God is the source of knowledge and its ultimate reference point. The type of relationship you have with  God determines the quality of what you can ever know. Therefore the first right step in the intellectual journey is obedience to God. This is exactly what the Bible means in Proverbs 1:7 when it identifies “the fear of the Lord” as the beginning of knowledge.

How does this work out in practice for you as a Christian student?  How do you understand the true beginning of knowledge in ways that guide your learning in the classroom?  Anybody who is serious about knowledge must ask and resolve primary questions. What is the source of knowledge? What does it  really mean to know anything? What are the limitations of knowledge? Your answers to these  first order questions determine how you handle all other  theoretical and practical questions about knowledge.

Primary Assumptions
Thinking about the beginning and nature of knowledge draws your attention to primary assumptions. These are essential beliefs that we take for granted in life. Primary assumptions are first rules which we must obey in order to think and function properly as human beings. We accept them first without question. Then, with them we go on to question and make sense of other things.

Learning starts from these untestable beliefs. Reasoning cannot take place without them, yet they can’t be changed or improved by reason. Science is not meaningful without these beliefs, yet they cannot be validated by empirical investigations or science. This is because human systems of reasoning and rules of logic derive from these primary assumptions in the first place.

A primary assumption is therefore a final starting point. It is not open to examination at any stage in the search for knowledge. Once we have taken the first step from our primary assumptions, we cannot turn back to evaluate them on the basis of secondary assumptions and techniques. This non-reversibility is a property that separates primary assumptions from working assumptions. We can’t simply change our primary assumptions like we do with working or secondary assumptions. You can see why this is the case. If half-way in your attempt to know, you decide to abandon all you know in order to start from ‘better’ primary assumptions, you haven’t made progress. How in the first place,  do you acquire the comparative perspective for judging your original primary assumptions? Since we can’t question primary assumptions meaningfully, we accept them by faith and organize our practical and intellectual lives around them.

Generic primary assumptions
Some primary assumptions are generic, in the sense that they are frequently used in almost all situations. For instance, we presuppose that human beings can know. Without this primary assumption, we can’t meaningfully engage in the pursuit of knowledge of any sort.

Secondly, we presuppose uniformity in nature.  This primary assumption is the basis of our relationship with other human beings and all creation. It is also a basis for the scientific approach. When scholars get down to the business of thinking about and researching any department of knowledge, they  theorize, classify, analyze and conclude on the basis of uniformity in both their rationality and whatever is the object of their study.
Again, we presuppose the reliability of our cognitive faculties. We believe that our memory, perception and reason  are reliable means of knowing and interpreting the world around us. That is why we take it for granted  (without question, evidence or proof) that the processes which our mind engages in gathering, processing and interpreting reality, are reliable.  Strictly, speaking, you can’t investigate the reliability of your basic senses. What means, other than the same cognitive faculties, are you going to employ in such an investigation? Without a primary assumption about the reliability of our senses, every intellectual activity is fundamentally flawed and ultimately useless.

Another generic primary assumption is the consistency of categories in language and logic.  For us to communicate using a language or formal logic, we presuppose that categories maintain the identities we assign to them. If, for instance, the symbol A changes from being an A in this paragraph to an H in the next paragraph, how can you understand what we mean when we claim to communicate in standard 21st century English language? Likewise, formal logic which we use in intellectual discourse, presupposes consistency of categories. Otherwise reasoning and intellectual activity in general would be in a state of  complete disarray.

A last example of generic primary assumptions is the adequacy of human verbal and symbolic language. Social  interactions are not possible — the way we are used to as human beings— without the primary assumption that human language is adequate for formal and informal communications. Rejection of this basic belief would result in intellectual and social chaos of unimaginable proportions.

You can think of several other generic primary assumptions with which we begin to make sense of the world. The same principle holds for life in general and for intellectual engagements. We first presuppose, then on the basis of primary assumptions, we start the process of systematic derivation of organized knowledge using different approaches of our choice. In all cases, primary assumptions are unjustifiable primitive beliefs.

Non-Christian Primary Assumptions
Non-Christian scholars begin their quest for knowledge with human nature the way we experience it. Many of them presuppose absolute authority and reliability of human sensation and rationality. They believe that human beings can discover true knowledge using only human resources.

In practice, many of your lecturers start with a primary assumption that there is no God. They presuppose the existence of nothing outside of what you see and experience in nature. If you ask a direct question about the source knowledge, they are likely to offer one of two answers in various forms. First, they respond that we derive all our knowledge from observing the world around us. At first, this answer appears convincing. But the more you  think about it, the clearer you see its flaws. Sense observation cannot be the starting point of knowledge.  From where did you acquire the categories of thoughts that make what you observe intelligible? Surely something must precede observation, and that cannot be human observation.

Others present human experience as the starting point of knowledge.  In their view, human beings claim to have knowledge when they have, through experience, established sufficient patterns of regularity or predictability. Again, we can raise the same objection we had for observation. On what first principle do you base your categorisation and interpretation of experience? Furthermore, in practice, human experiences are subjective, deceptive and pliable. Whose or which experiences should we accept as the authoritative beginning of knowledge, and on what basis?

Christian Primary Assumptions
Clearly, neither sense observation nor human experience qualifies as the primary starting point of knowledge. A true starting point of knowledge must be external to both human observation and human experience. Otherwise, we cannot truly assign primacy to it. Secondly, it must be universal, thus imposing uniformity  and absolutes on all humanity.

Only one source meets these two requirements. This is God’s divine revelation. The all-knowing and God voluntarily discloses Himself through means and to the extent that He sees necessary for human beings to play their role in His divine plan and purposes. God equips every human being with innate codes for understanding Him. These codes of beginning serve as the conduit of God’s essential self-disclosure to all individuals as part of our being created in the image of God. They are the foundations for understanding rationality, articulating observation and interpreting experience.

Practically, God’s self-disclosure is presented to humanity in three interrelated ways. First, wherever we look in nature, we are reassured by indisputable evidence of God.  This evidence of nature mirrors the primary source of knowledge in the living and omniscient God. Secondly, the truth of God that is evident in nature is presented in human language in the Bible. Ultimately, God is disclosed to all humanity in Jesus Christ. The person, teachings, deeds and historical events of Jesus Christ are the completeness of God’s revelation to humanity. He is the way, the truth and the life. The Lord Jesus Christ is Wisdom and Reason. He is the Light that shows the way to all humanity. He is the Word and Knowledge in human form. He is the true starting point of knowledge.

The Ultimate Authority
We must be prepared to justify our claims to knowledge by appealing to other referents. The referents must have criteria that are fully external to all knowledge systems. They must be pre-eminent, absolute, morally impeccable and universally true. Obviously, referents that meet these criteria must  be from beyond nature and human beings in order to overcome natural and human limitations. They must also be permanent and universal in order to overcome the variability of time and space.

In the course of your tertiary training, you will learn directly or indirectly, what various knowledge systems present as their ultimate external referents. Most scholars rarely go beyond nature and human reason. You will be surprised to know that several non-Christian starting points clearly state that they have no external ultimate authority.

In contrast, Christians don’t hesitate to present the living and active God as the only true and final authority in matters of existence and knowledge. We don’t need to prove the existence of God and His divine self-revelation. This is because our God, the God of the Bible is the ultimate in every sense of the word. There is no other existence, reality or authority from which anybody can begin or rest a proof.  Everything coheres and makes sense only in our self-revealing God.  Without God, nothing exists; no truth, no proof. If you don’t believe in this God, what else is there to believe? If you don’t start from His self-revelation to all humanity, your primary assumption doesn’t rest on the ultimate authority.

Some ungodly scholars can be smart in this battle for your intellect. They know that as long as you don’t accept their primary assumptions, you will see more clearly the holes in their positions. This is why  they encourage you to shed your own ‘preconceived ideas’ and come to the table, their table, with an ‘open mind’ on their terms. When you concede to their so-called objective common ground, they go on to show you how and why  ‘it doesn’t make sense’ to bring God and the supernatural into serious intellectual discussions.

Implications for Your Studies
Three points should be settled in your mind as you begin a serious engagement in knowledge. First, there are true and false starting points in knowledge. True knowledge starts from God’s revelation which is reflected in nature,  presented in the Bible and demonstrated in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Secondly, intellectual inquiry is not possible without primary assumptions. These primary assumptions cannot be questioned because there are no human instruments for interrogating them. All scholars simply believe them. It is this act of  faith that confers coherence to learning, relationship and all human experiences.

Thirdly, many of your non-Christian lecturers deliberately or ignorantly start from primary assumptions that deny the authorities of the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ. In many cases, they defend intellectual traditions arising from false starting points.

Especially in your introductory classes, your lecturers are likely to highlight the role of assumptions in intellectual inquiry. Ensure that you understand which of the two possible senses they use the concept. A few of them may refer to a primary assumption in the sense that we discussed here. Others use the term in a less fundamental sense as an aid to progress towards conditions, issues or quantities that are yet to be fully known.

Most scholars are rarely explicit in the classroom about their primary assumptions. This is partly because many of them take it for granted that all acceptable intellectual activities must be done with anti-theistic and non-Christian primary assumptions.  Their primary assumptions discount the supernatural and the miraculous. In contrast, your Christian primary assumptions affirm God, the supernatural and the miraculous. This disagreement is fundamental, permanent and unresolvable.

When you understand primary assumptions and their role in knowledge, you are better prepared to face intellectual challenges in the classroom. First, you are sufficiently aware of the differences between you as a Christian believer and most of your non-Christian lecturers and colleagues. Secondly, you understand easily that the materials you receive in the form of information, techniques, explanations and conclusions, are grounded in primary assumptions. As a Christian student, you should learn to identify such assumptions and assess the extent to which they derive or deviate from biblical Christian foundations.