📊 Faith vs Certainty: Rethinking How We Know Truth in a Post-Truth Age

Knowing and Being Known: Faith, Reason, and Doubt

Apr 14, 2025

Introduction

"Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, 'I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!'"

This cry from Mark 9:24 captures the complex reality of human knowing—simultaneously believing and doubting, knowing and questioning. The father's honesty reveals that knowledge, particularly knowledge of God, isn't merely intellectual assent but a relationship of trust amidst uncertainty.

This honest complexity stands in stark contrast to the epistemological frameworks of both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism. Both mutations, though politically opposed, share a fundamental distortion of knowledge that claims certainty while bypassing the vulnerability of genuine relationship. Both seek knowledge as power rather than participation, possession rather than transformation.

Knowing Through Participation: The Biblical Witness

Knowledge as Relationship in Scripture

The biblical understanding of knowledge differs fundamentally from modern conceptions focused on abstract information. The Hebrew word yada, often translated "know," refers to intimate relationship rather than merely intellectual comprehension. When Genesis says Adam "knew" Eve, it refers to intimate relationship, not information about her.

This relational epistemology appears throughout scripture. God tells Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:5), referring not to information about Jeremiah but relationship with him. Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God and Jesus Christ (John 17:3), indicating that salvation comes through relationship rather than merely correct information about God.

KEY INSIGHT: Modern epistemology assumes an observational model where the knowing subject stands apart from the object known, observing with detached objectivity. The biblical model presents knowledge as participation rather than observation.

Participation vs. Observation: Ways of Knowing

Modern epistemology often assumes an observational model where the knowing subject stands apart from the object known, observing it with detached objectivity. This model, dominant since the Enlightenment, treats knowledge as information gained through careful observation without personal involvement.

The biblical model, by contrast, presents knowledge as participation rather than observation. We know as we participate in what we seek to know, becoming involved rather than remaining detached. Moses knows God not by studying from a distance but by entering the cloud of divine presence. The disciples know Jesus by following him, not merely by hearing his teachings.

This participatory knowing challenges both Dominative Christianism's emphasis on propositional certainty detached from transformative engagement and Providential Identitarianism's emphasis on experiential authenticity detached from theological authority. Both maintain the subject-object divide of observational epistemology rather than embracing the subject-subject encounter of participatory knowing.

Knowledge Through Community: Discerning Together

Biblical knowledge emerges through community rather than isolated individuals. Throughout scripture, understanding comes through the community of faith wrestling together with divine revelation rather than lone geniuses discovering truth apart from community.

The Old Testament presents knowledge emerging through Israel's communal engagement with God's revelation, with prophets, priests, and people discerning together what God is saying. The New Testament continues this pattern with the early church "devoted to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship" (Acts 2:42), learning through communal reflection rather than individual study.

This communal formation challenges both Dominative Christianism's individualistic salvation that treats community as optional addition and Providential Identitarianism's political mobilization that treats community as activist coalition rather than formative context. Both miss the crucial insight that we become virtuous only through participation in communities that embody the virtues they seek to cultivate.

Dominative Christianism's Epistemological Distortions

Foundationalism: The Quest for Certainty

Dominative Christianism typically embraces foundationalist epistemology that seeks indubitable foundations for knowledge—truths so certain they can ground all other knowledge claims. This approach reflects the broader conservative desire for certainty amidst cultural change, seeking unshakable foundations that resist relativism and moral drift.

While appearing to honor divine revelation, this approach often imposes modern rationalistic frameworks on scripture, treating it as a foundation for propositional certainty rather than an invitation to transformative relationship. The Bible becomes a collection of provable facts rather than a living word that forms community.

This foundationalism manifests in apologetic approaches that prioritize proving the Bible's historical and scientific accuracy over its transformative purpose, reducing divine revelation to defensible propositions rather than relationship with the living God. Knowledge becomes possession of correct information rather than participation in divine wisdom.

Primitive Biblicism: Bypassing Interpretive Tradition

Dominative Christianism often claims direct, unmediated access to biblical meaning that bypasses historical interpretive traditions. This Primitive Biblicism assumes modern readers can understand scripture exactly as original audiences did without the mediation of church tradition, historical context, or scholarly insight.

This approach reflects what scholar Nathan Hatch calls "the democratization of American Christianity"—the populist emphasis on individual interpretation that emerged during the Second Great Awakening. While challenging elitist gatekeeping, this approach often leads to interpretive chaos with no communal authority to test private interpretations.

The claim to read scripture "plainly" masks the interpretive frameworks that shape all reading. What appears as direct access to "what the Bible clearly says" actually involves unacknowledged interpretive decisions shaped by cultural context, theological presuppositions, and political commitments that remain unexamined precisely because they claim to bypass interpretation.

Tribal Epistemology: Trust Based on Identity

Dominative Christianism increasingly embraces what journalist David Roberts calls "tribal epistemology"—accepting or rejecting information based not on evidence but on whether the source belongs to one's political tribe. This approach trusts information from ideologically aligned sources while dismissing information from perceived opponents regardless of factual accuracy.

This Tribal Epistemology manifests in separate information ecosystems where conservative and progressive Americans consume entirely different news, entertainment, and even scientific information. What counts as a "reliable source" becomes determined not by journalistic standards but by ideological alignment.

While presenting itself as defense against hostile secular media, this approach fundamentally undermines the Christian commitment to truth regardless of its source. It replaces the traditional Christian understanding that all truth is God's truth, regardless of who speaks it, with a tribal framework that accepts only truth spoken by "our people."

Providential Identitarianism's Parallel Distortions

Standpoint Epistemology: Privileged Access Through Identity

Providential Identitarianism often embraces standpoint epistemology that grants privileged access to truth based on social location, particularly marginalized identity. This approach argues that oppressed groups have epistemic advantage through their experience of structural injustice, allowing them to see realities invisible to those in dominant positions.

While offering valuable insights about how social position shapes perspective, this approach sometimes absolutizes experiential knowledge in ways that limit communal discernment. Claims based on marginalized experience become effectively unquestionable, creating new epistemic hierarchies that replace rather than reform traditional ones.

This standpoint approach manifests in language about "centering" particular voices and experiences that, while addressing real power imbalances, sometimes treats social location as determinative of theological authority rather than one factor among many in communal discernment.

Critical Theory as Theological Framework

Providential Identitarianism often adopts critical theory as its primary analytical framework, examining all theological claims through the lens of power dynamics. This approach focuses on how knowledge claims function to maintain or challenge existing power structures rather than their correspondence to divine revelation.

While offering valuable tools for examining how power shapes theological discourse, this framework sometimes reduces theological claims to their sociopolitical function, treating them primarily as expressions of power rather than potential witnesses to transcendent truth. Divine revelation becomes subordinate to ideological critique rather than the standard by which all ideologies are judged.

Therapeutic Epistemology: Feeling as Knowing

Providential Identitarianism sometimes embraces what sociologist Christian Smith calls "therapeutic moral deism"—an approach that identifies divine guidance primarily through emotional wellness and authentic self-expression. This approach treats positive feelings and personal comfort as indicators of truth, equating what "feels right" with what is true.

While recognizing the legitimate role of emotion in knowledge, this approach sometimes absolutizes subjective experience in ways that resist communal testing. Claims based on personal feelings become effectively unquestionable since only the individual can determine what feels authentic to them.

This therapeutic epistemology manifests in religious language about "my truth" and "speaking my truth" that, while addressing real needs for voice and recognition, sometimes treats personal experience as self-authenticating rather than requiring communal discernment and theological reflection.

Participatory Knowing: A Theological Alternative

Knowledge as Communion: The Patristic Vision

The early church fathers and mothers understood knowledge of God as participation in divine life rather than mastery of information about God. As Augustine wrote, "We know God better by not knowing," indicating that genuine knowledge involves acknowledging the mystery that exceeds our comprehension even as we enter into relationship with it.

This participatory epistemology appears in the Orthodox concept of theosis (deification)—knowledge through becoming like what we seek to know. We know God by participating in divine nature through grace (2 Peter 1:4), becoming by grace what God is by nature. Knowledge comes through transformation rather than observation.

This patristic vision challenges both Dominative Christianism's emphasis on propositional certainty and Providential Identitarianism's emphasis on experiential authenticity. Both maintain modern subject-object dualisms rather than embracing the participatory communion where knower and known indwell one another in love.

Special Equity: Context-Sensitive Application

The Anglican theologian Richard Hooker developed the concept of "special equity"—the recognition that general principles require contextual application that considers particular circumstances. This approach maintains commitment to enduring truth while acknowledging that its application varies across different contexts.

This special equity provides an alternative to both legalistic application of rules without contextual sensitivity and relativistic abandonment of principles in favor of situational ethics. It maintains the tension between universal truth and particular application, principles and context, tradition and adaptation.

This approach challenges both Dominative Christianism's tendency toward abstract application of principles without contextual sensitivity and Providential Identitarianism's tendency toward contextualism without enduring principles. Both fail to maintain the tension between universal and particular that characterizes Christian wisdom.

Analogia Fidei: Testing by the Rule of Faith

Karl Barth recovered the ancient concept of analogia fidei (analogy of faith)—testing interpretations by their correspondence to the core Christian confession centered on Christ. This approach differs from both modern rationalism that tests by correspondence to empirical facts and postmodern relativism that abandons testing altogether.

This confessional approach recognizes that all interpretation occurs within frameworks shaped by prior commitments. Rather than claiming neutral objectivity or embracing relativistic subjectivity, it acknowledges interpretive frameworks while testing them by their coherence with Christ's revelation.

This approach challenges both Dominative Christianism's claim to neutral biblical objectivity and Providential Identitarianism's embrace of perspectivalism without shared standards. Both fail to acknowledge how prior commitments shape interpretation while maintaining standards by which interpretations can be tested communally.

Practical Implications: Recovering Faithful Knowing

Epistemic Humility: Knowing Our Limits

Recovering faithful knowing begins with epistemic humility—acknowledging the limits of human understanding and the provisional nature of our knowledge claims. This humility doesn't abandon the pursuit of truth but pursues it with awareness of our finitude, fallenness, and cultural conditioning.

This humility manifests in language that avoids absolute certainty claims, acknowledges interpretive frameworks rather than claiming neutral objectivity, and remains open to correction through communal discernment and ongoing revelation. It speaks with conviction while maintaining openness to growth.

Communal Discernment: Testing the Spirits

Faithful knowing requires communal testing rather than either individual certainty or isolated experience. The biblical instruction to "test the spirits" (1 John 4:1) indicates that claims to divine revelation require communal examination rather than automatic acceptance based on either traditional authority or personal authenticity.

This communal discernment involves bringing diverse perspectives into conversation within the framework of shared commitment to Christ's lordship. It doesn't mean either majority rule or privileging particular voices based on identity, but patient listening across differences while testing all voices by their coherence with Christ's revelation.

Integrative Knowing: Holding Together Apparent Opposites

Faithful knowing integrates apparent opposites that modernity typically separates—faith and reason, tradition and innovation, objective truth and subjective experience, universal principles and contextual application. This integrative approach maintains creative tension rather than resolving it through either/or thinking.

This integration reflects the incarnational pattern where divine and human, eternal and temporal, universal and particular come together without confusion or separation. Just as Christ unites apparent opposites without dissolving their distinction, Christian epistemology holds together what modernity tears apart.

Conclusion: Truth as Person, Not Proposition

The recovery of Christian epistemology centers on Jesus's claim to be "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6)—truth as person rather than mere proposition. This understanding transforms knowledge from mastery of information to relationship with the living Truth who is simultaneously beyond us and within us.

This personal understanding doesn't abandon propositional truth but grounds it in relationship with the Truth who is personal. Doctrinal formulations remain important not as ends in themselves but as guideposts toward deepening communion with the living God who exceeds all formulations.

The father's cry in Mark 9—"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"—captures this relational knowing that acknowledges both faith and doubt, both knowledge and mystery. It reminds us that genuine knowing involves vulnerability rather than certainty, relationship rather than mastery, and ongoing transformation rather than final arrival.

Key Terms

Primitive Biblicism: Claims direct, unmediated access to biblical meaning while bypassing interpretive traditions.

Tribal Epistemology: Accepting or rejecting information based on whether the source belongs to one's political tribe.

Creative Doubt: Understanding doubt as a necessary element of faith rather than its opposite.