NOTES ON LOVING TO KNOW- ESTHER LIGHTCAP MEEK.

Vijai John

Loving to Know- Covenant Epistemology, by Esther Lightcap Meek

Hardcover: 540 pages
Publisher: Wipf and Stock (June 1, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1498213243
ISBN-13: 978-1498213240

NOTES:

[VJ Comments: Esther Lightcap Meek points out that most of our thinking around knowledge, how we
know what we know, and the process of coming to know, is based on a flawed and destructive premise
set in motion by Cartesian thinking. She points out how this has permeated our lives, adversely affected
relationships, communities, science, the arts and education. Her extensive study of scholars, mystics,
scientists, psychologists, theologians, philosophers, classical writers, and not least the Bible, has led to
the development of Covenant Epistemology. The book is heavy with concepts, excerpts and explanations,
but is accessible and ultimately rewarding and personally satisfying. At 540 pages it is a daunting read,
and one can get lost in the woods. My condensation of the book to 24 pages is an attempt to systematize
the narrative but has the distinct disadvantage of depriving the work of its grand scale and progressively
revealed, luminous clarity. But this is as much my way of processing through the book, taking several
months to read, in between flights at airports, as it has to do with creating a framework to arrange her
concepts in a systemic manner.]

INTRODUCTION

• “Knowing begins with longing”- Esther Lightcap Meek.

• “Truth is revealed to the knower and the knower opens up to truth. It must take its time. The
knower cannot understand truth as if it were an object to uncover.”- Annie Dillard (my
paraphrase)
• “Truth is personal - it doesn't reject objectivity but rejects objectivism in knowing. It doesn't
reduce truth to knowing facts. Personal knowing, by contrast, is the kind of knowing that is
knowing by one person of another.”- Lesslie Newbiggin (my paraphrase)
• “Truth is relational- to know something is to have a living relationship with it influencing and
being influenced by it. Truth descends from Troth (Pledge). It is covenantal. To know is enter into
a troth with the other, and to be vulnerable (to be known as well as to know), and therefore
enter into a bond not of logic alone but of friendship. This doesn't negate reasoned justification
or data collection, but is an essential to prevent their quasi-successful but damaging divorce
from personal context.”- Parker Palmer (my paraphrase)

COVENANT EPISTEMOLOGY, POLANYIAN EPISTEMOLOGY AND CONTRASTING VIEWS

Covenant Epistemology is based on Michael Polanyi's "subsidiary-focal" paradigm. It resolves many long-
standing dilemmas in epistemology: between correspondence and coherence approaches to truth;
between realism vs antirealism debates; between foundationalist and non-foundationalist
epistemologies. Polanyi is not a foundationalist, but is an unfliching realist- an unheard of combination,
because his work is not familiar to professional practitioners.

Correspondence theory of truth says the truthfulness of a claim must correspond to reality. Coherence
theory says we cannot determine this correspondence, so the truthfulness of a claim must be consistent
with other truth claims we consider to be true.

Foundationalism is a proposal about the nature of knowledge- that we must have knowledge of 2 kinds-
1, of an all-important foundation of self-evidently certain claims; and 2, of other claims that can be
derived from thus foundation.

Generally, foundationalists are also correspondence theorists. They also generally argue that one must
both to be epistemic realists. Epistemic realism says that knowledge is knowledge of objective reality,
rather than a mental or social construct or convention.

Subsidiary-Focal Integration: All knowing is the profoundly human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a
pattern that we then submit to as a token of reality. Polanyi called this act of finding such clues to find a
pattern to take as a token of reality 'integration'. When we identify the pattern, it becomes focal: we
focus on it. The clues become subsidiary to the focal pattern.

All acts of coming to know are integrative and transformative, rather than deductive and linear.

A key to understanding a person is knowing what he or she longs for.

Foundationalism, by pointing to the false ideal of explicit knowledge, privileges the focal, and blinds us
to the ever-present, ever palpable, ever unspecified subsidiary awareness which alone allows us to
sustain knowledge. This is why knowledge is not deductive or linear. If we have connected the dots to
form a pattern, any clues which come up later serve to enhance the pattern, not overturn it completely
unless there is a real reason to believe that the pattern was entirely false- this is extremely unlikely. If
knowledge were merely linear, or explicit, one could argue for such dramatic overturning, but if it forms
a pattern then our process of subsidiary-focal integration only serves to clarify the pattern.

Our very sense of the truth of a claim draws both on unspecifiable clues and also on unspecifiable hints
of future possibilities.

SUBSIDIARIES

Tracing the truth based on clues is not foolproof, but we have the skill to navigate using them. Our lives
are a tapestry of coming to know. These once-disparate clues are of three sorts: (1) the world; (2) the
lived body; and (3) the directions, or normative word. This is just the "perspectival triad" which was
proposed by John Frame.

At Point A, the particulars of the body, world and word make no sense. The Known seems exterior, alien
and opaque to the Knower. But at Point B, the opacity shifts to transparency, and exteriority shifts to a
sense of connection with me, like an internalized familiarity, like second nature.

WORLD: World clues comprise our situation or circumstances that we need to make sense of. The shift
from Point A to Point B impact the world clues. I get a sense of the world when I make that shift. I also
find myself rooted deeply in the world I come to understand. I also get a sense of future manifestations
and new directions in the world. I was reminded of Jesus' disciples in the boat during the storm calling
for Jesus to calm it. Jesus does, and their categories get messed up, and they as 'Who can this be, that
even the wind and the waves obey him?" Changed circumstances could open up new lines of thought
that lead to knowledge.

LIVED BODY: These clues comprise our experiences is using our bodies in some task, like typing on a
keyboard. The body is not merely an object (as the Cartesian approach of divorcing the mind from the
body says), but we are aware of it is a subject- we know of it subsidiarily than focally. The lived
experience is typically not known like a doctor examining it, but by coursding through myriad bodily
experiences. At Point A, we feel some extreriority to our bodies, like when we start to learn how to ride
a bike, or when we say "I'm all thumbs" when attempting to play the guitar. At Point B, we don't focus
on the body- we are in our body knowingly, and our body is knowingly in the world.

DIRECTIONS (THE NORMATIVE WORD): Includes the words of people who guide us, or our historically or
societally shaped worldview, or coach who instructs us, or the methodology which we apply to the task
at hand, or ideals and goals which inspire us. The novice only half understands directions when she
hears them first. Somehow she must indwell them- climb into them, and then having learned the
meaning, can use them knowingly, 'normatively', shapingly. Without the normative, no knowing can
occur. To "notice" means to apply our gaze on some clues, but not others, such as on the foreground
and not the background, for instance. Authoritative guides don't fabricate what is real, and don't teach
us to fabricate what is real. They teach us to see what is there.

Normative clues form the dimension in which Covenantal Epistemology is developed. Covenant is by
nature interpersonal. Normativity presupposes a context of two or more persons relating
interpersonally. Therefore, the Normative Dimension implies a fundamental context: Interpersonhood.

TRIANGULATING: An act of coming to know can originate in any of the above 3 dimensions of body,
world or the normative. I could intuit that something is out of place (body), or I may be forced to adapt
to a new set of circumstances (world), or I may be faced with unknown concepts (normative). I, as the
vector, eventually moves among these dimensions freely in the course of coming to know, in an
unfolding, recurring way. This is the act of "triangulating". Our defective default mode of 'objectivism'
doesn't let us see this interdimensional movement.

Thus ordinary acts of knowing display the dynamics of subsidiary-focal integration, three interlocking
sets of clues, and the knower's unfolding triangulation among them.

Where does knowing start? Empiricists say you start with sense perception. Rationalists say you start
with reason. Theologians say you start with God. Subjectivists say you start (and end) with the self. But
in reality, knowing could begin in any of the three dimensions, and the act of coming to know requires
their plurality and occurs at their intersection.

The Western tradition, which is our defective default, approaches knowing as if knowledge is wholly
focal, and therefore restricted to lucid, articulated statements, and as Marjorie Grene puts it, "pieces of
information immediately present to the mind, and impersonally transferable from one mind to another".

[VJ Comments- Something that comes to my own mind is from a recent presentation from Marvel
Comics in which the character Tony Stark uploads his entire consciousness into a computer, so even
after his body dies, his intellect, passions and pursuits continue through this disembodied
consciousness. Clearly a product of the Western epistemic tradition, which believes that knowing is
simply holding up a mirror to an extant and fully comprehensible reality.]

Polanyian epistemology understands that tacit clues- the subsidiaries- are epistemically foundational.
These may include values, virtues, pre-theoretical commitments (often derided as preconceived
notions), traditions, communities, emotions, etc., which in the defective default, would be considered as
being detrimental to knowledge, but Polanyi shows us is integral to knowledge. Therefore, to Polanyi,
knowing is anticipative through the subsidiaries, not just a still-life reflection of reality.

DICHOTOMIES: The Defective Default presumes that knowing has a dichotomy like a daisy, which has
pairs of petals around the center, with one of the pairs over the other. This tradition holds that one is
dominant over the other, such as reason being dominant over emotion, in which emotion may be
considered to be detrimental to knowledge and reason being supportive of knowledge, or its
practitioners think they have to settle for a less than ideal compromise between these two. Polanyi
shows us that this is a false dichotomy. The realization that we indwell clues subsidiarily creatively
reconnects the pairs that the default divorced- knowledge, fact, science, theory, etc. are contexted and
rooted in and outrun by what we took to be extraneous petals like adventure, passion, emotion, art and
religion. Responsible belief is the epistemic act.

INTERPERSONAL KNOWING: Something about knowing a person, like a close family member, seems to
help us transcend the dichotomy. There is an indeterminacy in truly knowing a person, but still such
knowing is palpable. So knowing is not an individualistic activity, rather it is relational. Covenantal
Epistemology is built on this idea as well as the Polanyian subsidiary-focal integration as its two loci.

CONFLICTS RESOLVED BY COVENANT EPISTEMOLOGY:

(a) Epistemic Naturalism: This is the proposal that reduces all knowing to physical behavior or brain
activity. Cognitive science deals with the idea that 'mental events' are simply brain activity. Pragmatic
behaviorism is the idea that mind and knowledge are determined from human behavior, and therefore
knowledge can be reduced to it. Both Cognitive Science and Pragmatic Behaviorism reject the Cartesian
dualism which dichotomizes mind and body. It does so by rejecting the mind and replacing it with the
body. The best brain studies only deal with the organ, and views it as an object. Polanyi sidesteps the
dichotomy by honoring 'personhood' (from the idea of body knowledge as a subsidiary) while benefiting
from scientific discoveries about the brain.

(b) Modernism and Postmodernism: Modernism emphasizes reason, logic and objectivity.
Postmodernism emphasizes relativism, subjectivism or skepticism. In the metaphor of the daisy,
postmodernism rejects the center of the daisy as impossible. Subsidiary-focal integration acknowledges
the active contribution of the knower, without rejecting the active contribution of the known. It
understands (like the postmodernist) that all knowledge is interpretation, but also that the
interpretation is subsidiary and knowledge is focal. Of course, interpretation could be skewed or biased,
but good interpretation engages the world, it is an indwelt beachhead in the world.

(c) Realism vs Antirealism: Is our cognitive effort the knowledge of an extramental world or is it just our
outlook? This is the summary of the realism vs antirealism debate. Example: Are Copernicus' proposals
merely a summary of data, or are they real? In the Cartesian ideal of certainty, 19th century thinkers
concluded that it is just a summary of data- this position was called Positivism. For Polanyi, the scientist,
this was unacceptable, something which reduced scientific discovery to convenient summaries of data.
For Polanyi, even partial knowedge, being a subsidiary, is justified by its transformative and allusive
qualities for a future focal to be discovered. It isn't confirmation, says Marjorie Grene, but an intimation
of confirmation that testifies to the reality of our findings.

(d) Foundationalism vs Coherentism: Foundationalism posits certain truths as infallible and self-evident,
and any other truth claim must be derived from it. Its weakness is identifying any truths which qualify
universally as foundational. The Coherentist view is that truth claims are understood to be true if they
are mutually consistent, not from any foundational infallibility. Its weakness is being unable to tell if any
set of internally coherent statements is inherently true or false. For Polanyi, our beliefs are indeed
foundational and rooted, but the foundation itself is a subsidiary. The clue base of any act of knowing is
unspecifiable and tacit, not articulated or explicit. It is not certain, it is lived. Polanyi’s alternative to
certainty is neither skepticism nor probability. It is lived confidence that roots us in a world and inspires
us to responsible risk and profession of truth. It exposes the weakness of Coherentism in that while we
do test the relative merit of truth claims by consistency with other such claims, coherentism does not
recognize the fact that we do so working tacitly from subsidiary (foundational) awareness behind the
explicit claims we are considering.

(e) Religion and Science: For Polanyi, commitment is "a manner of disposing ourselves" toward the as-
yet unknown reality. The question of knowing God becomes an accessible question once we realize that
knowing anything, including science, becomes a matter of subsidiary-focal integration, not of absolute
certainty.

INTERPERSONAL RECIPROCITY:

The Knowing event seems to involve a reciprocity between the Knower and the Known. Based on the
Polanyian construal, Covenant Epistemology sees the contours of a person in the Knower, the contours
of a person in the Known, and the contours of an interpersoned relationship in the Knowing:

Knower: While in general all animals possess sophisticated awareness, only humans pursue and embrace
truth responsibly with universal intent, in submission to self-set accreditation and standards; and also
encourages further inquiry into the known, along with a "society of explorers" in community. Polanyian
epistemology reinstates the person into the process of knowing. But this is because only a person (as
opposed to an automaton) has a reality rich enough to combine in a full blend all these aspects of
knowing.

Known: Polanyi said of reality as "that which may manifest itself indeterminately in the future." When a
person makes any discovery (or makes any kind of focal integrations), the achievement possesses an
"ontological aspect," i.e. the knower possesses an an accompanying sense of the possibility of
'Indeterminate Future Manifestations." (the IFM Effect, an acronym coined by Meek). It points us to a
sense of hidden dimensions that we can sense, but not name. This confirms to us as knowers that we
have made contact with reality, connected with the real. It can feel as if the knower's questions are
exploded, not explained. The knower can feel as if he/she is the one being known, that we are being
drawn into a relationship we can't govern or control, and we can feel the grace of the reality's self-
disclosure, that it was not my wizardry, but the entity's generous choice to grant insight. Along with my
questions, I too am changed. When we keep inquiring, we keep knowing- there is reciprocity in knowing
when there is somebody at both ends of the exchange.

Knowing: Knowing is like a dance: overture, response, overture, response- a rhythmic reciprocity of
growing understanding and movement. Our participating in it involves our subsidiarily sensing our own
personhood and in some sense that of the other, and comporting ourselves in such a way as to enhance
these in tandem.

THE KNOWING EVENT AS TRANSFORMATION

Meek draws on the work of James Loder, who wrote the book ‘The Transforming Moment’ about
convictional knowing, existential experiences which the Christian has of God. He builds on Polanyi’s
subsidiary-focal integration, and says we have this integrative dynamism because (1) it taps into our
humanness, (2) it is rooted in human development, and (3) human knowing prototypes, anticipates and
actually is an instance of being graciously accepted by God.

Loder says knowing is a transformative event, and involves a five-step sequence, which he attributes to
all knowing, including scientific, aesthetic and therapeutic knowing:

(1) It begins with conflict in context, which is a rupture in our knowing context. Before it happens
we experienced an equilibrium of coherence and were amiably making sense of things, but
when it happens (through the body, world or normative dimensions), we experience conflict,
prompting us to urgently seek a deeper coherence to restore equilibrium. We cannot know
what we don’t care about- as Meek said in the beginning, knowing begins with longing.
(2) The next step is an interlude for scanning, in which we start to indwell the conflicted situation
with empathy for the problem, to search methodically for clues to resolve the problem. Polanyi
described this as using creative imagination with intuition which gives a sense of increasing
proximity to the solution (a longing for the face of the Other).
(3) Stage 3 is an insight felt with intuitive force, a constructive resolution which reconstitutes the
elements of incoherence (moving parts) and creates a new, more comprehensive context of
meaning.
(4) Stage 4 is a release of energy and repatterning, an aha moment, which releases the energy
bound up in sustaining the conflict. This is the knower’s response of opening up herself or
himself to the resolution. The knower now contemplates, as Polanyi would say, “indeterminate
future manifestations.” Loder says the generative human spirit is the “uninvited guest in every
meaningful knowing event” and the dynamic that shapes them all.
(5) Stage 5 is interpretation, in which the knower relates her/his new vision back to the original
conflict and to gain its acceptance with the general public. Because the knowing event has been
transformative, the knower is passionately compelled to do this.

Loder argues that the “eikonic eclipse”, our defective default that exalts rationalism to the status of a
‘focal’ rather than relegating it to a ‘subsidiary’, is counter-productive to true knowing and humanness.

On Mutuality and Reciprocity: Loder says that true objectivity lies in mutual indwelling of both the
subject and the object, not being separate. The knowing event has a dyadic (an I and a You) as well as a
cooperative aspect, in which the reciprocity is not heavy-handed or controlling. The knower comes to
know himself or herself in the fact of the other. The prevailing paradigm of knowledge as being
impersonal leads us to overlook these personal and interpersonal dimensions.

Abraham Joshua Heschel suggested that unlike the Greeks who learn in order to comprehend, the
Hebrews learn in order to be apprehended- because what transforms us is not a what, but a who.
Teachers don’t teach information, they teach themselves.

JOHN FRAME’S TRIAD OF KNOWING

Covenant Epistemology builds from the above premises and is based on the work of Reformed
theologian, John Frame. His Calvinist antidote to modernism serves to build its foundations. Three
essential Christian tenets to understand prior to delving into this:

1. Creator-creature distinction and its implications: God is ontologically independent, needing no

point of reference beyond himself, transcendent and is self-contained (in three persons, united,
co-eternal and equally ultimate); and the creation is ontologically dependent on God. Because
creation is dependent on him, every molecule or atom is his creation, and speaks of him. This is
termed general revelation. This tenant about act of creation is not referring to the question of
origins in the scientific sense. The latter is a question (Let there be) is prescriptive, not
descriptive. It follows that every second of creation’s existence constitutes God’s ongoing ‘let
there be’-ing, i.e. by virtue of a covenant relationship with him. Created entities have distinctive
characters, the “way they are supposed to be”. This is what I understand as normative, a rule
standard or pattern.
2. God as Covenant Lord: From our understanding of ancient Near Eastern covenants, the language
of Scripture is covenant language, and the Covenant head (the covenant partner who
definitively shapes the covenant) is God himself. God as Covenant Lord is both transcendent and
immanent -intimately present with his creation in what Frame calls covenant solidarity. The
heart of this is knowing God as Lord and being in covenant with him. The goal of knowing God is
friendship. Because God as the covenant head shapes the covenant, the creation’s very
existence is its covenant response, even unintentionally as when the creation doesn’t believe in
him. All human action and knowing is covenant response. The relationship of the creation to
God is unmediated and intimate. Sin is Scripture’s word for covenant rebellion. All of life is
about knowing God. Intimacy, praise, trust and obedience are intentional covenant responses to
him.
3. Humans as two-way representatives: Humans represent God to creation as agents (imago dei)
and also represent creation to God. As imagebearers, we are stewards reflecting God in a
derivative way by caring for and nurturing creation (called the cultural mandate). Human
knowing is stewardly, covenant response. Therefore, all human knowing is profession or
confession, something that integrally requires a stance of belief. This is because our knowing is
derivative, and distinct from God’s divine knowing. It is not appropriate to say that God has the
truth, but that God is truth. Our job as knowers is not to get it right, but to know God intimately
as the truth or ‘in troth’, as Parker Palmer would say.

Frame frames knowing God as covenant Lord a triad: (1) knowing his authority, expressed in his law
(or in the Meekian contrual, the normative word), (2) his control in his works (the world), and (3) in
his presence in ourselves as knowers (the body). This triad evocatively aligns with other triads in
Scripture- prophet (authority), priest (presence) and king (control); the persons in the Trinity- the
Father (as the Law giver, representing authority), the Son (his incarnation bringing him into the
world among us, representing control) and the Holy Spirit (his ministry as God with us, representing
presence). God’s ongoing creative act involves him in all 3 ways: he words interpretively the world
into existence; he thus controls all of it; and he is present with it in sustaining it. Our every epistemic
act involves all three of these dimensions, distinguishable but never separable.

All this has 3 correlativities: (1) Knowing the world is correlative with knowing God (since God is
covenant Lord, there is nothing in the world we cannot now without knowing God- the world reveals
God as authoritatively as Scripture does); (2) Knowing the world is correlative with knowing the self,
as well as with knowing a standard (since knowing involves indwelling the subject and the object
according to standard criterion, we covenantally interpret, whether using good or bad interpretative
frameworks); (3) Knowing God is correlative to knowing oneself (as ontologically dependent beings).

MELDING FRAME AND POLANYI

Polanyi’s proposals help us understand religious terms like faith and commitment. Martin Luther
said at the Diet of Worms, “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise.” Polanyi cites this as expressing the
act of upholding a truth claim by exercising great personal responsibility, yet being simultaneously
compelled by submission to reality. Commitment here is a “manner of disposing ourselves”, our
personal assimilation whereby we press an existing framework into subsidiary service, indwelling it
to extend ourselves in pursuit of the yet-to-be-known. Commitment refers to the clues we indwell
subsidiarily in pursuit of a focal pattern. Faith is just what we do in knowing, an epistemic act
engendered by commitment.

Polanyi paints the picture of a scientist in pursuit of an as-yet-undiscovered reality. He raises Plato’s
awkward Meno Dilemma, which the western tradition has not yet satisfactorily answered. How do
you come to know? We either know something or we don’t. if we do, we don’t need to move
toward knowing it. If we don’t, we cannot move toward knowing it. To Meek, the dilemma only
confirms that there is more to knowing than we are able to articulate- there must be anticipative
knowledge.” Polanyi concludes that the paradigmatic case of the scientific knowledge is the
knowledge of an approaching discovery, where a discoverer is filled with a compelling sense of
responsibility for the pursuit of a hidden truth, which demands his services for revealing it- in other
words, it demands his commitment to a half-understood, but already revealing reality. This makes
sense of how one can look back on how she may have known God even before coming to know God.
When she does come to now God, she may experience surprising recognition and find herself the
one having been known. Catholic mystic Simone Weil said in her essay, ‘Forms of the Implicit Love of
God’, that there must be some kind of love of God going on in people before they come to realize
they are loving God, including in their love of beauty, true friendship and care of neighbor.

Polanyi said all knowing is perspectival. In the Framean triad, one may view truth from the
normative (directions), situational (world) or existential (body) perspectives. We may position
ourselves at the situational and view the normative from there, or view the existential from the
situational. If we retain a sense of what we are viewing from where, we can hold the two together in
subsidiary-focal integration. We can speak of revelation of God from nature, of nature from God, of
God from man, of man from nature, etc. Orienting ourselves in the from-to delineation is the main
thing. Christians often hold to the doctrine of antithesis, which says that humans can’t be indifferent
to God, but are either in submission to or in rebellion against God, so an unbeliever’s stance is
antithetical to a believer’s, and therefore each side considers the other’s opinion as biased. Another,
more optimistic principle held by Christians is that of Common Grace, the implication of which is
that because God is Lord of all, it is impossible for any human in rebellion to fully succeed at
rebelling, lest we should cease to exist (assuming God sustains every atom of reality)! To bring these
two together, God is like a magnetic true north. A compass pointing northward may get pulled in
wrong directions, in rebellion. Part of us points to God (common grace), and part of us doesn’t.

COVENANT

Theologian Mike Williams offers believers a coherent grasp of Scripture in his idea of the covenant
as unfolding relationship, such as the covenant of friendship or marriage (not a mere economic
contract). The Scriptures use this word (berith = covenant) 286 times, where the context is one of
friendship and God’s self-disclosure. These are the components of God’s covenant:

Mutuality: Initiative and Purpose: God initiates it- this initiative is sovereign and gracious (not
earned), and we respond to it. This interplay is the mutuality present in the covenant.

Historical: Yahweh works covenantally through history- the covenant is historical but the past is
retained as the relationship develops.

Promises and Obligations: Promises of loyalty and love, and fulfilment of mutual obligations. God
binds himself in covenant. In the Biblical covenant, love and loyalty precede law and obligation. The
obligatory serves the relational. Covenant relationship is not conditional on the obligation.
Obligation proceeds from and in response to God’s sovereign initiative (grace). The Law doesn’t
create, but nourishes the relationship. A father’s love for a son may be unconditional, but a son’s
flagrant disobedience damages, not nurtures, that relationship. The term Torah means fatherly
instruction, in compliance with which is found security and blessing and shalom. Relationship is the
context of the normative, not vice versa. What motivates God is not desire for law-keeping, but
desire for relationship. The law nurtures this relationship.

Covenant Parties and Mediator: Why should the covenant characterize our dealings with God?
Because, God as triune is already 3 persons in relationship. God’s character is relational. He created
humans uniquely for relationship and to image him in relationship. But he also created all creation
to be bound covenantally to him- the creation account in Genesis (‘Let there be’) shows they are
covenanted into existence. But a feature of covenants is that there is a mediator, responsible to
embody and bring covenantal promises and obligations to fruition. Humans are designated as
agents of God (imagebearers) to care for his creation and to reveal God to creation, to cultivate and
voice its praise of him. As humans rebelled, God himself provided a perfect mediator in Jesus, fully
God, fully in perfect submission to him, not in rebellion, but fully human, the “second Adam”. Since
creation and culture, including human knowing, have been radically bent by rebellion (sin), Jesus’
atonement therefore is central to the renewal of all things (Jesus’ term for it). A human caring for a
rose bush is also responding covenantally to God, and mediating his covenant of creation in
preserving and developing it.

Not Ascent but Descent: The motion or trajectory of Biblical covenant (unlike what most religions say
and many Christians think) is not the first motion of the knower/worshipper ascending to God. It is
God descending to us. He descends to covenant creation into existence, to sustain every atom in
every moment, to dwell among his people, in the Incarnation, and in the eschaton, the last state-
the renewal of all things. The pattern of redemption and the initiative of covenantal relationship is
the descent of God.

Tacit but Palpable: Covenantal bonds are often tacit, but palpable. If something looks amiss at my
neighbor’s house when she is out of town, I check it out. We trade services, care for each other’s
kids. We bind ourselves to faithfulness of a different sort or level, not mediated by law. Friendship is
one of the richest covenants, and rare. Deep friendship is intimate covenant love. Intimacy is a
mutual self-disclosing, resembling the reciprocity of a dance. It is most palpable when a covenant is
broken. Unlike a contract it is difficult to tell when this happens, and can be disputed by one of the
partners. The violation may be subtle but is palpably felt. The relationship, not prescriptive actions,
makes it covenantal.

Covenant Blessing and Covenant Curse: Scripture indicates that construing human-divine dealings
covenantally leads us to expect that keeping the covenant brings shalom, and violating it brings
curse as a consequence. Similarly, human knowing could either bless or curse. Knowing responsibly
brings blessing. Knowing irresponsibly brings a curse. In our interactions with the world too, we can
bless or curse according to how we know.

INTERPERSONHOOD

This section delves into the concept of interpersonhood, a term coined by Meek, based on John
MacMurray’s works. What makes a person? Substantivalism reduces the description of any reality,
including humans, into a substance-attribute statement, like ‘a human is a rational animal’. This is an
impoverished perspective of persons. Just as all knowing is interpersonal, personhood itself is
interpersonal. Even knowledge understood under an impersonal paradigm requires communication
so to be verbally articulated, needing more than one person. To transfer the task of logic from the
analysis of thought to the analysis of language requires recognizing the mutuality of the personal
and its implication, the primacy of action. If language is fundamental to human existence, then the
personal cannot be understood in simply organic categories, i.e. that human is an organism. Rather,
the self is an agent.

Macmurray wrote that we cannot have an egocentric starting point, construing the Self as the ‘Self-
as-Thinker’, of which Descartes’ cogito is typical. From this, no account of the personal is possible.
He argues we should be construing the Self as ‘Self-as-Agent’, or replace ‘I think, therefore I am’,
with ‘I do, therefore I am’- in other words, move the center of gravity from thought to action. Action
by definition is modifying the world with the rational intent to do so. Action is relational and needs
an agent to perform. The agent is necessarily in relation with the Other. The Other in this relation
must be personal. Therefore persons are constituted by their mutual relations to each other. ‘I’ is
only one component of this relationship of mutual interpersonal ‘You and I’.

Interpersonal communication precedes language, as in the case of a newborn needing care and
attention, and is comforted by the presence of a caregiver. The child’s first knowledge is the
recognition of the Other as “the person or agent of the Person in whom we live and move and have
our being.” We are born not fundamentally to an organic existence, but a humanly personal one, as
in the case of a mother and child relationship. We never grow out of being persons in relation. We
don’t go off to live among trees when we grow up, but we join churches, we have families and
friends. The human experience is shared experience, human life is a common life, human behavior is
always in reference to a personal Other. The knowledge of the personal Other is the starting point of
all knowledge, presupposed at every stage of subsequent development, and the absolute
presupposition of all knowledge.

The human child’s first cognition of the Other, not of herself or himself, which comes secondarily, as
foundationally connected to the Other, correlated in mutuality, both subordinated to and
constitutive of the Other. Macmurray links action (both moving and thinking are part of this) to the
baby’s knowledge of the personal Other. To move is to modify the Other, and to know/think is to
apprehend the Other. But he says the thinking is constitutive and subordinated to the doing. The
theoretical standpoint is constitutive of the practical. In other words, what we think of as knowledge
relates as a negative and constitutive aspect to a larger, positive, personal and interpersoned reality.
The reason why he considers thinking to be negative is that in thinking we retreat from the
apprehension of the Other. This is not negative in the sense that it is bad- but that even though it is
needed and vital, because it constitutes a withdrawal to our own thoughts, it is less real. What is
real is activity in contact with the Other- touch over imagined vision. In other words, to move from
the personal to the impersonal is depreciative, negative, not positive, it is de-personalization. We
should not start with the impersonal, and then personalizing or personifying. The impersonal
presupposes the personal, and never the other way around. Even so, in thinking, the ‘I’ can never
depersonalize itself. The science itself cannot account for the scientist. Therefore, the theoretical
standpoint should never be taken to be the original, it should be understood as being constituted
within the personal.

[VJ Comments: My own question at this point: Is thinking truly one-dimensional in a Christian view?
Isn’t the Other an active participant? I think I understand what Macmurray is driving at here, but will
keep this thought warm until it is answered.]

Macmurray says whether God exists is not the question we should be asking, rather it is ‘Is what
exists personal?’ The answer is yes, based on 3 axioms: (1) We live in and belong in the world, and
we ourselves are personal, and the world that contains us must be construed to be personal. An
impersonal world cannot contain the personal. (2) In an impersonal conception of the world,
everything “happens”, they are never “done”. There is no meaning to action in such a world- a
scientific place has no place for the scientist, and would be an unreal imaginary world, in which we
ourselves would cease to exist. A world without persons is not the real world. (3) “I” and “You” are
correlative. In action the existence of the self and the Other in practical relation are given. The rule
governing the process with which I seek to determine the character of the Other is this: I must see
to determine myself and the Other reciprocally by means of the same categories. Thus, the Other is
agent as well, and so personal. The world is one action, and its impersonal aspect is the negative,
subordinated aspect. To conceive the world in this way is to conceive it as the act of God, and
ourselves as created agents.

[VJ Comments: These axioms seem to me to be the same- we ascribe meaning to actions. A geologist
looking at a piece of rock is not just recording data. The recording is subordinated to a meaningful
act, that of creative and anticipative discovery which has meaning only in a personal world]
Polanyi (a scientist), says Meek, may agree with Macmurray on all but one point- that scientific
practice- even the theoretical exercise- involves the personal as much as the baby’s awareness of
the Other. For Macmurray, action cannot be fact because action involves intention, and what is
intended is always future. Polanyi says that which confirms we have made contact with reality is the
intimation of unspecifiable future prospects. This means that knowing on the Polanyian account has
the same open-endedness to the future as action does for Murray.

Overlaying Polanyi and Macmurray with the Framean triad, one may say that what humans do is
only what servants (creatures, imagebearers, stewards) “do”. In other words, “knowing”, as
stewardship, doesn’t simply “happen”, but is “done” coram Deo (in God’s presence). Knowing
intimates the presence of God.

MARTIN BUBER’S “I AND THOU” AND “THE PRESENT”

Meek introduces early 20th Century intellectual, Martin Buber, whose influential book, “I and Thou”
discussed similar concepts to Macmurray. He said a human orients to the world in 1 of 2 ways at a
time, “I-It” and “I-You”. In the “I-It” way, we relate to the world objectively, as to “something”. In “I-
It”, the subject “I” is the ego, which “experiences” the world. An experience is something that the
subject “I” has internally, subjectively. It distances the object “It” from “I”. In the “I-You” mode of
existence, “I” don’t experience “You”, but encounter it. In the encounter, I behold, confront and
commune with it. In the encounter, “You” and “I” are present to one another in an enduring
present; and each acts on the other. The action is self-giving. Each says “You” to the other. All actual
life, says Buber, is encounter. In “I-It”, “I” says “this is how I am”. In “I-You”, “I” says, “I am”. For
Jewish (as Buber was) or Christian believers, the resonance of “I-You” with God’s name “Yahweh” (I
am) cannot be missed. Mike Williams says when God reveals his name to his people he was not
making a dispassionate metaphysical statement, but is saying, “I am the One who is present to you,
and there for you.” Buber’s translator and student, Walter Kauffman, said, “The only possible
relationship with God is to address him and be addressed by him, here and now (or Buber says, in
the present). For [Buber], the Hebrew name of God… means he is present… he is there… he is here.”
Buber asserts that in calling God Father, Jesus teaches his disciples to do the same, evoking “I-You”.

Buber links the experience of the present, and of being present, together in the “I-You” encounter.
He says the actual and fulfilled present exists only in encounter. Only as You becomes present,
presence comes into being. By contrast, “I-It” only has a past. Buber says in the “I-You”, “You” fills
not only time, but also space. He fills the firmament. There is a timelessness and a transcendence.
So the “I-You” involves, being there, or being “at home”. Also, he says, “The You encounters me by
grace- it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole
being, it is my essential deed.”

In addition to this, Buber concludes like Macmurray does, that to be human is to stand in relation to
a You. This suggests that we are both persons and also in need of full-fledged personhood. It takes a
You to bring us into full personhood. Buber says this occurs over time through relationships.

Buber says that the I-You encounter can occur in any involvement with the world, such as with
nature. There is nothing I “must not see” in order to see. I do not turn away from the ordinary to see
the extraordinary. How mistaken to think we must turn away from the world to encounter God, he
says. But he says it is not that the world merely is God, only that we encounter the You where and
when we are, in this space and time. It is just a different manner of relating to what is there, and is
neither mystical nor beyond our reach.in fact it centers our being, the orientation closes to where
we are. The I-You encounter brings existential change, transformation. In this the “I” has come to a
maturity of self-awareness, at home with itself, and can confront the world, stand its ground in the
encounter, while consenting to the being of the Other.

Meek emphasizes that this framework for covenant epistemology, combining insights from Polanyi,
Frame, Macmurray, Williams and Buber so far, is not meant to uphold a pantheistic view. She says
one cannot espouse a pantheism to affirm the creative richness and mystery of reality created by an
infinitely rich God, a reality so rich that its richness reveals God.

Buber adds a helpful insight- The I-You encounter is not expected to last, rather it advances a
developing relationship of overture and response (I-It, I-You, I-It, I-You…). But we are expected to
bring the I of I-You into all our I-Its, so when we encounter the You, we say with the newness of
anticipation, “So it’s You”.

[VJ Comments: This section reminds me of Annie Dillard’s comments on Mountains Beyond
Mountains, Tracy Kidder’s book on Dr. Paul Farmer: “[It] unfolds with the force of gathering
revelation”. Something about truth, revealed in fiction or a life narrative has this sense.]

Meek adds that all this has implications for how we learn. We learn in community, so serious study
should not be an insular, solitary practice, but instead like that of the Rabbinic tradition. “Make thee
a master, get thee a companion and a judge,” says Pirke Aboth, the sayings of the fathers. Both a
master guide as well as companion learners are needed- these are our ‘covenant friends’.

RETURN TO LODER

Meek returns to James Loder. She had previously discussed several of his insights, including the 5
stages of knowing (Conflict in Context; Scanning; Insight Felt with Intuitive Force; Release;
Interpretation). Loder adds another (higher level) layer of 4 items which he designates as existential
experiences that a person has of the Holy Spirit: the Knowing Event, Four Dimensions of Humanness;
Convictional Knowing; and Human Development. The first 5 categories (stages of knowing) detailed
the Knowing Event, the first item of this higher layer. The other 3 items are below:

Four Dimensions of Humanness: These exist prototypically in us from birth, but full-fledged four-
dimensionality is something to be developed, therefore it is possible to be human and not-yet-fully-
human. Also, remarkably, Loder says to be fully human, one needs both an experience of the void,
as well as an experience of the Holy. Dimension 1 is embodiment in a composed environment (Loder
calls this the world, but it includes our situatedness in it- the lived world). Dimension 2 is the Self.
Loder says it is common for humans to live in these first 2 dimensions. This two-dimensionality
reflects our common everyday activities, school, job, family, fun, career success and so. These are
weak in comparison to the third dimension. Dimension 3 is the possibility of annihilation, the
potential and inevitable absence of one’s being- “the void”, the threat of non-being, the implicit aim
of conflict, absence, loneliness, death, near-death experiences, crises of faith, mid-life crises and
many other factors beyond our control. The void is implicit the moment the lived world is ruptured
and the process of transformational knowing begins. It initiates the struggle to know, and not
necessarily evil in itself, but that which evil, in our bentness, is sometimes the only possible way to
bring us to understand. Dimension 4 is the Holy. The earlier 5 stages of the Knowing Event can be
juxtaposed against these 4 dimensions (‘Conflict in Context’ takes place in the lived world and self-
as-ego; ‘Scanning’ in the void; Insight and Release and Interpretation in the Holy). The Holy is the
reason why we don’t give up living in the face of the void. On the verge of the chasm of the void, we
experience the gracious reversal of its undertow. The Holy is the manifest Presence of being-itself
transformed and restoring human being as it recomposes the world in the course of
transformational knowing, like the self, anchored on the Rock. This includes the conversion
experience but is not limited to it- every act of coming to know is a grappling with the void and
embracing the Holy.

Convictional Knowing: The Holy Spirit, in gracious complementarity with the human spirit, often
takes knowing events (they are his medium) and transforms the transforming into convictional
knowing events. This is only possible through the redeeming knowledge of Christ, but other
transforming events are proximate forms and participate sacramentally insofar as they are visible
forms of that invisible and infinite truth. Loder says that at the central of a knowing event is a
nonrational intrusion of a convincing insight. The knowing event is a prototype of knowing God. This
transformative knowledge of Christ is experienced repeated in the Eucharist, which may take the
following corresponding steps to the stages of knowing: (1) I am in the world (conflict in context), (2)
I need rescue from sin and death (scanning), (3) Jesus plunges in and undoes the Void with his
fullness (insight), and (4) I respond and enjoy communion with him (release and interpretation).
Loder adds that this convictional knowing is not what is envisioned in Eastern religions- for one, the
end result is the communion of two persons, not one- the consummate Christian experience is God
with us, not God is us. Second, Loder shows how Jesus’ walk with his unnamed disciples on the
Emmaus Road and breaking the bread illustrates the convictional knowing event on all four
dimensions of humanness, and centers it firmly on the Eucharist.

Human Development (or, The Face of the Other): Loder challenges typical accounts of human
development, in which only the first two dimensions of humanness (the lived world and the self) are
considered, which he says is damagingly false, and needs to consider the void and the Holy. Without
these, it suffers from a loss of Face, and hence its denial of person-centeredness. Loder’s account
showcases the face of the Other. He typifies this in the example of a child, in which (1) the infant
responds to the presence of a Face with a smile (context), then senses the absence of the Face
(conflict), throughout life, experiences the primal longing for the Face that will not go away
(scanning), recenters the personality in the Face of the Other (insight and release), and the ego is
miraculously transformed into a self that gives love (interpretation). Loder also says that in the
process of human development, there is danger on every side- on one side, abandonment, or a
lecherous or some other sort of gaze that induces shame, and on the other side, development into
idolatry, in which the person tries to make the other person into the missing face of God. In our
bentness, anything can go wrong and it takes time to recover and heal. Some may become
unbelievers. But when healing comes, it takes the form that Loder describes. The Aaronic
benediction reflects this: “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face to shine upon
you and give you peace; The Lord lift his countenance upon and be gracious to you.”

THE TRANSFORMATIONAL LOGIC OF THE COVENANT DRAMA OF REDEMPTION

Loder says that he would like to see someone explore transformational logic as the key to Biblical
narrative, not just in the cases of individual or communal transformation, as with the men on
Emmaus Road, or Paul on his way to Damascus, or Thomas, but the way we tell the whole story as
Yahweh’s redemptive relationship with his people. In Reformed circles, this takes the narrative of
Creation (context), Fall (conflict and scanning), Redemption (insight and release), Restoration or
consummation (interpretation) and Mission (my addition- this may be part of interpretation). This
pattern is evident throughout the Bible, typified in the Exodus narrative as the Israelites cross the
Red Sea and the Egyptians face the void in terror, and Yahweh frees his people in such a way that
they actually have a choice to respond to him in love- giving a prototype of what central redemptive
act in Christ would look like. Again, Christians speak of the time between Christ’s first and second as
the “already and not yet”, that is, the void, longing, and beginning of transformation. People have
said in jest, “It’s turtles all the way down” of cosmogony. What Meeks says here is, “It’s relationship
all the way down- and all the way along.”

A SENSE OF PERSONAL BEAUTY AND THE I-YOU ENCOUNTER

A sense of personal beauty is a kind of self-knowledge, arising from a successful knowing event,
available to all human beings- both as humans in relationship and especially for those who have
been redemptively known by God. It comes in the generous, self-giving gaze of another person.
Loder explicitly links beauty with the experience of convictional knowing. This is God’s gift, a quality
of completeness, a sense of no lack. Knowing brings beauty out of chaos. Also, as the person is
constituted in the gaze of the other, the person takes on “the character of being”. This must be what
the woman at well in Samaria experienced, in the face of Jesus. It was the noticing regard, not the
naming of her sins, which caught her attention. [VJ Comments: And, I think, for Martha’s sister,
Mary, the tax collector Levi, Zacchaeus, Peter and others who were called by Jesus.]

John and Staci Eldredge argue that every little girl asks a haunting question, “Am I lovely?”. From her
father in particular, for the sake of her lifetime wholeness, she needs an affirmative response. But
this sense of personal beauty is needed by all humans, and it is never too late to re-center a life
through an I-You encounter. Simone Weil asserts that in our human acts of creative attention we
image God the Creator.

SCHNARCH’S DIFFERENTIATION AND RIESMAN’S AUTONOMOUS PERSON

Psychologist David Schnarch talks about ‘differentiation’, a process of maintaining ourselves in close
interpersonal relationship. It involves grinding off our rough edges through the normal abrasions of
long-term intimate relationships. The well-differentiated person has the ability to stay in connection
without being consumed by the other person, allowing each to function more independently and
interdependently. It means going forward with one’s own self-development while being concerned
about the other’s well-being. It moves forward through holding on to one’s self of self in intense,
emotional relationships. Schnarch alludes to a mysterious spiritual element in this, asking, “What is
this trial by fire is the integrity-building path of differentiation?” People whose identity is
inappropriately dependent upon their relationship don’t facilitate the development of those they
love.

Sociologist David Riesman described the distinguishable social characters he termed “inner-directed“
and “other-directed”. Inner-directed societies tend to acquire early in life an internalized set of
goals, to which they conform. This happens in transitional (not traditional) societies. In Other-
directed societies, people tend to be sensitized to the expectations and preferences of others, to
which they conform (typically in societies of incipient population decline). Riesman says that though
Other-directed personalities may seem less desirable than Inner-directed ones, they are both
flawed. The former may have internalized something as much as the latter, who may really be other-
directed. Independence is really “in-dependence”. In place of these categories, Riesman advocates
the autonomous person, for whom autonomy is a heightened self-consciousness which enables
her/him to orient with respect to the connectedness while transcending it (similar to Schnarch’s
idea of differentiation), or in other words, to operate in a social order without being part of it.

PERICHORESIS

Paradoxes: Trinitarian theologians, especially John Zizioulas and Colin Gunton, link ‘interpersonal
personhood’ with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. They say that the Trinity is best understood as
persons on relation, and if we profess the Trinity as the ultimate reality, then humans as beings-in-
communion reflect this original. Gunton aspires to bring cultural and societal healing with his
proposed cosmic dynamism of perichoresis (relationship of the three persons of the Trinity). To that
end he attempts to diagnose and address the paradoxes of modernity. He is concerned about how
the human and non-human worlds are alienated from each other, resulting in crises like
environmental damage. Other paradoxes involve how modernity can be committed to freedom, but
ends in totalitarianism, how we could have so much leisure and yet live at a frantic pace, and how at
the end of a tradition committed to truth and meaning can come to lose both. In his book ‘The One,
The Three and The Many’, he asks, what is reality fundamentally? Ancient Greeks considered three
alternatives. Is it fundamentally a monism (as Parmenides said) - everything reduces to one
immaterial, rational thing? Or is it ultimately a pluralism (as Heraclitus said)- nothing reduces to
anything, so you have a plurality of ultimate things? Or is reality dual (Plato said), with one part
being one (immaterial and unchanging), and the other many (material and changing)?

Platonic Thought: Some (not all) early Christian theologians (such as Augustine) allowed Plato to
shape their Christianity, rather than the other way around. As a result, the God of Scripture was
aligned with Plato’s one, and material creation was deemed to be the many (plural) and accorded
little intrinsic value. The problem of the one and the many is that if you overdo one the other
disappears. In the modern era, people rejected the one. Because of the early (and defective)
Christian alignment of the one with the transcendent God, they rejected him as the one. Gunton
says much modern social and political thought can be understood as the revolt of the many against
the one, or humanity against divinity, leading to the Enlightenment ascendancy of human reason as
the uniter of all. But this meant the human mind was now the immanent one, set against the
materiality of many, both bodies and the world. Post-modern thought then inevitably rejected all
forms of the one, immanent and transcendent, in order to recover the many, in the process
presuming to celebrate the individual but reducing all individuals to relatively valueless similitude.
The ideal of the human mind has both endured and self-destructed, leading to paradoxes- the ideal
of certainty in objective knowledge devolving into suspicion, freedom disappearing into collectivism
and bondage.

Trinitarian Perichoresis: Gunton makes a distinction between individualism and particularity. The
former is non-relational, self-centered and mistaken today for freedom. The latter calls for a
fundamental understanding of reality, in which particulars receive their fullest expression only in a
freeing space accorded in their relation to one another. Without the relationship, there is no freeing
space, and no opportunity for the particulars to be expressed. Gunton contends that this dynamic is
what we have in the Trinity. In creation God the Father spoke creation into existence, but creation is
also Christological (involving Christ) and pneumatological (involving the Holy Spirit). The Trinity is
characterized by relation without absorption. Their uniqueness is a function of their relatedness.
Since creation comes about and is sustained by the Son and Spirit, with the Father, creation can be
expected to bear the mark of this relational being. The concept that evocatively captures this
mutually constitutive being and diverse working is the Greek word perichoresis (dancing around). In
this dance, Christ is the Logos (word) spoken into time from eternity, and the immanent dynamic of
meaning holding time and space together. The Spirit enables boundary-crossing, the openness of
one to the other, to be shaped by the other. The Spirit also works to maintain, strengthen and
develop particularity, giving freedom in community (not in a collective), as the source of autonomy,
not homogeneity. We live in a perichoretic universe, sustained by gift-giving. The unity of this dance
showcases the particularity of each partner in the dance, distinct and unique yet each inseparably
bound with other (and ultimately all) particulars, whether they are human or non-human. If the
notion of particularity seems strange to us, it is likely due to the exigencies of the translation of
Green into Latin. The Greek Christian Fathers used the word hypostasis to refer to particularity in
the Trinity. The Latin rendered this as substance, misleading us to favor homogeneity over
particularity. Knowledge was taken to be universal in its oneness.

PERICHORETIC KNOWLEDGE

Following Gunton, for knowing to be healthy, it should display this perichoretic dynamism.

Gunton associates foundationalism with modern monism, which devalues the particular and lauds a
homogenous universal certainty. He associates non-foundationalism with postmodern pluralism,
which in seeking to honor particular perspectives, often reduces knowledge to fideism (or that
knowledge depends on faith or revelation only). Both approaches share the same presupposition of
the false dichotomy between the one and the many, and ignoring the relationality between them.
He says we need an account of knowledge that is both universal and objective, while acknowledged
to be the work of fallible human minds. Gunton agrees with Polanyi and confirms the Framean
mission of construing human knowing as a creaturely endeavor. To say p is to say I believe p. A truth
claim is a truth claimed. However, this does not mean privatizing truth. Polanyi develops a helpful
approach- he speaks of holding our beliefs responsibly, with universal intent. We must accept
responsibility for our claims, while at the same time we are also committing ourselves to their truth,
and to the conviction that anyone else in our position would be able to see that they are true. This is
a perichoretic and healing dynamic, allowing for errors to be held as shaping our position rather
than overturning it.

CONTOURS OF COVENENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY

Summing up our understanding so far, Meek offers the following:

1. We in the West have a defective epistemic default that needs reorientation.

2. Knowing is subsidiary-focal integration, and transformative. As such it can be seen to be fraught
with the personed.
3. Knowing has a normative dimension, which is covenantal.
4. Covenant metonymously references an interpersonal relationship, which unfolds dynamically
and is profoundly akin to subsidiary-focal integration.
5. Interpersonhood involves persons as beings-in-communion, I-You encounters, the void-Holy
dynamic, the face of the Other, and perichoresis.
6. The real is metonymously personal. As such it is especially suited to being known by a knowing
that is fraught with the interpersoned.

Meek proceeds to outline Covenant Epistemology in the standard manner in which epistemological
proposals are presented- involving the objects, source, nature and justification of knowledge, even
as such terms betray the defective default in such proposals.

THE OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE: COVENANT REALISM, COVENANT ONTOLOGY

Meek says one of the most important questions regarding knowing is whether in our knowing we
access the real. If the answer is no, then what we are doing is not knowing, and not worth the effort.
Answering yes is epistemic realism, and answering no is epistemic anti-realism. Covenent
Epistemology (CE) is a fresh way to espouse realism. Anti-realists say that our epistemic efforts do
not access an independently existing objective world because our epistemic efforts are always
shaped by our interpretation. Meek says this is a non-sequitur, as simply because our knowing is an
interpretive, embodied, situated, traditioned viewpoint does not mean it does not engage the
world, but that it is precisely due to our view-point-beachhead that we do access the world. Some
anti-realists go even further, arguing for extreme subjectivism (I know only my subjective viewpoint),
relativism (What I take to be true is only relative to my situation), or skepticism (What I “know” isn’t
really knowledge, just opinion). Critical realism, on the other hand, names the active contributions
of the human mind to knowing (following Immanuel Kant’s Critiques), the knower’s hermeneutic
bent, social setting and other qualifications concerning what we can’t really know of what reality in
itself is.

Covenant Realism: CE offers a fresh way to be a realist, having reoriented the dichotomous default
that opposes mind and body, emotion and reason, knowledge and belief, etc.- and therefore, it is
possible to take a stand which doesn’t share the negative outlook of anti-realists or critical realists.
Meek proposes the term ‘Covenant Realism’ (CR), which has the following theses: In our knowing,
we access the real- in fact, the real has transformative primacy in our knowing. Our knowing
relationship with the real displays covenantal features, which by definition pertain in interpersoned
relationship. Thus good knowing practices involve covenantally interpersonal excellence, and is
about mutual transformation than about exclusively information-collecting. The goal if human
exchange with the world is not exhaustive certainty, but dynamic, mutually healing communion.
And finally, reality itself responds favorably to covenantally appropriate overtures (not to criticism,
but to covenant faithfulness). The real is metonymously personal. Meek adds here that great lovers
make great knowers, because CE and CR see the real as one seeks a person.

Covenant Ontology: Everything that exists is covenantally charactered- it has defining features that
we must uncover and live covenantally on the terms of in order to know it and bless it and us in the
process. This is the distinctive implication of a biblical vision of creation. In this we are
fundamentally engaged in love, care, friendship and fidelity. Everything is thus covenantally
constituted, in covenant relationship to its Creator. Yet every real thing is itself and not another
thing- it has its own integral particularity, thanks to the asymmetric perichoresis that reflects the
Holy Trinity. The Real wants to be known, so we discover to our surprise that far from being the
ones coming to know, we are coming to be known. Someone Else besides us is home in the
universe. There is no corner where a recalcitrant knower may hide from this possibility. [VJ
Comment: I recently saw a quote from Bertrand Russell, himself an objectivist: “Mathematics, rightly
viewed, possess not only truth but supreme beauty”. The truth that we may not hide from the
possibility of an encounter with the interpersoned Real is brought home quite clearly]. Goethe’s
hailing the rosebush – “So! It’s You!”- indicates this penchant of the real to gracious self-disclosure.
On a biblical schema, that transcendent Other, the Somebody Else is Yahweh, the triune God, who
when we have sought him, we find he has been seeking us.

THE NATURE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

(a) All knowing is fraught with the interpersoned; (b) Knowing is varyingly personal- it comes in 2
forms: one is explicitly interpersonal (I-You), and the other is metonymously personal (I-It)- and
by calling knowing ‘varyingly personal’, Meek voices her creative synthesis of the 2 forms within
an unfolding personal relationship studded with I-You transformative moments over a knowing
trajectory constituted by faithful covenant over time; (c) All knowing is coming to know, a being
on its way to truth; and along the way, knowing may be anticipative and implicit, hinting
unspecifiably of more, surprising and deeper dimensions; (d) Knowing is covenantally
constituted, with active and shaping overtures that invite reciprocally shaping self-disclosure of
the real in response; (e) Knowing is perichoretically rhythmical- more than one pair is
perichoretically balanced: relationality and particularity, love and covenant, knower and known,
overture and response; (f) Knowing is Subsidiary-Focal transformative integration; (g) Knowing
transforms both the knower and known.
(b) In addition to the above characteristics of knowing, this understanding of knowledge has some
corollaries: (a) Knowing is knowing God, knowing the world and knowing the Self; (b) All
knowing is ‘knowing with’; (c) Human knowing is creaturely knowing (not divine knowing)- it
involves no ultimate or absolute anchor of certainty, but nevertheless (actually not
nevertheless, but because of this) is capable of responsible stewardship of the real.
(c) CE challenges the default epistemic challenges raised in the beginning of the book which deals in
false dichotomies between: (a) Knowledge and Belief (Belief just is the epistemic act, the risky,
responsible, inspired act of coming to know); (b) Knowledge and Opinion (To the extend that a
distinction between responsible and irresponsible knowing is envisioned, we are called to
stewardly, wholistically expert, knowing for shalom; (c) Fact and Value (Apart from value, the
responsible, interpretive commitments of the knower, and the knower’s noticing which assigns
value to certain clues, there are no facts; (d) Fact and Interpretation (interpretation unlocks the
real, and is the same as facts); (e) Reason and Faith (CE recasts reason to involve integrally
responsible submission to the not-yet-fully-known, i.e. faith); (f) Reason and Emotion: Not all
emotion is discussed, but implied emption like longing and desire constitutively drive effort to
know, and is intertwined in CE with reason; (g) Science and Art (Where the knowing event is
recognized to be transformative, scientific acts of discovery and artistic acts of creativity are in
substance the same). Meek similarly reconciles other seeming opposites- such as Male and
Female (while insisting on their particularity and complementing natures); Objective and
Subjective; Theory and Practice; Appearance and Reality; Mind and Body, and many others.
THE SOURCE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

Typical introductions to epistemology list the sources to knowledge as being reason

(rationalism), sense perception (empiricism), and sometimes utility (pragmatism). Testimony is
often dismissed (following Kant’s Sapere Aude!- Dare to be wise) as being a source in childhood,
meant to be superseded in adulthood. CE redefines both the rational and the empirical in a
manner profoundly consonant with testimony.

Proximate Sources: CE acknowledges a rough correspondence among the 3 dimensions of

sources- the world, the lived body and the normative (also corresponding to rationalism,
empiricism and testimony). But CE integrates and transforms each of these to be a different sort
of collaborative enterprise. CE understands these dimensions to be not ultimate or surefire
sources, but only proximate sources, sources only as we relate to them subsidiarily. They are not
sufficient conditions or efficient causes, for knowing is never linear or guaranteed. We steward
what we have, humbly groping in the direction of the longed-for integration. But when it comes,
it comes from the “outside”. Meek says this leads her to suggest there are 2 different sort of
sources, which she terms Candidacy and the Intrusion of the Other.

Candidacy: Knowledge is not to be derived from sources, so much as graciously disclosed in

response to covenantal candidacy, the effort to put ourselves “in the way of knowing”, by
creatively indwelling clues. Meek says that we may “invite the real” through covenantal
behavior, which she expounds on later. The question is not, where do I get knowledge, but how
do I comport myself to invite it? Source is an ill-fitted word to express transformative knowing.

The Intrusion of the Other: There is something in the dynamism of knowing to which the word
source applies radically, but it isn’t the knower. The transformative aspect of knowing leaves us
with the palpable sense that the we did not instigate the knowing event except in a stewardly
way, and the source was the Other. Loder says of this, ”the self is caught in the act of knowing.”
He further aphorizes, “the truth always exceeds the proof.” Meek says we need not despair that
we cannot define a source the way we do for other epistemological proposals. There is
something we can do- it takes the form of covenantal self-binding, i.e. we can invite the real.
When we do, the Real discloses itself lavishly.

THE JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

Justification of knowledge concerns the ways it is appropriate that we accredit a claim as

knowledge. In the contemporary analytic tradition, this area has been the all-encompassing
pursuit of epistemologists, and reflects the contexting of knowledge as explanation (rather than
as discovery), complete with statements and proofs, and implies that personal allegiance to
truth claims be withheld pending thorough justification. CE challenges these assumptions by
reconstruing what knowledge is. Philosophers explore correspondence, coherence and
pragmatic responses. Respectively, justification requires evidential support, coherence with
other knowledge claims and workability. Other approaches also broach factors such as internal
conviction, virtue and social support. CE doesn’t reject these, but qualifies them. CE, following
Polanyian epistemology, and consonant with the Christian profession that human knowers are
creatures, is fallibilist. Fallibilism affirms that what we at one point consider true may be
possibly false or in need of a revision- for CE, this is nota shameful label, but courage enacted.
This doesn’t leave us in a void of skepticism either, but we are unleashed responsibly to engage
the world.

Allegiance and Obligation are Prior to and Throughout Justification: Rather than knowing in
order to love, we love in order to know. Obedience, especially in the anticipative dark before the
dawn, precedes understanding, not vice versa. Allegiance is sacrosanct and incorrigible (even if
it is to be revised continually in our apprehension of the real). Where knowledge is credo prior
to commitment, there is no knowledge to be had. This makes CE not simply a viable alternative,
but the only alternative.

Discovery is Prior to Justification: The transformative moment of insight is the thing without
which prefatory clues not only do not make sense but cannot even be designated as clues.
Discovery must in some respect be prior to justification. Justification is what Polanyi called
destructive analysis- a reflective return (from communion) to focus on that which, only when we
rely on it, prompts the integrative transformation. [VJ Comments: Meek comments on this
throughout the book, but I brought it in only here- while Polanyi considers knowing to take place
along the 3 dimensions he mentioned, he talks about a temporary inward focus to take stock,
which justifies knowing after it has taken place.] Destructive Analysis, in bike riding, would me
memorizing the physics formula that describes how we keep balance on the bike.

Contact with Reality: With the onset of a transformative apprehension of a pattern, there are 2
indicators that affirm we have made contact with reality: (1) the first is retrospective- we sense
the profundity of the pattern, and our collection of clues are shown to be superseded in depth
by this pattern, so the insight reshapes our questions; (2) the second is anticipative or
prospective- discovery is accompanies by and attested to by the intimation of the possibility of a
wide range of as yet unspecifiable prospects. Both the above 2 criteria (retrospective and
prospective) are informally gauged. At its root, justification is informal.

INVITING THE REAL (OR, AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ETIQUETTE)

Meek savors this last chapter of the book and says this is the one she has longed to write, and is
at once a meditation and a catechesis to form aspiring covenantal knowers. [VJ Comment: I’m
reminded of what the songwriter Sandra McCracken once said, “All relationships begin with an
invitation.” Whether it is the moment of conversion, or the birth (and adoption by parents,
whether biological or not) of a new child, a covenant of marriage, or friendship, I think this is
true. An invitation seeks a response]. Meek’s inference that drives inviting the real is as follows:
the real behaves as a person, treat it personally and hospitably, it will respond personally. She
arranges the practices of invitation into five loci: Desire, Composure, Comportment, Strategy
and Culmination.
Desire: This encompasses the practices of longing and love. Longing (the passive component of
desire) calls for the other to give. Love (the active component) gives oneself for the sake of the
other. Christianity affirms that love is prior to knowing, as Jesus showed the apostle Thomas. [VJ
Comments: This has long been my interpretation of 1 Corinthians, from chapter 8 (knowledge
puffs up, but love builds up) through chapter 13-14 (then we shall know even as we are fully
known).] On longing, Simone Weil says, “…the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know whether
anything real answers its love… The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The most
important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying… The danger is not lest the soul should
doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not
hungry.” Passive longing is nevertheless anticipative and invites the real. Weil goes on to argue
that the right use of studies is to develop the kind of attention that invites God, as the psalmist
says in Psalm 63, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I see you; my soul thirsts for you; my body
longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” This is no mere longing for
information, but for communion and transformation. On loving, Meek says Love presumes that
the real is lovely, or loveable or worth loving. Love invites the real because the opposite,
indifference, invites falsehood.

Composure: A key inviter of the real is ourselves- more specifically our selves having become
most fully ourselves, composed as ourselves [VJ Comment: As CS Lewis talked about in ‘Till We
Have Faces’]. This takes the following forms: (a) Before God: to be fully ourselves we must have
been composed, re-centered radically in the loving gaze of the Other. For those who have been
known by God, we know the Other is in fact God. Many church fathers have said this, but there
are a few things that suggest that knowing God invites the real- the first is obvious and
important: to know God is to invite him. Humbly, with the realization that I have gotten it wrong
about him, I yet receive his assurance that I may feel confident about his continual advent- or in
other words, repentance and forgiveness. Second, he self-discloses. Mike Williams says we only
have to get a few Christian doctrines right, not very many to be a Christian. It is not about our
ascent, but God’s descent. Third, the biblical drama of redemption will inexorably lead to the
renewal of all things, for which we receive a down payment- the Holy Spirit leads us to be better
knowers as better lovers- love of neighbor and love of God stand together. Meek also broaches
other points which I have not included here, partly as they are repeated elsewhere. (b) Being at
Home (Presence): This is a kind of self-awareness or self-knowledge, a subsidiary composure as
when one sits at the feet of a teacher, a embodied and lived. (c) Differentiation, as Schnarch
defined it; (d) Personal Beauty: Also, as mentioned earlier, this is a kind of self-knowing which
forms in the loving gaze of the Other; (e) Embodiment, as mentioned earlier; (f) Openness (a
willingness, in the knowing, to be known in turn); Embracing Pain: Affliction is a given, especially
for those who desire to live authentically, and is closely linked to openness. Pain enables us to
better discover ourselves and can involve a shift from Cartesian disembodiment to being in the
body.

Comportment: Similar to virtue, comportment identifies qualities of relating to the yet to be

known. This locus of practices includes: (a) Pledge, Covenant: Covenant includes keeping one’s
promises, making a pledge is covenanting- an illocutionary act. Both making and sustaining the
pledge is comportment that is central to love. (b) Trust: We both long for the Other and feel
threatened by the Other. George Steiner describes us as monads haunted by communion.
Inviting the real requires a fundamental act of trust, of risk and our openness to it- or as the
medievals said, “Credo ut Intelligam- I believe in order to understand”; (c) Obedience: To know
the truth we must follow it with our lives; (d) Humility: David Dark links humility with genuine
readiness to know, and involves acknowledging our fears and weaknesses; (e) Patience: Where
knowing is an unfolding trajectory, and our epistemic task is construed as inviting the real, the
knower must sustain the pledge over a lengthy period of time; (f) Saying “You” and Listening:
Meek talks at length about this- one of her illustrations is about working at a mission in a small
town, where she listened as people told stories of their brokenness, and the Spirit opened their
eyes to find Christ.

Strategy: Includes: (a) Being in the Way of Knowing: Meek talks about the fact that before she
had read Parker Palmer’s ‘The Courage to Teach’, she knew to expect great reward. Being in the
way of knowing is planting oneself where you expect something to show up and expect joyous
insight; (b) Noticing Regard: Meek talked earlier about how Jesus had noticing regard for the
woman at the well. She says one of the most provocative sentences in Scripture is when Jesus
asks her, “Will you give me a drink?” By asking this he puts himself and her on the same level,
inviting her initiative in response to his own need. Simone Weil calls this ‘creative attention’,
that which gives our attention to what does not exist, or what is invisible. Noticing regard
confers dignity. (c) Active Listening: Listening well, and asking well-placed and well-attuned
questions; (d) Listening beyond the categories: [VJ Comment: I’m not sure I understand this well,
but it involves listening to what we are not seeing, to a world of unrealized possibility]. In David
Dark’s words, “it serves to invest the details of the everyday with cosmic significance while
awakening its audience to the presence of marginalizing forces otherwise unnamed and
unchallenged.”; (e) Indwelling: The culminating strategy to invite the real, it refers to the way
the lived body extends itself through the skilled use of tools- the tool user both indwells and
interiorizes the tools. It also refers to the inherent unspecifiability of tacit knowledge, such that
apprentice or student must indwell master or teacher to come away with knowledge that is
more than the teacher (or the student) is able to specify. Loder says, “Knowing anything is to
indwell it and reconstruct it in one’s own terms without losing the essence of what is being
indwelt.” (f) Connected Knowing: Blythe Clinchy, a developmental psychologist, says separate
knowing is a doubting procedure, while connected knowing is a believing one, which looks to
understand, not challenge. It looks for what is “right” even in positions that seem initially wrong.
It uses the self to understand the other. (g) Seeing vs Looking: Looking is disembodied and
passive, across a space, non-interactive, objective scrutiny. Seeing is active, interactive and
interpretive. It is embodied, a phenomenon of love, reveling. Meek asks, “Do you think that God
looks at us, or sees us? Would you rather be seen by him or looked at by him?” She suggests
another line of thought, about how humans mistreat each other, for instance the way in which
some men have treated women, or when Jesus described it as a “looking at a woman to lust
after her.” When we understand intimacy as seeing rather than looking, this would mean some
physical and sexual acts are the opposite of intimacy, the perpetrators of alienation. To see is to
delight and to co-delight with God. David Bentley Hart writes, “Only in loving creation’s beauty-
only in seeing that creation is beauty- does one apprehend what creation is.”
Consummation: Meeks asks how the consummation of knowledge could invite the real. She
answers this question by saying that it can, if knowing is cast as a relationship. Friendship and
Communion thus count as strategies to invite the real. Friendship is the consummation of
knowing; or we may describe the culmination of relational knowing as communion. It is, we may
say, more than “the logic” of gift and reception- it is the gift and reception, over an open-ended
period of time. It is the ongoing freshness of the Other. It is knowing and being known, the fully
actualized self-differentiated, perichoretic reflection of the Trinity. Meek gives one last practice
to invite the real: the Eucharist. Meek says it is both the concrete paradigm of knowing as
described by CE, and the most strategic primer of the pump of human knowing. For the Eucharist
enacts a microcosm of the creation-fall-redemption-restoration drama of biblical redemption,
and of Christ the Holy entering the void to deliver us to the gracious possibility of new being, re-
centering us to self-giving love. He invites us to the table to eat what he provides, and he gives
us himself. To partake, we must eat and drink (embodied intimacy and mutual indwelling). The
appropriate posture is to kneel to eat and drink (signifying the honored role of the giver, your
need for his generosity, and your readiness for the gift). The celebratory ritual forms us in the
posture. It also shapes us for the communion of knowing.

KNOWING FOR SHALOM

This section is Meek’s afterword. Among the insights she notes here is the fact that her
introduction to CE is simply a beginning, and we should think of ourselves as being pilgrims on
the way, or as Newbiggin put it, we are in the middle of the story. To say that knowing is ‘being-
on-the-way-to-knowing’ is to accredit the journey as itself epistemic. In our journeying, we are
already living life on terms of the yet-to-be-known. Echoing with one of the cries of the
Reformation, semper reformanda, Meek coins the maxim ‘semper transformanda’- always
transforming.

Meek says knowing should bring healing to both the knower and the known. It should bless,
bring shalom, rather than curse.

There is something more important than understanding CE and knowing well- it is to be known
by God. She calls this the descent of God- the real comes unbidden, with fecundity,
unrequested, unanticipated, unmerited, by grace.

Meek quotes from the Book of Common Prayer’s Prayer of General Thanksgiving, to talk about
being unfeignedly thankful to God:

“… give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and
that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to
thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days…”

Enacting thankfulness opens our eyes to see what is going on under our nose. It is being in the
way of knowing. This too is the descent of God. The point of celebration of the Eucharist is that
God himself comes and gives himself. All worship is in response to this.