The Limits of Empiricism
I remember exactly where I was when it happened. It was a brisk autumn day on my college campus, and I was frequenting the library like I so often did during my time at Campbellsville University. I love libraries and I think my love for these quiet museums of thought began on this very day. See I had been in quite an internal struggle. I was exhausted from a constant fight inside with this seeming voice – if you would call it that – that seemed to require me to disprove every doubt that had ever entered my mind, my friend’s minds or really the mind of anyone who had ever existed. I felt that unless I was able to completely answer every question in regards to my faith then I would never be able to have peace.
Philosophy was warfare, Psychology a nightmare, History an ominous shadow that seemed to loom over my shoulder. And science. Don’t even get me started about science. All of these studies were phantoms in the night to my shell-shocked soul. I didn’t know what to do. I had just had a life-changing encounter with Jesus just 6 months earlier where He had revealed His Love to me in a way that I couldn’t deny but here I was not far removed from that Divine embrace knee deep and mired in a sludge pit of doubt and despair.
Perhaps you can relate to a struggle like this, maybe your there right now. If you are then in reading this I would imagine that you would expect me to say that on this particular afternoon something dawned on me that instantly cleared away the fog in my heart, brought clarity to my mind and forever lifted my soul out its existential abyss. And in a certain sense – in the truest sense – you would be right.
But while God certainly touched me that day it was a deliverance in a seed form that would take years to germinate into what I needed (Matthew 13:31-32). I wrote a whole book about this process – of how God delivered me from the notion that I had to have everything figured out before I would trust Him to instead learning to find strength from His Presence – which I would really recommend reading if you have a similar struggle.
The True Foundation of Knowledge
And it was on this very day that the seed was planted. And it happened when I had a realization. In the trenches of this inner war, I had been thinking about all of the deep questions and how the different disciplines could or couldn’t answer them. And after much thought on this, I suddenly realized that both rational inquiry and empirical observation would never be able to provide the foundation needed to draw an absolute conclusion. Philosophy – the exercise of rational thought – is limited because one has to know to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers and in our abstract existence it’s very possible¹ that even the brightest thinkers have blind spots. Science – the collected sum of empirical observation – falls prey to not having complete knowledge. All one has to do is study the history of science to find people making claims based off the best evidence they had at the time only to have such paradigms washed away by a new discovery. This is the difficultly with empiricism which is that because mankind is not omniscient, we are always drawing conclusions on incomplete information.
With that in view I was able to see that the only way for humanity to truly know anything would be for the Omniscient God to reveal it to us. And such is the story of the Incarnation. Mankind was lost in his ignorance and blinded by his sin, struck with a desire for something that he couldn't put words to but at the same time unknowingly resisted. Wanting to scratch that existential, moral and spiritual itch but unable to reach the spot that he so yearned to touch. Struck with an inner ache that couldn't be satisfied.
But in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4), when all hope of resolving this woeful state seemed lost, God sent His Son to the earth. And it was this monumental mystery – that God put on flesh (1 Timothy 3:16) – that became the touchpoint by which man could finally relate to God and God to man (Hebrews 4:15). And it was this very descent of the Divine into a fragile human frame that became the foundation by which we were able to trust the Scriptures. For Perfection Himself walked the earth and declared that the Scriptures before Him were unbroken (John 10:35), that the Holy Spirit would both bring to remembrance all that He said (John 14:26²) and that He would guide His disciples into all truth (John 16:12-14³). In other words, the only One who has ever been without fault bore witness to the reliability and Divine Authorship of Scripture.
So, on that crisp October day as I sat underneath the tall oak tree that occupied my college library's front lawn, the sun peaked through the darkened autumn leaves into the very soil of my needy heart. And it was on that day that I made a decision to value revelation above both reason and empirical observation. To value Scripture above both philosophy and science.
The Divine Tour Guide
And I went on my way putting a tremendous amount of focus on the study of God’s Word. And I was content and still am content to do this for the rest of my natural life. Scripture is all we will ever need. But I’m beginning to realize that the Lord sometimes has a different plan for us than we think. Sometimes He calls us to die to something and after we have fully given it over to Him, He then turns and gives it back to us (Mark 10:29-30). And the story of my last 6 years has been just that.
The Lord first gave me back Church History through Ligonier Ministries with the late R.C. Sproul and Robert Godfrey. I wasn’t looking to learn about this but rather stumbled upon the Renewing Your Mind radio program because of a broken iPod and a long commute to work. Hearing Dr. Godfrey teach about the lives of Martin Luther and John Calvin created in me a hunger to search out the lives of the men and women of the faith who have gone before us. It wasn’t my desire to know facts as much as it was to hear the stories of the Gospel torch-bearers from previous ages. Though they mostly came from a time before electricity and running water I felt connected to them, studying them like I would study the legacy of my family tree. Looking for something in them that would tell me something about God, myself and the wonder-filled voyage that is the Christian life.
It was also through Dr. Sproul that God gave me back a love for philosophy. I was more tenuous about this because the enemy had used philosophy to bring about the confusion that I referred to earlier in this chapter. But I decided to trust Dr. Sproul because I saw in him a soundness of mind and a reverence for the Word of God. The Lord used him to completely flip the philosophy of Rene Descartes on its head so that it went from being a source of confusion to instead turning it into a launching pad of the noble pursuit of a faith that while being grounded upon Scripture was able to be explained in a rational way⁴.
In both cases the Holy Spirit used Ligonier as a tour guide (John 16:13) into formerly troubling subjects by giving me the necessary foundational understanding of these disciplines to enable me to go deeper on my own, providing me with the equipment to not only tackle these subjects but that in so doing to see them became sources of personal encouragement. I have written about these subjects in the past and will likely continue writing about them as they are fountains of inspiration⁵ that the Lord has blessed me to drink from.
More recently the Lord gave me back the field of science. Similar to history and philosophy I had avoided the subject of science because it felt daunting and anti-Christian. I was content to simply trust God, to let His Word lead me and to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit in prayer but through a unique turn of events I ended up reading Eric Metaxas’ new book “Is AtheismDead?”
It all started when I found out that Youtube had censored Eric Metaxas for his political views. I had read and thoroughly enjoyed Metaxas’ book about Bonhoeffer and was deeply troubled by what Youtube did. I understood that he had controversial political beliefs – some of which are on issues that I honestly don’t know what to think – but I was vexed by an unwillingness by the Tech giant to tolerate a voice they disagreed with. Don’t get me wrong, Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter have done much good in connecting the world by providing platforms to not only allow regular interaction between people who would have never met before but also have facilitated the spread of knowledge throughout the whole world. Who hasn’t consulted Youtube when changing a car battery or restringing their guitar? And even more so these companies have empowered those who can't afford an expensive education. I have friends who have started successful businesses solely with the knowledge they acquired while watching videos on their phone.
But while I remain appreciative for the good that these companies do, I am troubled by an intolerance that I see in them towards those they don’t agree with ideologically.
And after giving this a fair amount of thought and prayer I decided that the best thing to do in this case was to buy signed copies of all of Eric Metaxas’ books. I did this not because I intended to read them but rather to support a man who I believed to be the victim of an unjust decision. At this particular point in time, it is my conviction that the God-honoring way to live in the midst of a culture that doesn’t seem to value tolerance like it used to is do whatever we can to support those in the Church who are victims of “Cancel Culture” while at the same time not entertaining bitterness in our hearts towards those who did the “cancelling”. I can’t imagine Jesus advocating boycotts or wishing for the destruction of those who seem to be against us. Rather He told us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) and modeled it by forgiving the people who put Him to death⁶ (Luke 23:34).
After buying his books I also signed up for his newsletter and began reading some of the previews that he had made for “Is Atheism Dead?” and was peaked in my interest based on what he was saying about how the new discoveries in science were pointing to God. So much so that when the books finally arrived, I read the first chapter and was so blown away by its content that I jumped headlong into it and ended up devouring the book. I read it in full twice, reading some portions as many as four times.
So now – led again as it seems by the Holy Spirit – I’m venturing into another field where I hope to both discover how God is glorified in science while also understanding how Holy Scripture may integrate with what scientists are finding in our day. And while I remain unconvinced of our ability to draw conclusions based on incomplete knowledge, I am becoming more and more interested in science itself and hope in these following chapters to communicate where it seems to be pointing in our day.
🍂 You always shine through the leaves of my darkened tree oh God. Shine on me again and again. 🍂
¹ And even apparent in the history of philosophy
² The writing of the Gospels
³ The Epistles
⁴ For the story of my initial
struggle with Descartes see the first chapter of my book on finding a God who
is greater than doubt. For the way the
Lord flipped the script on Descartes for me see the post called The Remarkable Implications of Descartes Famous Phrase Cogito Ergo Sum.
⁵ By “inspiration” I mean that
they inspire thought in me, not that they are inspired by God like Scripture is
inspired by God.
⁶ Obviously this is an easy
thing to say but incredibly difficult to practice and something that I fail at
regularly. But even though I’m bad at
it, it still remains that loving our enemies is the Biblical mandate for anyone
who would take their faith in Jesus seriously.
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