Epistemic Theology …or How I Know the Bible is True.

Part 1.

I’ve already made the point that God is the source and foundation of everything. I’d like to think, though, that I’ve also made a couple other points on the sly. One of those points I hope I’ve made is that the only way to really understand God is to experience Him. Job thought he knew God for the first 37 chapters of the book, but he realized he didn’t have a clue once he had first hand experience. The second point I hoped to get across was that there’s no way to experience God vicariously. I can’t experience God for you.

I have a droll joke I like to throw out, whenever the opportunity presents itself: Say I’m at work and a coworker turns to me and says, “Wow! I’m so cold I can’t feel my fingers!” Immediately I’ll say back, “Wow! I can’t feel your fingers either!” Inevitably, I get the stupid look—how am I supposed to feel her fingers when I’m way over here?

The same principle applies when it comes to knowing God. There’s no way my description of an experience I had is going to work for you. You have to encounter Him yourself.

So what good is the Bible? If the only way to really understand God is to experience him, why do we have a book?

Experience—or the Bible?

I hope you can see where this is going, and why it gets a little kooky here. There are basically two groups of people in reference to the scriptures: those who believe it is authoritative, and those who don’t. That is, either you believe the Bible is right and you must conform yourself to it, or you believe it’s a handy reference for what people used to think. There are lots of degrees between these two poles, but those are the two basic positions.

For the record, I’m part of the group that believes in the authority of the scriptures. But out of their absolute trust in the scriptures, I hear some people saying a lot of strange things. For some reason, there’s this odd pattern in the world, of people pitting experience against scripture. Usually, the question you hear is something along the lines of “are you going to believe the scriptures, or your experience?” Inevitably scripture wins out. Honestly, this is pretty embarrassing.

The problem is that people forget that everything still comes through the human filter. Even if God dictated the scriptures word-for-word to Moses and Paul and all the other authors of the bible, what we have would still be the written record of someone’s experience of that dictation. So the question is really, “are you going to trust someone else’s experience or your own?” Which is an absolutely unfair question. You can’t have someone else’s experience! You can have a similar experience. You can experience the record of their experience. But you can’t have someone else’s experience. So these people are actually asking you to judge between two of your own experiences. How confusing is that?

How can you say to yourself, “these two experiences that I had, one of them is true, and the other one never happened. As it turns out, I’m actually a schizophrenic. I have mad delusions of ordinariness.”?

Fortunately, you don’t have to. There’s nothing wrong with your experience.

A few hundred years ago, a man by the name of Copernicus was dragged into court. His charge: seditious insults about the nature of the universe. Copernicus, based on his experience and a little math had determined that the earth was not the center of the universe. In fact the earth rotated around the sun. This was terrible bravado, because it was as clear as day that the sun rotated around the earth. What Copernicus was saying was not only in direct defiance of everybody else’s experience, but it was contrary to the gospel of Aristotle. Copernicus was ordered to immediately recant or be condemned to for heresy. (“Recant” – to take back what you said, as opposed to “repent” – to take back what you did.) Copernicus, delightful man that he was replied, “the earth stands.” Poof. End of heresy. But as he was walking out of the room, he finished his sentence: “But yet it moves.” Today we agree with Copernicus and decry that heretic Aristotle.

Fortunately for us, the Bible has never said that the sun revolves around the earth. In fact, it quite clearly states that everything revolves around the Son. But we can learn a little from Copernicus: there was no difference between his experience and the experience of everybody else concerning the movement of heavenly bodies. The difference was in how much thought he applied to his experience.

It works the same for us. If the Bible is authoritative, and I am not a schizophrenic, then there can be no disparity between my experience and the scriptures. If there is a difference, the problem must lie in how much thought I have applied to my experience.

Author: KB French

Formerly many things, including theology student, mime, jr. high Latin teacher, and Army logistics officer. Currently in the National Guard, and employed as a civilian... somewhere View all posts by KB French