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Epistemology
How do we know that any thing is true? How do we know there is truth? How can we have an encyclopedia with such questions still being raised? As with all things, God has given us direct information, not only in the form of information itself, but organized and telling of a system of knowledge as well. The study of knowledge, epistemology, is spoken to directly in the Bible.
For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.
God knows all things, for He created and sustains them through His holy will. God's knowledge is exhaustive and all encompassing. Any human knowledge is a subset of His knowledge. Since we are finite and He is infinite, our knowledge is not like His knowledge, only analogous. Nevertheless, we can speak of genuinely knowing some thing, insofar as God grants us that knowledge. All knowledge is revelation.
The History of Knowing
A reasonable demarcation in the history of philosophy is Rene Descartes "cogito ergo sum" of 1637. Intellectual tradition before this time could be called Pre-Modern, Descartes could be said to inaugurate the Modern era, and perhaps 1900 might mark the transition into the Post-Modern period. The Modern Epoch was and is marked by beginning with the finite I, being profoundly foundational, methodologically rigorous and ahistorically universal. It was also deeply arrogant, believing all but omniscience to be achievable through empirical inquiry.
Almost predictably, having left God out as a necessity for knowledge, Modernism reached an impasse, first philosophically and later empirically. Immanuel Kant, with his unlivable divide between the phenomenal and the noumenal intimated the coming degeneration into absolute relativism. This is why some historian dislike the term 'Post-modernism', saying it is nothing but Modernism going to seed. However, it is useful to our discussion, especially as we are tempted to see these camps as the only alternatives.
Neither Modern nor Post-modern
Modernism teaches that with the right foundations and rigorous methodology, anything can be known exhaustively. Post-modernism rightly points out that we are all perspectival, forever bound by our finitude. It wrong asserts that since we can know nothing exhaustively, we can never know anything at all. This false dichotomy consumes our age threatens to draw the Church aside from the Truth. D. A. Carson describes human knowledge as 'asymptotic', never reaching but drawing finitely closer to an infinite goal.