revelation about revelation

In much of my work over the past few years I have been trying to understand and then explain the 2 kinds of knowledge, eido and gnosis. If you haven't been keeping up, eido knowledge is what we know through our senses. Often this is called "head knowledge." Gnosis on the other hand is knowledge we gain in ways other than through our senses. It is the common notion of "heart knowledge."

The reason this has interested me is because the secular thought leaders starting with Aristotle and continuing on for 2500 years in his tradition see knowledge as primarily, if not exclusively, eido. In other words, our senses are the most trusted source of knowledge.

Yet, the word for knowing in the Bible is more often gnosis. Further, there has been very little discussion among Christian thinkers about gnosis, mainly because Gnosticism is a philosophy that distorts God's view of the material and spiritual world. Nevertheless, gnosis is quite apparently important in the Bible and so, we must take the word seriously.     

While eido knowledge takes precedent in formal secular thinking, it is not offensive for everyone to recognize that sometimes they just know what they know. They cannot prove it through observation but in their gut, they know. They would be comfortable claiming, "I know this in my heart." This may suggest that gnosis knowledge is, in and of itself, not a Biblical only idea. It is a form of knowledge that exists in all human experience.

The challenge becomes how to explain what it is and how we get it. The first question, what is it, is easier to answer. Some call gnosis knowledge intuition, instinct, conscience, or just plain gut. This has especially applied to studies of decision-making.

The second question, where does it come from, is not so simple or clear. There are basically two possibilities. We either generate from within, through internal processes, knowledge we do not get through external sources, or the knowledge is revealed to us supernaturally from a source outside ourselves. Most people favor what psychology has found - that ideas "bubble up" from the sub conscience within us. I recognize revelation is less accepted in secular thinking since human nature is oriented toward self sufficiency. Revelation is more mysterious and for some, too religious.

My understanding is that the bible emphasizes gnosis knowledge over eido and revelation from God as the mechanism by which we get gnosis. The Incarnate Jesus claims He only knows what to do or say based on what God reveals to Him. Jesus tells Peter that 'this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood (human means), but by my Father in heaven." Romans 8 provides the multiple ways the Holy Spirit bears witness to us. Its clear the Holy Spirit is revealing directions to Philip concerning the Ethiopian eunuch. And so on ....

Maybe it does not matter how revelation occurs, just that it does. I generally think about revelation as a transaction, a process by which God hands off to me info. Revelation then is knowledge I don't have but given to me supernaturally at times that I need it.

I was reading Augustine's "the Confessions" recently. He says this, "when we learn things that are not imbibed (taken in) through the senses, but are known directly inside the mind, as they are in themselves, without intervention of the senses, we are collecting by means of our thoughts THOSE THINGS WHICH OUR MEMORY ALREADY HELD, but in a scattered and disorderly way." 

If Augustine has it right, all knowledge we need from God, gnosis, is in our minds somewhere. God has put it there from the beginning. Our focus is not to get more, but to iron out the scattered and disorderly form in which it resides.

This may seem academic and trite to you, but it is extremely freeing to me that I am not at the whim of what God chooses to tell me and when, He has already told me everything. This gives me a whole new perspective on being "scattered brain.

I can ponder that with excitement ....