practical, as discourse fit for an ivory tower that no one really visits, surely this is it. What relevance does this have for the everyday life of the Christian?
The relevance doesn’t lie in the hope that we’re all going to write Christological descriptions of kangaroo facts. It lies in our acknowledgement that every facet of knowledge in the universe sits under the lordly feet of Christ. To know anything truly without reference to him is futile. It is, in Paul’s language, “foolishness.” Certainly, on the surface it appears that Christians and non-Christians know the same things. But that’s only on the surface.
We cannot claim to know any fact without simultaneously affirming its context in God’s redemptive storyline. That is a basic truth for any epistemology. And God has revealed that the hypocenter of that context is Christ: he is the one deep beneath the surface of our knowledge. Claiming to know anything truly apart from him makes no biblical sense. It might make perfect sense to the world. But I’ve never been much interested in that. In the world’s judgment, it didn’t even recognize the Son of God in the first place.
I look at my life each day with the assurance that anything I know is related to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and that this will appear foolish to anyone else. That’s simply what it means to live in a kingdom sundered from the sinful continent of self-reliance.
Some Christians differ on this, and we can still love and commune with those who disagree with us. But I still encourage those who hold a revelational epistemology to remind others that what God has done through Jesus Christ changes everything, even how and what we know. Should we think anything less about the very incarnation of the Son of God and his defeat of the aeon-old disease of sin and death? So whether its kangaroos or car-repairs, metaphysics or microphones, relationships or cosmic galaxies, all of these can only be rightly understood in their relationship to the risen Christ who is Lord over all. And how do I know this? The Bible tells me so.
