Dialogue

“You touched on one of the first concepts I teach my students in high school theology; in epistemology (the study of knowledge) there are certain things that we cannot know on our own and we require assistance from someone or something greater than we are. In order to receive that knowledge (not "discover" that knowledge) we have to have Faith that that knowledge exists and that there is someone who Loves us enough to share that knowledge with us.”

When I teach upperclassmen, I start with a unit on anthropology and epistemology. Some theology teachers get upset that I “waste” my time and do not focus on catechesis or apologetics more…that I start my class with philosophy. Of course, I quote the Baltimore Catechism and respond by reminding my critics that at first we are called “to know Him, to Love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” The primary directive is “to know” Him. The difficulty is that Catholic theology understands the process of acquiring knowledge in a particular way that, at first glance, isolates us from the rest of the thinking world. But I teach anthropology and epistemology to emphasize the highly rational perspective Catholic theology has on how we can come to know anything. It is this perspective that Truly pushes our students to be “more” than what they could be on their own.

Much of the world, especially in education, focuses on the kind of knowledge that we can control. It is knowledge gained through personal observation and comprehension. Most of the modern sciences help us to “know” things based on observations made with the human senses. We not have physics or biology or Netflix or tacos or any of the Beautiful comforts of this world unless we, as humans, observe, study, and reproduce these ideas. This sort of knowledge, I teach my classes, is called episteme. But there are some things that are too complex or too transcendent for us to observe, study, and reproduce on our own.

All Souls Catholic Church in Englewood, Colorado. The Altar is the ultimate "dialogue" between what we can know and what God can Reveal. It is no mistake that dialogue and a meal often accompany each other.

             In order “to know” Transcendent Truths like Love, Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, itself, we need to rely on a different form of knowledge. This is a kind of knowledge that can only be given to us, not directly observed. Aristotle uses the term phronesis to refer to knowledge gained through encounter. It is knowledge that one cannot know on their own; they rely on one who is smarter than they are to reveal it to them. Ultimately, I want my student to understand that Catholic theology claims that both of these types of knowledge are essential for us to know God, and perhaps more importantly, the relationship or dialogue between these two types of knowledge is where God most fully encounters us.

We use Reason and Free Will to observe the world around us. We can choose to look at the world as just material and something that can be fully understood by the human intellect, or we can have a certain willingness or openness to the possibility that there are Truths much greater than we can “know” on our own. We can be open to this other form of knowledge, Revelation, and we can begin a sort of dialogue between what we can know and what God Reveals. Christianity is not simply about God telling us Truth and our perfect assent in response. It is also not about us using logic and reason to discover the meaning of life. Christianity is a relationship between what we can know on our own and what God reveals to us. Catholic education, then, really should be about creating space for dialogue between episteme and phronesis… if we are serious about helping our students to become more, Magis, then as teachers we need to facilitate that dialogue between what we can know on our own and what God can teach us. To close ourselves and our students to either one is a disservice and an injustice to our students.