In Bishop Kallistos Ware’s book, The Orthodox Way, the first chapter is entitled, “God as Mystery.” In Part 2a, I looked at the first half of the chapter. Here in 2b, I will proceed to look at the second half.
In the second half of the chapter, “God as Mystery,” Ware builds off the idea that faith in God entails a personal relationship with God, and that it can’t be reduced to some sort of logical certainty of a theory. Since faith in God entails a loving relationship of truth in a personal friend, Ware states that we do not need to “prove the existence of a personal friend,” because at bottom, God isn’t a matter of exterior evidence, but is rather “the secret call within us.” The person who believes (i.e. puts his faith in) God, it is because that person knows God directly through personal experience, not because that person has deduced God’s existence through logical proofs. That is not to say that intellect and logical don’t play any role in faith in God, but it does mean that intellect and logic are not the equivalent of faith. For example, a man knows and loves his wife, not because he has arrived at that knowledge and love though a series of intellectual and logical exercises, but because he has entered into a personal relationship with her. Now, within that personal relationship, he often uses his intellect and logic to make decisions to further strengthen that relationship, but that intellect and logic is not the equivalent of the loving relationship.
In any case, when it comes to “evidence” for God’s existence, Ware states that nothing really is more convincing that direct experience. Nevertheless, there are three “pointers” that, although they do not “prove” God’s existence in some sort of scientific sense, still point to the existence of the divine reality.
The Three Pointers: The World Around Us, Within Ourselves, Relationships with Others
The first “pointer” in the world that points to the existence of God is that of the world around us. Ware states that even though we are immediately faced with questions like “Why is there so much suffering, disorder, and apparent waste?” (i.e. the problem of evil), we have to also recognize that there is a “problem of good” as well. In the midst of all the “bad stuff” in this world, there is also beauty and goodness. In addition, Ware states, “Out of an initial chaos there have emerged patterns of an ever-increasing intricacy and meaning, and among all these patterns the most intricate and meaningful is man himself.”
This is very similar to something C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity—even though we are faced with the problem of evil in the world, the fact that we have a concept of “evil” is, in itself, a pointer to the existence of a high power. As Lewis put it, “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning, just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. ‘Dark’ would be a word with no meaning.”
The second “pointer” also echoes something C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity—the feeling of duty and moral obligation (i.e. a sense of right and wrong) that everyone has. Simply put, the second pointer is our conscience. In addition, not only do we have within ourselves this sense of right and wrong, we also find within ourselves a sense of wonder and self-transcendence.
The third “pointer” is found in our relationships with other people. Not just our common, everyday interactions with people we don’t know, but those deep, intimate, close relationships we have with the people we truly love. That deep, personal sense of truly knowing another person “points” to the reality that human beings are more than just biological creatures. The sense of personhood, relationship, and indeed love, points to the existence of a divine personhood who seeks to enter into relationship with us. As Ware puts it, “To say to another with all our heart, ‘I love you,’ is to say, ‘You will never die.’ At such moments of personal sharing we know, not through arguments but by immediate conviction, that there is life beyond death.”
Now, as Ware acknowledges, none of these “pointers” constitutes “logical proofs” for God’s existence. Of course, they’re not meant to be, because God is not at “thing” that needs to be proven scientifically. Rather, since God is a person, and since faith in God constitutes relating to Him within the context of a loving relationship, Ware says that faith in God is what makes it possible to understand why the world is like it is, both in its ugliness and in it beauty, and why human beings are the way they are, both in their nobility and in their meanness. As Ware writes, “Faith in God enables me to make sense of things, to see them as a coherent whole, in a way that nothing else can do.”
That is an important thing to realize, for far too often, both with atheists and many Christian apologists, the question regarding God always (and wrongly) seems to be framed as if God is an object within the universe that requires scientific arguments to be proven to exist. Well, you can’t have scientific proof for God’s existence because science deals with studying things within the natural universe and God is not a thing within the natural universe. And at the same time, despite many of the arguments from logic that many Christian apologists use to try to prove God’s existence, God is infinitely beyond any possible logical explanation we might give.
If I could put it this way: God cannot be “proven” by arguments or methods that are limited to this world because He is not a “thing” within this world, but faith in God makes it possible for us to begin to make sense of things and realities of this world, much like viewing a blueprint of a house and talking to the architect of that house allows one to better understand and appreciate the construction and design of that house.
God’s Essence and Energies
At the end of chapter one, Ware then touches upon a fundamental understanding within Orthodox Christianity regarding God and our relationship with Him. Within Orthodoxy, there is a clear distinction made between God’s Essence, which is God’s nature or inner being,and God’s Energies, which are His operations or acts of power. Or to put it another way, God’s Essence is who God is, while God’s Energies are the things God does within this world. Orthodoxy teaches that God’s Essence is totally incomprehensible and beyond human understanding—it is completely transcendent to us. We can never know or understand God’s Essence. By contrast, we can know and understand God insomuch what He reveals about Himself through His Energies. We relate to God through His Energies, but His Essence is completely “other.”
Understanding this distinction between God’s Essence and God’s Energies makes it possible for us to further understand the significance of the incarnation and salvation. For even though God cannot be known in His Essence, not only can He be known in His Energies in general, but He can be most fully known specifically in Christ, who, on one hand, shares in God’s Essence and who is one with the Father, but who also, on the other hand, is the fullest revelation of God to human beings through God’s creative Energies. And thus, through faith in Christ, human beings can participate in the Energies of God, and in that participation, human beings thus are able to enter into a direct, yet mystical union with God through Christ. As C.S. Lewis puts it, through Christ, human beings can be taken up into the life of the Trinity that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shares. And this taking up into the life of the Trinity, this man’s participation in God’s Energies through faith in Christ, is what Orthodoxy calls theosis—or “deification.” For through faith in Christ, human beings become like Christ, and since Christ is the image of the invisible God, that means human beings become more like God. This is what salvation ultimately is: One becomes like what one worships. By worshipping Christ, who is one with the Father and is both God and man (and thus the only true human being), human beings become the truly human image-bearers of God who become more like God as they worship Christ.
This understanding of God’s Essence, God’s Energies, and salvation in Christ inevitably causes one to view God and His creation in a radically different way. Ware thus ends his chapter with a quote from John Scotus Eriugena: “Every visible or invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God,” and then comments on it in this way: “The Christian is the one who, wherever his looks, sees God everywhere and rejoices in him.”
Very interesting, NT Wright echoes many of these sentiments, such as deification and the notion that we become what we worship.
Pax.
Lee.
Yes, these thoughts make sense and point to reality beyond mere sense and sensibility. This is what Jesus taught when he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”