Esther L. Meek, "Take Off Your Two-Dimensional Glasses"

Perhaps you have had occasion to use a pair of three-dimensional glasses, those barely-more-than-cardboard contraptions that get issued, for example, at the door of Disney MGM’s Muppet Movie show. If you wear them, things in the movie appear three-dimensional.

I have something like the reverse of those in mind. A pair of two-dimensional glasses, as I am conceiving of them, when you put them on, would make something three-dimensional appear two-dimensional, allowing you only to see the two-dimensional aspects of what you are looking at.

People generally are born with a certain kind of two-dimensional glasses plastered to their face. When we think about what knowledge or knowing is, we think of information, facts, statements, formulas. Not that these aren’t knowledge. It’s that these aren’t all there is to knowledge, nor even the most important part. If we think knowledge is information, it’s as if two-dimensional glasses are serving to flatten knowledge for us, keeping us from registering any dimensions of knowing which aren’t information.

Then, when it comes to thinking about learning, or getting an education, we think this involves transfer of information. True, we might protest that knowledge isn’t just information; it’s also application. You learn information, and you learn a method; you implement the method that uses the information, and you’re educated.

What else could knowledge be, you might ask? Not information, but transformation, according to James Loder, in his book, The Transforming Moment (2^nd ed. Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1989). Loder criticizes our preconceived notions regarding knowledge as resulting from an “eikonic eclipse”: something that hides the critically central transformational role of the imagination in any act of coming to know.

Take the scientific method, for instance, taught from grade school on: in science you identify a problem, form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis by collecting and analyzing data, and formulate conclusions. All this sounds systematic and right as rain. But our two-dimensional glasses (my analogy, inspired by Loder’s term) flatten out the profoundly imaginative, highly talented and wise, risky, responsible, deeply human, somehow divinely inspired, self-and-world transforming, “form a hypothesis.”

When I was in 11th grade, contemplating studying chemistry in college, something drew me up short. I couldn’t see how anybody, no matter how many labs they did, could count on “forming a hypothesis.” To me that seemed a kind of magic that I could not explain and didn’t think I could generate. And so I thought I couldn’t be a chemist. (I didn’t realize that I was, however, on my way to being an epistemologist—somebody who thinks a lot about knowing.)

Knowing is transformation. It is a creative insight that changes us and changes things. We emerge, from the knowing event, different persons, seeing the world differently. Knowing is more like a conversion and less like catechism, we might say. And apart from the conversion, catechism is lifeless two-dimensionality. Catechism of course is important, but precisely because it invites conversion.

The dynamic of transformational knowing is, I believe, akin to the descent of God. The Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, says the Scriptures. God comes; I am changed. He breaks the bread and our eyes are opened to see Him and ourselves and our world differently. We’ve been summoned. There is no going back. That is knowing.

This suggests two very profound implications. In one direction, our relationship with the living Lord, far from being antithetical to “knowledge,” (as in “faith VERSUS reason”) is the best specimen and model of it. In the other, in whatever way we are involved in education—as teachers or students in classrooms, churches, homes, or on-the-job training, we must teach and learn and assess for transformation. We must learn, not so much to comprehend as to be apprehended. We must see ourselves as, in our determined efforts, putting ourselves in the way of the incoming of God.

Comments

[The Friar]

Being apprehended, being transformed seems like such a passive experience. Like C.S. Lewis' search for joy. You cannot control when it comes or how long it will last. But what is the alternative? Keep reading and studying and reading and studying? Or do we settle for long periods of living under the "eikonic eclipse" in our lives? My desire is to be transformed, to feel the joy of conversion again and again and to be deeply motivated to walk with the incoming God, but it seems to require a whole lot of waiting. C'est l' vie, I guess.

[William Coyne]

This is a fantastic point about the "two-dimensional knowledge" How often as humans do we make assumptions based upon incomplete data? For example a have a friend here at Geneva College who is from Haiti and has a darker complexion. She often tells a story about a student who approached her and questioned her "How is it being an African-American on Geneva's campus?" Here the student asking the question based her information solely on the appearance of the other student and failed to ask her any questions dealing with her nationality and simply made an assumption based on the color of her skin. Here we see a perfect example of someone seeing based on flawed and incomplete information.
I feel that the example I have used adds another dimension of what data is. A sensory experience provides the mind with signals about the nature of a particular experience and evaluates on a basic level based on the feedback from the signals. For example, we do not need to gather information about the most general pieces of information about another person. Unfortunately due to our fallen nature and the "two-dimensional glasses" we fail to realize the full three dimensional nature of the person we are confronting.
Jeff Daniels, while he is portraying the role of Col Chamberlain in the film "Gettysburg" gets at the heart of the issue I am discussing. He says "inside each human being, regardless of if he is white or black, is a divine spark given to him by God that can never be taken from him, no matter how great the cruelty he faces is." We must do God the honor of properly appreciating the beauty and complexity of what he has created by not simplifying or stripping his creation of its diversity by simply judging by sensory means. We must make the effort to learn and glorify the differences that make each and every one of us the beautiful and complex being that God crafted. And the almighty God created us just how he intended, in his image and fearfully and wonderfully made.
God Bless,
Bill Coyne
Sophomore (Wise Fool)
Geneva College

[Jason Kettinger]

Why should imagination in the shape of the biblical story be any more prized than answers from another place? The positivist trap is one, but the other seems to be relativist chaos. What if the only real draw of this story is the startling claim that it's a normative story, situatedness notwithstanding? It startles me still. What do I do next?