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At the very least, the simple fact of the distinction between divine and human knowledge should be taken into account in Christian epistemological discussions. Surely it is relevant to our theories of knowledge that we believe that there is a divine consciousness whose ways are far above our own, and whose thought patterns are not plagued by the limitations that characterize our own cognitive strivings. To acknowledge the reality of divine knowledge is to believe in some fundamental sense that there is "objective" truth, and that it is possible for at least someone in the universe to have certainty about the way things are. And, as Wheaton's Arthur Holmes has long insisted in his writings, this kind of acknowledgment can provide us mortals with both "epistemic humility" and "epistemic hope." The humility comes from awareness that we are not God, that our claims to know the truth must always have a tentativeness about them. But the cause for hope is also important to emphasize: we can stay with the struggle because of God's promise that our cognitive condition will eventually improve greatly, when that day finally arrives when we will know even as we are known.

We would also do well to keep in mind the traditional distinction between pre-fallen and fallen human knowing. To what degree are our "non-foundationalist" limitations due to our sinfulness and to what degree are they endemic to the human condition as such? Our answer to this sort of question will tell us something about whether we are talking about human epistemology as such or about the ways in which our cognitive capacities have been wounded by our sinfulness. To be sure, past discussions of "the noetic effects of sin" were often highly speculative. But those thinkers who paid attention to this topic did manage to come up with at least a few emphases that parallel those which have been inspired these days by anti-foundationalist perspectives.

One important consideration that can sustain our epistemic hope is the firm conviction that we are constituted by our Maker with the capacity to get things straight. In emphasizing this conviction, the recent defenders of a "Reformed epistemology"—Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and others—have given us at least one good reason to exercise caution in the way we go about criticizing Enlightenment thought, since they have some of their inspiration from the writings of Thomas Reid, himself a Scottish Enlightenment thinker. In formulating his alternative to Hume's scepticism, Reid insisted that God has created us with certain epistemic dispositions—for example, the disposition to believe that causal relationships exist, and that physical objects exist apart from our perceptions of them, and that we are unified centers of consciousness and not mere bundles of transitory perceptions and feelings—and that it is legitimate to trust these sorts of dispositions as we make our way through the world.

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