It might seem, at a prima facie level, that these two operations are very much synomous and interrelated to such an extent that there is seemingly not much of a distinction between the two. This would be a most grievious fallacy though and subsequently proves to be a pitfall for many a christian. To know something and to understand something, though they are indeed related, are as different as night and day. Albeit, both exercises are necessary for proper cognitve function it is nevertheless incumbent upon the christian exerting his or her christian mind to make the necessary contradistinction between the two. While they are intextricably bound to one another in the overall mental construct of the christian each represents an individually unique quality to the regenerated and sanctified mental process of sound reasoning.
To know something appertaining to truth in general (truth in particular within the confines of this blog) is to possess awareness of a fact, idea, formula, information and the like. This is more or less a static and/or mechanistic memory of something. Whereas to understand something is to possess a familiarity with any given "datum" or article of "knowledge" one has ascertained and how that "datum" or "knowledge" is to be applied and how it is to function.
Consider the sordid affair involving David and Bathsheba in II Samuel 11 and 12. King David commited adultery with Bathsheba and then sends her husband Uriah to his demise in battle. Now, David was a "man after God's own heart," and possessed an incisive knowledge of God's law. The king was fully aware of the facts surrounding the aforementioned sinful ordeal yet inexplicably failed to apply the facts he knew of God's law to his sin. It took the prophet Nathan to bring David to a position of understanding his actions. David failed to apply the knowledge of God's law/truth to his circumstances, decisions and actions. And by not applying (understanding) the knowledge he had, his reality reached an irrationalistic nadir. Nathan enabled the king to rightly perceive and reason with his immediate reality by way of understanding (applying) his knowledge. As John M. Frame puts it, "What had David learned at that point? He already knew God's law, and, in a sense, he already knew the facts. What he learned was an application-what the law said about him. Previously, he may have rationalized something like this: 'Kings of the earth have a right to take whatever women they want; and the commander-in-chief has the right to decide who fights on the front line. Therefore my relation with Bathsheba was not really adultery, and my order to Uriah was not really murder.' We all know how that works; we've done it ourselves. But what the Spirit did, through Nathan, was to take that rationalization away." This commentary underscores the reality that it is one thing to know something and it is another to understand that same thing. It takes understanding to translate the facts of scripture (the normative) into the facts of one's life (the empirical and inconstant). This understanding is refined whenever the christian is commited to incorporate or apply knowledge of Gods truths or biblical facts into their own plane of existence; by grace of course. This bespeaks noetic regeneration and noetic sanctification; or more simply put the perpetual reonovation and renewing of the mind aided by the Spirit of truth. When this is active the christian praxis is clearly and palpably changed. Whenever understanding of biblical knowledge is truly apprehended their will be new practical implements, so to speak, that crystallize or become actualized. Ones ability to discern situations, judge, pray, obey God's word, exercise christian love and charity, properly implement church discipline et cetera drastically develope and blossom. This of course is not a single act but a lifelong process of transformation.
This distinction of knowing and understanding is made by Christ in His discourse with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Then he said to them, 'These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.' Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures...," (Luke 24:44-45). "Minds" is the translation of the Greek nous. Nous means mind or intellect with the implication of understanding. Christ and the surrounding text affirms that these men had knowledge of the truths Christ previously spoke to them but it is evident they lacked understanding. Christ however opens their minds and so enables them to understand.
Of course the Pharisee's illustrate this truth. They knew the Penteteuch, the Torah, the Prophets yet they were unable and unwilling to understand those truths in conjunction with their immediate circumstances. Christ castigated them in one place by saying, "You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times," (Matt. 16:1-4). Christ's retort to Nicodemus is also quite revealing, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things," (John 3:10; cf.3:1-15).
It is inane to aqcuire an immeasurable treasure of knowledge without understanding how to spend that treasure. In so doing that treasure loses its value.
It is becoming increasingly idiosyncratic of the church in our day, at least in the west, that christians are satisfied with aqcuisition of an amalgamation of biblical facts without understanding how or why those facts compliment each other (if they do) and what those facts essentially mean. This in my opinion is why the church has lost a sense of her meaning and an underlying reason nominalism prevails within her borders. Knowledge has been stripped of understanding and truth of meaning.
Biblical wisdom is absent in Christendom. Wisdom encapsulates both knowledge and understanding within the bounds of biblical nomenclature, "for the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding," (Prov. 2:6). To the Hebrew mind wisdom involves both knowledge and its sibling understanding. Effort needs to be made by all christians to understand what they know for, "understanding is a well spring of life to him who has it," (Prov. 16:22).
Intergrating the knowledge of God's truths into the christian life vis a vis understanding is paramount. Paul expressed this when he prayed, "we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God," (Col. 1:9-10). Paul was praying this for the Colossians against the backdrop of a heresy that was gnostic in nature. The Gnostic doctrines advanced a dualism that divided the corporeal from the incorporeal or the mind from the body. For the christian there needs to be a coherent unity of being, whereby the knowledge of biblical truths resident within the mind finds an understanding expressed through the body in every sphere of existence.
In so doing we will learn to "see as" much like David above. The perception of his experiential facts changed when confronted with Nathan's comparative story which enabled David to move beyond his skewed "seeing." Though he knew God's law he was not defining his actions according to that law he had knowledge of. It took an interaction with what he knew from another source in order for him to rightly understand how to interpret his experience. Whenever we are continually applying biblical categories to our perception/s what we might have been "seeing" previously may be shown to be fallacious and thus enable us to "see as" it should be perceived according to biblical truth/s. (For more on this subject see Ludwig Wittgensteins' Philosophical Investigations, 1953.) The rudimentary maxim behind this is that human perception is fundamentally interpretive).
In so doing our reasoning, theology and interpretive matrix is subject to His Lordship.
Credo ut Intelligam
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