“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge."

Here is a post I done this week in Philosophy.  Just wanted to share the thought.

The Gettier Problem

Belief, Truth, & Knowledge

The Gettier Problem, from what I gather, is to state what, in addition to or instead of justified true belief, is needed to have knowledge.  Basically is JTB enough or do we need something else? 

According to our presentation on knowledge, there are three basic types of knowledge:

            Knowledge as Acquaintance-“I know Bill.”

            Knowledge of Competency-“I know French.”

            Knowledge as truth claims-“I know Kennedy was president of the U.S. in 1962.”

The knowledge as truth claims is basically what we are looking at as we venture through epistemology.  However, the question presented this week is basically is JTB enough to define knowledge or is something else needed?

For my thoughts here, I turned to the Bible, which I firmly believe meets all the qualifications for knowledge.  The Bible is truth, I believe it is true, I have reason to believe it is true, and it is in fact true.  Proverbs 1:7 tells me what knowledge is.  It states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instructions.”  This definition is provided through God’s Word.  Then we see in Proverbs 12:1 “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge.”  Then continued on in Proverbs 15:4 “The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge,” and then in Proverbs 18:15 it says, “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”  I could continue on but here is what I “believe” about “knowledge.” 

Knowledge is not just justified belief.  Knowledge is belief, truth, discipline, “fear of the Lord,” understanding, and an intelligent heart who seeks the Lord and truth.  To me to limit knowledge to JTB is only saying, “I can see it, it has been proven, analyzed, and accepted by the mass majority” is limiting out what the Bible says knowledge is.  Since God gave us the truth and He gave us knowledge then to me there is no knowledge without Him and truth.  I hope that makes sense here.  I could have taken this without the concept of God, but I don’t think knowledge exist in that form so that is why I have chosen to pursue this post with the truth, the Word of God!