摘要：This response to papers on my 2003 book, Longing to Know, presented at the Polanyi Society’s November 2004
meetings, addresses two primary concerns about the book’s argument: first, that the book’s argument depends
on an inappropriately unquestioned commitment to the authority of Scripture that falls short of the adjustment
required by modern higher critical biblical scholarship; and second, that the book’s argument implies a
religious exclusivism that overlooks the fact that the model of knowing it defends suits competing religious
positions equally well. I argue that LTK’s strategy is more sophisticated than has been represented, and that
the commitment to Scripture as an authoritative guide in knowing God, as over against the commitment to
modern higher critical scholarship, may be reasonably justified as a consistent elucidation of the Polanyian
model of knowing. I argue that, indeed, the Polanyian model of knowing may be applied to or by competing
religious claims, where the claim that we must treat all such claims as having equal validity must itself be treated
as a religious claim. In fact, Polanyi’s argument about competing scientific claims makes more sense of how
we may (yea, must) maintain the rightness of our own position while acknowledging respectfully the
disagreements of others.
关键词：Longing to Know, Polanyi, Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the modern higher
critical tradition, religious exclusivism, principled pluralism, knowing, epistemology.
