*What do you know?*
As I write this I don’t know where the subject will take me. The older I get the more sure I am that I really know hardly anything. I’m trying therefore to see what I mean when I say: “I know”. I suppose there are just a few things, plain historical facts about which I truly can say: “I know”. For instance I speak with some confidence when I say that I’m 86 and was born in Oxford in April 1923. I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me that those are plain facts. I know they are true. In the same vein but with a little less certainty I can say that I know my mother had passed her 100th birthday before she died.
But what about more remote history? Can I really say that I know Julius Caesar invaded this country in 55 – or was it 54 B.C.? More importantly from my personal perspective, how much of what I read in the New Testament do I know to be historically true? I, like many others, used to speak about “Gospel truth” Once upon a time I believed that everything in the Gospels was accurate historical fact. Now I can no longer believe that. Gospel truth means something quite different. For me today what it means is that the essential Gospel message is both true and enormously important but most of the details of what was said and done are as liable to be mistaken as any other ancient document.
I hope next month to wonder about what it means to say: “I know what you mean.”
*
Peter Graham (e-mail peter.graham[at]bucklandnewton[dot]com)
