The following article maps the various ways in which the expressions “knowledge” and “to know” are diversely used with reference to the Triune Lord of historic Christian orthodoxy. The reason for this epistemic cartography of Christian grammar stems from a desire to help dissolve and bring quiet to the decades of confusion that have arisen in theological conversation as a function of the failure to specify just what one means by the relevant terms (chiefly, “knowledge” and “to know”) in questions like “Can we know God?” I therefore list the various ways “to know” and “knowledge” are traditionally used to give shape both to the differing versions of the question “Can we know God?” and to their respective answers as displayed within the grammar of the Christian faith. Making use of St. Thomas Aquinas's contributions when helpful, the resulting analysis yields that, though we can truly say it is possible for us to know or have knowledge of God that is of the unitive, conventional, demonstrative, and nominative sort (i.e., the form of the question under those intentional conditions leads to an affirmative answer), we can in no way meaningfully assert the same of definitional knowledge with respect to God. Through God's self‐revelation in/as Jesus Christ, however, I argue that an infallible and superlative expansion of the possibilities for our unitive, conventional, demonstrative, and nominative knowledge of God is on offer.

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对“我们能认识上帝吗？”这个问题的托马斯认识制图

下面的文章列出了“知识”和“知道”这两个词在涉及历史基督教正统的三位一体主时的不同使用方式。对基督教语法进行这种认知制图的原因源于一种愿望，即帮助化解和平息神学对话中数十年的混乱，这些混乱是由于未能明确说明相关术语的含义（主要是“知识”和“知道”）在诸如“我们能认识上帝吗？”这样的问题中。因此，我列出了传统上用来表达“我们能认识上帝吗？”这个问题的不同版本的“认识”和“知识”的各种方式。以及他们各自在基督教信仰语法中所显示的答案。在有用的时候利用圣托马斯·阿奎那的贡献，由此产生的分析表明，尽管我们确实可以说我们有可能认识或拥有统一的、约定的、指示的和主格的上帝知识（即，在这些有意条件下问题的形式会导致肯定的答案），我们绝不能有意义地断言关于上帝的定义知识也是如此。然而，通过上帝在耶稣基督里的自我启示，我认为我们对上帝的统一的、传统的、示范的和主格的知识的可能性得到了无误和最高级的扩展。