Any great scientist is a supreme example of an integration of inherited outlook and knowledge and judgement gained personally. In his or her personal being, the great scientist IS that living knowing integration, and so it is with all of us. We hold all the knowledge together in ourselves which we have accumulated, and a vast proportion of it we are no longer consciously aware of. It is tacit. It is this reservoir of tacit knowledge which we rely on and must take for granted when we move beyond it to focus on something new, or make a discovery. In the nature of the case true creative advances can only occur at the boundaries of knowledge, when what is known already functions tacitly and acts as the springboard for further discoveries. People's success in performance, or people's success in innovation, thus depends on the success of all the tacit knowledge which they have previously acquired and built into themselves. Much of that cannot be assessed except by judgment similarly acquired.

Therefore to demand that people's performance is measured more and more by so called objective  yardsticks is to frustrate the very process by which knowledge develops and creative discoveries take place. The more people focus on the explicit and the quantifiable, the less their tacit knowledge is able to function, and the more that happens the less creative and productive they are. They steadily lose their personal space, their freedom, their own meaning and their sanity. To function successfully as people, they need to be treated as people, which means being allowed an element of trust in their own living judgment, and allowed enough space and time to sense the things which they cannot put into words, and which help to give meaning to their lives.
 
Of course no one is disputing that what can be "objectively assessed" has its supremely important place, but it is equally important that there must be a balance between that and the tacit. We rely on the tacit, on what we have already learned and which has become tacit, in order to think rationally at all. We cannot be continually going back and proving things we have already absorbed. Not only is it logically impossible to prove everything but we would never get anywhere if we attempted to, and would never discover anything new. We must be continually going on from the point which we have reached, and it is doing so that in fact proves that we are on the right track. For if in all thought and life we cannot prove what we have tacitly absorbed already but can only think through it and go on from it, then the proof that we are on the right track lies in the fact that what we discover proves to be in line with what we have already absorbed, and often a totally new and surprising confirmation of it.
 
Here there is another supremely important fact: that if we are on the right lines at all we are always aware of much more than we can put into words. What we are actually thinking about consciously, or what we can actually already articulate, is itself guided by things we can sense, but cannot yet put into words or prove. It is this that guides the scientist's hunches which lead on to discovery: he or she senses something long before they can put it into words and articulate it, far less prove it, but it is that which guides them. They sense something and are convinced of it before they can actually prove it.  It is the original awareness, initially intangible, which leads on to proof. It is the same when any of us are aware that there is something wrong but cannot put it into words, at least not yet.
 
What can be "objectively proved" thus depends for its validity not only on what goes before but on what comes after. What goes before is the all the tacit knowledge, now taken for granted, through which alone we can now focus on what we are trying to prove. What comes after is the knowledge
which we are aware of but cannot yet put into words: it is this that lies behind what we are trying to prove, and which ultimately will lead us on beyond it. When it does so it will confirm what we know already by showing it to be the stepping stone to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding.
 
All in all it is critical today that we realise the validity not only of tacit knowledge, built up over the generations and then absorbed and deepened by each of us personally, but of the skills of awareness that lead to discovery. It is our ability to sense things which we cannot yet put into words but which guides us which makes us civilised and human. It is this that guides us, not only in scientific discovery, but in our awareness of the higher values of truth, justice, love and ultimately of God himself.
 
Yet in our undue emphasis on the allegedly scientific and provable, we imagine today that we have no valid grounds to believe something until it has been understood and proved. We think that until something has been scientifically proved it is not really valid, and therefore we think that at the end of the day faith or ethics can only be subjective. It is actually the other way round: it is our fundamental beliefs, and our intuitive judgments that guide us to understanding and proof, not least in science. Understanding should normally follow belief, and not the other way round. Of course beliefs may be wrong, and they may have to be modified, but they still have a primary role in our functioning as people. As living persons we integrate skills and knowledge in a way that may be valid even if it cannot be proved at the moment (at least not by impersonal "objective" means): such personal knowledge can be deeply objective, that is, in touch with reality, and it can also be deeply subjective, if it is not in touch with reality. 

But the fact that it is personal does not mean that it is necessarily subjective. For while we cannot be truly personal unless we are genuinely related to the objective and based on what is there, it is also true that we cannot discover the objective world without personal relation to it through tacit integrative skills. There is no way to the truly objective other than through the deeply personal. The personal, and an appreciation of the personal, are vital to our successful dealing with the whole objective world. It is, further, only when the personal is seen as real, that there can be a rehabilitation of ethics and faith in the modern world. Till then ethics and faith will be seen as subjective, and persons will be increasingly depersonalised.

Through their awareness of God, whose very nature is personal, and through their knowledge of Jesus, through whom alone we become truly personal, Christians are uniquely placed to be a light to society at this point. Not only can they help to rehabilitate a more fruitful understanding of the nature of knowledge and belief, and of the vital role of our personal tacit skills, but they can lead people to the still higher personal  functions, where we learn to function as persons in relation to other persons, and that through relation to the supreme Person. It is through pointing people to Jesus, to his integrated personhood, to his personal relations within God, and to the love of Father, Son and Spirit for us, that people can be drawn into the same personal relations with the Trinity and find themselves personalised.
 
Truth is One.
First the concept of one universe: it is one of the implications of belief in one God as Creator, and of our place in creation under him, that we should learn to see the universe as a whole and relate it to him. For if there is one God over all, then we cannot think in mutually exclusive compartments. In practice that can become a modern equivalent of idolatry, where we select one aspect of reality and focus entirely on it. Instead we need to relate different subjects together, not only to try to discover the common principles behind them, but also to apply Christians insights to them. We need a programme something like that advocated by the Scottish philosophers who made a determined effort first to relate the various subjects together, and then to create a series of textbooks designed to translate them into the language of the ordinary person and to educate him accordingly. Only in this way, they felt, could they keep society cohesive, and help to overcome the gap between intellectual and worker, and between mind and body.
 
Truth is Personal.
Second the personal nature of the universe: the fact that the one God is personal, a communion of loving persons (Father, Son and Spirit), and that we are in his image at the heart of creation means that the universe has an ultimate personal structure to it. The implications of this for society are enormous, for so many of the outlooks which govern modern society are ultimately impersonal. Mechanistic, deterministic, materialistic, bureaucratic and legalistic outlooks, with their demands for quantifiable results, govern so much of modern life, creating ever increasing levels of stress and can dehumanise people.
 
Against all that, Christians need to assert the importance of the personal. As persons, people have a value which cannot be quantified and measured. In the sum of what they are, in their own unique blend of experiences, skills, feelings and thoughts, they hold things together in a way that nothing else can.  Yet in society today there is an increasing call for measurable results, quantifiable achievements, doing things by the book. Yet our skills in assessing things quantifiably and measurably depend on our prior functioning as integrated persons. In our treatment of people, and in our interaction with them and what they do, there is indeed an element which can be quantifiably assessed, but there is another equally valid element which can only be assessed using tacit personal skills. This is the level of persons and of inter-personal relations, and at the end of the day it is only when people are treated as persons that they are actually more creative and productive. And it is only in the gospel, where people find that they are loved for themselves, that society can ultimately be shown the true meaning of the personal.
 
The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
As regards her own particular message, the church has always made the most impact when she has been truest to the following elements at the very heart of the scriptures: God the Creator as Trinity, Jesus as full God and full man in our place, Jesus’ resurrection in body for us and sending of the
Holy Spirit to unite us to himself, unconditional grace, and Christian freedom. (See for example the theology of Wesley or the fact that key revivals can often be traced back to a rediscovery of unconditional grace). It is important today when the church so often polarises into left or right, and where each group selects and emphasises particular biblical insights, that we try to be as comprehensive and as true to the heart of the faith as possible in our theology.
 
 
At the centre of all is of course life in Christ, who in his resurrection has established our humanity, and in his ascension has taken it into the very fellowship of God himself. Perhaps there is no one element which the church today needs to recover more than the humanity of Jesus and its significance. The whole life of Jesus, from birth to death and resurrection, was at once the death of the old Adam (our death) and the establishment of the new Adam (our new life). Hence, as the literal Greek translation of Galatians 2:20 goes: " I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."
 
That is the radical significance of the incarnation, of the humanity of Jesus. We need to be born again but we cannot. We need to repent but are unable as we ought. We need to rise to a new life but cannot. We need to pray in the Spirit but we cannot. The real significance of Jesus' humanity is that the very life we ought to live Jesus has lived for us in his life on earth, and now lives in us by the Spirit. We are born again, believe, repent, pray, die and rise again, and yet it is not us but Christ in us. He is the one who has received the Spirit for us in heaven in his humanity (our humanity) and who as our continuing High Priest sends the Spirit to take us up into life in him, so that what Jesus has won for us in his humanity may flow into us. That is what frees us from ourselves, liberates us to live the Christian life, and gives us the vision of all people as called to fellowship with one another in our new humanity in Christ.
 
 
Comments to Bob Walker

Relevant to Bob Walker's article is the book review of Everyman Revived - the Common Sense of Michael Polanyi by Drusilla Scott.

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