If you understand, it's not God
We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. 1 Corinthians 8:1
I’m sure you’ve heard that it’s no good to put God in a box. I don’t think anyone intends to do that, but it’s very easy for all of us to get comfortable with our ideas, or knowledge about God. This week’s comic is not meant to pick on anyone in particular, so much as to challenge all of us to open the box and let God be God. Augustine once famously said, “If you understand, it isn’t God.” The idea is that God is infinite, and we are naturally finite; therefore the best we can do at the end of the day will always fall short of describing God.
In the orthodox Christian tradition, there is a way of being called apophatic theology, or a theology of negation. The Cappadocian fathers highlighted this via negativa, went so far as to say that God doesn’t exist in the same way that humanity exists. Richard Rohr describes it this way: “Apophatic knowing allows God to fill in all the gaps in an ‘unspeakable’ way, beyond words and within the empty spaces between them…strangely enough, this unknowing offers us a new kind of understanding, though we have an old word for it: faith. Faith is a kind of knowing that doesn’t need to know for certain and yet doesn’t dismiss knowledge either.”
Apophatic faith is balanced with what is called kataphatic theology, knowing through images and words, or positive theology. Kataphatic theology is based in the belief that the incarnation and the revelation of God in history allows us certain words and images that help us get a glimpse of the nature and person of God. Yet for the orthodox, this knowing must always be held in tension with what is unknowable and mysterious.
Apophatic theology is not so much focused on reason and the mind as it is focused on experience and the heart. Once again, Richard Rohr states, “You see, information is not the same as transformation.” Our context, our humanity, limits what we can know, and therefore all knowing must be rooted in humility rather than arrogant certainty. Apophatic theology happens when we participate with God, as subject to subject, rather than when we merely observe God as subject to object. This via negativa is the way of experiencing God in the gaps, in the in-between, in the liminal spaces where spirit and substance mysteriously become one.
This way of knowing impacts all our other knowledge. We can become experts in all sorts of things, but a knowledge rooted in humility, a knowledge rooted in limits, sets us free to experience life alongside God’s movement in history now. When we speak our theology, may it be rooted in our experience of the living God’s action in scripture and in our own lives.
I want to commend to you a most beautiful book by the late Rachel Held Evans and my friend, Matthew Paul Turner. It is a children’s book that just came out, called “What Is God Like?” It does a great job of resting in the mystery, with a child’s whimsy, to talk about the God of the in-between. It’s recently reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for Children’s Books, and it is great for helping us recognize and talk about God based on human experience of the divine.
Good luck opening up your boxes this week. I recommend it be done in worship, prayer, and getting lost in the Psalms. But of course, you seek God in whatever way fits your journey right now. May your view of God be ever-expanding. Amen.