to be

A professor and philosopher named John Vervaeke has developed a framework called the “4P Metatheory of Cognition.” He uses four terms to explain four different ways we measure what we know and how we know it: Propositional knowledge, procedural knowledge, perspectival knowledge, and participatory knowledge. I have been thinking about these four terms a lot and how they relate to our faith. Read part one here, part two here, and part three here.

---

I’ve been sitting with the final “P” in the 4P Metatheory of Cognition for several weeks now, not quite ready to put my thoughts into words. In fact, I don’t think I’m ready now, either, but as a written and verbal processor, just sitting down and doing it is probably the only way I’ll ever get closer.

To know by participation is somehow both the most basic and the most profound form of knowledge in Vervaeke’s framework. It’s the ultimate state of childlikeness: even the tiniest newborn babies, before they know anything through proposition or procedure or perspective, know just by being. They simply are, and that is all. And they are so completely that it’s several months, at least, before they have any idea that they’re actually a separate being from their mother.

This knowledge is unclouded by fluctuations of feeling, nuances of experience, differences in technique, or debates over terminology. It’s entirely pure and innocent, defined by the Known instead of the knower. The perfect embodiment of a branch abiding in the Vine, without which it has no life, no fruit, no identity, no meaning, no anything.

In a world we struggle to describe without terms of emotion, action, or fact, it’s incredibly hard to describe what it means to just . . . be. Particularly to be as a form of knowing, which we tend to think of as more of an action or activity than a state of existence.

And yet participatory knowledge isn’t passive or idle. It’s “experiential and co-creative,” leading to growth and engagement and relationship in a way that can’t be helped. Something like tending a garden in Eden must have been: Perfect conditions, perfect soil, pure sunlight, ideal moisture, flawless weather, no weeds or pests. Flourishing wouldn’t be a matter of strain and effort for seeds and plants there—no, in those conditions, they couldn’t do anything but flourish.

Sadly, our approach is often to drill propositions and force procedures, eking meager fruit from exhausted and resentful plants, instead of feeding the seeds first on a pure and cloudless relationship with the Lord, using perspective as a bridge back to that childlike state when needed, and allowing the desire for greater wisdom and understanding to grow naturally.

What does this mean for how we walk with Jesus, how we understand the Gospel, how we operate in the church?

I wonder if it means letting go of some of our extremely individualistic approach to faith and embracing the fact that we are interdependent on one another and on the core Vine for our life and fruitbearing. The health of one of us affects the state of all of us.

I wonder if it means changing the focus of our church gatherings, away from lengthy propositional sermons and toward the communion table where we meet together with Jesus and wash in the water of the Word.

I wonder if it means releasing our grip on being “right” about every little theological debate and opening our hands and hearts to the big-picture vision of the Triune God to reopen the gates of Eden and spread His upside-down kingdom over the face of the earth.

God is here

I’m not sure how noticeable it is in this journaling space of sorts, but I’ve been going through what feels like a massive shift in how I understand the Gospel and, really, the Bible in general over the last few years. For so long, I thought of it mostly as a guidebook through the wilderness wasteland of earthly life to the Promised Land of heaven beyond—a view that I think a lot of Christians have, and one that is easily reinforced in our churchly experiences. “Repent and be saved so that you can go to heaven when you die” has been the prevailing message of what has been called the Gospel for many recent decades.

The trouble with such a gospel is that it leaves us there in the wilderness wasteland, waiting around for death. What then is the point of life? Is it any wonder that we’re so often tempted toward either fearful legalism or lawless hedonism when we don’t know what else to do with the intervening years before our salvation is, in our mind, actually realized?

But if the whole story of the Bible informs how I understand the Gospel, then there must be so much more to it than repent, be good, and wait around to die.

In the beginning, God planted a garden paradise where His presence would dwell, and He placed His image bearers within it. They were to cultivate and keep it, and to fruitfully multiply into families of image bearers, working in partnership with a present God to push the borders of Eden wider and wider until His holy garden-temple-kingdom might envelop all Creation.

We know what happens next: Instead of working in cooperation with the plan, the bearers of God’s image rebelled against His wisdom, choosing their own instead, and were consequently banished from His presence.

All this takes place in the first three chapters of Genesis. What then is the rest of the Bible? It’s the story of God’s relentless efforts to remedy the breach and return to dwell among His people—from the wilderness tabernacle to Solomon’s temple to, finally, incarnation in Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God With Us.

He, crowned King over all Creation and then ascending to sit at God’s right hand, sent His Spirit to dwell not only with us but in us. And He has never left.

God is here.

And yet our version of the Gospel seems too often to tell us that we’re just like the intertestamental Israelites, living in a broken and oppressed society, our temple overrun by moneychangers, our God silent, and our only hope in some unknown day when the Messiah might appear or we might die, whichever comes first.

Does that sound like good news?

Contrast this dismal picture with the language of the New Covenant for Israel, described in Ezekiel 36:

Thus says the Lord GOD, “On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt. The desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passes by. They will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’ Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the LORD, have spoke and will do it.”

Ezekiel 36:33-36

This is, importantly, a text directed at God’s people Israel, describing the New Covenant that superseded the Mosaic Covenant through the Messiah. It wasn’t written to you and me. But as adoptees into God’s family, we have been grafted into this covenant (Romans 11), and so while the specific renewal of the Holy Land isn’t directed at us or our nation, the imagery remains applicable: desolation gives way to flourishing, desertion gives way to multitudes, waste gives way to fruitfulness. Ruin gives way to Eden. Death gives way to life.

Because for those whose iniquities have been cleansed, God is here, and He is hard at work, partnering with us once more to transform a desolate world into a heavenly kingdom.

Too many of us, including myself a lot of the time, are loitering around the construction site dressed in suit jackets and pearls or collecting signatures on a petition or just sitting on the ground with our head in our hands, waiting for a rescue that has already occurred while the job that still needs doing sits undone.

Yes, it’s slow, dirty, uphill work. It’s discouraging at times to know we will not see its completion during our earthly lives. It’s curiously the richest and poorest vocation simultaneously, the loveliest and the ugliest, the biggest and the smallest; it’s both completely invisible to the untrained eye and a shimmering beacon in the black of night, a city on a hill.

And it’s so much better than whiling our lives away walking circles in the wilderness, trying to attain Pharisaical perfection or giving ourselves up to selfish depravity.

God is here. Not only with us, but in us. I wonder what might happen if we started living like it—not in a guilty or shame-based way, but by breathing deeply of His Spirit and letting His life animate us to work in partnership with the heavenly vision. As Jesus said in John 15:4-5,

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

The focus is not on tirelessly pumping out fruit until we die so that God will be pleased with us, but on restfully drinking up the life offered by the Vine, with fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and their holy results as they feed the hungry souls of others—being the happy byproduct.

Advent is a beautiful season. I’m enjoying reading a Scripture and singing a hymn each day with Clara, in symbolic anticipation of the coming Christ. But I’m also firmly reminded that I’m not a B.C. Israelite waiting in a dark silence—I’m redeemed, made new, and indwelt by the Spirit of God. He is here. And because that is true, my role is to abide in Him, to bear His image, and to live as a citizen of His heavenly kingdom—both now and not yet.