To Know Each Other
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Nathanael Szobody on
Nathanael Szobody on In sin how can we know another, for we shirk from knowing even ourselves
Nathanael Szobody on In sin how can we know another, for we shirk from knowing even ourselves
Comments ( 6 )
a very great extent, because I still retain vestiges of the image of God:
I'm a rational being and my senses, created without guile by God, tell me
the truth about my phenomenal experience. I can see and communicate and
reason and know because he also does so. In spite of all skepticism against empiricism (and certain extreme presuppositional apologetics by conservative Christians), we have put a man (several) on the moon. Our senses and reason didn't lie. This true knowing of "things below" is also confirmed in the Incarnation as the eternal Creator himself entered the senses and confirmed to us the truth of their basic fidelity as touching things and beings below. Otherwise, we couldn't function. To argue from Kant's question, "Do we really know the apple as it is...or de we just know what our limited spectrum of senses tell us?" is a mute point -- on this issue --by virtue of the biblical witness to creation and Incarnation. We do, thank God-in-Christ, know the apple as it really is,
for God has equipped us so. We at least know the apple in truth, that is, to the degree we need to know it to live in God's real and good world. One must be careful to not call into question this knowledge of our world as it is, else we end up in pagan thought teaching all sensual experience as an illusion. The consequence is mysticism (in many forms) where the world is conceived as illusion and the only solution is escape: not only from reason and the sensual experience of this world, but from my own being also.
Obviously, this biblical affirmation of knowledge-here-below can be extended to the human object also. It is true that only the spirit of man knows the thoughts of a man. But that Corinthian text is speaking of the human spirit,not God's Holy Spirit. And just so, human spirit is revealed to other spirits, that is, thinking beings, by way of words and acts/gests. And that,in a nutshell is our world below. (And which also, by the way, is the way of Incarnation and the inscripturated Word: God speaks rationally in words and acts, which in sum, the Bible is the record of. All are accountable to it, for all can understand it to the degree necessary for accountability).
But as to the things above, that concern salvation and the kingdom: I would agree that our knowledge is nil except by the Spirit of God. In this sense, and in this only, we Christians seem to have a capacity to know the Christ in the brother/sister that is beyond the human norm here below. But such doesn't deny the real, analogical, human knowledge of other beings here below. In emphasizing the drastic Fall, and its dire effects, we can never lose sight also of the remnant of grandeur left in the human being. It gives witness still, in its present capacities, of a lost glory even greater.
Thoroughly agreed, and I would not want to deny what is clearly observable by the senses and stands to examination. The problem with fallen humans is that in our relationships sin and its effects so often twist the knowledge that we have a person--that real, earthly, analogical, rational, and emotional knowledge--and brings it into doubt. The illness of depression is a case in point. In these instances, because the human psyche is so exceedingly complex it becomes easy for one to question whether they ever really knew a person, or if they had beed blind, or misled.
This has real pragmatic ramifications, as we treat a person according to our knowledge of that person. When someone close is seen in a different light, for whatever reason, a person can be at a lose to know how to respond; can one continue to love as before? Is the relationship real?
In Christ such circumstances are not precluded, but neither do they need to shake our confidence or turn our world upside-down; for we have a transcendent knowledge of a new identity which is in Christ that cannot be shaken. And in this we can always continue to love, for we are loving Christ. With his eyes we see the beloved who is a member of the bride of Christ, and this carries through the doubt.
The question is: do you know the Sox? And if so...how can you be sure? :)