Need to Know: Vocation as the Heart of Christian Epistemology

How should a Christian think? If a serious Christian wants to think seriously about a serious subject--from her vote in the next election to her choice of career, from deciding among scientific theories to picking among eligible suitors, from weighing competing marketing proposals to discerning among fitness plans--what does he or she do? This basic question is at the heart of a complex discourse: epistemology. Need to Know offers a comprehensive, coherent, and clear model of responsible Christian thinking. Grounded in the best of the Christian theological tradition while being attentive to a surprising range of thinkers in the history of philosophy, natural science, social science, and culture, the book sets out a scheme for drawing together experience, tradition, scholarship, art, and the Bible into a portable, practical, and yet theoretically profound system of thinking about thinking. Its fundamental idea is as simple as it is startling: Since God calls human beings to do certain things in the world, God can be relied upon to supply the knowledge necessary for human beings to do those things. The classic Christian concept of vocation, then, supplies both the impetus and the assurance that the faithful Christian can trust God to guide his or her thinking--on a "need to know" basis.