KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST (OLIVER O’DONOVAN)

The work of Anglican evangelical moral theologian Oliver O’Donovan in his landmark book Resurrection and Moral Order provides a constructive account of the nature of knowledge in Christ. While his purpose is to provide a description of how specifically moral knowledge can be accessed, his schema certainly invites application across a broader field. O’Donovan addresses the question, as we have here, of how it is that we can say truthfully that we know things about the order of created universe when we ourselves belong to it and cannot find a vantage point to consider it from above (as God does)? What kind of knowledge does the gospel invite us to seek and entitle us to say that we have, and to try to impart to those we educate? O’Donovan sketches four features:

a. OF THINGS AS PART OF THE WHOLE
In the first place, this knowledge in Christ is knowledge of things ‘in their relations to the totality of things’. That does not mean that it is given to human beings to know everything, or even of everything. But we do know what we know as part of a coherent whole. The universe has a purpose and an order, the broad outline of which is discernible in the evangel. If the restoration and fulfillment of the created order is announced to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ, then it is possible to see that the world which we inhabit is a totality. The things and events we encounter in the world, though they may not in themselves look significant, gain significance from their connectedness to other things and events. These together make up a unified totality of objects and occurrences.
Seeking to grasp the shape of this totality has been until relatively recently one of the primary tasks of human knowers. It was this idea that stood behind the founding of the modern universities, even as late as the 19th century. Science and religion were not held apart but were invited to enrich one another mutually – for knowledge could not be total without both perspectives. We moderns benefit in every way from their partnership. The fragmentation and specialization of knowledge which we have latterly experienced is evidence of a despair that things could ever been known completely and in all their relations.

b. FROM WITHIN
At the same time this knowledge is known by knowers who are themselves a part of what they know. Though it is the empirical scientist’s ideal, we never can know at a distance. We are only artificially able to isolate the objects of our inquiry. We cannot transcend the things we seek to know. The historian is herself an historical being; the biologist part of a biological system. Especially, we see this as the natural sciences examine the largest questions of all – as to our origins and as to the boundaries and the essential properties of the universe: at these limit-points scientists inevitably wax philosophical. As O’Donovan points out ‘We expect scientific knowledge to ‘comprehend’ or ‘contain’ its object, whereas in this knowledge the object contains us.’ (p. 79) This reminds us that, though we may have knowledge of the totality, it is never total or complete knowledge.

c. FROM A HUMAN POSITION
It is also the fact that whatever knowledge we have is knowledge from a human position. This is a refinement of the notion of the ‘from within-ness’ of our knowledge. Humans know as other creatures do not. We name the creatures; they do not name us – they do not know us as we know them. To human creatures is given the task of recognizing the true nature of the things around them. In their calling to dominion over the creatures of the earth, sky and sea, men and women are equipped with the capacity to know and the authority that comes from such knowledge. The business of knowing things is task in which humankind is expected to be faithful and to use in the service of the creator.
We do indeed need to recall that in this as in other God-given tasks man and woman have been miserably deficient to the detriment of the creation itself. As in other things, knowledge is checked by the fallen-ness of would-be knowers. Human beings are not now some other creature because of the fall. But they are not the beings that they were supposed to be. We know truly, but also falsely, in error and in lapse of judgement. We are by turns enlightened and confused. The cancer of ignorance weakens the bones of our knowledge. We construct false totalities and invest ordinary material objects with divine properties.

d. NOT OF THE END OF ALL THINGS
So then, we must reckon with what we do not know. What we successfully apprehend of the created order does not include its end. We do not see far beyond the horizon – the destination of all things lies hidden in the sovereign power of God. There is no philosophy of history aside from that which is revealed to us in the Scriptures.