46. Inviting the Real, with Esther Lightcap Meek, author of A Little Manual for Knowing

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In her book,  A Little Manual for Knowing, Esther Lightcap Meek says that in order to truly know something, we must welcome “the yet-to-be-known with respect, humility, patience, and attentiveness.”

In this episode, Esther Lightcap Meek unpacks what she calls “covenant epistemology,” an approach to knowing that acknowledges the relationship between the knower and the known.  It’s an approach that I believe can help us better life into the way God is calling us–actually calling us–to bring healing to the world.

THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Esther Lightcap Meek is the author of A Little Manual for Knowing and Professor of Philosophy at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.
• Esther grew up “a good little Christian girl.” In eighth grade, she began to question her faith, including, “How do I know there is a world outside my mind?”
• Esther read The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer when she was in high school. It was then that her questions were not sin, they were philosophical.
• The dominant paradigm for thinking about knowledge is that knowledge is information to be acquired.
• Subsidiary Focal Integration is a way of describing the fact that knowing relies on a multitude of “subsidiary” knowings. In riding a bicycle, we focus on where we are going. Subsidiary to that focus is the knowledge of balance, pedaling, braking, steering, and so forth. When we know something we are integrating into our focus all the subsidiary patterns that make up that knowledge.
• When we memorize scripture, it’s not so that we can merely have scripture memorized. It is so that we can indwell scripture subsidiarily.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS

• Esther Lightcap Meek 
  • Website:  http://www.longingtoknow.com/
• Books mentioned: 
  • A Little Manual for Knowing by Esther Lightcap Meek
  • Longing to Know by Esther Lightcap Meek
  • Loving to Know by Esther Lightcap Meek
  • The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer
  • Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi
  • The Catholicity of Reason by D.C. Schindler
  • No God, No Science: Theology, Cosmology, Biology by Michael Hanby
  • The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin
  • Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship by Lesslie Newbigin
  • Western Culture in Gospel Context: Towards the Conversion of the West by David J. Kettle
• Video mentioned: 
  • Wonder: The Final Word by D.C. Schindler

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