‘Knowledge’ is yet another English word where Greek has many words making distinctions we too easily gloss over in English. Two words for ‘knowledge’ I’d like to talk about are EPISTĒMĒ and GNŌSIS.
The simplest way to explain the difference is with an example: You can study all about swimming, the hydrodynamics of water, the physiology of swimming, all that theoretical knowledge. That’s EPISTĒMĒ. But getting into the pool and getting water up your nose and all that goes with the actually swimming is an altogether different kind of knowledge — that’s GNŌSIS. The Biblical idiom “Adam ‘knew’ his wife Eve” — that’s the verb form of GNŌSIS (nothing ‘theoretical’ about THAT experience!)
One can communicate EPISTĒMĒ pretty well with language. And I think it has a social dimension to it. I can imagine that the earliest language was used to communicate things like “look out for the saber tooth tiger behind that tree!” and things grew from there. Even Science is about communicating new-found knowledge to others. As important as math is (and that is arguably it’s own unique kind of language) Science needs regular language too. If for no other reason than to explain how the math applies: “the X axis on this chart is fortnights, and the Y axis is furlongs, so the graph shows furlongs per fortnight…”
Language does a really poor job, however, of communicating GNŌSIS. For example, please describe how it feels to be in a pool, in such a way that someone who has never been in a pool can know what it’s like. Sure, one can make a pathetic stab at that, but no amount of description can come close to doing justice to the feeling of being in a pool, or the taste of an apple, or the experience of a sunset.
Maybe the best we can do describing GNŌSIS experiences using language is with poetry and metaphor. Indeed, you may note that in my ‘definition’ of GNŌSIS itself that I resorted to a metaphorical story (getting in the pool instead of just learning ‘about’ swimming). I haven’t found a definition yet that does a decent job of ‘defining’ GNŌSIS. A simple story works much better!
Christianity has plenty of EPISTĒMĒ — creeds and systematic theologies that try to describe God and our relationship to Her. But I note that creeds and systematic theological statements are virtually absent from the Bible. Instead, it’s packed with things like parables — metaphorical stories. And poetry (e.g. Psalms, Lamentations and Job are poetry.) Might that be because what we REALLY want is GNŌSIS of God, not theoretical ‘knowledge’ about Him? What we really want is the Big Baptism of being immersed in the ocean of God. I’m guessing that’s what God is really interested in too. I note that Christian mystics down through the ages repeatedly use the metaphor of ‘marriage’ to describe their relationship with God — not dispassionate ‘scholar’ or ‘scientist’.
But we still need EPISTĒMĒ as a practical matter. Creeds and theologies help focus our attention and situate us collectively in our social world. And we need all the social structures and institutions that also comprise Christianity in the real world — churches with buildings and budgets, and seminaries, etc. The analogy I like is that all those things are the ‘bowl’, but GNŌSIS is the wheat. We’ve needed the Bowl down through the ages to preserve the Wheat and pass it on to the next generation.
It’s just helpful to remember that as important as EPISTĒMĒ is, that GNŌSIS is the real goal.