to be

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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.

to feel

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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; this will serve as the framework for a four-part series leading up to The Bible180 Challenge 2025. (Nearly 600 people have already joined the wait list to read with us! I can’t wait!)

Read the first post in this series here, and the second post here.

The third term in Vervaeke’s theory is where—for me, at least—things get interesting: perspectival knowledge.

Most of Christianity is very comfortable with knowing and doing. Reciting a creed is, in many traditions, a weekly portion of the liturgy; and what is the Christian faith if not doing something, by following Jesus and obeying God’s commands?

But we often put a hard stop on the next step of knowledge, which I’ll summarize as feeling.

In fact, I would venture to say that for most of my life, I’ve measured the rightness of my knowledge by how well-stripped it is of feeling. Knowledge, I thought, ought to be purely objective, pure logic. We assent to what is true because it’s true. We do what is right because it’s right. To hell with feelings, those deceptive devils!

But as I meditate on the different ways we can know, I begin to see perspectival knowledge not necessarily as a baser, more carnal kind of knowing but as a deeper, more real kind of knowing. If we began with knowing in theory (propositional knowledge) and then stepped into knowing in action (procedural knowledge), the next natural movement in the progression is toward knowing in perspective; knowing from having felt something related, or walked in similar shoes. If we’ve learned the “what” and the “how,” this is the “what it’s like.”

To return to the example of previous posts: How does my perspective as both a child and a parent inform my knowledge of God as my Heavenly Father? How does knowing what it’s like to have children of my own change the way I approach this doctrine?

I can hear my inner 30 years of history with the proposition-heavy, Sola Scriptura church protesting already: “What does it matter what it’s like for me—a fallen person—to be a parent? How can that possibly have any bearing on what it means for God to be a Father? How can using my own flawed and limited experience to understand the truth be anything but corrupt?”

To which I gently respond:

God did not have to portray Himself primarily as a father (or mother, as He also sometimes does in Scripture). He could have chosen Ruler, Dictator, Sovereign, Bully, Friend, or literally anything else He wanted. The terminology is for our benefit, not His. He knows who He is; His choice of characterizations is designed to help us, in our much-smaller human worldviews, understand some measure of Himself.

And He chose to portray Himself as a parent of children—not just of His only begotten Son, but also of the human race He created in His own image.

I don’t know what it’s like to be God—omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, or omni-anything. But I know what it’s like to be the mother of two young children, whose care is my greatest responsibility and whose discipleship is my highest calling.

In motherhood, I’ve found that I know what it’s like to love someone else so completely and viscerally that you would suffer or die to rescue and protect them, as God has done for us. His sacrifice seems perfectly fitting for a father on behalf of His children; the delightfully surprising part is that I’m His child, not that He would do such a thing.

In motherhood, I’ve found that I cannot assent to certain doctrines. Knowing God as my Father through the lens of knowing what it’s like to be a mother has, for example, taken the theology of hyper-Calvinism off the table. It would be morally abhorrent, not to mention beyond unnatural, for me to choose only one of my children as my own while completely and permanently rejecting the other. And I don’t think I am more moral or more in tune with nature than God, the Creator of both humanity and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from which my ancestors ate.

In motherhood, I’ve found that I learn more about how to be a child with childlike faith daily. My daughters show me tremendous trust and dependence day in and day out. They find peace, love, and joy just by being with me and learning from me. This is what it looks like to live as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven!

In feeling—in knowing what something is like—we not only know deeper, we step closer to childlikeness. Though a toddler may be cognitively incapable of assenting to abstract doctrines and a baby may be physically incapable of acting out their faith, both can feel and make connections to their own experiences. That’s why storytelling and role-playing are such effective teaching tools across peoples and generations. They are the exact same tools God uses to teach us His immense truths in Scripture.

The Bible is sacred, ancient, complex, and profound. But it’s also a story in which God has often assumed the role of Heavenly Father, making space for us to step into the role of His children. This is intentional. It allows us to come to the Scriptures safely from our human perspective and learn more than a creed and more than a set of commandments.

It allows us to learn who He is, on His own terms.

to do

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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; this will serve as the framework for a four-part series leading up to The Bible180 Challenge 2025. (Nearly 600 people have already joined the wait list to read with us! I can’t wait!)

Read the previous post in this series here.

The second term in Vervaeke’s theory is procedural knowledge.

If I went to Bible school for the acquisition of a creed at age 18—to learn how to assent to a proposition like “God is my Heavenly Father”—then I went to church for my entire life, in substantial part, to gain some understanding of what being a child of God actually looks like. The how-to. The procedure.

Procedural knowledge is a step deeper than propositional knowledge because it requires more of me: I have to do something, not just assent to something. At the same time, it’s also a notch less complicated in that it doesn’t require as many higher-order cognitive skills. A brand-new baby may not know how to do much beyond what their instincts demand, but an older baby quickly learns cause and effect, following simple steps to get the thing they want.

The beauty of procedural knowledge when it comes to something like “God is my Heavenly Father” is that we all know something about how to be a child (although those of us blessed with good parents and happy childhoods might find this procedural knowledge more accessible than those who weren’t). As children, we were dependent on two people with more power and capability to provide for our needs; we were at the mercy of those two people to be good to us, because we had no recourse if they were not. We ate what they fed us, we did what they told us, we lived where they moved us.

If we learned the “how-to” of being children well, particularly from parents who taught us well, then the leap to being children of a Heavenly Father is not a difficult one. It’s easy to see how assenting to the proposition that God is our Heavenly Father is given legs to stand on when we take that knowledge into our actions: when we depend on Him, trust His goodness, follow His lead, and obey His commands.

My brothers and sisters, what good is it if people say they have faith but do nothing to show it? Claiming to have faith can’t save anyone, can it? Imagine a brother or sister who is naked and never has enough food to eat. What if one of you said, “Go in peace! Stay warm! Have a nice meal!”? What good is it if you don’t actually give them what their body needs? In the same way, faith is dead when it doesn’t result in faithful activity.

Someone might claim, “You have faith and I have action.” But how can I see your faith apart from your actions? Instead, I’ll show you my faith by putting it into practice in faithful action.

James 2:14-18

It’s far easier to show what we really believe through how we behave than through what we claim or recite. Propositional knowledge is all well and good, but procedural knowledge will prove—or disprove!—our sincerity every time.

This can be deeply challenging for those who are prone to guilt and shame, for those who don’t have a positive experience of being a child to fall back on, and for those who have a strong fear or aversion to the idea that they can play any active role in their own faith. In such cases, it can feel a lot safer to stay in the world of propositions, where the knowledge can stay primarily theoretical and intellectual and grown-up.

Maturing into the deeper and simpler knowledge of a child might seem extremely uncomfortable. It is for me, often. My brain is my safest place: logic, analysis, and objectivity are there. But so is my inner scribe, Pharisee, and scholar of the law that makes it so terribly hard to enter the kingdom of heaven like a child.

Let me only remind you that when you were a child, your child-ness was defined by your immovable position in the family, not by how “good” you were at filling the role. Flawed though they were, your parents didn’t exchange you for someone else when you disobeyed, disrespected, or distrusted them. You were, and are, always their child—an unchangeable status that you could reflect more perfectly or less perfectly on any given day.

So it is with being a child of God. We are adopted into His family to share in the inheritance of His Son. How we live may reflect how much (and how accurately) we believe that, but never the effectiveness of what He has done to give us this status.

As we prepare to read through the Bible in 2025, may the very act of reading the Scriptures each day become evidence to you of what you know and believe: Not that you have attained a perfect theology (because no one has), but that you are doing what you know.

Like my mostly-still-nonverbal 17-month-old, who tells me she wants a snack by crying and running to the kitchen, you are a little child asking your Father for the food of His Word every day—by simply opening it and reading.