Liturgy as a Form of Knowing: Part 1 - Sensual Experience

I was watching a little video clip (it isn't really that little, it's an hour long) between Alister McGrath and Richard Dawkins where McGrath essentially attempts to argue that the Christian faith is "reasonable." I quit pretty early on, as I grow bored from what I perceive to be futile attempts to reconcile Christianity with an empiricist, rationalist version of Modern philosophy. That is, I do not believe that Christianity will ever be rational in terms of modernism. It will never be supportable by empirical evidence. It will never be "certain" in any meaningful sense of the term when playing by the rules of so-called "objectivity." One will always have to fall to the default position of having faith in the unprovable and unsupportable idea that God became human, died, and rose again from the dead after 3 days. It is simply indefensible, and there is no evidence we can submit which would somehow make it a reasonable or rational thing to believe.

However, I want to contend in this and the next post that concrete evidence is not the only form of evidence that humans function from. Instead, sensory evidence - that is, what we experience - is every bit as powerful (and valid) a form of knowledge. I will use love to make this point.


While one can know, and even have certainty, outside of love, without passion we are generally not very concerned with such knowledge. That is, why do I care to know? Do I care to know for knowing's sake, or do I care to know for my enjoyment of that knowledge? Within this, the knowledge that we are loved is often the most important knowledge to us. But how is it that one knows they are loved? Does one know it because of empirical evidence, or because they have experienced that love?

The knowledge that one is loved breaks the rules of empirical modernist thought, yet it is the most important form of knowledge and the most important experience of knowing that we seek. Love has its own evidence, none of which works empirically. One cannot prove they are loved, no matter the depth to which they know this to be true. Likewise, the fact that one is loved is no less true because it cannot be proven.

However, is love really without any proof at all? No. Love has its own proof, its own evidence, and its own rules by which this evidence is determined to be admissible as evidence.

Let us pretend for a moment that there is a couple. They are now married, and someone asks the husband whether his wife loves him, and he answers affirmatively. When asked for proof, this husband will no doubt give some standard ideas that are generally agreed upon within their specific subculture. From there, the answers will all be very specific to that couple, and their relationship. The husband will likely point out things that his wife does and says to him or for him. These will never prove to anyone else that his wife loves him and, in fact, will never stand as real proof that she loves him. The reality will always exist that it is possible that she is doing these things or saying these things so as to make him think she loves him, so that she might get some personal gain out of the relationship and move on once her goal has been accomplished. And vice versa.

However, when the love is real and true, the experience of that love is the evidence itself. One cannot prove it, and another cannot know that it is true except to participate in the life of that couple (as friends, spending time together, activities together, etc) so as to experience that love (albeit in a cursory way). Yet this "knowing" is no less true, and this experience no less a form of evidence - it simply fails the empirical test.

We might then conclude that while one might know with a level of certainty, they cannot be as certain as they can be that their comforter is made from down. However, again, this begs the question as to which type of knowing is more important, and which is more real. The certainty of the down comforter is only as real as often and as deeply as the question is asked, and ceases to truly make any difference beyond the occasional instance in which it is noticed. However, the certainty that one is loved leaves its imprint on every moment and every decision which a person makes. They choose to live together, have children together, share life together, and even their decisions about what they do are significantly impacted by the truth that they are loved and that they choose to return this love.

Therefore, can experience - and love - actually provide us with a better ground for certainty in the Christian faith than attempts at "apologetics"? It would seem so. In the next post I will attempt to provide a place where this experience finds a concrete manifestation.