Faith's Knowledge

Synopsis: Can we know truth even though certain proof is unattainable? Can we be known by Truth? Is there a relationship between belief and truth, and if so, what is the nature of that relationship? Do we need to have faith in reason and in real meaning to be able to reason towards truth? These are the sorts of questions this book seeks to address. In Faith's Knowledge, Paul Tyson argues that all knowledge that aims at truth is always the knowledge of faith. If this is the case, then--against our modernist cultural assumptions about knowledge--truth cannot be had by proof. Yet, if this is true, then mere information and simply objective facts do not (for us as knowers) exist. Knowledge is always embedded in belief, and knowledge and belief is always expressed in relationships, histories, narratives, shared meanings, and power. Hence, a theological sociology of knowledge emerges out of these explorations in thinking about knowledge as a function of faith. Endorsements: "I have never known anyone to wrestle so seriously, so strenuously, or so studiously with matters of faith as Paul Tyson. . . . Paul's reflections, climaxing in chapter 7 on faith and medicine a . . ., represent theology at its most honest--harrowing, hardheaded, heartbroken, and heartbreaking." --Dave Andrews, author and peace and community justice activist "Having developed an epistemological framework that rejects relativism and overcomes the modern faith-rationality split, Australia's up-and-coming philosophical theologian, Paul Tyson, with careful argumentation and passionate applicatory discourse, shows public truth in education [and] health and global security is not only possible within a Christian worldview, but it builds a more humane society than the utilitarianism that currently blights our social landscape. This book is for thinkers who wish to change the world." --Charles Ringma, Professor Emeritus, Regent College Author Biography: Paul Tyson is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University in Brisbane.