Mystical Theology Needs Liberation Epistemology

“Knowledge” When One Conscious Being Encounters Another

But the problem of imaginary filler is compounded by an order of magnitude when the “object” is a conscious subject who has free will to choose different responses in their interactions. When free will can intervene, a potential instigator can never construct a theory that can accurately predict the consequences of their push. Risks of adverse consequences become much harder to minimize. And fundamentally, when we push on other persons against their will, we violate their personal agency. We attempt to commandeer them for our own use instead of inviting them into mutually voluntary cooperation. Because this transgresses their human dignity, the human spirit naturally pushes back. So there are often negative unintended consequences to pushing people, even when our aims are quite good. 

Because of all this, there are serious ethical and practical problems with doing experiments on human subjects. Generally a good way to acquire deeper knowledge of another person is to invite them to speak for themselves, though even this has its limits, as some people may lie or lack self-awareness. Rather than pushing on a person to see how they react, we can invite them, without physical or psychological coercion, into cooperative activities. And while it is true that a person who pushes on other people without remorse may need equal and opposite force to stop their violations of the dignity of others, given the continuing limits on certainty (is this really the person who committed a crime, were they truly free in their actions, what prospects do they have for reform?), forceful interventions even against violence need to be approached with caution.

It is futile to push God, assuming the truth of the basic Christian narrative. He won’t strike back or withdraw from us, even if we slap Him or crucify Him. He won’t draw closer to us if we tug on a rosary as if yanking on His chain for attention. The only interactions with God we truly can have are appreciation and cooperation. Our attempts to objectify Him or destroy Him are nothing but illusions. So we can’t experiment on our theory of God; the only way we can know more about Him is to keep taking in more sensory input or shared truthful information.

Which is not to say that our theory of God does not have consequences. We may not be able to use God Himself, but we can use our theory of God to push on other things. We may use our theory of God in constructing our theories to predict the chain reactions of pushing on subjects and objects—if I throw my body from a pinnacle, will God’s angels save me from the force of gravity? We may use communication of our theory of God to try to control the reactions of other people—obey my commands or God will punish you with eternal fire. The consequences of what we do with our theory of God may be far-reaching and serious indeed.

Taking Action in the Cloud of Unknowing

When we realize that our use of theories has substantial consequences, and realize how little of the reality of the world around us we truly know as truth, this can be paralyzing. How can I use anything, not truly knowing the full impact of that use? There are two ways of resolving this dilemma: minimize our use of things to that which is necessary for a healthy life, or try to acquire more certainty about more things. Let’s call the first path asceticism, and the second path dominion epistemology.

Dominion epistemology looks for shortcuts to acquiring knowledge and filling in the gaps of uncertainty. Intellectual authority is the natural place to turn: someone else already gathered the data, molded it into a theory with their imaginary filler, then validated the theory and wrote about it, so I can skip all those steps, take their prior construct, and keep building onto it. This can work pretty well in the objective scientific realm where theories can be validated by experiments. As long as the author is being truthful about their data and their experiments, we can rely on their knowledge as a foundation for building more.

The problem with intellectual authority when it comes to human subjects, and especially to God, is that we can’t positively validate the theories with experiments. So all we can really take from prior authors is a recounting of their observations and their imaginary fillers. The accuracy of the imaginary filler remains in the cloud of unknowing. Without assurance of the solidity of this foundation of knowledge about other persons or God, we can’t conscientiously exercise dominion over them.

Authoritarian epistemology is not content with these limits on dominion. It declares that certain authors are reliable by virtue of who they are, since their theories can’t be validated by experiment. Perhaps it is an office that vests an author with presumed reliability, or posthumus acclaim. Some go so far as to claim that God Himself is the real author, and the human is just a scribe faithfully recounting His oracle. In any case, authoritarian epistemology pushes past the real problems of proof in order to justify broader dominion over the world.

Sometimes the libido dominandi is so strong among a “school” of thinkers that they slip from authoritarian epistemology into totalitarian epistemology. Authoritarian epistemology takes approved authors as a given source of truth, but is open to new constructions on top of these foundations, and perhaps even some corrections of prior notions of “truth,” but only if new information directly and clearly contradicts the prior “knowledge.” Totalitarian epistemology says that no idea is valid unless it has already been expressed by an approved author. It does not allow the imagination to make new constructions. It condemns and may even punish those people who challenge “truths” in the totalitarian cage of approved “knowledge.”

Totalitarian epistemology is a constricting and destructive way of thinking that cannot possibly arrive at truth about God and humans. Authoritarian epistemology, on the other hand, is an ironically inefficient way of arriving at truth about God and humans—ironic because it trades efficiency in truth-seeking for efficiency in dominion. Approved authors may alight upon certain truths despite being unable to experimentally validate them, but they inevitably use inaccurate imaginative fillers as well. The presumption of accuracy based on the identity of the author makes it difficult to correct these inaccuracies as more information comes to light. The more sanction there is against contradicting these authors—the more the school of thought slides toward totalitarian epistemology—the harder it becomes to course-correct.