Friday, January 1, 2010

Epistemological Certainty and Prayer

Secular philosophy has offered up various epistemologies that have sought to explain why and how the universe is what it is. Going about the task without a prior knowledge of God and His self-revelation, it is an understatement to assert that they have failed miserably, and culture is now left with the ruins of postmodernism—a not very good set of spectacles to look through at the world. The self-centered, pleasure-seeking, and despairing zombies that now walk the earth is a sufficient attestation to this fact.

"True knowledge is based on the revelation of God. The interpretation of every fact that mankind has discovered, or will discover, in this universe is dependent on this special revelation from God. The reason is simple. Only God has true and exhaustive knowledge of every fact in the universe and, consequently, only he can know the ultimate significance of every fact. This is not only because he knows everything, but because he determined and created every fact. The implication of the biblical view of the creation is that it is a unity within which all the diverse elements relate in some way to all others. They do so in accordance with the sovereign and creative will of God who is the Lord over all. He alone can interpret any given fact in relation to all other facts. The significance of this for prayer, as a response to the revelation of God in his word, should be obvious. If prayer is to be more than a groping in the darkness, it must be enlightened by God's revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. We must know the God to whom we pray, and be in fellowship with him."

- Graeme Goldsworthy, Prayer and the Knowledge of God, ch. 7, pp. 109—110.



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