theology-less knowledge of God

Yesterday I was talking with my brother Dallas. And began talking about evil and the Garden of Eden. We began to imagine and wonder whether evil might have been a movement away from tacit knowledge of God. Basically, evil as abstraction.

We we drawing on the language of Tacit knowing as presented by Micheal Polanyi. Polanyi lays the foundation for Tacit knowledge in his book “Personal Knowledge” and articulates it more fully in “The Tacit Dimension.” Both books are must reading (I my opinion). Tacit knowing like the kind of “knowledge” that a fifth-generation violin maker who has made violins his whole life has; he just knows. So this violin maker picks up two pieces of wood that look the same, but some how he knows that one piece would make a great violin while the other piece would not. How does he know this? Even though he has been making violins his whole life, he can not fully articulate how he knows this; but he does know.

That is tacit knowing. No checklist, no objective signs to lean on, simply knowing, and acting on that sense of knowing. Like when the painter knows the painting is done. Or when a dating couple know they are to get married.

We were wondering if that kind of tacit knowing of God is what we are created for. Maybe God created us for a tacit relationship. Created to live within a theology-less knowledge of God… relationship without abstraction.

peace, dwight