"We Know To The Extent That We Love": St. Augustine Goes To The Heart Of Epistemology

Alan: The Western world has become increasingly biased in the direction of valuing -- and over-valuing -- cerebral knowledge and cerebral understanding. 

It is not my purpose in this brief essay to prove that cerebral understanding is inferior to other forms of knowledge -- such as the way "a man" and "a woman" (or any two people for that matter) know one another carnally.

Indeed, when two people "come together in carnal knowledge," the very prospect of cerebral knowledge - were lovers to ponder cerebration in the midst of climactic celebration -- is relatively insignificant against the backdrop of the all-consuming reality that attends the immediacy of sexual knowing.

But my purpose here is not to prove the Augustine's truth, for very little can be proven, particulary in the domain of religious faith. (That's why they call it faith, not knowledge.)

So, without trying to "prove" anything, I want to suggest the real possibility that Augustine's observation may be true; that epistemology may be conditioned by, qualified by, and even ratified by the practical reality of love.

"We KNOW to the extent that we LOVE."

And I would also suggest that we remain "un-knowing" to the extent that we fail to love - whether we fail to love the least of our brothers and sisters, fail to love people of another color, fail to love so-called "infidels," fail to love human failures and "the undeserving," fail to "love our enemies."

It is presumption -- and an unprovable presumption at that -- to believe (or to assert) that ultimate knowledge is truly embodied by dogma, doctrine and conciliar-or-pontifical pronouncements. 

All these word-bound enterprises are indicators -- what the Zen tradition refers to as 'fingers pointing us in the right direction" -- but "the pointing finger" is NOT -- emphatically NOT -- the "thing," the "incarnation," the "enfleshment," the existential Reality that the finger is pointing toward.

For nearly half a century I have marveled at Psalm 34 (reprised by 1 Peter) that we know the Lord through taste, which -- along with our inextricably bound and equally primitive sense of smell -- tells us what is real and good in ways that are completely apart from cerebration, verbal argumentation, and literary formulae (as important as all these things may be). 

Psalm 34:8 ESV 

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

1 Peter 2:3 ESV 

If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

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https://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2020/04/fr-thomas-merton-explains-in-16-words.html