"Christianity affirms that the nature of its own vision is such that understanding can only come 'from within', i.e. it is given to faith. The vision is there for the catching in the liturgy, and it includes a practical component for living. Christianity yields its secret only to those who engage themselves existentially in worship and appropriate conduct. This is necessarily the case, since it is of the essence of the Christian vision to claim, or invite, the whole person. The sciences have tended to regard the observer's participation as a regrettable necessity, imposed by the nature of things. Christianity glories in the fact, the strict matter of fact, that reality can be known only by participation. Thus the epistemological principles of Christianity correspond better than the epistemology of much modern Western science to the place of human beings amid the reality of which they are a part and which they seek to know. Moreover, Christians gladly acknowledge that their knowledge is relative (to the knower) and, without falling into contradiction, claim that it is potentially universal."G. Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life (1980: 361).
