Loving to know : Introducing covenant epistemology / Esther Lightcap Meek. [print]

The need for 'epistemological therapy' : our defective 'default' in knowing Texture 1: Rekindling the longing to know Another kind of knowing : suggestive preliminary conversations and proposal What covenant epistemology offers Knowing as subsidiary-focal integration : conversation with Michael Polanyi Texture 2: Body knowledge : forays into the subsidiary Knowing as transformation : conversation with James Loder Texture 3: Knowing as transformation, not information : implications for academic and theological curriculum, education, and pedagogy Knowing as stewardship : conversation with John Frame Texture 4: Anticipative knowing and common grace Knowing as unfolding covenant relationship : conversation with Mike Williams Knowing as interpersonal : conversation with John Macmurray Knowing as I-You encounter : conversation with Martin Buber Texture 5: Friendship and learning : all knowing is knowing with Knowing before the face of the Holy : second conversation with James Loder Texture 6: A sense of personal beauty Knowing and healthy interpersonhood : conversation with David Schnarch Texture 7: Dance as metaphysical therapy Knowing as dance : conversation with Colin Gunton Reality as gift : conversation with Philip Rolnick Texture 8: Stopping short of personhood : inadvertent insights from Marjorie Grene Contours of covenant epistemology Inviting the real : an epistemological etiquette Knowing for Shalom.

This radical book develops the notion of covenant epistemology--an innovative, biblically compatible, holistic, embodied, life-shaping epistemological vision in which all knowing takes the shape of interpersonal, covenantal relationship. Rather than knowing in order to love, we love in order to know. Meek argues that all knowing is best understood as transformative encounter. Creatively blending insights from a diverse range of conversation partners--including Michael Polanyi, Michael D. Williams, Lesslie Newbigin, Parker Palmer, John Macmurray, Martin Buber, and James Loder--Meek offers critically needed "epistemological therapy" in response to the pervasive and damaging presumptions that those in Western culture continue to bring to efforts to know. The book's innovative approach itself subverts standard epistemological presumptions of timeless linearity. While it offers a sustained and sophisticated philosophical argument, Loving to Know's texts and textures interweave loosely to effect therapeutic epistemic transformation in the reader.

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Esther Lightcap Meek is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Geneva College in Western P.A. . She is also the author of Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (2003).