Knowledge and God

Toward the end of No Country for Old Men (2007), Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones at his finest) drives through a desolate West Texas landscape to visit his cousin Ellis. Ellis, himself a former lawman, is now confined to a wheelchair from a gunshot wound received in the line of duty. He lives in a squalid trailer alone, save for an army of feral cats.

But it’s Sheriff Bell who seems troubled by life. As the two men share a cup of (possibly week-old) coffee, Bell confesses that he feels “overmatched.” A deeply (if drily) compassionate man, Bell senses that he is not equipped to deal with the new kind of savagery emerging around him. But instead of recounting the recent violence he has witnessed, he suddenly begins to speak of the absence of God: 

“I always figured when I got older, God would sort of come into my life somehow. He didn’t. I don’t blame him. If I was him, I’d have the same opinion of me that he does.”

Bell might know that God exists, but at the same time he feels that he cannot know Him. This scene came to my mind shortly after I finished Matthew Benton’s recent contribution to religious epistemology, Knowledge and God. Although couched in the language and methods of analytical philosophy, Benton’s work deals with the most existentially vital question imaginable: what can it mean to “know” a God who seems to hide himself from us? 

Western epistemology has long focused on propositions — statements that can be either true or false. Knowledge is understood as correctly judging the truth value of propositions in a way that is justified or warranted. Since I believe the proposition “the US women’s rugby team won a medal in the 2024 Olympics,” and since this belief is justified by credible eyewitness testimony, it can be said that I know that this statement is true. Similarly, debates in religious epistemology have traditionally focused on whether, and how, belief in a proposition like “God exists” could be justified. 

Over the last two decades or so, however, analytic philosophy has begun to consider kinds of knowledge that are not obviously reducible to propositions. Benton discusses “qualitative knowledge,” a sort of knowledge that “requires special experiential conditions” and that cannot be (easily) boiled down into justified belief about the truth value of various propositions. Qualitative knowledge is knowing “what something is like.” It’s the kind of knowledge that people are referring to when they say things like, “I know Boston.” Such a statement would be misleading if one had no first-hand experience of Boston; merely knowing facts about the city would not suffice.

Benton spends the bulk of the book exploring a kind of knowledge he calls “interpersonal.” It’s the idea we are trying to express in everyday phrases like, “I actually know that guy.” Clearly, such phrases mean something different than sentences like, “I know a lot of facts about him,” or even, “I have a great deal of first-hand experience of him.” To cite an example from the book, a competent spy could amass a great deal of knowledge, from third-hand sources or even from direct observation, about a target individual without actually knowing him in the relevant sense.

For Benton, what creates interpersonal knowledge are second-personal interactions. One individual knows another when he treats that other, and is treated in return, as a “you,” i.e., as a subject or a center of consciousness. On this account, the spy knows his quarry interpersonally only when the two have somehow interacted reciprocally in an “I — you” format. 

Benton would say such an interaction creates interpersonal knowledge even if the spy is thoroughly dishonest about his background and intentions. Interpersonal knowledge is not dependent on knowing any particular set of propositions about the other person. The target individual would therefore know the spy while knowing very little about him. Benton goes on to formulate a principle called Opacity, which stipulates that it is possible to interpersonally know an individual without believing that one actually knows that individual, at least not  “under the relevant guise.” Rather delightfully, he uses the illustration of Mary Jane and Spiderman. Mary Jane knows Spiderman interpersonally, precisely because she knows Peter Parker. This is true even though she does not believe that she knows Spiderman, and may not even believe that the web-slinging superhero exists at all [1].

Analogously, Benton explores the possibility of “fragmented” knowledge of God: roughly, that we can interpersonally know God without knowing or even believing that we enjoy such knowledge. Interpersonal knowledge involves treating God second-personally (through worship and prayer, for example) and, in return, being treated second-personally by God. But God being invisible and intangible, it’s usually unclear if and when the latter is taking place. As Benton puts it, “Recognizing and embracing that we … don’t always know that we [interpersonally know] someone, can at least temper the expectation that religious conviction must always involve a feeling of ‘firm and certain knowledge.’” 

The final section of the book explores the notion of “interpersonal faith.” Benton analyzes this kind of faith as “relational virtue,” i.e., a disposition to act in ways that make one an “excellent participant” in a relationship. Specifically, interpersonal faith is a disposition to act (and feel) in ways that demonstrate love for and trust in another person. When the other person in question is God, faith is the disposition to worship, to serve others for the sake of honoring God, and to not allow fear to dominate one’s life since one holds the conviction that God will ultimately bring about a good future. 

The relationship between knowledge and faith is murky. Knowledge, particularly of the interpersonal variety, can certainly strengthen faith. As one comes to know God and experience his forgiveness and love, it becomes easier to love and trust him in return. On the other hand, Benton does not hold that the connection between faith and knowledge (propositional, interpersonal, or otherwise) must necessarily be a strong one. For instance, one can know a great deal about God and yet lack faith in him [2]. Conversely, Benton allows for the possibility that one can love and trust God without feeling that one knows him well or even at all.

Returning to the scene from No Country for Old Men: Sheriff Bell would not claim to know God interpersonally, as much as he would like to. At the same time, this very expression of regret points to some degree of love for God — at the very least, a desire to trust him. 

But can faith be completely divorced from knowledge? Benton does not give a direct answer. A new member of AA might entrust his sobriety (and therefore his life) to a completely unknown Higher Power, but this seems more like an act of desperation than the “dispositional state of love and trust” that defines the book’s notion of faith. “I’m going to try this because nothing else has worked” isn’t necessarily an expression of love or trust, even in their most inchoate forms. At least some knowledge of God — perhaps propositional, and more likely interpersonal — seems necessary for faith, in Benton’s sense.

Even so, one can know things about God, and know God, and even put faith in God — only to find that he still seems hidden or absent. Both faith and knowledge can exist without the believer knowing that he possesses either. Benton elaborates:

“One might be well-related to God in faith, or through knowledge … while struggling with doubt about whether one is so related … or whether one knows God [interpersonally] … Insofar as our cognitive and relational capacities are ones we do not always have an excellent grasp of, we should expect God to feel hidden.”

***

In Knowledge and God, Benton has given us well-crafted analytical tools to think about different varieties of knowledge more precisely. I found his account of interpersonal knowledge persuasive, and his discussion of how one can know God without knowing that one knows him is an important contribution to the problem of divine hiddenness. 

As I progressed through the book, I hoped to find a clear exposition on the relationship between faith and interpersonal knowledge of God. Knowledge and God, however, does not explicitly define this relationship. This is perhaps unsurprising; Benton works in a theistic but not specifically Christian framework, which limits the kinds of resources he can use to those available to all monotheisms. On the other hand, I think Christian theology — and particularly certain ideas that took shape during the Reformation — can help us understand how faith in God relates to our interpersonal knowledge of him.

Let’s start with Philip Melanchthon’s famous dictum in the Loci communes (1521) that “To know Christ is to know his benefits.” In context, Melanchthon is commenting on the kind of knowledge that makes one a Christian. It is not knowledge of Christ’s “natures and the modes of his incarnation,” nor of the “history about him.” Rather, the genuine Christian is one who knows “why Christ put on flesh and was nailed to the cross.” What really matters is an understanding of “the power of sin, law, and grace,” for “from these things Christ is known.” 

What kind(s) of knowledge is Melanchthon talking about here? It seems that “knowing Christ” is in the same neighborhood as Benton’s notion of interpersonal knowledge, only stronger. To know Christ is to regard him, and to be regarded by him, not only as a “you” but as a friend or loved one. For Melanchthon, this kind of interpersonal knowledge of Christ necessarily supposes a knowledge of the “benefits” he offers. In a lecture given a year before the Loci were published, the reformer had elaborated on what it means to know Christ’s benefits: 

“To know Christ … is to embrace his benefits that the Heavenly Father has poured out on the whole earth.” [Emphasis mine] 

The idea of “embracing” here is complex. On the one hand, it implies that more than propositional knowledge about the atonement is in view here [3]. Used in an epistemological context, “embracing” requires a recognition of one’s need or desire for the thing embraced. Drawing from a category described in Knowledge and God, to embrace Christ’s benefits requires qualitative knowledge of one’s own self as in desperate need of God’s gifts. In other words, knowledge of “why Christ put on flesh and was nailed to the cross” extends beyond the realm of theological propositions and into one’s own experiences of shame and alienation from God. 

But Melanchthon’s notion of “embracing” also seems to possess an element that cannot be boiled down to knowledge of any sort. Here “embracing” finds itself in the vicinity of “interpersonal faith,” i.e., a disposition of trust towards another person. But the faith that embraces God’s gift is something more active and decisive than a disposition. Specifically, to embrace Christ’s benefits, and thus to know Christ, requires staking one’s existence — one’s salvation and hopes for eternal happiness — on God’s promise in Christ to justify sinners. Faith moves from the epistemological realm of belief and knowledge into the realm of personal commitment. The person of faith chooses to speak and act on the basis of the promise. 

On this reading, a person comes to interpersonally know God as a friend when she knows first-hand that she is a sinner alienated from God, and stakes her life on God’s promises to justify and forgive her in Christ. There is no set chronological order here. Like Saul of Tarsus, she might experience the glory of God through Christ, and thus come to know him interpersonally in Benton’s sense. But if this knowledge continues (and becomes saving knowledge of God as a friend), she will necessarily recognize herself as a sinner and live in the conviction that God will keep his promise. 

It is entirely possible, and in fact probably inevitable, that this person will experience the hiddenness of God as Benton describes it. In other words, she might know God interpersonally and continue to stake her life and hopes on his promises, while not knowing that she knows God or has faith in him [4]. “Christ was wholly lost,” Martin Luther once wrote about a particularly intense period of mental torment and spiritual tribulation that took place well into his career as a reformer. He felt that God had reneged on the promise and abandoned him to hell. Did Luther lose his trust in God’s promise, and thus his interpersonal knowledge of God, during this dark period?

Not necessarily. Faith is a decision, but perhaps it is finally a decision made for us. In my experience, I simply find myself trusting God to keep his promise in Christ. I stake my claim on God, not as some kind of existentialist hero, but as one hopelessly attracted to another. And this claim remains staked when I’m too exhausted or depressed to think or feel anything. Faith is a choice, a commitment, a decision — but it is also a gift, not of myself. My decision for God is, at root, his decision for me. 

After Sheriff Bell shares his sorrow over God not coming into his life, Ellis replies with a dismissive wave, “You don’t know what he thinks.” At this moment in his life, Bell thinks he knows that God has passed over him in contempt. But Ellis is right. Bell does not know this; instead, to his surprise, he could one day find that he knew God — and that God knew him — all along.