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Divine Incomprehensibility in Eastern Orthodoxy and Reformed Theology

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Divine Incomprehensibility in Eastern Orthodoxy and Reformed Theology DOI: 10.29357/2521-179X.2021.v19.1.1 DIVINE INCOMPREHENSIBILITY IN EASTERN ORTHODOXY AND REFORMED THEOLOGY Tim Shimko Westminster Seminary, Sacramento, California, USA Introduction Theology, in its most basic and fundamental form, is the study of God. Before God can be studied, a pressing question must be engaged – can God be studied? Various answers have been given to this question. In this paper, however, two views will be analyzed; both begin with the fundamental tenet that God is incomprehensible. A striking difference, however, arises in the manner by which God can be known. On the one hand, Eastern Orthodoxy, especially in its more contemporary form as presented by Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff, views that a mystical experience is theology par excellence. On the other hand, in Reformed theology God can and should be known intellectually, but this knowledge is analogical. Though both begin with the same fundamental tenet, both arrive at two different conclusions. Not only are the conclusions different, the entire structure and paradigm of these two systems are different. Due to the different views of how God can be known, both have striking differences in anthropology, Christology, and pneumatology. The two different views and their resultant paradigms will be explored in this paper. Eastern Orthodox Position The Eastern Orthodox position begins, as was mentioned, with the fundamental tenet that God is incomprehensible. God is eternal and uncreated, while creation was made from nothing. It was not made from his essence, but by his mere command – he spoke and creation came into being. In the act of creation, therefore, there exists a fundamental difference between God and that which he created. His creation is not in any way similar to him. Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), an Eastern Orthodox theologian, wrote: All knowledge has as its object that which is. Now God is beyond all that exists. In order to approach Him it is necessary to deny all that is inferior to Him, that is to say, all that which is. If in seeing God one can know what one sees, then one has not seen God in Himself but something intelligible, something which is inferior to Him.1 1 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood: St . Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 25 . Theological Reflections 19.1 (2021) 15 Tim SHIMKO God cannot be known because of the sharp Creator/creature divide. To claim to know him in a direct, intellectual manner is to bring him from the realm of transcendence into the created realm. Such a claim is essentially presumptuous and arrogant. Aidan Nichols, describing Lossky’s views, wrote: “The human mind and human language are incommensurate with the divine reality. God escapes all our concepts and images, and thus all our words.”2 The cause of this incomprehensibility is described later: “God’s darkness may be regarded as the effect on us of the super-abundance of his radi- ance, his light.”3 Not only is God of another imperceptible realm, the radiance of his glory blinds all and leaves them in insurmountable darkness. All that may be known about God is that which relates to his nature, or in the words of John of Damascus: τὰ περὶ τὴν ϕύσιν.4 His essence cannot be known; only that which is about him or, to speak crudely, that which is on his perimeter can be known. In the light of his utter incomprehensibility, in which neither notions nor words suffice to describe him, Orthodox theology resorts to apophaticism as a means of knowing God. Simply put, apophaticism is a negative knowledge. It does not seek to understand who God is, but who God is not. Lossky remarked: “Apophaticism … is, above all, an attitude of mind which refuses to form concepts about God. Such an attitude utterly excludes all abstract and purely intellectual theology which would adapt the mysteries of the wisdom of God to human ways of thoughts.”5 God cannot be brought down and placed into human structures of thought; instead, to know God, humanity must be absorbed by the divine realm. God can only be truly known when the seeker resigns his capacities of thought, or as John Chryssavgis wrote: “The unknowability constitutes the crux of His knowability.”6 The negative character of apophaticism is excellently illustrated in Lossky’s quotation of Gregory Palamas, a fourteenth century monk and theologian: “For if God be nature, then all else is not nature. If that which is not God be nature, God is not nature, and likewise He is not being if that which is not God is being.”7 The use of positive, or cataphatic, theology is subordinated to that of apophatic theol- ogy. Theology which seeks to know God intellectually, wrote John Meyendorff (1926– 1992), another Orthodox theologian, is “the lowest and least reliable level of theology.”8 Even the positive knowledge that is attained is not conceptual, but iconic. Lossky noted: “These are not the rational notions which we formulate, the concepts with which our intellect constructs a positive science of the divine nature; they are rather images or ideas 2 Aidan Nichols, Light from the East: Authors and Themes in Orthodox Theology (London: Sheed & Ward, 1995), 34 . 3 Ibid ., 35 4 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 36; John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (NPNF2 9:4) . 5 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 38-9 . 6 John Chryssavgis, “The Origins of the Essence-Energies Distinction,” Phronema 5 (1990): 16 . 7 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 37 . 8 John Meyendorff quoted in Nichols, Light from the East, 49; cf . Meyendorff quoted on the same page: “Be- cause the concept of theologia in Byzantium as with the Cappadocian Fathers, was inseparable from theoria [‘contemplation’], theology could not be – as it was in the West – a rational deduction from ‘revealed’ premises, i .e . from Scripture or from the statements of an ecclesiastical magisterium; rather, it was a vision experienced by the saints, whose authenticity was, of course, to be checked against the witness of Scripture and Tradition ”. 16 Богословськi роздуми 19.1 (2021) Divine Incomprehensibility in Eastern Orthodoxy intended to guide us and to fit our faculties for the contemplation of that which transcends all understanding.”9 The function of this knowledge is not to produce intellectual stimula- tion, but to create a living communion with God. The chief end of theology is not theory, but practice. In Orthodox theology, the incomprehensibility of God is not meant to drive a complete wedge between God and man; the end of this knowledge is not deism or agnosticism. The infinite chasm can be bridged and man can come near to God. The bridge, for the Ortho- dox, lies in the essence-energies distinction. David Bradshaw explained: “The best gen- eral description of the essence-energies distinction remains that which is implied by the meaning of the word energeia itself: it is the distinction between an agent and that agent’s activity.”10 The divine energies are the things which John of Damascus describes as being about God (τὰ περὶ τὴν ϕύσιν). Citing Basil the Great, Bradshaw wrote: “we are led up from the activities of God (τῶν ἐνεργειῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ)... and so come in this way to an under- standing of His goodness and wisdom.”11 God is inaccessible in regard to his essence, but can be approached in regard to his energies.12 These energies are not operations that come into existence with the creation of the world; instead, they are coeternal with God’s essence.13 God’s essence can be likened to the sun and his energies to its rays. The existence of the rays does not depend on the objects which encounter its presence. The energies are not created, but they are also not his essence; instead they are the operations of his essence.14 Chryssavgis aptly noted: The energies are not one with the essence, they do not contain its totality (only He who possesses the essence contains it entirely!); but they do transmit what is specific to the total essence. The object of communication is more or less modified with respect to the state and measure of the person who is the recipient of these operations, that is to say in relation to the receptivity of the believer.15 The energies do not depend on creatures and yet it is through them that creatures come to know God. Since the means of knowing God is not intellectual, it is argued by the Orthodox that he can only be known mystically. Instead of bringing God down into the realm of rational thought, humans must be brought up into his realm. The manner by which this is done is divinization, or theosis as it is also called. Lossky claimed: “The way of the knowledge of God is necessarily the way of deification.”16 As Demetrios Harper observed, “deification depends not on man transcending his substance or in overcoming his nature, but rather on the Logos’ outpouring of divinity into human nature, elevating both man’s 9 Ibid ., 40; cf . Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 17 . 10 David Bradshaw, “Essence and Energies: What Kind of Distinction,” The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies 6 (2019): 35 . 11 Ibid ., 10 . 12 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 86 . 13 Ibid ., 74 . 14 Ibid ., 70-76 . 15 Chryssavgis, “The Origins of the Essence-Energies Distinction,” 27 . 16 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 39 . Theological Reflections 19.1 (2021) 17 Tim SHIMKO noetic soul and material body to divinity through His descent.”17 God cannot be known intellectually and he infinitely transcends his creation.
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