Faith and Philosophy

ONLINE FIRST

published on December 9, 2014

Terence Cuneo

Ritual Knowledge

Most work in religious epistemology has concerned itself with propositional knowledge of God. In this essay, I explore the role of knowing how to engage God in the religious life. Specifically, I explore the role of knowing how to engage God in the context of ritualized liturgical activity, exploring the contribution that knowing how to perform liturgical rites of various sorts can make to knowing God. The thesis I defend is that the liturgy provides both activities of certain kinds and conceptions of God such that knowing how to perform those activities under those conceptions is a species of what I call ritual knowledge.