Knowledge of God as Assimilation and Participation: An Essay on Theological Pedagogy in the Light of Biblical Epistemology (original) (raw)

The doctrine of the Trinity makes any attempt to formulate a Christian epistemology problematic. This is because, from a Trinitarian perspective, God is not a solitary being – set apart from other, lesser beings and communicating knowledge of Himself as one being would to another. Rather, the Triune God is, to quote the apostle Paul, the being in which ―we live and move and have our being‖ (Acts 17:28). 1 The Triune God of grace has come to dwell in the flesh among us, and His Holy Spirit makes us ―participants of the divine nature‖ (2 Pet 1:4). From a Trinitarian perspective, acquiring the knowledge of God necessarily entails cognitive and volitional participation in the life of God. The word that Christians have long used to describe the content, reception, clarification, preservation, and dissemination of this participatory knowledge of God is theologia. In the classical sense, theology is no mere academic discipline. Rather, it refers both to the content of divine knowledge (kno...