We recently travelled a brutal and unforgiving terrain in our journey as a broader West: we endured decades of hegemonic epistemological dominance within our academies of learning, which was devoutly translated into the discourses and terms by which its citizens would be impressed upon, not only to live, but to think. The dominance referred to here is that which empiricism, as both an epistemological claim and method, came to own. This occurred, not, as a revelation of its superiority among other epistemological claims for broad application to nearly every practicality of human life (even while such became the case), but also as it came to be regarded as sufficiently explanatory (despite not arriving at such claims under its own epistemological terms) of the human person in all of its aspects and properties. 

Broadly speaking, Modern Empiricism ultimately became an effort to bring “…more and more of the realm of knowledge into the purview of naturalistic and quantitative explanation” (Coon, 2000, p.84). When posited as an authoritative epistemological claim, empiricism becomes a requirement to regard spirit as existing outside of the realm of available knowledge because spirit cannot be seen or perceived under the dictates and strictures of what became the modern application of the method. In this, what was once merely a method of observation, first and properly applied in medical settings in the Ancient Near East, became a dogma to which one had to adhere in most academic settings and aspirations. 

The extent to which this (and most other seismic academic movements—whether heralded as advancements or not) have shaped the broader culture of the West, cannot be overestimated. As it regards our purposes here, our central concern is that modern empiricism made knowledge of the essence of the human self, impossible. Philosopher and theologian, Dallas Willard, explains that against the backdrop of empiricism, “Rather than “reconstructing” the person, the person is simply lost. The loss of the self is the central reality of nineteenth-and twentieth-century thought in all of its dimensions. This is something upon which, I suppose, most informed people will agree” (Willard, 2006, p.142). 

The impact of such a movement within modern academics was therefore to colonize the collective mind of the West and sever humanity from its rich heritage in versions of self-understanding that claimed origins, purposes and natural properties that aren’t accessible merely through study of the ‘sensate’ world. This shift relegated entire fields of thought and knowledge—discourses on the unity of truth and beauty, on the supremacy of love, on natural law—to the realm of mere ‘values’. In other words, the demand within the hegemony of empiricism as an epistemology, was to regard all such concerns as falling outside of the realm of available knowledge and, thereby, to concede to knowledge of such things being in the end, impossible. 

In public discourse it is seldom acknowledged that not one of these claims or demands-become-dogmas was arrived at by way of empirical investigation. Indeed, none of them could have been. Dallas Willard elaborates on this modern dilemma: 

…[empiricism] cannot guide us in the interpretation of knowledge and reality, for it fundamentally misconstrues them.  Its primary function was to replace religious orthodoxy with a secular, epistemological orthodoxy, as cultural authority was passing from religious to merely intellectual institutions in modern Western society. As an orthodoxy, it is, of course, repressive and, among other things, makes impossible knowledge of the human self. One can judge for oneself the cost of this by candidly observing the intellectual and moral chaos that rules modern society—not least, intellectual society itself. Of course, empiricism is not itself an empirical theory, and in the nature of the case could never be. It stands self-refuted (2006, p.140, italics added).

In many (certainly, not all) cases, such a view proved too welcoming a substrate for another protrusion from this line of thinking: that God, as such, could not exist, because we know that material being is all that exists. If the essence of God is spirit (as is commonly held), then God cannot exist, because spirit itself cannot exist. Again, that this conclusion is drawn by way of claimed inference and philosophical reason, and not—in keeping with their own stances regarding the means to knowledge—empiricism, begs questions as to the motives for holding such a demonstrably indefensible (is it too simple to say, unhelpful?) view. 

Empiricism, such as it has come to be expressed in the main, is a materialist claim. The so-called neo-atheism that these views eventually came to be expressed within—and this, until quite recently—took hold within culture as its own religious tradition, complete with its own dogma, systems of authority and excommunication, terms for participation and belonging, and cultural leadership. The most popular of its exemplars, who themselves achieved celebrity status, became very difficult to distinguish in their acclaimed function, from priests. 

Of course, among whatever others may exist besides, there remains one distinguished difference between the class of priests who devote themselves to the life of the Church and the priestly class from within the the Neo-athiest movement: the true priestly, essentially human, and distinctly theological understanding, that at the heart of the universe exists a force not reducible to physical law, not expressible merely in physical terms, and therefore, not discernable by way of the means of measurement which empiricism requires of its adherents. That spiritual understanding does not comport with empirical requirements, therefore, can only indicate to us that it is categorically unfit as a subject of empirical inquiry along traditional lines; not—as became the claim—that spiritual knowledge is untrue or impossible as an epistemological category because it defies empirical categorization or investigation. 

With love and grace we can plainly and kindly observe that an avowed empiricist who makes an ontological claim is always committing flagrant malpractice: they are utilizing other epistemologies in support of their empirical demands and are simultaneously conceding to the limitations of their own worldview claims; they must borrow from the others when the insufficiency of their own worldview requires of them that they either renounce empiricism or conceal its flaws, either as an attempted worldview or as a knowledge claim. The claim that all that exists in the world is material is as indefensible a claim as empiricism is a self-refuting epistemology. The fact that empiricism is itself not an empirically produced position is grounds for serious reconsideration of several of the most ardent claims issued to the broader culture from the halls of authority, wherever those claims were produced merely under empirical controls. 

It is in this sense, also, that empiricism is proof of a bound mind. The binding here is not to a surrendered commitment to the truth and thereby to careful consideration—as opposed to immediate dismissal— of any such claims wherever such claims emerged on an appropriate basis of thought and experience—but to a rather myopic obsession with material alone. This, of course, would require that empiricism be recognized as an insufficient container for what we all know and experience as life, whatever the obvious and beneficial aspects for study of the material world empiricism does possess. 

Of course, the demand conferred to the broader culture has been to regard the physical world as all that can possibly exist and, therefore, all that we can have knowledge of. This, the reader may note, is a claim on absolute truth, however erroneously or naively the pathway to such conclusions was constructed. This position stands in contrast very plainly with its alternative: that physical reality is not all that exists or that one can have knowledge of. The substance of the latter claim is that human life is essentially guided by and consists in, spirit (sometimes referred to as, ‘mind’, or, ‘will’) that cannot summarily be described or conceived of merely in physical terms. Immediately, we are led into an additional inference: that our human spirit is derivative of another Great Spirit, or God, that exists as the source for all that is spirit or material. 

To confer a demand on others by requiring of them adherence to empiricism as a contingency in a living worldview—the more restrictive of the two claims cited just above, both of which exceed in their essence, the terms, boundaries and applications of empiricism—is, at the least an irrationally developed posture, and is more likely to be a view merely held. In these regards the cultural demand to regard empiricism in the terms under which it was granted its authority appear to be more the products—pitiful and simple such as they are—of laziness, fear, compulsion, or contempt, none of which, empiricism can guide us in the proper discernment of. It is a pitifully exacting and reductive way to reflect on a cosmos that so exceeds our faculties for understanding as to be better regarded in awe with humbly held uncertainty, than to be reduced to the conventions it will always defy. 

This is not intended to be a qualitative or moral statement in this instance about the possessors of empirical epistemologies, but a plain observation as it regards our larger subject of worldview as a means to dialogue. A mind bound to material observation as the only thing that can be known is objectively a mind with no plausible means of competently engaging matters of distinctly human consequence—of love, morality, hope, healing or distinctly ‘human’ advancement—either through observation or relationship in a guided system that can bring order to life. Such a mind is bracketed in its permitted range of claims to knowledge, to a physically sensate world. 

The global community appears to be awakening to the plain insufficiency of empiricism to carry us through life, not only in terms of reliability, but also those of fulfillment. The soul of humanity was recently tested in a global catastrophe that proved and then exceeded the limits of the scientistic view of life demanded of us by those who had long held sway over social consensus in most public domains. The enactment of any ‘science’ without a corresponding ethic of love to guide it, proves in each case, to become a danger to the survival of its possessors, the very ones who laboured in the direction of the mere ‘technological’ advancement of our species, often in stark condemnation of the notion of a spirit of man to be advanced at all. This continues to be realized—in increasingly fewer cases, remembered—inside of the crisis of our times by many within society. What seems invariably to be the case is that wherever nature is either tampered with or ignored, the grace with which it is endowed by its Maker will amount to nothing short of benevolent revolt. To frame the matter differently, nature itself seems to be infused with the loving character of God in its very function, and not merely its appearance. For our sake, therefore, so-called-science, such as it has been adhered to, will reliably yield chaos and death without a kindred recognition of its better-half: moral knowledge. It is our humbly held faith and living experience, that the life, teaching and legacy of Jesus are the finest arrangement, and collaborative example of human life that has ever occurred. Further, we witness in Jesus, the very heart of moral knowledge in His perpetual yield to the One, Whom he referred to simply as, Father. In this, our understanding of morality, of spirit, and consequently, of spirituality consists.

But a proof of spirit the effects of its rejection do not make. And the pursuit of proof would here be the most hypocritical of impulses to follow, for nothing could be more like unto empiricism than that. Instead, we must engage in a freedom to think outside of the myopic view of the empiricist, by asking, instead, “what seems plain to my senses—all of them?” Does it square with me, for example, that what I have experienced and longed for as love is merely describable along the lines of my endocrine system and a few good points on neurology? Does the heart that breaks within me at the sight of genocide, or the interest I have in others’ children’s wellbeing only consist in my animal instincts, as it were, merely for the survival of my animal species? When COVID came, was the anguish I experienced as friendships and families alike were shredded to pieces, merely the result of some evolutionary impulse? Or was I responding with my whole self to something deeper, more distinctly human? Was I grieving because something was actually wrong, wrong, that is, in contrast with the good that could and should be? Were we all running into absolute truth in these moments? Did what occurred there amount to an exposure of how misaligned we were with the truth of things in their essence? Is love something that we have to leave to chance-impulses, or is it possible to have knowledge of its qualities and properties as a substantive and central force in the universe? Is it possible that, shot through the sum of every geopolitical or global health quagmire, is a spiritual, moral, and not merely empirical problem? These questions at the very least deserve a place setting in the round-table of ideas, at which we are grateful to be granted a seat. We welcome you and whichever titles happen to don the face of your place card there as well. We are grateful to have you and hope to know you there, as both friend and neighbour.