Here are my “two cents:”
To the empiricist, all knowledge comes from sensory perception and reasoning.
If he holds a concept of God, and even if he has received that definitive divine revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord, he will nevertheless insist that God must comply with his own ability to comprehend Him.
On principle, whether he realizes it or not, He rejects the Spiritual insight that God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. He always anthropomorphizes God.
For instance, he would insist that God must comply with Aristotlean laws of logic, such as the Law of the Excluded Middle. Which is to say, in his mind God cannot speak two things which are to him mutually exclusive, e.g. do not kill, kill these. He will either reject such revelations in Scripture or seek to reconcile them by his own reasoning.
IMHO, some theologies look like pretzels because of this tendency to value sensory perception and reasoning above God's revelations.
Likewise, he would insist that God must comply with the physical laws and most especially causality, i.e. cause>effect. In his timeline oriented mind, God could not say that He hates Esau and loves Jacob before either of them were born.
That doesn’t mean the empiricist is a lost cause, however. Like doubting Thomas, the empiricist will always have a tendency to put himself above God by demanding physical or logical proofs. He is an idol worshipper and the idol is himself.
But if God reveals Himself to him, as Jesus did to doubting Thomas - he'll know. Doubting Thomas was an apostle, too. And God favored Job as well by revealing Himself to him even though he had deigned to judge Him (chapters 38 to 42.)
In his Christian walk, he’d be more like Martha in the story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) – cumbered about much serving, missing that good part which came so effortlessly to Mary. The physical doing would be more comforting to him than the spiritual being. In that respect, he would tend to be Spiritually unplugged - but not without hope if he takes in the full counsel of Romans 8 so that he will understand that he can let go and let God.
Amen. Beautifully put.
"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." -- Galatians 6:14
Preach it, Sister! I just went and read again Romans 8 - you’ve mentioned it a lot lately, so I’ve read it many times over the last week or so! I ended in tears. Yes, indeed! It will all work together for good: There is nothing that can kill or condemn us; we only rise, In Christ Jesus. Amen.