247 Relational Epistemology and the Art of Living Together 7 (2021), as explained in the theoretical part of this dissertation (Chapter 1.3.3). One member of the outsider group explained that, in this idea, ‘one’s first perspective is not “you there and we here” but “we together, as people, seeking for truth”’. In addition, the fundamental difference between God/Christ, on the one hand, and man, on the other, a distinction that could be heard in the normative theological voice, coincided with Beech’s (2021) relational epistemology. The conversational community underlined the necessity of an individual pedagogically and theologically driven epistemology as a fundamental ingredient of Christian-holistic teacher formation for a modern, fragmented society in its 14th meeting, terming it a ‘doctrine of knowledge that broadly and holistically formed students need to learn to sustainably combine critical openness and critical faithfulness in super-diverse classroom situations’. The subgroups of teachers and students that met during the 13th meeting also recognised the three-dimensional geometric figure or octahedron to represent Beech’s (2021; visualised in: van Olst, 2023b) relational epistemology. Time was, however, short due to the vivid talks on Biblical truth and the handling of truth claims, leading to only a superficial acquaintance with the model. At first sight, the octahedron seemed too complex to be compelling to the teacher trainers and trainee teachers. Notwithstanding, they recognised the idea of the interconnectedness between God as the Creator, creation as representing His works and teachers, students and others as relational learners from creational reality. ‘The model makes you think more and see more connections’, said one of the students. ‘More broadly’, added one of the teachers, it is ‘a network of relationships’. All this leads to the conclusion that a relational epistemology can be embraced as a working title for the kind of truth believing, holding, studying and presenting previously identified as necessary when the voices of normative, operant and espoused theology are heard. This accords with another finding—namely, that creation, as a code, appeared in all of the minutes and transcriptions no less than 14 times, 6 times during the 15th meeting, when the topic of longing—and a pedagogy of longing—was deliberately put on the agenda by members of the conversational community, in addition to what was said about the attitude of humble servitude necessary with a relational epistemology. In this sense, the conversational community showed its adherence to the Belgic Confession, as part of the Dutch Reformed tradition, where it says (in Article 2) that there are two central fountains of revelation of divine truth, which is not only Scripture but also nature.
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