Mike Tolliver (00:00)
So Dru, we in the Hebraic thought community just finished a community driven book club where folks had heard you talk about this guy, Michael Polanyi, a bunch, and we’re curious to read him. And so the book study was on
personal knowledge is one of his main works that often gets cited. And ⁓ I think you had made the side comment to me that the folks in the book club now knew Polanyi better than a lot of folks who cite Polanyi. And so it seemed like it would be a good thing to at least talk more about this guy that we are so high on. And so I’m curious if you could just give us a little bit of insight into why we think this guy Polanyi matters so much.
Dru Johnson (00:33)
Yes, I think that’s true.
Yeah, I mean the short answer is…
He’s a chemist turned philosopher who started thinking about what science is. And so he spent a lot of time and he’s a very smart guy and he was in the inner circle of a lot of smart people thinking together with them. And he kind of single-handedly changed the view of science, which kind of changes the view of everything. ⁓ and the view, not the view from within science, but our view of what science is doing. How do they know things really well? And he, and he,
wrote in such a way that we were able to connect it and say, well that’s kind of as Esther Meek would say, that’s how a mother, like that’s the same kind of motherly knowledge that a woman has of breastfeeding. That’s the same way I know ⁓ one child from another of mine, right? That’s the same way I know people. It’s the same way I know ⁓ various subjects. He kind of connected all kinds of knowing into one form rather than splitting it up in the traditional knowing who
knowing how, knowing what, those are get treated as three different types of knowledge. He basically said, no, they’re all the same kind of knowledge and it’s the same thing scientists are doing. And then gave kind of a landscape where you could see, oh yeah, these are all deeply connected and they’re deeply connected to our bodies and the social body, our communities as well.
Mike Tolliver (02:13)
So I find that last point pretty interesting that it’s embodied. And so how does that contrast from a lot of what is out there on knowing?
Dru Johnson (02:19)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Well, you and I have studied analytic philosophy and so we’ve kind of seen the best and the worst of these views of what’s called epistemology, right? The theories of knowledge. ⁓ But many of, not all of them, but many of these views that are very popular today in modern analytic philosophy, ⁓ essentially put knowledge is the issue of a proposition, which is an abstract entity that can be expressed in different languages through different sentences. ⁓
And you you say, where does this proposition exist for the, that the sky is blue or, ⁓ that gold is, I shouldn’t have picked that one. Water is H two O. that water is H two O like, where do these exist? Well, they’re kind of abstract entities and you know, they’re true when they, when the thing attains to be the thing that you thought it was. And there’s different versions of how things are true in these formulations.
But in almost all of these formulations of what good knowledge is, ⁓ the body is almost entirely absent from most of these explanations. And it’s basically a mentalist framework, knowing is what happens up here. Now that, think that’s changing in the last 10 to 20 years. You do see people who are starting to think about embodied cognition, Tobias Tanton, who’s written for us, a written article for us on the Center for Hebraic Thought, ⁓ Andy
Clark, a British philosopher as well, who’s talked a lot about embodied cognition, about how we actually farm out a lot of our mental work to, you know, sticky notes and stuff like that, that we’re constantly extending our mind into the world through physical objects and artifacts. So there is some thinking on it, but man, it’s just not where most analytic philosophy has sat for the last 50 years. It’s the body almost doesn’t matter, right? I think one thing
Mike Tolliver (04:07)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (04:21)
that’s contributed to that change, that’s helped that change, is actually trauma studies. I think you could talk about feminist studies, feminist critique, and then more recently trauma studies. know, the feminist critique is essentially like, of course men want the mind to dominate everything, you know, like the men are all about how they can rationalize their way through, which again is kind of an unfortunate caricature as well.
But women understand what it’s like to be in a body, right? That their bodies matter and there’s a lot more sensitivity within, this is a caricature of the feminist critique as well. But they really did bring in a body first, the body matters critique of all their kind of male counterparts who were dominating academia back in the 60s, 70s, 80s. And then trauma studies came in, obviously with Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, which you can get for like $4 now because it’s such a best seller, the price.
This is like drop to rock bottom. It’s a great book, ⁓ but he’s just showing like, when we say I know something, I mean all the way to my fingertips, I know something. That my mind is, my mind is part of me all the way down to my toes and my fingertips.
And then we could also say, I kind of extend my mind out into the world in different ways by using various tools, electronics, notes, writing, et cetera. ⁓ So I think most normal people would say like, yeah, that actually makes sense. But there’s a lot of resistance, as you know, to that view and analytic philosophy, because it’s really hard to say what true knowledge looks like in that ⁓ paradigm.
Mike Tolliver (05:59)
Now I do, I’m like super tempted to go into like, where did that dichotomy between, you know, men’s views of cognition and women’s. ⁓ But I’m curious, kind of more fundamental than that, ⁓ why is it that Christians should care or do care about knowing generally?
Dru Johnson (06:08)
yeah.
yeah.
Yeah, I mean, think Christians, know, for better or for worse, we have definitely emphasized ⁓ John’s gospel, you know, he who believes in me, ⁓ right, that kind of, that we’re supposed to know God and know him well, ⁓ and that, I mean.
you know, even if you start with the Bible, the first opening chapters of creation and then an issue of knowledge in creation, right? Knowing good and evil becomes the very first dramatic event in creation is the couple trying to know good and evil. ⁓ So I think.
You know, there is some ways in which Christianity is a epistemically driven enterprise. mean, I think there’s a reason why science and Christian, you he, he, he, call it Hebraio- Christianity, uh, Hebraic thought, then Christianity, the Christian thought that extends, uh, the Hebraic thought.
I think there’s a reason why science dovetails with that very nicely because they are very focused on communities understanding properly this area of focus, whatever they’re supposed to know.
So I think Christians ⁓ early on, mean, Michael Polanyi, who was not a Christian, had many Christian friends. fact, ⁓ TF Torrance, Thomas Torrance, who was the disciple of Carl Barth, if you know those names. ⁓ He was one of Polanyi’s good friends who was the executor of his will when he died. And ⁓ TF Torrance had worked a lot of Polanyi’s ideas straight into Christian theology and said, if we just take Polanyi and now do Christianity.
under a very Bartian lens, if you know who Barth is, with a heavy dose of Barth. ⁓ But lots of people since have said, ⁓ this actually, the way Polanyi talks makes a lot of sense of what I see in scripture and what we’ve seen in Christian theology.
Mike Tolliver (08:02)
Hahaha
Now it sounds as you described that, that Polanyi helps and he could help particularly in this common dichotomy in Christian circles where we talk about the orthodoxy verse orthopraxy. And so I’m curious to hear you kind of talk a little bit about how he might help us there.
Dru Johnson (08:32)
yeah.
Yeah. So his focus, you know, again, with you think of that, caricature of what science is, it’s just scientists collecting facts clinically and objectively, you know, their personal bias ⁓ is supposed to be checked at the door. ⁓ and me as an individual scientist, you know, the more clinical I can be and the more objectively I can collect facts, the more I can reason through them and come up with theories and know the world scientifically. And Polanyi kind of rejects that at a surprising angle. He’s.
is no, ⁓ no, science is a community. It’s a social fabric. Like that’s what science is. It’s actually a mental fabric shared out ⁓ amongst the society of people who know an area particularly well. ⁓
And so he wants to reorient us towards how do you, how does the scientific community create a person who can, you know, see the world in this particular way, biologically? How does a biological community, biology community create ⁓ a person? How do they structure them? how does a chemistry, ⁓ community structure a person and bias them so they can see significance where others cannot see it? And, ⁓ I lost track of your question now cause I got, I got so entranced with the social.
Mike Tolliver (09:52)
So orthodoxy,
right-knowing, universal orthopraxy, but he can help here. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (09:54)
yeah, yeah, So when.
When you talk about that, kind of constructing of individuals to see significance and biasing them and traditioning them in a good way so that they can see significance where others can’t, it means that orthopraxy actually in some ways has to come before, I mean, I don’t want to say it logically comes before orthodoxy, right? ⁓ That, or I would say they’re actually just kind of entangled, right? So, and we all know this, people who have their theology all worked out to a T, but they don’t practice any.
of it, right? Or vice versa, people who only do the good works ⁓ in scripture but never actually reflect at all on what they should be doing and then they have very ham-fisted attempts at doing justice, So, yeah, so what you get in Polanyi is the necessary entanglement of those two things where ⁓ it’s because I’m in a community where we practice things so that I can see things so that then I can go back and practice again so that I can see them even better.
⁓ The example I always use is if you want to learn how to read x-rays, And just substitute in read x-rays for anything, right? If you want to know God better, if you want to understand your spouse better, right? ⁓ If you want to know ⁓ chemistry better, doesn’t matter.
Mike Tolliver (11:09)
You
Dru Johnson (11:18)
The best way to do that is to ⁓ participate in bodied activities where you have the person who can read the x-ray over your shoulder, helping you to, you know, pointing out, pay attention to this. And they’re just going to put up x-ray after x-ray. I asked lots of doctors, like, how do you learn to read x-rays? And it’s the same answer every time you look at thousands of x-rays, but you don’t just look at them by yourself. You look at them with a radiologist who’s telling you what to attend to and what to ignore as well.
Okay, I know there’s a big black dot on there. Don’t pay attention to that. That’s not what we’re looking at here, right? Now, do you see this hairline little issue here? That’s what they’re doing. And to me, it’s very difficult to separate that practice out from the thing that you’re supposed to know. It’s so that you would know, right? The only reason you’re doing that is so you can see something that was there on the X-ray the entire time, but you couldn’t see it or notice its significance. And I think that…
Formulation A is what the biblical authors are describing. And B, it puts orthopraxy and orthodoxy in a ⁓ particularly problematic relationship because you can’t separate them. In other words,
Mike Tolliver (12:29)
Good.
Dru Johnson (12:30)
In that view, it’s kind of like civil from ceremonial from moral law and the biblical law. say like, well, yeah, that’s not a real thing or subjective and objective knowledge. go, well, that’s not really like, there isn’t a subjective world and an objective world, but it’s a way of talking about the world that I can kind of look from this angle in the same way orthopraxia and orthodoxy. It’s way of kind of separating out reality and talking from them. And I say that because you are, if you are a theologian that sits in your office and just
thinks all day and thinks that you’ve arrived at the correct theology, that is an orthopraxy as well. Sitting in your office is a practice. It’s a ritualized practice that you have entered because it feels good or the community has told you this what you’re supposed to do that biases you in a certain way that helps you to see certain things but can also blind you to other things.
Mike Tolliver (13:21)
So are you saying the radical claim that James, the brother of Jesus, is actually correct when he says a faith without works is dead?
Dru Johnson (13:26)
Right.
And Paul, when he says it as well, I think is correct. Even Paul, the Pharisee who says something identical. Yeah, that they actually believe, you know, it’s…
Mike Tolliver (13:32)
Yeah, right.
Dru Johnson (13:42)
It’s just the case that, and I’m going through the gospel of John right now with a class. ⁓ You know, the idea that Jesus expects you to do things so that you can see that he is the light of the world. Right. ⁓ And if you don’t do, and this is the trick, if you don’t do the thing, if you don’t do the practice that’s being prescribed, you will never ever see the thing that’s being shown to you. It can be right there in front of you, but you won’t see it because it’s only the practice that allows you to see it or understand it.
significant or appreciate it in some way. Some people may be begging for biblical ⁓ examples here. I’ll just give one that I think is obvious. is Leviticus 23, Sukkot, or the feast of booths or shacks, however you want to say it. ⁓ It says, you must live in a shack seven days ⁓ so that your generations might know that I caused Israel to live in shacks when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God. And you say, okay, well, if the thing
Mike Tolliver (14:16)
Yeah.
Sure.
Dru Johnson (14:42)
is he wants them to know that God made Israel to live in shacks when he brought them up out of Egypt. Like you don’t need to go sit in a shack for seven days once a year to know that. Like as soon as I’ve said it, you now know it, right? But it seems to have a different view of knowledge. That there’s something about the community sitting in that shack together that forces you to appreciate that fact, to see the significance of that fact in some way that you could not outside of sitting in a shack for seven days every year. ⁓
So that’s just one little tidbit, but I think you see that style of thinking from Genesis 2 forward.
Mike Tolliver (15:19)
Well, and I’ll add one that we get from Jack Collins because I think this is so critical. remember him going through Psalm one. You know, I’ll never forget him walking us through Psalm one that you don’t sing this because it’s true of you as a person. You sing it so that it can become true. And it’s the act of singing that shapes you into that person, ⁓ you know, who
Dru Johnson (15:22)
yeah, our beloved Saint Jack.
Right.
Which is why
the songs are so theologically important, right? Is that you’re singing laments before you ever have to have that. a colleague that died this last week, suddenly in class, in the middle of students, right? So was very traumatic. It’s been traumatic on the campus. It’s been very tough. And he was just like, he was literally a legend. Even to, I’ve only been here a few years and the man is, he was already legendary to me.
Mike Tolliver (15:59)
Wow.
Dru Johnson (16:12)
And ⁓ like before that happens, you can actually like theologically develop lament by singing those songs. And now you have words to put to them. now you know, like you don’t have to ask, is it okay to like yell at God and say, how could you let this happen? Because you know, like you’ve sung through it. understand that of course you can, right? And that genuine trust can include ⁓ deep skepticism towards God’s actual, you know, what he’s
Mike Tolliver (16:31)
Right.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (16:42)
allowed to happen in the world.
Mike Tolliver (16:46)
Wow, ⁓ I did not know that, so I’m sorry to hear that. That’s all right.
Dru Johnson (16:50)
Yeah, no, I’m sorry to spring that on you, but yeah, it’s
been a tough week for everybody here. But it’s a great example of how doing prepares us for the thing that when it comes, we can kind of see it better for what it is. Which is, that’s I think one of the most difficult examples to do with.
Mike Tolliver (16:55)
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, so, Polanyi is not the first one to do thinking or this kind of thinking, and he’s not the only ⁓ voice speaking into the Christian tradition on how to do thinking rightly. So I’m curious, you know, we talked a bit briefly about the tradition of what’s called presuppositionalism in Christian circles. And so I’m curious if you could talk a little bit about that, how what
Dru Johnson (17:32)
yeah.
Mike Tolliver (17:38)
Polanyi is doing is different than that. ⁓ Help us out there.
Dru Johnson (17:42)
Yeah,
and I am no expert on presuppositionalism. I went through a phase where I was reading Van Till, ⁓ right, because… Well…
Mike Tolliver (17:50)
Didn’t we all go through that phase?
Dru Johnson (17:52)
Actually,
I was only going through the phase reactively because people were telling me things and they’re like, yeah, it’s Van Till. Haven’t you read? And they were saying things that didn’t quite sound right to me. And I was a newer Christian. And so I started reading him. And then I had to read them again later because I was like, okay, I was too new of a Christian. didn’t really understand what he was saying. And ⁓ I think now I can appreciate what he’s saying. But Van Till, if I can just give him as one example of this presuppositional view, essentially says that as
Mike Tolliver (18:12)
Sure.
Dru Johnson (18:22)
Christians, we just see the world differently. We know the world differently. A rose to a Christian is not the same as a rose to a non-Christian. And I think, A, just as we’d say phenomenologically, the way that feels to me feels right. Like that feels like a really good thing to think.
that I do, you know, hopefully on a good day. Well, like when Fred Johnson, may his memory be blessed, when he passed, I hope that as a Christian who has hopefully matured over the decades, I can see and understand both his life and his death in a way that maybe a non-Christian couldn’t.
But I think that little phrase I snuck in there as someone who was hopefully matured over the decades. I think that’s the kicker for me where Polanyi is going to come in. That your tradition and your history, your personal history, your history in the community that actually is going to shape you for good or for ill to see things in different ways. So it’s not just that I’m a Christian because I’m sure Van Til, well, I don’t know what he would say. He’s passed on his
well, but ⁓ you know, it’s not true that Christians all see things the same way in case in case you’ve not noticed. ⁓
Mike Tolliver (19:38)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (19:43)
And I mean, even the, you know, a rose can be known to a Christian in a way that it’s not known to a non-Christian. I think it can be known maybe a dozen different ways to a Christian as well. And they’ll fight to the death over how they know the Rose or whatever. So it’s not clear to me how that creates a uniform system of presuppositional knowledge. Although I’m sure somebody has a good answer to that somewhere. And I’m sure I’m not representing the view ⁓ fully or fairly. ⁓ But for Polanyi, it’s that.
tradition and the community that constructs us. I will also point out I hate to do this pull, but when you look at scripture, this is clearly the emphasis as well.
The tradition and the community and the rituals you participate in and don’t get scared by the word rituals. just mean like the ritualized practices that we all participate in are the things that shape us to see significance or they can distort our vision, right? If it’s a bad community, if they got bad rituals is why I get all hopped up about Christmas and Easter and stuff like that. it like rituals can turn dark as I’ve, you know, as I argued, can turn flimsy to where they’re no longer useful, or they can turn dark to where they no longer illuminate the thing that they’re
supposed to be showing you, even good Christian rituals can as well. ⁓ But those are the things that actually help you to understand significance. And I think that’s where Polanyi and at least Van Til would butt heads a little bit. ⁓ And maybe it’s a matter of emphasis. I don’t know what Polanyi thought about Christian conversion. It’s difficult. He’s got a weird line. The last sentence of his book is just crazy, but it’s about Christian worship.
where he has not been talking about Christian worship for 50 pages and then all of sudden the very last sentence is like, maybe this is what’s going on with Christian worship. And you’re like, what the heck?
Mike Tolliver (21:32)
Well, it’s funny that
you say that because that’s literally where my mind was going is the evangelical enterprise, which are evangelistic enterprises is what I mean to say, ⁓ which which is like the invitation of the outsider into the covenant community to participate in the rituals to be shaped by them to some degree, whatever degree that is, but to bear witness to the shaping.
Dru Johnson (21:37)
yeah.
Okay.
Right.
Mike Tolliver (21:59)
that is occurring in that community is a powerfully evangelistic thing. ⁓ In a way that’s different from just getting non-believers to believe the right things.
Dru Johnson (22:05)
Yeah. And I think…
Well, absolutely. And I think that’s where you see that kind of rationalist empire. I’d say it’s an empire because it has dominated our thinking. The rationalist empire is get them to think the right things, right? Which is at the end of the day is a heresy called Gnosticism, right? I love walking into class with freshmen and go like, look, there’s this heresy we’re going to have to deal with this semester. It’s where if you just believe the right things about Jesus, then your soul will go to heaven, right? ⁓ And, you know, half of them are going like,
Mike Tolliver (22:28)
Hmm, yeah.
Dru Johnson (22:41)
I’m pretty sure that’s what my church teaches. I’m like, well, it’s probably influenced some things that our churches teach. ⁓
You without sin, to quote something not in the Gospel of John. You without sin, right? Cast the first stone when it comes to Gnostic ideas, it’s floating around there. But this is what I think is so powerful about Polanyi, is people now had a non-Christian, so it’s not somebody who’s doing it for evangelistic reasons, who was a top flight scientist, like engaging Albert Einstein in his work, they were going back and forth discussing their work together, turned philosopher and essentially turned theologian.
some point. mean, he’s essentially a non-Christian theologian because a lot of the ideas he’s working out have a lot of theological import and they feel like theology oftentimes. Who is saying
your body matters. Whatever is going on, whatever you think is going on with your soul, like that body and the social body of the community are ultimate. And so again, I hate to like slap presuppositional list with this issue, but that the social body and the rituals are like at the top of God’s bucket list of things that he wants to get straightened out with his people and including Jesus as well. mean, I, again, I’m just going through all the gospels with a class I do every semester
Mike Tolliver (23:54)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (24:00)
and you realize like, this is, like if you’re not doing the right thing, you will not see what Jesus is trying to show you. Like doing the right thing in community with your body. You absolutely will not see.
Mike Tolliver (24:13)
So you’ve mentioned a couple of times that ⁓ Polanyi was a scientist and people may be familiar with one of his friends who I don’t know if he had better press or just, know, okay, they weren’t friends. ⁓ Thomas Kuhn.
Dru Johnson (24:25)
We’re friends No, no, no, I don’t think so I’ve never
Yeah, Thomas Kuhn. Yeah, don’t think he was friends. I think because, and I always say that, and I may be wrong because there’s some Kuhnian and Polanyian scholars out there who they know every last detail of these things. Kuhn was confronted at an academic conference basically saying, hey, you your structure of scientific revolution sounds a lot like what Michael Polanyi has been saying since the 1940s. Like this is 1960.
Mike Tolliver (24:45)
Okay.
Right, okay.
Dru Johnson (25:00)
And, ⁓ hasn’t Michael Polanyi been saying all this for 20 years? Right? And, ⁓ and he said, ⁓ yeah, I maybe have been influenced a little bit. you know, like I’m, I’m aware of his ideas or something like that. Right. So. Yeah. He, he’s, he’s been accused of plagiarism, but I don’t know if it’s plagiarism or he came at them independently or not. It’s, you know, it’s impossible to tell, but Kuhn definitely has gotten better press and, and, and, you know.
Mike Tolliver (25:13)
Wow, okay.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (25:28)
I don’t even know if it’s true or not, but it’s often said that Kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions ⁓ is the most footnoted ⁓ piece of literature in all of the humanities. So if you look at history, literature, theology, philosophy, et cetera, ⁓ that Kuhn gets quoted more than, and the irony of course is you go over to the sciences and most of them have no idea who Thomas Kuhn is. It’s like.
Well, he’s this very famous historian of science. I love to tell this story. I was talking to a physicist at MIT. was in Jerusalem. He came over for a conference. And he said these things that sounded very Kuhnian and Polanyian right? ⁓ We can talk about what that is in a second. But he… ⁓
Mike Tolliver (26:10)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (26:14)
And I said like, ⁓ yeah, it was amazing. You said these things that sounded very much like Kuhn, but you didn’t actually say who you were citing in your talk. And he goes, who? And I go, Thomas Kuhn, the professor who retired from MIT, like one of the most quoted people in the human, he had no idea whatsoever. ⁓ that’s the state of academics.
Mike Tolliver (26:24)
Hahaha
Wow. Well,
you know, I guess bad on me because I knew the body of content well enough. just assumed I guess they were friends because, man, it’s right there.
Dru Johnson (26:42)
Yeah. Right.
Well, I had that moment when I was reading through personal knowledge, I think the second time.
after I had read more widely by that point, and I hit those like four pages where he talks about where you have to convert other scientists to your way of seeing things and at first it’s new and they don’t know how to deal with it and then eventually people cross the Tiber as it were, they cross over, they see it. He doesn’t use the word paradigm, but he basically describes what Thomas Kuhn is going to talk about as a paradigm shift, So most people are familiar with this term paradigm shift. That comes from Thomas Kuhn, which I have a theory as to why Kuhn…
Mike Tolliver (27:18)
Right.
Dru Johnson (27:21)
is popular and Polanyi isn’t. ⁓ And that is simply, if you read structure of scientific revolutions, it’s very plainly worded. For the most part, it’s very easy to read. ⁓ And he kind of just takes one aspect of Polanyi. So Polanyi has a whole system where he thinks about community and how communities know things. He basically just takes one little strip out of that.
Mike Tolliver (27:31)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (27:48)
and just wants to talk about the actual, part where there’s a controversy, scientific controversy, and then a revolution in thinking where the new paradigm is accepted and the old paradigm is rejected at that point, or is no longer, they can’t, you can’t have both paradigms. You gotta pick one or the other. ⁓ And that, I think most scientists, you could just look down the history of science and go, yep, that, something like that is what’s happened, right? Maybe not exactly every time, but something like that is exactly what’s happened.
⁓ So yeah, he took the very easy to understand part of Polanyi and made a cottage industry out of it. And I don’t know if that’s a true statement to say that he’s taken it from Polanyi or not. If you go on the Polanyi, there’s a journal, a Michael Polanyi journal, and there’s definitely a lot of people involved with that journal that think it was straight up plagiarism, but who knows?
Mike Tolliver (28:26)
Okay.
Well, I will take their expertise for what it’s worth. Now, I’m curious if we could maybe situate this to the people in the pews. How is this going to help each of us in daily living and help us motivate that?
Dru Johnson (29:01)
Well, I want to say the guys in the book club ended up being all guys. Well, we did have Yona who, but she had to drop out cause she, she didn’t have enough time, which can completely understand that. But ⁓ Tyler and Keith and Colton and James who had actually written a PhD and he had included some Polanyi in his work. I mean, they slugged it out. I Polanyi is not easy reading ⁓ even for academics. In fact, I was recommending Polanyi to somebody in in a,
theologian leaned over, heard me recommending just the other day. And she said, yeah, he is not, you cannot assign him to your students, maybe not even your graduate students. Right. So it is very difficult reading. ⁓ and they were, they were total troopers. And I think, and it’s, it was funny to watch them go through something I had gone through like 25 years ago, where it’s at first you’re kind of like, well, what’s he doing? Why is this so important? Why is he like all hopped up on these very particular issues? ⁓ and his arguments are very
difficult to follow. ⁓ And then over time you see like, he’s going to keep repeating the theme with different examples and going into different avenues of thought. And eventually, it’s funny, his epistemology, the way he thinks knowing happened is happening as you’re reading the book. Like over time, the thing that he has been saying the whole time, you go back to chapter one, you’re like, he’s been saying this the whole time. ⁓ And I’m just now able to see it because I kind of had to enter his world.
Mike Tolliver (30:20)
Okay.
Dru Johnson (30:31)
and swim in here for a while before I saw how everything was related to each other. think what happens is, ⁓ look, to say Pellani’s not for everybody, cannot recommend. ⁓ He is brilliant, he is good thinking, he’s a good compadre to help you think as well. I think for Christians, I always recommend Esther Meek’s work because I think she’s a popularizer, but she’s ⁓ a
Mike Tolliver (30:57)
Right.
Dru Johnson (31:01)
brilliant popularizer, which means she understands all the details and can translate them for normal people like us. ⁓ But, you know, so she’s not a hack at all. She’s brilliant in her own right. And she’s actually extended his thinking into all kinds of new things that he doesn’t talk about, but I often wonder, like, would he go along with that? I think he would.
He gives us a way of talking about knowledge that is parallel to the way the biblical authors talk about knowing things in a scientifically and philosophically rigorous way. So if you ever thought it was fluffy to say like, know, you know, the way I know God is the same way I know, ⁓ you know, how a V eight engine runs. ⁓ you might say that kind of in a quirky way, like, you know, Bob over there, he really understands, you know,
⁓ engines. ⁓ I’d like to know God as well as he understands engines. Pilate can actually explain to you how those two things are actually related to each other, profoundly related to each other.
He can explain to you why reading a book is not an isolated, lonely, that is not, there’s no such thing as an autodidact, because you ask everybody, because I have students every once in a while, they’ll go, I’m an autodidact. I’m like, what do mean by that? And they go, well, I just taught myself calculus. I just taught myself history. I’m like, really? How did that work? And you’re like, well, I just read a bunch of books. I’m like, well, then you didn’t teach yourself. You had world-class experts who spent years of their life writing that book so that you could understand it. You had somebody over your shoulder.
the whole time explaining to you, all you’re telling me is you could follow them. You understood what they were saying and you could go along, right? So I think Polanyi also, if we turn this whole…
this topic towards the wisdom literature, the same thing. We can now understand why the ear is the organ of wisdom, not the mouth ⁓ in Proverbs. It’s listen to my ear, sorry, incline your ear, listen to my voice, my son. Listen to your mother’s Torah, her instruction, listen to your father’s teaching. Why they keep repeating that over and over again, because it’s the parents over the shoulder trying to help this young man understand why this slutty woman over, all right, take that. They’re both sexually attracted. They’re both sexually coming.
for the young man. But this one woman over here, you know, I know you’re 18 years old young man and you don’t understand why she’s dangerous and this one is the one you want to go after. So let me point out the salient features that I as an adult can see very clearly like an x-ray, right? As a doctor looking at an x-ray, but you, it all looks the same, right? And anybody who’s had teenagers knows exactly what this is like, right? Where they’re like, hey, let me explain to you.
Mike Tolliver (33:42)
You
Dru Johnson (33:45)
why that BMW you’re trying to buy for $2,500 is not actually a good deal. And they’re thinking, I can’t imagine any way, this is the best deal I’ve ever heard of, I can’t imagine any way in which a $2,500 BMW is gonna go wrong on me. So I think Polanyi helps us, you know,
Mike Tolliver (33:58)
Hahaha
Dru Johnson (34:09)
There’s the, the kind of saying in foreign languages is that you learn another language in order to learn your language, your native language. ⁓ cause for a lot of us, when we learned a foreign language, it’s, I’m a high school dropout. So I actually did not do well in grammar. ⁓ cause I basically never finished anything past the ninth grade. ⁓ when I learned Spanish in college, all of a sudden I’m like, what is this pluperfect thing? Like why, why does Spanish even have this pluperfect? And someone leans over to me and they’re like, we have pluperfect in English.
as well, you know that? Nice, very nice.
Mike Tolliver (34:40)
We’ve already been having it, Dru.
Thank you.
Dru Johnson (34:48)
So I think in the same way that kind of reading Polanyi, or I recommend reading Esther Meek ⁓ as she translates Polanyi to you, helps you kind of step out and then you go back to the Bible and you’re like, my goodness, all this stuff about knowing and community and being tradition by God and his plans for us so that we can see what he’s trying to show us and Jesus doing the same thing. my goodness, it’s all been there the whole time and I’ve just never noticed it, right? And then that’s gonna, all kinds of practical things are gonna come from that. Like you said with evangelism
Like, okay, what does that mean for when we bring people in who can’t see anything that we’re talking about? Like the invisible kingdom that has already come and is still coming. Like what do they see when they come in? How do they see it? How can we help them? ⁓
And then I will also admit that in scripture you do have this paradox constantly running from the Torah all the way up to Jesus where God is opening minds and closing minds, hardening hearts, opening eyes and closing eyes. So that is always a possibility there as well, but the emphasis is always on participate, do justice in order to understand what justice is, right?
Mike Tolliver (35:55)
Yeah. And I’m, I’m excited for us. At some point we’ve talked about recording an episode around this Deuteronomic dilemma that you’ve spoken of. We’ll, we’ll make that happen at another, another time. But as I’m hearing you talk, I, you know, I’m even thinking, ⁓ you know, honor your father and mother that this making a top 10 sort of further motivates why that might be the case is the family unit as a community of knowing.
Dru Johnson (36:03)
Yeah, yeah, we gotta talk about that.
Right.
Mike Tolliver (36:25)
⁓ expressed in the wisdom literature like you just ⁓ discussed.
Dru Johnson (36:31)
Yeah, honor your father and mother and then Deuteronomy 6, right? That children are fully, or Exodus 12 as well. In the days to come when your sons ask you, you are to explain. Like this, it’s…
it’s implicit for us that ⁓ children are supposed to be part of the education program. That is not an implicit claim in the ancient Near East, right? That’s actually, I would say, a new innovation in the Hebrew scriptures is that foreigners, young, old, native-born men, women, all are supposed to hear the instruction of God and practice it in order that they can see it and according to Psalm 1, rejoice in it, right? Delight in it.
Mike Tolliver (37:08)
Yeah, and I really appreciated that point that Anthony Bradley made when you interviewed him about the Deuteronomy 6 to Malachi connection that this is, I mean, it’s part of how we’re wired. ⁓ And to ignore that, we do so at our peril.
Dru Johnson (37:19)
Yeah. Yep.
There’s a perfect example of the community, ⁓
I’ve taught those, I’ve written on those passages. I’ve taught those passages. I knew exactly what those passages were doing. I had just never lined them up the way Tony Bradley lined them up, right? And once, and because he sees significance in certain things because of his practices, his time, his study, et cetera. So, ⁓ the, the communities he’s lived in that I have not lived in. and so I think that’s, you know, this is what we’re supposed to be doing is we’re supposed to be helping each other, see the world more truly. And we do that.
I mean to me this is actually an amazing thing about Christianity is Understanding the world more truly is actually a goal of the kingdom of God ⁓ Which makes me think that whatever the new heavens new earth is it is not being exposed to all facts simultaneously or something like that ⁓ Because that is part of what the joy of being a human is is discovery ⁓ in fact, there’s
Mike Tolliver (38:15)
Hahaha.
Dru Johnson (38:23)
there are only a handful of things that might be more enjoyable than discovery. And some I’m not polite to talk about here, but.
Mike Tolliver (38:30)
that
may also be described as coming to know, right?
Dru Johnson (38:34)
Well, and are, right? The metaphor for knowing and sexual intimacy are used in scripture. it is actually part of it, right? That you actually do, sexual intimacy is supposed to, under correct circumstances according to the biblical authors, is supposed to bring an intimate form of knowledge of that person that nobody else has, maybe except for God. ⁓ So I think that this is what it means to be a human, and I assume, it’s what it meant to be a human in the garden before anything goes wrong.
Mike Tolliver (38:36)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (39:04)
God is showing the man all of these animals and letting him name them so that he can find out for himself who his ally is there. ⁓ And I assume that it’s gonna persist into the new heavens and new earth as well. So this doesn’t end ⁓ when we get the, we’re not gonna have the great awakening when we go into the new heavens and new earth. I don’t think so, least.
Mike Tolliver (39:26)
Good, good. Well, I appreciate us diving into this a little deeper and if folks want us to go further, we can. We do recommend the books by Esther Meek, Longing to Know and Loving to Know. ⁓
Dru Johnson (39:38)
Yes. Longing to Know is the easy
one to read. A little book on knowledge by Cascade is another great, like if you just want a 90 page book, that one’s great. Longing to Know is a beautifully written longer book. And then Loving to Know is a more academic book. She’s got a new book out called The Mother’s Smile. She’s really developing her thinking in very like interesting ways towards… ⁓
how like infancy and being in the arms of your mother is already an epithelium. Your theory of knowledge, like what is going on with you is already being developed in that moment. And so she’s really taking the whole lifespan ⁓ of knowledge out there in ways that is shockingly interesting to me. I, know, again, I don’t think I would have ever in my life thought of things the way she’s thinking. But once she says them, I’m like, my goodness. That is true and powerful and completely ignored.
So anyways, Esther does great stuff.
Mike Tolliver (40:41)
Dru thank you again and until next time.
Dru Johnson (40:44)
All right.
