Quotes about Knowledge

"Knowledge" in biblical language never refers to what we today call "head knowledge," but always to experiential involvement with what is known—to actual engagement with it.

We can fail to know because we do not want to know - because what would be known would require us to believe and act in ways contrary to what we want.

But what is true of Christianity in its inception and history is true of other religions as well. They all present themselves as providing knowledge of what is real and what is right. To think otherwise is to falsify the very nature of religious consciousness and religious life

It is desirable to base our beliefs on knowledge wherever possible. Knowledge stabilizes true belief and makes it more effectual for good as well as more accessible and shareable.

Knowledge is the basis of belief, and, when it is, it gives the belief a very different bearing upon life.

So God uses our self-knowledge or self-awareness, which is heightened and given a special quality by his presence and direction, to search us out and reveal to us the truth about ourselves and our world.

Faith is not opposed to evidence that we might gain from perception as well as from reason.

Knowledge strengthens faith, sometimes by allowing us to grasp an item of faith in such a way that it also becomes an item of knowledge. Knowledge also can and often has laid a foundation for faith. We do often believe things because we have come to know them, and that is an ideal condition of belief.

Indeed, for anyone who has a genuine knowledge of God, praise is the only appropriate attitude in which to live. It is the only sane attitude.

To say that "the righteous (or just) shall live by faith" does not mean that they live by blind and irresponsible leaps in total absence, or even in defiance, of knowledge. It does not mean that the "just" live in a state of ignorance or stupidity. They do on occasion act in specific ways beyond what they know, but only within a framework of knowledge that makes such action reasonable.

An act of faith in the biblical tradition is always undertaken in an environment of knowledge and is inseparable from it.

A thoughtless or uninformed theology grips and guides our life with just as great a force as does a thoughtful and informed one.