LIMITS TO OUR KNOWLEDGE

Although there appears to be widespread distrust of experts in some quarters, there is still (according to recent polls) the recognition that professionals such as scientists and engineers have pushed back the frontiers of knowledge so rapidly that there is virtually no limit to our grasp of the universe around us. In rebuttal, I was going to quote the famous comment from the Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office in 1889, who reportedly wanted to shut down the office since “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” However, it turns out that there is no real evidence that he said any such thing.

But, nonetheless, it is enlightening to look at the number of new patents granted in the U.S. every year. Back in 1963 that number was 49,000; in 2020, 390,000 patents were granted. (My own 49 patents over my work years represent a very puny contribution to the whole.) And that only includes the discoveries with demonstrable practical applications. In addition we would have to consider the many basic contributions to our understanding of the physical world that are published in technical journals every year. It all goes to show that, as scientists have known for years, every time a small discovery is made, it only opens the door to a whole host of new questions that need answering. So in reality, the more we know, the more we know how much we don't know.

Augustine of Hippo originated the useful concept of the two ways in which God has revealed Himself to the world, the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. At the best, the Book of Nature (which is all that the previous paragraph is concerned with) only gives us a dim insight into spiritual matters.

What does the Bible have to say on the subject?

One of my favorite verses in the Bible would probably never make it to the top 100 of any poll on that subject, and that is Deuteronomy 29:29 – “The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” I was once asked, “What are the secret things of God?” My obvious reply was, “If I knew that, they wouldn't be secret anymore.” But seriously, the end of the verse explains that God has revealed through His Word the sorts of things we would have no way of discerning on our own, namely, His will for our lives.

The Psalmist in Psalm 139:1-6 marvels at the way God is completely aware of his every thought and deed. His wise response is to humbly state: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.”

Or we could turn to the author of Ecclesiastes for a compendium of things that this proto-scientist gave up on trying to understand:

    Ecclesiastes 2:18-19a “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?” This statement sounds a little self-centered. However, it does bring out the simple fact that we can have no assurance regarding any of our achievements while here on earth as to what will happen to them on our death.

    Ecclesiastes 3:11 “He [God] has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” As a species, we appear to have a much better grasp of the concept of time than other animals, and can see that it stretches out both forward and backward. Scientists are now trying to cope with an understanding of conditions at the beginning of the universe, but there is no guarantee that they will ever be able to put together a complete scenario that they can all agree with. And some are not convinced that we cannot even speak of a beginning at all, but only a never-ending cycle of beginnings and ends. And as far as prognostication of even the near future, we still don't seem to have the ability to predict the weather accurately more than a day or two out, much less predict the actions of any single person a minute or two in the future. How different this situation is from what the non-scientist Bertrand Russell predicted 100 years ago would happen in his immediate lifetime – the complete mapping of the brain of every human being on earth so as to reduce them to machines whose every move could be predicted in advance!

    Ecclesiastes 3:21 “Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to earth?” The whole concept of any part of a living being carrying on after death in any meaningful sense of the words is completely outside the bounds of scientific inquiry. And thus, scientists cannot use their tools to guide them to any authoritative pronouncements on the subject. And this applies to a great number of other fields that are not within their purview. So when an astronomer like Carl Sagan says that the cosmos is all there is and all there will ever be, he is merely spouting out his personal beliefs based on no data whatsoever.

Getting back to the Teacher's comment above, it is interesting that nowadays most people apparently accept the concept of an Afterlife for human beings. Their only concern seems to center on whether the animals, at least their pets, will be there also. How different from OT times when even most believing Jews were not sure whether humans would experience anything at all after death other than some sort of shadowy existence far away from God's presence.

    Ecclesiastes 6:12b “Who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?” This is not a question regarding the Afterlife since the repeated phrase in Ecclesiastes “under the sun” simply means “on earth.” Therefore it is somewhat different from the rhetorical questions in chapter 3 in that it is mainly concerned with earthly events and human actions, not spiritual existence or God's actions.

    Ecclesiastes 7:23b-24 “I said, 'I will be wise'; but it was far from me. That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it?” The answer to this rhetorical question is found throughout Proverbs. Earthly wisdom can only be gained from earthly knowledge, and we are incapable of ever grasping but a small portion of that. By contrast, heavenly wisdom can be gained from divine revelation, and that has been provided through God's written word.

    Ecclesiastes 8:17 “Then I saw all the work of God that man cannot comprehend. However much he tries, he won't find it.” It is for that reason that we have to rely on God's revelation to us for the information we need and not rely on our own endeavors to discover it.

    Ecclesiastes 11:5b “You do not know the work of God who makes everything.” As just one member of His creation, who are we to think that we can ever understand the rest of His creation on this earth, much less in other galaxies?

The Book of Job is the other example of “speculative writing” in the Old Testament. And here we are confronted with a narrative in which all the pertinent facts are given to the reader, including heavenly deliberations that drive the plot. By contrast, the earthly characters in the story flounder about trying to make sense out of a situation which, on the surface, appears to make no sense at all. But they are all incapable of doing so since the key pieces to the puzzle are hidden from them. The problem is that they all, excepting Job, act as if they know the answer and are too pigheaded to admit their ignorance.

God deals with his servant Job in a rather unexpected way. He subjects Job to a long cross-examination in chapters 38-41 regarding natural phenomena on earth to get him to admit that he doesn't even begin to understand any of them. And if that is so, then how in the world should Job expect that he can understanding the nature and actions of God? Job wisely replies, “I have uttered things which I didn't understand, things too wonderful for me which I didn't know.” But Job's saving grace was that throughout the book he knows exactly where he can find the truth, from God alone. The same certainly cannot be said about his friends.

Just as I was writing these word, I realized a close parallel with my own experience in taking my preliminary oral exam in graduate school. I was warned ahead of time by other students who had been through the grueling ordeal that the members of my orals committee would start out asking me no difficult questions at all until I began to feel self-confident and a little cocky. Then they would slowly but surely lead me further and further away from my limited areas of expertise until I made some colossal mistake. And then they would all pounce on me. When that happened, I was told, the only proper response would be to freely admit my ignorance and ask them for a little help. If I did that, they would start giving me hints as to how to correct my errors. However, if I continued in my error and refused to admit it or throw myself on their mercy, I would flunk my orals. Despite being warned, I fell for their trap anyway. But fortunately, I remembered what I should do and did it.

Moving on to New Testament teachings, one can cite the following passages:

    Matthew 24:36,42; 25:13 “You don't know the day or the hour.” We might as well start with these words of Jesus since they are the ones most ignored by the self-proclaimed prophecy experts of our times who try to get around the plain meaning by saying that they can at least pinpoint the month or the year. And they do this through their man-made timelines constructed by piecing together diverse scriptural passages from the OT and NT into some sort of semblance of order adequate enough to at least convince their target audiences.

    Romans 8:26a “ We don't know how to pray as we should.” Here, at least, we are promised the aid of the Holy Spirit to translate our thoughts and wishes into an understandable form no matter how poorly we happen to express them in our prayers. Again, there is a valuable lesson here that some Bible teachers have not learned or have ignored. We do not need to be extremely careful in exactly how we word our prayers. If we don't, I have heard some prayer experts teach that “God may give you exactly what you ask for, no more and no less;” “God will not answer a general prayer; it needs to be very specific;” or “God will not answer any prayers unless you first pray that God will bind Satan while you are praying.”

    Romans 11:34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” Here Paul quotes from Isaiah 40:13 to express this obvious limitation to man's knowledge. However, look at I Corinthians 2:16 for a slightly different take on this quotation.

    I Corinthians 2:11 “For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him?” That does not mean that we can't have some inkling of what someone else is thinking by listening to his words and observing his actions. But I am sure that all of you have experienced what I have at least once in my life. That is to totally misjudge another person's motives due to our lack of knowledge of their past life and how it may have influenced them for better or worse.

    I Corinthians 13:9-12 “We know in part, and we prophesy in part but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away...For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully.” Those same Bible teachers who say that “the perfect” actually means “the Bible” are often the same arrogant ones who claim to be able to then authoritatively interpret everything in the Bible, including the mysteries of the Last Days.

The final take-away lesson out of this is best expressed again by Paul: “If anyone thinks that he knows something, he doesn't yet know in the way he ought to know.” (I Corinthians 8:2)