Hi everyone, welcome to the Oak Hill podcast, Deep Roots, conversations about theology and ministry.
Thank you so much for joining us.
My name is Eric and I teach Hebrew and Old Testament at Oak Hill.
I'm joined by my two friends and colleagues today, Andrew and Kristy.
Hi, I'm Andrew Nicholls. I'm director of pastoral care here.
And I'm Kristy Mare and I teach here with my lovely friends and colleagues.
I teach apologetics and ethics.
So Kristy, thank you for joining us today.
We're going to be talking with you today about your work.
Tell us a little bit about what specifically strikes your interest
and give us some complicated philosophical words and tell us what they mean.
Oh, no.
Well, I think we're talking a little bit about one of the subject areas for my doctoral dissertation,
which is on a guy called Michael Polanyi, who's a former scientist turned philosopher.
And I kind of got into his work initially because I had lots of questions in my own life,
in my own faith, in my own walk with the Lord.
You know, lots of people saying that, you know, you have to know things certainly and truly.
And there are lots of people who said that they knew things very certainly,
but also they disagreed with one another very strongly.
And so I had the philosophical question of, well, how do you know which position is true?
How do I know that, you know, this person is telling me the truth over and against this person over here
who's saying it just as confidently and just as certainly in particular ways?
So it was a pursuit that was born out of a personal love and a personal pain of how do I know anything is true?
And I think that that grew out of some of my university experiences and then later on in my faith as well.
So could you summarize some things that Polanyi has said that have been really helpful to you
or different ways of thinking or questions he's asked?
Yeah, thank you. Oh, gosh. I mean, how much time do we have?
But he, well, some of his famous aphorisms are things like we know more than we can tell
and we say more than we know, which is, yeah, I do that a lot.
But yeah, that there is an inexplicable element to all of our knowing, which you cannot articulate explicitly.
So there's this sense in which as a scientist, he was coming to his work and saying, well,
how do I know that this particular problem that I'm pursuing will be fruitful,
that it will it will kind of arrange in a particular way that I know that this is a worthwhile problem for me to pursue as a scientist.
So he was saying that as a scientist, you bring your bodily particulars,
which is basically just a way of saying you're not just a brain in a vat that is able to have a bird's eye view of everything that takes place
and then can set that knowledge in a propositional statement that doesn't explain how we come to know.
So his big his big question was, how do we come to know anything?
And so just the poverty of and the scientific method, which was great in terms of producing particular results.
But the focus is on the outcome, not the input. So how do you know that this is a good problem?
How do we even come to know in the first place?
And so, yeah, he saw that there's this certain element in our knowing that we can't explicitly articulate
because we know more than we can say and we say more than we know.
So how do we account for that?
And philosophically, he kind of draws some of this thinking back to come across Plato's Mino paradox.
I haven't. I'm sorry, because he's just covering my shame.
But tell me about Plato's Mino paradox.
For Andrew's sake, explain it to him. I'll listen as you do.
If I can actually remember it.
Yeah. So it's how do you how do you know there's something to know if you don't yet know it?
You know, so, you know, for for you, Eric, you know, how did you know that you wanted to learn Hebrew
if you don't already have the content of Hebrew knowledge in your mind in order to determine that that is something you need to know?
Because you don't yet know it. So you don't know that you should or you ought to know it.
So this was part of the seed in Polanyi's kind of thinking of, well, how do I come to know then?
Because if a particular way of knowing is saying that knowledge is all about my ability to formulate explicit propositional statements,
then how do I come to know something in the first place and say this is worthwhile?
Pursue of knowledge.
So a certain framework for knowledge that focuses much more on a kind of bird's eye view,
propositional statements, absolute certainty, can't give an account of how it gets started or how it can't give a full account of itself.
Is that part of what Polanyi is saying?
Yeah, it cannot give a full account of itself. And it's also necessarily reductive and restrictive.
So he'd say that one of the ways in which you know that you know something is because it leads to an indeterminate range of future manifestations.
So you do that again.
Most of us are indeterminate range of future manifestations.
So that means when you come to know something, you don't know the outcome of that knowledge.
What that will look like. So, you know, you learn to ride a bike and you're focusing to begin with, you know, your hands are on the what's it called?
Handlebars.
Thank you.
I was going to say and then your feet are on the pedals.
Thank you.
And for a moment. So basically, all you're focusing on is those things.
And there's this moment of integration at which those things that you're focusing on become bodily and dwelled clues.
And then you're riding the bike.
But you know that you're riding the bike because it leads this indeterminate range of future manifestations, which means that you can ride that bike anywhere.
You could, you know, you could go to France and you could go to Greece and ride it.
You could ride with people.
You could ride alone.
You could ride uphill, downhill, you know, on track, off track, you know, fancy stuff.
I don't know.
But that's a mark of knowing something is that you don't actually know all of the ways in which that thing that you've come to know will continue to reveal itself to you in the future.
It opens up the world in ways that you can't anticipate yet.
Yes.
And just as you've been talking, I've noticed a couple of things.
This might be jumping out of ourselves, but feel free to say let's let's save that for a bit.
But there's a couple of things.
One is that there's a really strong connection in the New Testament between knowing things or between a teacher and the character of the teacher.
And it seemed to me that part of what you were you were talking when you were talking about the limitations of simply propositional truth is that if it were true that you could know things simply by propositions and mastering a whole set of propositions.
So we wouldn't need a character in a teacher. We just need truth.
Someone could be deeply immoral, but have the right propositions.
Yeah. And I guess we acknowledge that you can learn certain theological propositions from someone who's not a believer, but can you learn Christian discipleship from any end really from someone who isn't.
Is that is that a legitimate connection with the kind of things you're talking about?
Is that me going off on one?
No, that's not at all.
One of the things that Palanis says is that we all knowing how we come to know is in relation to like a disciple to a master.
So in the sciences, you come to know something by watching someone closely and in ways that a form a formula isn't going to get you there.
So you're watching not only what someone is doing, but how they are doing it as well.
So character, for example, is massively important.
You know, how does a scientist treat their treat the objects that they are that they are studying or relate to other scientists within that community?
And then Palanis would also kind of say that there are certain assumptions that we bring to our knowing, which are just as valuable and important.
And that is a basic set of beliefs that we give our commitment to.
So for us as Christians, that's the role of tradition and thinking scripture, scripture and role of tradition and Christians, brothers and sisters coming together.
What what are some of the boundaries and the assumptions that are legitimate in our coming to know something but aren't fully articulable?
You can't articulate all of them in explicit ways.
And character would be one of those things.
You can't you can't always put your finger on what it is that makes someone a good teacher, as it were.
But as you watch and see the way in which their character unfolds and watch the ways in which they come to know something and teach you, that is just as meaningful as the the product, as it were.
The sentences they write. Yeah.
As I've listened to you talk, I cannot but think of conversations I've had with biblical studies students,
some of whom want to have a proper concern for hermeneutical method with scripture,
but become so focused on it that without quite realizing it, they get into a model where they think if I just have the perfect hermeneutical method, all scripture will make sense.
And so I sort of leave scripture to one side and figure out this perfect conceptual framework that will be an absolute guide to this book that I love and care about.
And I constantly want to say you probably know scripture better than you think without a fully articulated hermeneutical method.
You can get down into the details of the text. You probably have pretty good instincts about it.
That seems similar and helpful to the sort of you know more than you know.
And and it's difficult to put in to articulate, to put into words everything that you know when you if it's science or scripture or something like that.
And it's very easy for students get stuck in the I've got the hermeneutical method has to be flawless or there's like why should I open the book at all?
You know, right. Yeah. And that's, you know, thinking about indwelling words and particularly scripture that in a way that's ineffable.
You know, we we all are in different ways when we're reading a particular passage indwelling the word of God being filled by his spirit,
who who then reveals to us truths which you can't you can't get to with a particular formula that they're helpful guidelines, helpful ways in.
But yeah, I think Palanye very much resonates with that.
But he isn't saying that then everything is reduced to some kind of subjectivism or pure kind of experiential experientialism,
because there is someone who is standing behind things, revealing it to us truthfully, which is why our guides, authoritative guides, teachers,
scholars really matter in that they're bringing us deeper into the truth or or the truth of the text, because the author is not dead.
And that's, you know, I found that really that was one of the pieces that actually really helped me to think about that question of how can different people say
this is true and have very different draw very different conclusions on on particular issues.
So just expand that. Well, how did he help you?
Sorry. How did he help you?
Well, I think partly it's through it's through that subsidiary focal integration, that thing that with the particulars.
So you've got the subsidiaries, you know, the riding the bike, the clues that you're kind of that integrates and then focally.
So they integrate focally and then you're riding the bike.
So it's this is part, I think, of the the how to say it.
I already, as I'm saying this, I can hear all the objections to what I'm saying, which is I'm not saying that that there is no such thing as truth
or that there isn't a standard of truth or that creedal statements aren't important or that that doctrine isn't, you know,
significantly necessary in the in the shaping and formation of our of our lives.
What this is saying is that the the the way in which we come to know what God is saying to us is more than propositional statements.
So scripture isn't just words as we know, you know, that are written down, their spirit breathes words,
but we come to know them as we submit ourselves to clues in scripture by the power of the spirit.
God reveals himself to us and these clues integrate in a way.
So, you know, look at like Luke twenty seven and the disciples on the road to Emmaus and joined by Jesus,
but they don't know it's Jesus and Jesus starts to relate to them.
Everything that had to happen that was necessary for the Savior to die, you know, from from the Old Testament,
kind of going through the prophets and the law and saying, you know, and the disciples still don't get it.
They don't get that is Jesus with them and that Jesus had to die, that that was part of the plan.
It's only but they felt anticipate there was an anticipation in their hearts and their hearts start to burn within them
that they only understand later when they see him breaking bread.
And it's as he's breaking the bread, it's that moment of of indwelling, of kind of coming to to see God is from their memory
and that they're catapulted back to the upper room when they see Jesus breaking the bread.
It's in that moment that they think, no, this is this is Jesus.
Like he had to die. So I think that helped me to see that propositional statements are helpful,
but they don't always generate a healthy kind of knowledge that the to breathe.
Yeah. The aha moment. Aha moment.
And an ongoing. And also some reflection of the of the revealer in the in the hero.
Is that right? So so if I understood what you're saying, there is both.
It's not simply that they are now. I understand that the death and resurrection was necessary.
There's something much more personal about it.
There's something much more I'm in. I'm in the presence of the Lord about it.
And I'm humbled by it. And it seems to me you're that there's a kind of link with what we've often said.
There's been knowing something, knowing a person, knowing a fact, knowing a person.
If all the facts are derived from the great revealer, then to know a fact truly is to know God better and better.
But you can still know facts without really knowing God.
You can you can say that God is great without ever really being humbled.
Yeah. Yeah. You search the scriptures thinking that in them you have life, but you've missed you missed Christ.
And especially to the extent that Polanyi is interested in the integration and the metaphor of the bicycle
and the kind of the kind of whole sold embodied like part of a community knowing,
having those aha moments as part of your relationship with other Christians.
That goes a lot beyond just getting a proposition. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think it also taught me a healthy.
I'm not quite sure how to say this, but in a in a sense that if someone is telling me that they are absolutely certain that something is true and it cannot be otherwise,
I think you could have a healthy questioning around that in in a.
All of our knowledge is is limited. It's finite. We're creatures.
It's we have settled yet provisional understanding of of truth.
And if there are particular people saying this and only this, I think there'd be there'd be a right sense of healthy questioning around what that looks like and how they got there.
Just so we're clear, we're not denigrating propositions. It's just if all a person has as a proposition,
it would be appropriate to say as a Christian, there's something more here.
There's the there's a deeper aha moment waiting for me to two biblical examples that come to mind are first in Psalm 73.
The psalmist begins by saying, surely God's good to Israel, to the pure in heart.
But I was jealous of wicked people who thumb their nose at God and are selfish.
And it's not until he's in the temple participating in ritual worship that has lost all joy for him that he realizes the end of how God's going to judge these people,
which is probably something he knew theoretically.
It just wasn't real to him. And that destroys his jealousy of that kind of selfish lifestyle.
And Peter refusing to eat with Gentiles and Galatians, too.
He hadn't quite had the aha moment about who to eat with in community.
You know, he I'm guessing he probably had pretty good propositions,
but he hadn't had the breakthrough aha moment and he needed a teacher, Paul, to help to help him with that.
And it obviously involves doctrine in that case.
But but having good doctrine will not necessarily always save you.
I was thinking about an example in in John 15, where Jesus says that this is how people will know that you're my disciples if you love one another.
And that that is one of the most profound things any human being could know,
and that somebody else is a follower of Jesus.
And that becomes obvious, not because they are not simply because they're saying, I'd like to tell you about Jesus, who I follow, but because they see the Christian community.
And that seems to me a kind of example that should constantly be informing our church life and constantly being demonstrated in our church life,
which is quite quite clearly not simply, yeah, I know the gospel and I can tell it to you.
Yeah. And then, you know, that that leads on to what we're seeing a lot of at the moment is people coming away from coming away from Jesus himself and from church and kind of deconstructing their faith and saying,
well, you know, if if knowing is all about creating this particular edifice of knowledge that cannot be questioned in any way and is is certain, yet I look at the world and I see the suffering, the evil.
I read the Bible and I see, you know, this Old Testament God who seems just completely vengeful and, you know, wrathful.
And I look at the scriptures and I think how is how are the scriptures reliable in light of different textual variants?
And there isn't room to actually talk about these things.
There's only assertions in terms of this is what you ought to believe to be a Christian.
Then it's it's no wonder that we're seeing, you know, people very tragically and very sadly, you know, start to deconstruct their faith in unhealthy ways.
That then that then leads them to kind of walking away from the church and Jesus himself entirely.
And is that because what they're really doing is exposing inconsistencies between the propositions, which they had slightly misappropriated, slightly got got wrong?
Is it because that's the only kind of foundation they had for how to work out what's true?
And whereas are you saying that if we do if we handle truth more biblically at the same time as transmitting a message, we are growing relationships.
And and those relationships are part of the way in which people feel held and secure.
And because they're secure, they can ask questions about the truth.
And it cycles around. Is that?
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
So there's David Kinnaman, the head of the Barna Group, did some research into why it is that people in their 20s and 30s are starting to deconstruct their faith in an unhealthy way.
And he identified seven different there are seven different factors in that that came up in terms of what the church was like.
And those things like shallow teaching, restrictive, restrictive church communities that there wasn't space to be able to ask questions or even express that, oh, I'm not sure how these things hold together.
And there was a whole range of things that that he looked at and just saw that coupled with that, the biggest questions that people have who are deconstructing their faith center around scripture, reliability, the Old Testament, God, hell and suffering.
And if there isn't room to talk about those four things and you're in a culture which has like a shallow teaching, superficial discipleship and and the other things I can't remember off the top of my head, sadly.
Then that will lead people to to thinking, well, OK, if this is the only model of this is the only way in which I can know something is I have to 100 percent assent to something and know it certainly.
And I can't achieve that level in my own personal discipleship.
Then that means I have to walk away rather than having something modeled to them, which is more like actually as Christians, we still have questions.
You know, I still don't know why certain things happen in the world.
You know, I don't know that. But that doesn't mean that there isn't ample existential and and satisfying intellectual reasons to believe because God is the one who reveals himself to us through through his word
and through the quality of those redeemed relationships and community and through the ability to be able to ask questions and say, actually, is that you know, is that right?
And that not be seen as something that is immediately.
Sorry, for that to be seen as something that is very healthy to do rather than something that is a marker of, ah, you're not quite in, are you?
Because here's here are the things that we believe.
And this is how we say these things. And if we say these things differently or we show any kind of evidence of doubt, then you're obviously not a serious Christian.
You're suspect. Yeah.
So the word certainty has come up several times for the pastors listening in.
If they're talking with members of their church, who are asking really serious questions about Christian are troubled and stuck and not sure what to do.
What sorts of things could pastors say? What questions could they ask?
And what kinds of certainty are healthy for Christians and what can make faith vulnerable and fragile in these tragic ways?
Great questions. I wish I knew. I think my my my.
You know more than you know.
This is this is part of it like where where where some of what you know is difficult to articulate, right?
That's part of how pull on you is helpful. But you you you are already embedded in this question.
And I I'd be willing to bet you know more than you know.
Thanks, Eric. Yeah, I think.
I wonder if partly it is giving people the room to be able to ask questions.
And part of this is us being good listeners and not coming in with a quick, well, this is what the Bible says, therefore, this is what you ought to believe.
But, you know, asking questions like, oh, that, you know, how did you what?
Why is this an important question to you?
Like, where did something happen that to make you ask this question afresh?
Like, have you asked this question before in your in your Christian life?
Is this a new question to you? In what ways does it unsettle you?
Do you think that there is a confident response to this?
Do you think Jesus actually wants to answer your questions?
Do you think there is an answer to your questions, but you're just not there yet?
You know, just asking those kind of questions, because I think then what that leads to is not certainty.
We have confidence, you know, even when, you know, in Luke, you know, I'm writing these things,
you know, the theophilists say that you may know with certainty, you know, the word there is to do with a non leaky ship.
It's it's it's the soundness of the ship that it won't sink.
It's not and it's not this enlightenment kind of baggage that we with which we read certainty.
It doesn't mean that it won't like like a boat, that it won't be tossed about a little bit, but it's not going to sink.
It's the water isn't going to to get in.
We know these things with surety, with confidence.
It's a confident assurance that we have.
And I think addressing some of that as another philosopher who helpfully calls this kind of defective epistemological
defaults that we have these particular assumptions with which we review knowledge and for some people that would be
knowledge is in a modern mindset, completely certain.
That's what it looks like in a postmodern mindset.
It might be well, knowledge is completely experiential.
That is the the type of confident assurance that I need is through experience.
And I think identifying where people are in that on that range, on that spectrum and who we're talking to will help us to then think,
OK, what does confident assurance look like in this situation?
So even a question that is about what what kind of uncertainty are you expressing?
Help me understand the question a bit better before you jump in with an answer.
Let me get to know you and your background, your story and how the question arises for you at this point in your life.
That's a great way of thinking.
I was thinking of another connection going back to the bicycle when you learn how to ride a bike.
You know how wonderful it would be to be a teacher of bike riding.
And you personally, let's say you love road racing and that's just been your thing.
But somebody's never ridden a bike. You put them on a bike and they suddenly discover mountain biking.
You could feel that you were a failed teacher because they hadn't picked it up in the way that you had.
But how foolish would that be? You taught them to ride a bike.
They've gone to explore things that you had no idea of.
And that kind of generosity in, say, a pastor, a teacher, or just even the expectation in a church more group as we discuss things together.
Other people are going to do stuff with what we're learning together that's enriching for everybody, totally different from every everyone else.
And there's a kind of sense of corporate adventure that, you know, that we share knowledge,
but which is going to be land differently for everybody and enable them to go and do different things
and bring different aspects of their relationship with God, different kinds of Christian discipleship,
not only because they have different jobs, but partly because they have different jobs.
They have different questions about life, different things they're going to do with what it is that God is good, to know that God is good.
And a shared sense of a church's corporate adventure is so much healthier and more exciting than me as an individual worried
something doesn't make 100 percent sense.
So I'm going to go off by myself and think about it really obsessively and try to convince myself that way.
How's that going to end? You know, when I taught where I taught in Canada,
sometimes college students would ask some pretty profound questions, have pretty profound doubts about different aspects of Christianity.
And as gently as it could, I would try to say, what would give you closure and resolution on this?
Like, what would convince your mind? And more than once, they would say, I don't know.
I don't even know what certainty would look like in that position.
And that throws doubt back on the doubt in the sense if you don't have a standard for what would give you peace about this.
Yeah, that's interesting, because I was.
You know, Paul is quite happy to say not only learn from Jesus, but learn from me, I think, as a pastor,
you know, whatever you see in me put into practice from from Philippians Hall, I think the pastor, especially maybe a young pastor,
which I once was, but that sense of self-consciousness about being an example.
How liberating to realize you're not an example in absolutely everything.
Everybody doesn't have to be the same kind of everything in the life that you are.
They they they they need the same Lord.
And as they grow in their own sense of submission to his rule, it's actually going to look gloriously different in everybody.
And for a pastor to feel enabling of that and enjoying of that and to grow leadership teams that they're not only differently gifted
because we recognize that God has built diversity and in that kind of way that none of us the same are all different parts of the body,
but then differently, differently enabled, differently oriented,
differently expecting to see differences in the way we're responding to God all around.
And so any church any any church conversation, what potential there is to find out what's it meaning for you to follow the Lord this week?
Because I wouldn't have a clue.
Well, I would have a clue, but I wouldn't know what it looks like in detail.
It seems like part of the pastoral implications of what you're saying is if if you are on the way,
you know some things, but not everything, you still some pretty substantial questions.
Then that means you are in no way a deficient knower or a deficient Christian.
That's at least I'm hitting the target when I say that, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And you don't have to worry, oh, I might be wrong if you find yourself sort of in process, you know, on the way, but not there yet.
Yeah. And someone else, I won't say a name, but someone spoke a bit like this, that you have your knowing,
you then have unknowing and then you have new knowing and all of the ways in which we come to know and continue to live with God kind of goes through that.
It's like it cycles through that, that we have what we know and then we we learn something new or we see something different.
And then that means we have to undo some of our knowing and that being part of the healthy structure of of of the mind and of the life in community.
And that leads to new knowing and then so you're knowing, but then something else might happen or something else is revealed to you or God by spirit convicts you of something
or you meet someone completely different who challenges you on a number of issues like, oh, yeah, I need to know some things here.
And that being part of the pattern of our relationship with knowledge, it's not just that I've arrived, this is it.
And you're either on board with this or you're out there in our in our discipleship for all of us as as Christians, as leaders, whatever that looks like.
There will always be knowing, unknowing, new knowing and giving space for that, I think, in our expectations and in our discipleship and our pastoral conversations.
That that that is true for each one of us. There are things that I need to unlearn and there are things that I need to grow in and and learn afresh.
But that doesn't mean that that I then start with a blank slate and I have to get rid of everything.
There are things that I know truly, but not exhaustively.
And they are settled things which I cannot prove, but I guess it's a different conversation.
But that there will be things that I will need to I will need to unlearn.
And that is just as important as learning.
That's why. Why do we think we never need to unlearn something as Christians?
What a strange idea. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Very strange idea. And and again, the sense of.
I just it takes the pressure off a pastor, you know, the fact that they're left out, killed five years ago.
You know, we talk about we want to be and we want to to for people to become lifelong learners.
That that it's really helpful to have it made explicit.
That means not just that you're always adding to your sum of knowledge, but you're always correcting.
And therefore, there may be times you have to say the way I put this last week wasn't right.
And some of the questions that people brought to me after the sermon or after the Bible study have made me realize I wasn't right.
Not least in the implication that I communicated to some people that even intending to.
I've had to learn again different ways of saying this, better ways of saying it, saying something slightly different.
To to to to see that if that healthy Christian is supposed to look like that rather than having the right answers all the time is liberating.
I tell students in Old Testament classes, there can be something really healthy and wonderful.
But when you have to stand up and preach and you are forced to say, I understand this, this and this about this difficult Old Testament book,
I don't understand this, this and this. I'm going to do the best I can here.
That can be a wonderful way to feed your congregation on a Sunday morning.
Students sometimes feel nervous with that, but there's no way around it.
Can I close with one final question for both of you?
I know a pressing pastoral problem frequently is helping people experience deep assurance of the forgiveness of sins.
A sense of unforgiveness, failure. God is disappointed with me.
That can be very deep in a Christian's heart. Does anything from this discussion help pastoral experientially
how people can enter into the assurance of total, complete, absolute, utter forgiveness of sins?
Because oftentimes when Christians struggle with this, they have the right propositions, they have the right.
It's not faulty doctrine. Sometimes it might be, but frequently it isn't.
Hmm. I've got one thought on that, which is when somebody,
you know, James has confessed his sins to one another, all kinds of dangers in that.
But if I'm willing for you to know me as someone who sins in an ongoing way and you don't pull away from me,
but you, as it were, put your arm around me, pray with me and say, yeah, that's the kind of person I recognize myself as.
That is communicating something. I'm learning something about forgiveness through my experience of your non-rejection.
Indeed, you're joining me in the battle, perhaps, if you pray for me.
And that teaches me more truth about how God receives me, I think.
That would be my... It becomes non-theoretical then. Yeah. I experience it.
I know what it is to be forgiven because of the way you respond to me, which is a practical, actual joy of being your friend.
Yeah. Yeah. And that, I think, is linked to the thing that came to my mind was just the importance of an external word,
that it is someone else who is listening and speaking words of forgiveness if it isn't a personal relationship in which there has been sin.
But more broadly, it's the importance of God's word breaking through our particular intellectual paradigms or whatever they are,
or our caskets of certainty in which, you know, you can only be forgiven as so far as you can understand what you have done.
Sin is insanity. And it is God's word breaking in by the power of his spirit who gives us the ability to confess.
And he is the one, the external word, who is able to then forgive us as we receive that.
And as we humble ourselves before him and before others, that we are then able to have that confident assurance because it de-centers ourselves.
If we are the pinnacle in the seat of all knowledge, we'll never receive that word because there'll always be a wall around us.
And because God is real and he is speaking to us, he is the only one because knowing works very differently to particular kind of paradigms and ways of knowing.
That is why it's so essential because if knowing did look like knowing is in a box, God can never break in.
If knowing is this knowing, unknowing, new knowing, that means that I'm making myself vulnerable
and there is room for an external word to communicate and to contact me and to reach me in the deepest pits of my life because I'm not alone.
That I don't activate or authenticate God does.
I'm always very moved in Psalm 130 and it's in the context of forgiveness and it says,
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits in his word, I hope, more than watch one for the morning, more than watch one for the morning,
for God to speak that prophetic word in a way that stills the storm.
And he's waiting.
And from other things he says in the psalm, the psalmist has all the right doctrine.
He's still waiting for the word and he's still waiting for the morning.
And he's absolutely certain, there's that word again, but by the end of the psalm, it's still nighttime.
It's not morning yet.
So there's that knowing, unknowing.
The patience, the humility, the waiting.
That's profound.
Kristy, thank you so much for joining us today.
If people are interested in this, is there some more reading you could recommend if people want to pursue these things further?
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for asking.
There's a very short book by Michael Plany called The Tastic Dimension.
It's only 80 pages long.
That kind of highlights some of the key things that we've been talking about.
I have a book called More Truth.
It's very popular level, accessible, but that goes into some of these questions around our personal discipleship
and how do we know that Jesus is the truth, the way, you know, the way, the truth and the life.
And Estimique has a short book called Longing to Know as well.
So, I mean, this is all kind of that some of the things you'll read and you'll think that is very usefully provocative.
And that will help hopefully just create more questions, hopefully in conversations with people.
Wonderful. Wonderful.
Thank you for being here with us.
Thank you to everyone online for joining us.
God bless you all.