Part
2 : The element of Love
Another basic element is the element
of love. Once again, we are not referring to an emotion. There are
certain words that we must constantly interpret. We are also not
referring to a relationship that arises from a compulsory state,
with no liberty. And be careful here, because this is so very
profound, that it escapes us. Every relationship contains a
compelling factor when it is governed by laws, like for instance the
laws of biology. Or aesthetic laws for Plato and especially for the
Ancient Greeks for whom Eros was a basic element. Sykoutris analyzes
this very capably; you should also definitely read Plato’s Symposium
in your free time – especially its Introduction. It discerns
between Christian Love and Platonic Eros. And it proves that in
Platonic Love, the attraction to something good - which was
understood to be beauty - is irresistible. It wasn’t possible
to not love a good thing, or not be attracted by good. We therefore
have an aesthetic necessity here, which was prevalent in ancient
Hellenism. You can furthermore have a moral necessity; one cannot
avoid loving a good person. Or even, a biological necessity…
Wherever we encounter a necessity, we cannot acknowledge a case of
“love” therein.
And how
do we prove that there is no necessity, or that it does indeed
exist? Or, how do we prove that in a certain instance I do
not have any such necessity? Only when one can reverse the
conditions, and this is exactly where the Gospel introduced the
greatest revolution. Sykoutris mentions in a footnote that, If Satan
asked God “why do You love people? Tell me, give me one
reason, knowing how humans are thus and thus and thus… and even
though You can see their pitiful state..”, he would have put God in
a tight corner. What sort of excuse would there be for such a love?
Where would you find a reason to justify His love towards a sinner,
where everything, simply everything indicates that he is worth
despising and not loving? Well, it is exactly then that you
have proved that you love, of your own free will. You do not love
because you have to love; you love because you willingly want
to love. Well, I am saying all this to show that when we speak of
knowledge that contains love, we must concede that it also has to
contain the element of freedom. We are subsequently speaking of a
love that does not arise from any necessity whatsoever, of any kind,
even the most delicate kind and the most spiritual, or moral, as we
would call it. God loves in exactly this manner, and this is
exactly what Christ reveals to us. He reveals a Love of God that is
liberal to such an extent, that it is not hampered by man’s
sinfulness. If you remove the love towards a sinner from the Gospel,
the entire notion of the liberty within God’s love will fall
through. Because, to love a just person and a good person is almost
inevitable; however, to love a sinner and to die for a sinner as
Christ did, well that may be sheer madness or foolishness, but it is
surely an expression of liberty.
The third element that comprises love
– which we are describing as a means of cognizance – and notice
carefully how we are slowly reaching the crucial point, that is,
that one comes to know God only through a lattice of
relationships. If there is no loving relationship, if there is
no love, no-one can ever know God. And here we stand at a point so
outstandingly obvious in the New Testament. We could examine
several verses that mention this curious albeit simple point: that
if someone does not love God, he will never know God. Paul,
in his 1st Epistle to Corinthians – which, as I have said
in the past, deals chiefly with the issue of cognizance, and has
been elaborated on with precision – concludes that “ ….many boast
that they have knowledge..” !! And of course, we must examine what
it means, to have knowledge. Paul says in chapter 8: “ knowledge
provides something physical, whereas love provides something
constructive” . And he mentions
the phrase “ if one believes he knows something, he has never known
anything whatsoever, in the way that it should be known; if one
loves God, he shall be known by Him” (Cor.A’ 8.2-4).
Pay attention
to this verse, which is pure gnosiology. “if one believes he knows
something, he has never known anything whatsoever…..”. A complete absence of knowledge. Then he goes to the point where
“if one loves God, he shall be known by Him…”. Even in the critics’
edition, you might observe that many manuscripts have omitted the
word “God”, and they may quite possibly be the most ancient ones. It
thus becomes obvious that “…. if one loves, he shall be known by
God”. That is, love is a prerequisite. As for “known by God” , it
basically means (as Paul says elsewhere, in the Galatians Epistle
“… having known God…” but afterwards immediately correcting it and
saying “… or rather, being known by God..”), that you cannot meet
God unless He has acknowledged you; because we - as creatures – do
not have the liberty of knowledge that the uncreated God has.
Now, God knows us primarily, and He reveals Himself
to us; but this cannot occur if the prerequisite of love is not
there. If man cannot love, he cannot meet God. When we go to John
Ch.1, it becomes quite clear. He says there “.. he that loveth not,
knew not God, for God is love “ (John, 1.4,8). The words “ he that
loveth not” have a special meaning in this chapter, in this epistle.
It denotes the relations within a community, a congregation. One
must exist, one must belong in such a lattice of relations, within a
congregation. We shall hence examine the significance that
ecclesiology has in Gnosiology. It may be quite specific there, in
John’s words, but there is also something else that we should also
observe.
Immediately after he spoke these words, he continued
with an explanation of what “God is love” means; this is something
that we have frequently misinterpreted. “…. In this, God’s love
was made apparent…..”. “….. that God is love…” because “…. He
sent forth His only-begotten Son….”.
God’s love is not an emotion, nor is
it something that flows from His nature, as we sometimes say “God
loves us by nature”. The Fathers were also very careful and
retracted all such expressions. Because even the ancient Greeks and
Plato used to say that God is love, and that He exudes love from His
nature. Gregorios Nazianzenos does not acknowledge this either, and
attacks it, because as you may remember, it was the cause of the
problems created by Eunomius. He attacks precisely this idea of
Plato’s. He refers to “the Greek philosopher”, and states that for
us, God’s love is not “an effusion from a crater”. It does not
proceed from His nature. God’s love consists of His being a Father
and having a Son; just as I mentioned shortly before. And this Son
“He gave to us”. The Father’s love is His Son; it is a person, a
personal relationship, which henceforth is offered to us also, as a
means of knowing God. The conclusion therefore that is reached, is
that knowledge springs solely from a love relationship, which God
Himself commenced to offer. We cannot begin this relationship
ourselves in a state of liberty.
This gives
rise to a huge philosophical problem; why don’t we as creatures
freely know anything?. Why is everything to us a given thing? Well,
that is exactly what it means to be a creature, to be something
created and not uncreated. In reality, even your very existence is
a given thing. Therefore, you are subject to compulsory knowledge.
You cannot know anything in absolute liberty. God therefore, who is
the only absolutely free Being, is the only One who can love
freely. That is why He initially volunteers knowledge of Himself.
He acknowledges us as His sons, through His own Son, which is what
Paul meant when he said “or rather, being known by God”, and through
this means, we henceforth know Him as Father.
I will therefore finish off, with the
following conclusion. The cognizance of God involves an accession
into the love relationship between the Father and the Son in
liberty, under our own free will. This relationship is free and not
compulsory, because God is not obliged to love us; He does it, of
His own free will. Neither are we obliged to love Him. We also
enter this relationship voluntarily. Therefore the accession into a
loving relationship such as this, contains the potential for the
ontological identification of God as existing “in the person of
Jesus Christ”. Because, for us, God exists within this relationship
to such an ontological degree, that if this ceased to be, our very
existence would also cease to be.
In reality, this means that if we
don’t accede into the relationship of love that exists between the
Father and the Son, we cannot ever know God. We shall know Him in
thousands of philosophical ways, pagan ways or mystic ways, but not
as a Father; that is, as the Father of the specific Son - a person - and subsequently as our own Father, because we have related to the
person of the Son as being our father….
The second
element is that love should be the factor that creates the lattice
of these relations, where all those who acknowledge God as the
Father in this manner, through Christ , find themselves in a state
of existential inter-dependence amongst themselves. Therefore, one
must belong inside the community, inside the body that
is formed by these relations. You cannot approach God from outside
this body of persons who acknowledge Him in the way the Son does.
And this means that God is known fully, only within the
Congregation. Only in this way. Otherwise, He will be acknowledged
as something else, but not as the Father. But God is the Father.
It is how He reveals Himself. It is how He wants to
reveal Himself. I don’t know what else He is. He may be many other
things, but because – as I said – knowledge presupposes willful
revelation, this is the way that freely reveals God to us as the
Father.
For these things to happen, a
cleansing is imperative. You cannot reach this point of knowing
God, of knowing Him in this manner, without clearing up your
relationship in general; it is because in knowledge, there is
interference by all kinds of relationships. In order for me to know
about this table, the relationships that I have with the overall
physical environment will need to interfere: with colors, with
shapes, with everything. We never truly know about an object,
without these general empirical relationships. Well, the same thing
applies, when attempting to know God. Our entire existence, along
with all our empirical relationships, is entangled in the quest to
know God. I know God, through all my relationships, through things,
through nature, through my senses, through objects. This is not a
knowledge that flows only through my mind, nor only through my heart
as an emotional center. It is a broader, existential knowledge,
which engulfs my entire identity. My identity itself is linked to
all the relationships that I have with things, with faces, with
objects, with everyone; but especially with my personal
relationships, because they can affect my identity. All of these
things must therefore undergo a filtering, a cleansing, in order to
determine to what extent they can be included in this relationship
with God, through which His Son will reveal Him, and make Him known
to us in this way. This is where we shall discover that things are
not so easy, and that they truly require cleansing. I would say
that this is what ascetic living is all about. What is known as
cleansing of passions is exactly this clearing up of our
existential relations with everything that is entangled in our
personal identity. This clearing up is a necessary prerequisite.
At this point,
the words of Saint Gregorios the Theologian acquire immense
significance, as I mentioned in the previous lesson: “…… it is not
for everyone…. to philosophize about God..”, but “… for those who
have undergone scrutiny and have lived in theory of things, and who
have previously cleansed or detached both body and soul….”. But we
should not read the Fathers by isolating quotations. Saint Gregorios
himself stressed in another of his speeches the same thing that I
have tried to extensively analyze here; that is, in order to know
God the prerequisite may be cleansing, but it inevitably relates to
loving. He writes: “… God may be the ultimate radiance ….. which
becomes imaginable as we incessantly detach ourselves, it becomes
loved as we incessantly envisage it, and, by incessantly loving, it
becomes self-evident..”. Thus, cleansing is not a purpose on its
own; An ascetic life will not reveal God to us. Neither do we
automatically meet God by cleansing ourselves of our passions. God
becomes known, through our communion within the body of Christ; by
involving ourselves in the relationships that are created by this
body. That is when God reveals Himself, and that is when our
relationship with God is an actual relationship between a Father and
a Son. And this is what gives a special meaning to what we say
(unfortunately only in words most of the time), when we are asked
“what is the difference between an ascetic Christian and a guru?”.
We often hear the response “but we live that way in Christ”. What
do we mean, “in Christ”? Do we simply respond with a word, a name,
and the matter is settled? All the rest of the story is Buddhist,
and from that point onwards we insert a name – Christ –and that’s
the end of the story? What sort of existential face value does
Christ have, that makes Him the determining factor? If we don’t set
down these elements of Christ’s body, of the relations that Christ
creates within the community of His body – the Church – we shall not
be able to locate this determining factor in all these issues. So
what? A Buddhist comes to know God by cleansing himself of his
passions; therefore, his ascetic lifestyle is obviously not his
ultimate goal. The cognizance of God does not spring from, nor
depend on, nor is it accomplished automatically, by cleansing one’s
passions. There must be the positive element of accession into the
body in which Christ reveals Himself as a community of many persons
who are inter-connected by love, and can therefore see God’s
presence, in Christ. And I shall once again reiterate, from another
long and tiresome road this time, to something that I mentioned in a
previous lesson, with regard to dogmas: That dogmas are interpreted
within the Church, and specifically during the Eucharist. It is only
here, that God is acknowledged in the fullest possible way that we
have. All other ways are provisional, and although I do not disavow
their importance and their significance, but, for fear that we are
in danger of making them an end in themselves, I am obliged to
stress that they are not ends in themselves.
Cognizance,
therefore, of God presupposes our willing accession into the loving
relationships that God Himself has created with us, in Christ. “If
God loves my brother in Christ and I hate my brother, I cannot get
to know God.” It is imperative that I have the same kind of love for
my brother that God has for him. The cognizance of God moves along
this crooked path, which is not simply a perpendicular between my
heart and God, but something that also has a horizontal dimension to
it . That is why “….. he that loveth not, knew not God, for God is
love”.
Before closing the topic of
Gnosiology, we need to clear up the issue of negation, based on
everything that we have talked about. With the pretext of Lossky’s
writings in his “Mystic Theology” where he has mainly referred to
the Cappadocian Fathers and Saint Gregorios of Palamas, the
ignorance aspect has become overstressed. Indeed, in their task of
refuting Eunomian theories, the Cappadocian Fathers had overstressed
the idea that God could not become known, no matter how close one
may seem to have approached Him: “ …. Even if one becomes greater
than him (Paul) and reaches even closer to God, having attained a
smaller distance from Him and from perfect knowledge, or even if he
has surpassed us with regard to the complex and humble and
earth-infested alloy…..” (Gregorios the Theologian). But we must
not forget the following, basic points:
a)
the ignorance of God is described by the Fathers as
“incomprehensibility” or the “incomprehensible” notion of God. It
does not therefore imply a denial of any kind of knowledge of God
(if this were the case, then the Lord’s words ‘so that they may know
You as the only true God’ etc would have no meaning); it rather
implies a special kind of knowledge, that of “comprehensibility”
which is also an impossible thing. This kind of knowledge – which
Eunomians allowed – is the kind that we analyzed above as the
“knowledge of things”, and we saw how and why it cannot be applied
in the case of God.
b)
That which the Fathers do not accept, is the
knowledge of the nature or of the essence of God; to actually
comprehend the “first and unalterable nature, as it is known within
the Trinity” (Gregorios the Theologian). This doesn’t mean that the
Fathers refuse any talk of God as a Trinity. By relating the nature
or the essence of God with the Father, the Eunomians caused
confusion by admitting that, if we could know God as the Father, we
can also know the nature of God (since divine essence and Father are
fully aligned notions). The distinction between essence and the
Father, on which the Cappadocian Fathers insisted, ruled out any
confusion. Thus, by saying that we do not know God in essence, does
not automatically imply that we do not know Him as the Father (or as
a Trinity of persons). And reversely, to say that we know God as
the Father, does not automatically imply that we know Him in essence
or by nature.
All of these
indicate that the foregoing analysis is in accordance with patristic
gnosiology: that God can only be known “in person”, as persons,
and not by nature or in essence. Patristic literature does not
provide us with any existential analysis of what it means to know
“in person” or as persons. It does, however, furnish us with the
basic principle that there is a fundamental distinction
gnosiologically between nature and the person, since there is
absolutely no way of knowing the nature of God, whereas it is
possible to acknowledge His personal existence. Subsequently,
negation that refers to the nature of God should not be generalized
as negation and incomprehensibility with regard to His personal
existence.
Beyond this
general principle of distinction between the essence of God –
something that is utterly inconceivable - and His personal-triadic
existence which is made known to us through His Son in the Spirit,
the Fathers do not offer us – as we said – an analysis of what it
means to know God “in the person of Jesus Christ” and as a Trinity
of persons. This analysis was not deemed necessary in the years of
the Fathers, but that doesn’t mean it should never be done over the
centuries. On the contrary, it is an obligation of Dogmatics – as we
said during the first lessons – to proceed to interpret dogmas,
provided it doesn’t betray or distort the spirit of the Fathers.
That is what all the greater Fathers did: they interpreted their
predecessors, according to the needs of their own time, and they
sought to analyze basic terminology.
One such
necessity that historical needs imposed with regard to Gnosiology
was, during the Patristic years, the distinction between the essence
and the energy of God. This distinction, which appears somewhat
hazily in Saint Athanasios and more clearly in the Cappadocian
Fathers, is extensively developed by Saint Gregorios of Palamas, as
we know. In this way, the Patristic principle of the
“incomprehensibility” of God’s essence is preserved, and the energy
or the energies of God are offered as a basis of gnosiology.
Thus, negation is again confined
to the essence of God. The persons, as well as the energies of
God, which are both uncreated, allow us to know God and to
theologize. But in this case, as we saw from the preceding analysis,
cognizance cannot be perceived as comprehension. It is a kind of
knowledge that needs analyzing, if the Fathers’ aspect were to be
interpreted. This is the analysis that we attempted here.