Faith, Experience, and the Limits of Human Knowledge
The best way to push back against excessive self-confidence and ideology is to cultivate an attitude of intellectual pilgrimage.
By Collin Slowey
It is profoundly ironic that twenty-first century America, ostensibly one of the most advanced, modern civilizations in history, is also one of the most close-minded. Instead of a self-skeptical, authentically scientific society, our age of mass information and polarization has produced a country of armchair experts and political ideologues. It is up for debate whether or not this state of affairs indicates a failure of the project of the Enlightenment. But the fact remains that the average citizen is remarkably confident and doctrinaire in his opinions about everything from U.S. history and religion to science and current events.
This is problematic on many levels. On a national and social level, it makes it difficult for our subcultures, siloed as they are, to empathize with or even understand each other. The result is fierce “othering” and unwillingness to compromise. On a personal level, it reinforces false beliefs and encourages hypocrisy. The Enlightenment rationalists were correct in at least this aspect: that the strength of a person’s opinion has no bearing on whether or not it is accurate. Perhaps conservatives are right to blame unbridled skepticism for the destruction of the American consensus of values—but unfounded, unjustified dogmatism is not much of an improvement. It certainly brings us no closer to the truth.
How can we begin to move away from this unfortunate state of affairs? There are probably structural improvements that could be made. Changes in the institutions of social media, for example, might reduce the number of intellectual echo chambers citizens have recourse to, thereby forcing them to confront the possibility that they might be wrong on any number of issues. Most of us, however, are unable to affect such large-scale forces. What we can control is our own minds. For the ordinary American, the best way to push back against excessive self-confidence and ideology is to cultivate an attitude of intellectual pilgrimage.
What is an attitude of intellectual pilgrimage? It is the recognition that, in almost all cases, our relationship with the truth is more like a lifelong journey than immediate, total possession at an early age. As Hans-Georg Gadamer contended, understanding is a process mediated by time and as dependent on experience as it is on intellection. Assuming a pilgrim’s posture begins with the realization that our knowledge of the world around us is uncertain and our human authorities fallible, and it culminates in an embrace of epistemological humility from the perspective of which idle dogmatism is unthinkable. From adolescence to death, most people will change their minds to at least some degree on almost every issue imaginable. Instead of treating the opinions of the moment as gospel—and inevitably becoming hypocrites—we should prepare and plan for these shifts.
Just as we come to know God through time spent in prayer and through actions of love, so we come to know the truth of the world around us through the exploration of its subtleties and nuances.
This may reek of simplistic relativism. But admitting the limits of one’s access to the truth is a world apart from believing that the truth does not exist in an objective manner. In fact, epistemological humility is only worthwhile insofar as it enables a person to gain a better perspective on her relationship with the facts of the universe. It is of no intrinsic value at all if those facts have no substance of their own. The more difficult problem to resolve is how orthodox Christians can embrace a healthy philosophical skepticism and still maintain their commitment to their faith. For many Americans, political and social beliefs are tightly connected with religious ones. Is it possible to detach one’s self from the former without losing one’s grip on the latter?
Three great texts are especially illuminating in thinking through this question. The first is Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own. This is admittedly an incongruous choice, given that Woolf is known for her atheism. Nevertheless, her insights on the relationship between the individual’s limited perspective and the outside world are incredibly helpful in our muddled modern world. Woolf contrasts two different images of how humans interact with the truth. The first is satirical. Opening the essay, which was originally given as a lecture, she quips that the duty of a speaker is “to hand you [the listener] after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever.” Woolf then laments the fact that she is unable to fulfill this duty, the implication being that no one really can.
The second image, which recurs throughout the essay and doubles as a metaphor for the stream of consciousness, is that of a rural English river. Describing her vision of the water, Woolf says that it “reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been.” The ordinary human gaze is incapable of pinning down its essence, for it is constantly moving, changing its shape and appearance. The only way that thought can interact with it is by “[letting] its line down into the stream” and waiting for “the sudden conglomeration of an idea.” This is the image that Woolf herself favors.
The takeaway from these two images is not that truth does not exist independently of the individual’s perspective. Rather, it is that the truth of any given issue is dynamic and multifaceted, like the surface of water. It is too complex and too large to be reduced to sound bites and formulae without being distorted or diminished. A Christian way to express this would be to say that since humans are incarnate, embodied beings, we will understand the truth most fully when we interact with it over time and in particular circumstances and experiences. Just as we come to know God through time spent in prayer and through actions of love, so we come to know the truth of the world around us through the exploration of its subtleties and nuances. No ideology or earthly dogma can capture it adequately.
It is impossible to escape the fact that humans are embodied creatures, and that the application of revelation to human society will always be subject to the limitations of the embodied perspective.
Bonaventure eloquently expresses this sentiment in his Journey of the Mind into God. He argues that understanding is incomplete without direct contemplation of truth. And this contemplation cannot take place except through a relationship with Christ, a relationship that can only be received, not acquired or possessed. In his own words, “It is… necessary, if we want to reenter the fruition of Truth as to paradise, that we step in through faith, hope, and love.” Like Gadamer, Bonaventure sees experience—in this case, the experience of the theological virtues—as a requisite supplement to intellectual knowledge.
What about religious dogma? According to this view, are doctrines derived from divine revelation fallible? Unlike Woolf, Christians believe that God has revealed certain truths to His flock, through Scripture and the Church, that really can be expressed in neat aphorisms—nuggets that may be placed on the mantelpiece, if you will. Nevertheless, though these aphorisms are as clear as crystal in the abstract, applying them to real-world circumstances is a complex process. For example, Christians may have infallible knowledge, through faith, that humans have a responsibility to protect the environment. But this does not tell us in any definitive sense what our country’s cultural norms should be respecting recycling and car use, or what American environmental policies should be. It is impossible to escape the fact that humans are embodied creatures, and that the application of revelation to human society will always be subject to the limitations of the embodied perspective. Therefore, humility and an open mind are always called for in human affairs, even—perhaps especially—for Christians.
To what extent, then, should we have opinions at all? Should we profess ignorance on all matters of public debate? For some issues of which we have virtually no personal understanding, this might be prudent. For example, my knowledge of American foreign policy is limited enough that I only feel comfortable making the most generic judgments about it, much less giving concrete recommendations of my own. On the whole, a posture of intellectual pilgrimage does not require apathy or timidity. Rather, in issues that they have knowledge of, people should put forward their thoughts and opinions as meaningful and sincere, but also provisional and subject to change.
The book of Ecclesiastes is a valuable touchstone for those seeking to cultivate this type of intellectual humility. In Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, we read the catalog of the seasons. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” writes the author. God has not only ordained a time for every action, but also a time for every attitude, behavior, and stance. There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; … a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; … a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate.” Different approaches to the world, even ones that are seemingly mutually exclusive, are all put to the same service of God and man. Only time and patience are required to bring them into harmony.
The solution to dogmatic ideology and excessive self-confidence, which are responsible for so much of today’s political polarization and social factionalism, actually lies in recommitting to rationalist ideals.
Ecclesiastes is thus a helpful lens through which to view our own intellectual journeys, and a good complement to A Room of One’s Own. On the one hand, no person is infallible. As such, no one should be confident that her opinion is true just because she believes in it. On the other hand, people are capable of deduction and induction. They can dismiss obvious errors and come to an approximately accurate understanding of the facts about a variety of issues. Always and everywhere, we see as through a glass darkly—but it is almost never an opaque one. This means that knowledgeable men and women are free to take stances in political, religious, and scientific debates; circumstances may even oblige them to do so. But they should recognize that human theories and dogmas are never fully comprehensive or completely universal, and they should prepare for—or at least be open to—new revelations or paradigm shifts in the future. For there is “a time for every matter under heaven.”
Christians are often critical of Enlightenment rationalism, and rightly so. But the solution to dogmatic ideology and excessive self-confidence, which are responsible for so much of today’s political polarization and social factionalism, actually lies in recommitting to rationalist ideals. Culture warriors on all fronts urge unquestioning loyalty to a creed, and the only other option appears to be a radical relativism. But this is a false dichotomy. Reading A Room of One’s Own, we can appreciate the fact that humans are incarnate beings who interact with the truth through their own limited perspectives. Meanwhile, learning from the book of Ecclesiastes, we can acknowledge that time and experience often bring seemingly contradictory attitudes and beliefs into surprising harmony.
Together, these texts offer a middle way between self-justifying dogmatism and relativism, one that is both reasonable and compatible with Christian orthodoxy: epistemological humility. By understanding themselves as pilgrims on an intellectual journey rather than the arbiters of divine truth, ordinary Christians can both avoid the evils of hypocrisy and falsehood and contribute to a more tranquil, civil public discourse.
Collin Slowey is a senior at Baylor University, where he studies Political Science and Great Texts. He has written on the intersection of religion, politics, and culture for the Center for Public Justice, the American Enterprise Institute, and Public Discourse. Slowey intends to become a professional writer after he graduates from college.